I’ve had an interesting past few weeks and heard from several of you about scheduling a phone session with me. I’ve also come across an interesting question that I grappled with for a long time. If I get paid for phone sex, will it become just a job to me? Will I lose something of myself? Is it inauthentic?

I’ve thought about this a lot – of course I don’t know the answer perfectly yet since it hasn’t been much time – but I think that the question is coming from the wrong direction. What is it about money that automatically taints a sexual experience? Why, amongst all things that people have a passion for and are also lucky enough to be paid for, do we look at sex as fake and diminished when money enters into the transaction?

I’ve worked as a reading tutor before and developed a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge with other people. I’ve also been paid for teaching. Does my care for my students or my love of the work of teaching disappear when I get a paycheck? Am I merely a “reading whore” when I peddle my services to paying clients instead of giving it away for free?

While the analogy works, I know some people will get tripped up on it. We tend to think of sex as the one thing that should be motivated by pure and unadulterated altruism because of the assumption that it should be tied to romantic love and fidelity. Anyone that observes the world around them knows that this isn’t truly always the case but it is a strong current that sex workers must fight against.

Building a fantasy for free or building it for money has the same effects – someone gets to experience a fantasy. Just the same way as my students benefit from learning to read regardless of whether or not I am paid.

Do you get all of Ellie when you call an 800 number? Of course not! But you get my time and my talents and my passion. I think my time and talents are worth being compensated – the passion is an added bonus that makes me want to pursue this work. It is genuine and it doesn’t leave me regardless of whether or not money is being exchanged. So, instead of thinking of myself as selling out, when someone asks me if this is “just a job”, my response is, “it is a job because I’m good enough to be a professional.”