How Non Sex Worker Characters Can Be Relatable to Hookers

Depictions of characters who are sex workers are often terrible. Whether we’re talking about the caricatures of brothel workers that you find in video games or the Pretty Woman characters that you find in films and TV, it’s rare that these depictions reflect the realities of selling sex. Personally, when I see these characters I’m less interested in them than the kinky or sex-positive person I know who’ve never sold sex, because they’re created to titillate or intrigue an audience that has never sold sexual services rather than to be relatable. The appeal is precisely in the ways sex workers are seen as sensational and not as regular people.

That doesn’t mean that it’s hopeless, with regards to fiction. There are amazing sex worker characters, like Lafayette from True Blood and the characters in Harlots and Margot in The Menu, or problematic depictions which are relatable nonetheless like Gigolo Joe in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The writers who created these characters deserve to be recognized for them and I’d love to see more.

We show up more often in the background of things than as the focus of a show, where a character like Geralt in the Witcher might briefly go to a brothel and a worker gets some screen-time, but ultimately these background characters don’t have enough depth for most of us to feel seen. A line might make me smile, but I’m more likely to be pleased that the writers did their research than to be excited about the actual character.

With the state of current depictions of sex workers, it’s no wonder that the characters I relate to the most from a sex worker perspective often aren’t sex workers at all. I don’t mean that I relate to them for other things, I mean that they’re created in such a way that they have parallel experiences to a lot of sex workers even without being them. I see this occur the most with characters in a fantasy setting, and I know I’m not alone in my attachment being related to the way these characters can freely put words to experiences I won’t see discussed elsewhere.

An example of this, to make clear what I mean, would be the character of Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3. He’s a vampire spawn. At first glance, it seems bizarre to relate to him as a sex worker. He’s flirtatious and sexual and angry and murderous and bites people and drinks their blood, nothing about that screams “prostitute”. Except that as you go through his storyline, he reveals more about his past. Through this fantasy vampire concept, we learn that he was a thrall to the vampire who turned him and forced to follow his orders. Many of these orders, as it turns out, were to seduce people so he could bring them back to his master. Some of Astarion’s speeches about consent, feeling as though he didn’t own his body, his dissociation when sleeping with “targets” (who he might as well be calling clients), feel as though they could almost have come from the words of desperate people I’ve done brothel shifts with… if you take out the fantasy elements. Many of his words could almost be things I would have said myself, during periods of struggle and abuse from clients.

In the middle of the game, Astarion will be asked by another character to drink his blood. She makes it clear she wants him to do this for her sexual gratification and he refuses with obvious upset. Assuming that you respect his decision and don’t push him, you trigger a dialogue soon after about what occurred where he says:

“I spent two hundred years using my body to lure pretty things back for my master. What I wanted, how I felt about what I was doing, it never mattered.”

“It would have been so easy to bite her. To just go along with what I was being told to do. A moment of disgust to force myself through. And then I could have carried on, just like before.”

“The entire reason for my existence was to seduce anything with a pulse.”

“I’m more than that, more than a thing to be used.”

When asked “What are we?” during his romance plotline, Astarion answers: “I don’t know. But isn’t it nice? Not to know. You’re not a victim. Not a target. Not just one night it’s better to forget. But then… whatever in the world could you be?”

Astarion’s character isn’t going to be relatable to everyone who sells sex, because his backstory is one of sexual abuse and struggling to overcome feeling like he owes people sexual performance, but it is going to strike a chord with some of us. I’ve never been someone’s thrall, but I have been pushed and pressured by clients and felt like I had no other choice. I did spend years working through how I’d begun to see myself as a thing that existed for sex because I’d found no other workable way to earn money and I had so few people who cared about me as a person.

It stings a little, to know his character is able to be so relatable because he isn’t a sex worker. With all the love I can gather, because I admittedly adore the game, I know that if his character had been crafted as one who was recovering from trauma in the sex industry then his characterization would have ended up less relatable because of that. The things he said would have shifted from a place where they resonated with me into a poor facsimile of other sex workers characters. Too often, simply mentioning having sold sex is treated as the revelation of a trauma without any need to delve into the experiences of sex workers who are abused or how they’re processed.

I’m sure that anyone with PTSD from sexual abuse can relate to Astarion’s character from that angle, since that’s so clearly what the writers were going for with his reactions. The way he talks about his seductions as a continuous task, the dissociation he describes and the lack of attraction but pushing through it for the purpose of doing as he was told to avoid consequences, it really feels like the kind of dissociation and mental gymnastics I did to keep things together when I needed the money badly enough to keep seeing clients. It goes beyond the usual descriptions of sexual trauma I see in media that I can only half relate to.

Later in the game, once we reach the brothel “Sharess’ Caress”, the difference between the depictions of actual sex worker characters and Astarion becomes incredibly stark (and frustrating). If you have completed Astarion’s character arc and are dating, he will enthusiastically agree to a foursome with your character and two brothel workers. Once you begin having sex, his character dissociates and the narrator tells you that you can tell he is putting on a façade of enjoyment. He acts as though he is having a good time but as someone close to him you realize there’s nothing behind it and it isn’t genuine. This rings true to my experiences with clients, where I’m pretending to enjoy myself but I’m only half-present and am often counting down from a hundred or thinking of other things. In contrast, the brothel workers make comments about how they feel they “should be paying you” – this goes beyond simply faking enjoyment into the realm of things sex workers just don’t usually say, because it’s likely to make clients belligerent about having paid so much or to make them get overly attached.

Astarion later directly seems to compare himself to these elven brothel workers, if you choose to sleep with another sex worker character who is an elf, by referencing your character’s supposed preference for “elven prostitutes”. The comment is made in a self-deprecating way, implying he views himself that way and that it’s a negative and embarrassing thing for his partner to have this preference. When viewing Astarion as essentially being a sex worker though not having quite literally sold sex, his upset makes perfect sense to me. Dating a partner and finding out they are a client who often sees sex workers who look like you can make it feel like they’ve simply been fetishizing you for being a sex worker rather than that they’ve been interested in you as a person. However, if we’re not viewing Astarion through the lens of seeing him as very similar to a sex worker, it comes across as simple whorephobia regardless of whether the source of it is insecurity and trauma.

For a game that does include sex workers in it, it’s bizarre that the sex workers themselves feel so distant from me whilst the character who has not technically sold sex feels so close. The brothel workers go on about genuinely loving and enjoying sex, and considering that the game constantly allows you insight into how genuine other characters are being… this is presented as honest. Their enjoyment of sex with clients is not treated as an act, the way Astarion’s seductions are, and instead they supposedly love their work. I understand that they’ve chosen to have the sex workers view it this way, which so few sex workers do but which is not completely unheard of, because they don’t want to risk stigmatizing us with their depiction or make players uncomfortable. However, in doing so, they’ve made these characters more one-dimensional.

While Astarion’s character is useful to demonstrate, he’s by no means an outlier. I find that the familiars in What We Do in the Shadows remind me of sex workers, especially in scenes where they meet and discuss the vampires they serve who are wealthy whilst the familiars are working class and who they complain about in the same way I complain to other hookers about clients. There’s Black Widow from Marvel, in many iterations, for whom seduction is a part of her job as a spy. These characters aren’t created with us in mind but they often appeal to us nonetheless.

Anyway, back to playing Baldur’s Gate 3…