Paying for sessions

The taboo about paying for sexual services seems odd to me. Society finds it acceptable for people to pay for just about anything else. My physically disabled mother, for example, pays money to have people come to her house and do pretty much everything: cleaning, preparing food, feeding her, giving her medicine, washing her, brushing her teeth, inserting and removing catheters, cleaning her bottom, rubbing cream into her skin, cutting her nails, every possible physical service to the human body, apart from anything sexual. If she were younger and wanting sexual release, but unable to help herself due to her disabilities, would it be right to deny her that wish? Surely sexual release is part of good health.

 

I don’t fully understand why this boundary is drawn. Why should people not be allowed to provide others with something that benefits their health? I realise that people can be exploited, but people in many other occupations are miserably exploited too, and the solution there is not to ban the work, but to regulate it so that they are not exploited, and so that people who abuse the system and exploit others are punished. Making it illegal, on the other hand, counterproductively puts those who provide the service in an extremely vulnerable position, in which they will almost inevitably be exploited.

 

Even if, however, we choose to answer the question of whether people should be allowed to pay for sexual intercourse with a “no”, the question arises as to whether it is OK to pay for a BDSM session This question was always answered with a clear “no” by a female sub with whom I was together for several months a few years ago. She was regularly able to find men willing to play with her for free; indeed, she frequently received emails from men she’d met in BDSM clubs offering to play with her.

She found it wrong of me to pay a domme to play with me. I argued that it was impossible, or close to impossible, to find a woman willing to play without payment. Her attempts to disprove this involved advertising on Fetlife, but the only replies she received were from professional dominatrices.

 

I presume there are plenty of women around who play dominance games with their partners, but they tend not to be looking for random slaves, and if this is the case in a liberal city like Berlin, where society and the state largely keep their noses out of the sex lives of consenting adults, I assume it is generally so.

Some professional dommes have submissive partners in their private lives, but for most male subs, who may fantasise about such a relationship but actually prefer to compartmentalise their BDSM activities, the only way to play is to pay.

 

Payment for a session is clearly payment for a sexual service, but it is not payment for prostitution. In the vast majority of cases, not only will there not be intercourse, but there will be no access to the domme’s body, or only the access she elects to grant. And the degree of such access varies widely. One domme I sessioned with 20 years ago said angrily “Are you looking at my breasts?” – which of course were a stunning sight, dressed as they were in a low-cut leather outfit precisely in order to be viewed. At our first session, Phoenix ordered/invited me to play roughly with her naked breasts, whereas Bella once had to say “No boob-touching!” when my hand went too close.

The point is that the domme is in control of her body. She decides what, if anything, can be seen or touched. What the guest is paying for is not the domme’s body: it is her skills. Whilst it is pleasant to look at the domme, and enjoyable to touch her, it is perfectly possible to have a wonderful session blindfolded with hands immobilised, with zero direct contact. One is paying for the domme’s ability, sensitivity and creativity. Those aspects are what people pay for without any societal objections in many other occupations. I personally have no ethical problem with paying for this particular service.