The shame rubs off on you

I was just catching up on my reading and came across Melissa Gira's blog. Melissa is a sex worker who is also a free-lance writer, activist, and some other things. I came upon a sentence in her entry about a vigil to help end violence against sex workers, which she organized. This is what she wrote:

There is too much risk already in this work, in moving in the world as those who carry so much of people’s sexual shame and fear and pain.

Wow. I don't intend to address the violence we in the sex/entertainment biz face, although I know it is a very real risk. What really floored me was the way she nailed how being in this business colors how I face the world around me.

In my work, I really do see a lot of the seedy side of people. Not seedy people, just the seedy, seamy side we all have. I am at peace with my darker side, for the most part, which makes me able to face that darkness in other people. But thing is, that darkness scares a lot of people. Their own dark side scares them, and other people's darkness scares them too.

We all fear the unknown, the unexamined side of ourselves. We fear the unknown in others, possible because it reflects our own hidden selves. Because we fear the abyss, it is difficult to face and examine it. Without examination, or hidden selves remain unknown and fearsome, and the cycle continues.

Here come the sex workers and the entertainers, who listen to, act out, interact with, and participate in the hidden aspects of so many people. We see their fears; we touch their shame. Whether this harms or even changes us, is not the point. The world outside these personal little dramas knows instinctively that we have had our hands in the dirty, murky parts of other minds, and fears we are contaminated. They believe that shame rubs off on us like coal dust, and if they come too near us, the dirt and dust of all those unexamined fantasies will somehow transfer to them. It will stain them and sully them. It will make them unclean.

Whether they have given it that much thought or not, that is what people mean when they say they don't want to "associate with" certain groups of other people. They know I carry part of the shame and fear and pain of hundreds of other people. I know they know it. I know they fear it.

I regard people outside the industry warily. To them, I am an unknown "other" because I make my living where angels fear to tread. I am unsure how they will handle the truth of my life, but I know what their gut reaction will be if I choose to tell them. I've seen that before: one split second of horror before they arrange their features and choose their reply.

I move in the world as one who carries other people's fear and pain and shame, and I carry a shield, too, to protect me from those who fear where I've been.