Where's the line between professional girlfriend and just plain professional?
Season 1, Episode 5
Episode five begins with an introduction to Amalita, who Carrie describes to the camera as Eurotrash, but fun.
They bump into each other at the till in D&G, after Carrie’s credit card is declined and cut in half by the salesman. Amalita insists on buying Carrie the shoes. Carrie tries to argue it just like I would—Oh my god please no way stop are you sure ok wow— whilst Amalita reassures her it’s fine, her boyfriend Carlo is paying anyway. Carlo is very wealthy and has a small penis—because it’s the nineties and we were into body shaming then.
Carrie goes on to describe Amalita’s life as “a blur of rich men, designer clothes and glamorous resorts. She didn't actually work for a living, yet possessed a dazzling sexual power that she exploited to her full advantage, which presented a certain conundrum.”
The conundrum being—where's the line between professional girlfriend and just plain professional?
Later on in the episode, Carrie wakes up in a hotel room after spending the night with what turns out to be a one night stand. The man didn’t ask for her number or leave his, instead he gifts her $1000 that he leaves in an envelope on the bedside table. She invites Samantha and Miranda to the hotel room for Bloody Mary’s and breakfast and tells them about the money. Samantha’s advice? “Money is power. Sex is power. Therefore getting money for sex is simply an exchange of power.”
Was Samantha right?
I decided to sit down and explore this with award winner, expert, mentor and passionate advocate for the destigmatisation of BDSM culture and sex work, Eva Oh.
Laura: Eva, hello! I think the best way to begin is with an introduction. Who are you, what do you do?
Eva: Who am I today? Haha! I’m Eva, I moved to London last year and I’ve been a dominatrix since 2011. Prior to that, I’ve been a bunch of different things, including a strategic consultant. I started off working in a dungeon but my career has since progressed to having a very small group of slaves. I’ve also been more and more public with what I do and that seems to be a great interest to people these days. Which is good! But it’s also something new to navigate.
Laura: I guess you do a lot of interviews like this and speaking opportunities too?
Eva: Yeah! I’m very happy for them because through this work I’ve understood how much stigma there is—and I’m very happy to be an opportunity for people to think a little differently.
Laura: So when did the shift happen between working as a strategic consultant to working in the sex industry?
Eva: This thought of domination came to mind because somebody was making a joke about my personality a few years earlier, because of how I was asking for something—and women aren’t usually so clear in their requests I guess? They made a joke and said I’d make a good dominatrix. I didn’t know what it was, so I googled it and happened to be in Sydney—where everything is decriminalised in terms of the sex industry—and I found a dungeon to train at.
Laura: So it’s decriminalised in Australia?
Eva: In New South Wales and in Victoria. And then it’s legalised elsewhere.
Laura: And what about London?
Eva: It’s legalised here. There’s a lot of rules around it. So how I explain it is: imagine a journalist. A journalist can start a Substack, they can go work freelance with a newspaper, get hired by another newspaper, or write a random thing and chuck it on the internet. But if it were legalised they might only be able to apply for an ID that allows them to work with a specific entity. They can’t start a Substack, or a blog, or work freelance. And so there’s a lot of limitations in the legalised framework.
Laura: So the goal is to decriminalise the sex industry?
Eva: Yes. Amnesty International, WHO, and a lot of organisations have done a lot of research and understand that decriminalisation is better for the safety and health of people. That would be an ideal scenario.
Laura: So in this episode, Samantha says, “Money is power. Sex is power. Therefore getting money for sex is power.” I’d love to know your thoughts on that statement?
Eva: I think that money comes with a complex set of connotations. And sex and sexuality comes with a complex history that’s rooted in control and has established itself in society in a way that has a lot of added meaning. I think that statement is a good place to start, but it’s a very complicated space to operate in. I think it depends on what your motivations are and maybe what the framework your working in for that statement to be more or less true.
Laura: I’m finding that with a lot with Carries’s question. They’re a good place to start, but it’s always a little more complicated than that. Which I guess you know better than anyone right? Humans, psychology, how complicated we all are?
Eva: When people come to a dominatrix or a sex worker, they already bring a set of expectations and they also strip away some of that societal imagery that they usually have to carry, so you see a different side of people automatically. But then when they start to be a little more vulnerable than usual and you start to play with that space and they start to feel accepted in a space they’re not usually accepted in, you see a co-dependent side of people sometimes emerge. That’s a little bit necessary for the longevity of that exchange, but in other ways it’s not particularly healthy.
Laura: When you say the longevity, do you mean for an ongoing relationship between you and and your clients?
Eva: Yeah.
Laura: And how do you navigate those long-term ones?
Eva: This is going to be a little bit dependent based on the person I’m interacting with. I think if the person understands boundaries and has their own life, it can look a little more fruitful and it can be a bit lighter and satisfy me and everybody can go and do their thing. But on the more extreme end, they might have less to tether to in their own life and they start to invest a lot in you. They tend to be the clients that end up giving you much more, but they become a greater weight also. I love a healthy boundaried person, but I also love financial stability, so it’s this medium I have to navigate on an ongoing basis. I have to check in with myself and ask: is this much emotional labour worth it?
Laura: What are your thoughts on the psychology behind what you do and behind your clients too?
Eva: I think everyone is going to have a different experience of doing this job based on how they are. I tend to—thankfully—not overthink, but I do tend to think fairly deeply about how someone is/what an interaction is like/how I am within it. And so therefore I have a very rich experience of it. But of course you can just duck in and duck out, like life. Life can be a shallow experience, or something more thought through, or something over thought. It’s just dependent on the personality engaging with it. For me, I think I was very naive when I entered this realm. It was a job I wanted to try out, that was it. But then the people who worked in it were the most fascinating thing. They were much more expressive and communicative and I got to observe erratic, deep, caring, all the extreme behaviours from all these dominant women. I was also naive to how vulnerable a space it was for the clients. I remember within the first month people were crying after a session and that’s a very common occurrence. Because of all the biochemistry going on—guilt, shame, acceptance. I think they’re the most striking things about the experience so far. It’s an honour to see people in these spaces, but it can also be a weight if you’re not careful with setting boundaries.
Laura: And how do you do that?
Eva: I’ve had to learn over time. I’m quite naturally interested in people and I needed to know how to stop myself from asking questions and looking too deeply, so I’ve had to learn to be like, OK the hours done. And not carry it too much. It’s become enough of a routine that I don’t have to carry it anymore. I understand what helps me keep that compartmentalised and rested. I guess it’s all these habits learnt over time and a lot of trial and error.
Laura: You mentioned shame that some people feel after a session with you. Where do you think that shame is coming from?
Eva: Society.
Laura: And why do you think there is such a stigma around sexual gratification?
Eva: I think it’s because sexuality is closer to the raw expression of our personality than any other form of expression—and I think that can trigger a sense of freedom and a sense of rebellion. And I think the power in sexuality has been understood for a very long time and the people who would like to have power have understood that they need to control that in order to control people. And so that can trickle down to how they want people to have sexual interactions, how they want them to partner, what kind of family units they should have—and these become cultural norms. I think it’s all to do with attempts at reigning power over people and sexuality is a powerful aspect in doing that.
Laura: In Carrie’s words, where do you draw the line between the professional girlfriend and the just plain professional?
Eva: Being a sex worker has taught me a lot about my worth and how to value my output, whether thats in time or attention. I hold my personal relationships to a higher standard because of it. I accept less bullshit these days. Everything is transactional, even in my personal life—so are my needs getting met? End of story if they’re not, it’s very simple for me. In terms of what people think of my job, I guess I’m more interested in how people find me, as opposed to my job. And I understand that people have a lot of sexual hangups, so I just try to gravitate towards people who don’t. That means I don’t really have conversations like how do you feel about my job? It’s more like, I’m doing this and this is how I feel about it, can you support me in that? If you can’t, then this is probably not a good fit.
Laura: What do you want people to know about sex workers and the industry in general?
Eva: It’s been a gradual process of me becoming more public and so I didn’t really start off with this one overarching thing that I had to do. It’s been me realising this is really difficult for me to exist! Why is this so difficult? Oh, its because people have hang ups. How can I help so that my life is easier? Actually, this is helping a lot of people, so maybe I can do more of this so I feel a purpose and contribution. And so right now, I feel like the fact I’m speaking up is what I’m most happy for. It would be nice if people understood that there’s a human behind this job. And if they want to gather more information from that and more intricacy to that opinion, then great. But at a base level, that’s it.
I absolutely love Eva Oh!
i loved! haha