From Sexual Obnoxiousness to Appropriate Sexual Openness

As many of you know, I continue to maintain a profile on OKCupid. I do this for many reasons, most of them personal. However, due to my work in the sex industry, I feel it is necessary to be completely open about my work on there and this leads to many unfortunate behaviors from other people who misinterpret what said openness means. I get propositioned a lot and I get frequent demands for free services, amongst other things.

Today, I got a message that seemed to indicate that the individual had not even bothered to read my profile and was primarily interested in some sexual stimulation. Even before I got into this work, I knew this kind of thing happens to women all over the internet. This man began his message with a description of all the sexual things that he wanted to do to me, expressed that he wanted to meet me followed by him justifying his actions by saying that sexual openness is healthy. The problem is, sexual openness is healthy, but the context is as important as the action of being open. I responded to this person with the following and am offering it for your viewing so that you can share it with other people who need a little bit of a reality check:

Thank you for at least the implication that you find me attractive. I do think there are better ways to articulate such a thing, though, and I think you should bear in mind a few things before you send a similar message to people in the future:

1) I’m well aware of people’s desires; I study sexual behavior as a career.

2) There is a time and place to express those desires and in order for rational and practical sexual exchanges to occur, this is generally after two people have made an attempt to get to know each other at least to some small extent.

3) While it is healthy to have sexual desires and to express them; it is more healthy to express them at the appropriate time (see above). If one cannot restrain themselves, it is better to find an appropriate time before doing so. This helps prevent massive social blunders.

4) It probably would help if you make an attempt to actually read people’s profiles before writing them and then you can better understand how to approach them. If you want to talk dirty to me, you have to either become very close to me somehow or you have to be a client of mine. At this point, you are neither and have not made a motion to become either. So while your desire is healthy, you have failed on the social propriety front. There is a vast difference between being healthy in one’s openness and bypassing other healthy behaviors before one reaches that point. I would hope that in order to prevent making irrational and abrupt sexual decisions, you give some mind to this fact in the future. Open IS healthy, but it also has its place and there are other healthy things that should happen before you reach the stage that you jumped to in your message.

Be also aware that hastiness in trying to aim for sexual interaction with someone can have very severe side effects. Lack of knowledge about your partner’s sexual life, relationships status and even health can lead to confrontation and other complex issues or disease. Taking care to account for these potential problems can lead to a long and healthy (even varied) social life without putting yourself at risk.