Hugo Schwyzer

After yesterday’s post in the continuing series of posts on the subject of disclosing one’s sexual past to a partner, I got an email from a woman who is a regular reader and a Facebook friend. She writes:

My question comes from your “exclusivity” post. I’m wondering, if in a similar vein, how one should go about in terms of discussing such information such as having nude photographs taken, working as an exotic dancer, etc?

It’s a good question, and there are a couple of different queries buried within it. First of all, the issue of nude photos has changed enormously since the advent of the digital camera and the internet. Back in “my day”, it was difficult to get naked amateur pictures developed; many developers would simply throw away any film (including the negatives) that they judged obscene. I recall that a number of my friends, valuing their privacy, took Polaroids as a result of this longing for discretion and a permanent reminder of either nakedness or a specific sexual encounter. Today, with film more or less a thing of the past, it’s much easier to take — and more ominously, easier to send — naked photos of oneself. A couple of years ago, one of my youth group “kids”, then aged 16, took a topless photo of herself standing in front of her bathroom mirror, and e-mailed it to a boy she “thought” was her boyfriend. He shared the picture with friends, and the miracle of technology meant that half her school saw the photo. (At the time that one of my co-volunteers and I counseled her, we never realized that in some jurisdictions, this teen could have been charged with sending child pornography. She was, thankfully, never in legal trouble, but her humiliation endured.)

I don’t know what percentage of young people today take naked pictures of themselves and their friends with digital cameras. I imagine quite a few do, and that promises to delete the photos are as unreliable as similar promises about burning love letters were in the past. One waits for, oh, about 2025, when a Supreme Court nominee is forced to withdraw his or her name from consideration after nude pictures and a salacious college Myspace profile are uncovered by zealous journalists. And then, by 2045 or so, the ubiquity of these pictures and the cyber-indiscretions of the once-young will be so commonplace that this sort of thing will not be a disqualifier for high office. So, bottom line, I don’t think that the existence of amateur naked photos is going to remain a serious issue for years to come. What was once shocking will very quickly become banal, as is the way of most things.

That said, I don’t think my reader was writing about the topless photos one takes of oneself in the mirror with the trusty Canon SuperShot. She’s writing, I suspect, about whether to tell a new partner about one’s past experience of getting paid to pose nude, or to strip for money, or to do other things that would fall into the broad category of “sex work.” And that’s a much trickier question.

I think that when it comes to deciding what to tell a lover about one’s past, it’s worth separating things into two categories. First, what does this person have a moral right to know? Second, what do they perhaps not have a right to know, but if I don’t tell them, are they likely to someday find out from another source? Things that most people would agree fall into the first category include things like the existence of children from a previous relationship, a drug addiction overcome, a bankruptcy, a sexually transmitted infection. I’ve already made it clear that the number of past sexual partners, or the details of specific positions utilized with those partners, is not something a current partner ought to expect to have disclosed.

But of course, our past has a way of popping back up. I’m not sure that my wife had an automatic right to know that, years before she and I started dating, I had a series of consensual affairs with my students. But I disclosed this to her, without going into explicit details about names and actions, because I knew perfectly well that she would hear about it from someone sooner or later. Not only had I made a rather public amends to the college president for my behavior (back in 2000), but I knew that dozens and dozens of people knew about what I had done. People talk. And I was convinced that it would always be better for a girlfriend (much less a potential spouse) to hear about my past from me than from someone else.

Another example: abortion and adoption. One of my exes whom I dated for a while told me, when things were getting serious, that when she was 17 she had had a child and put the baby up for adoption. It was a closed adoption, but she knew that there was a fair chance that someday her adult child might track her down. As she and I were talking marriage, she wanted me to be aware that at some point, a teenager might appear on our doorstep. I was grateful to know this, as it was not only an important part of my partner’s story, but it was something that could re-emerge as a very real issue in the future. On the other hand, though she volunteered the story of an abortion she had had a few years later, I didn’t regard that as something about which I had an automatic right to know. I was grateful for her trust, of course, but acknowledged that there was a difference between what I was entrusted with hearing and what I was entitled to hear. Stories of babies put up for adoption probably fall into the latter category; stories of abortions undergone probably fall into the former.

So my rule of thumb, as it were, is simple: if it’s something from my past about which my partner has the “right” to know, I tell them. “I was married three times before you” is something that needs to be disclosed; “I’ve had sex with x number of people in my life” is a fact to which my current partner is not automatically entitled (and indeed, in many cases, would prefer not to know.) Very few people know my “number”, and I can’t imagine anyone tracking down my wife to foist this unwelcome detail upon her! I am safe in honoring our mutual agreement not to burden each other with these sorts of details. But I do feel compelled to share with her those things that might come to light thanks to someone else. It’s ten times more painful, generally speaking, to learn a shocking truth about one’s partner from a third party. At some point, I think we have the obligation to act pre-emptively against that possibility by being candid with our lovers.

This is not the post to re-visit the ethics of sex work, save to note the obvious truism that feminists are not all of one mind on the subject. I do think that those women and men who posed for porn, or stripped for money, or had sex for cash are entitled to keep that aspect of their past a secret. Obviously, if one is still working as a stripper, it’s something that ought to be shared with a new partner as the relationship develops. Maybe not on the first date, but before the first joint expedition to Ikea! If it’s in the past, then the likelihood of a partner finding out about it from a third party needs to be assessed. The right to know is linked, but not identical to, the right (if it can be called that) not to find out about it from a source other than the partner him or herself.

One of the great misconceptions we have about sex workers is that they are incapable of maintaining healthy partnered relationships. Many women who work in the “industry” are married to men (or women) who are not in the same business. These relationships are as healthy as any others, it seems, a point made over and over again by the happily married Ren at her blog. But being partnered with someone who makes porn or engages in sexual acts for money obviously requires a great deal of trust and transparency, two things that seem present in Ren’s life and in the lives of at least some of her fellow sex workers.

In the end, the ideal is to be honest with a partner about what they need to know. If the relationship has long-term potential, and one’s current feelings about sex are affected by a past in sex work, then yes, at some point the truth should be shared. If there are photos floating around in the public domain that might turn up, it’s safe to bet that sooner or later, they will turn up. And it would probably be better to have the “come to Jesus” talk before that moment.

But the ideal is also to create a society in which there isn’t as much shame, particularly for women, about a sexual “past.” The traditionalist mindset teaches us to revere what is hidden and concealed; it teaches us that a body exposed is a body devalued. A man reared in that misogynistic worldview may believe that if other men have seen his girlfriend’s body in a strip club or online, or touched her body as part of an erotic transaction, that what he shares with her is somehow less special. He is wrong. He has confused his lover’s body with a depreciating economic asset, a mistake that has ruined so much of our thinking about sexuality for so long.

Above all else, we need to remember that the great joy of sexual intimacy doesn’t lie in being first, or being only. It lies in the willingness that the two people involved have to “get naked as they get naked.” Intimacy is not rooted in uniqueness, but in mutual vulnerability. How many people have seen my wife’s nude body doesn’t interest me; how many men were inside of her before me is not relevant to our story. What I care about is this: when we strip off our clothes, are we also stripping off our defenses? Are we truly naked, soul as well as body? And is that kind of emotional vulnerability and honesty that we are practicing something that either of us is doing with anyone else, not in the past, but now? Those are questions worth asking.