On Boundaries and Intimacy, with Mistress Molly
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by the brilliant Mistress Molly Maack about how sex work and BDSM have changed how I see intimacy and boundaries. Below is a selection of our conversation.
Mistress Molly: Perfect. How would you define intimacy?
Wu: Great question. I guess intimacy, it's so funny. I'm so often using the word intimacy to define other things, so to define intimacy itself is a challenge, but I would just describe it as connection and I think that it can take a lot of different shapes and forms. I feel like a lot of that is stuff that sex work has taught me, but I think that I would describe it as a baseline of connection.
Mistress Molly: That's a great answer I like that a lot. How were you taught intimacy in childhood through parents, siblings, school et cetera?
This could be you. Photo by Princess Rosie X Royale
Wu: Oh my god. I was really taught-- God, I remember so much of this. I think that I really learned about intimacy and love as possession. It was taught to me that oh, if somebody wants to possess you, then they really care about you. I feel like that was something that my parents either knowingly or unknowingly did that intimacy is giving yourself to somebody without-- Basically, intimacy is protecting something at all costs and possessing that thing and all these. I feel like a lot of media when I was young taught that to me and then I think that my parents also unconsciously enforced that.
Mistress Molly: Do you think your parents pushing that view onto you had anything to do with your ethnicity or do you think it was just society in general?
Wu: I actually think that. Part of it is ethnicity. I think that part of it is like, oh, I have Asian parents and they're semi-conservative as far as Asian parents go. I think that a lot of the times they would dress it up as the language of that culture.
I don't even necessarily think that that's something that was necessarily intrinsic to their ethnicity. I actually do think that there was a lot of it that had to do with the fact they were older parents.
Mistress Molly: Interesting.
Wu: Yes. My dad was a much older father. He was like 54 when I was born. My mother had me, I think I would say like later closer to her late thirties. I was a miracle kid because both of them were a lot older and my mother really wanted a child. I think that there was a little bit about that that led to a childhood in which I was very heavily protected.
Mistress Molly: I could see that. Were you encouraged to set boundaries or were your boundaries positively viewed when you set any?
Wu: No.
[laughter]
Wu: Oh, I was encouraged to set boundaries that weren't mine. I wonder if this is a common experience--I think that that's something that might be intrinsic to parenthood is that parents are like, "This is how you survive in life. You should be telling people this and this and this." My parents were just like, "Oh, tell boys that you're not going to have sex until you're 27."
Those are the kind of boundaries that I was encouraged to enforce but when it came to me actually asserting myself to my parents or asserting areas around my own sense of privacy or my own sense of freedom, that was something that they did not know how to receive and I don't think that they received it very well.
Mistress Molly: Do you have siblings?
Wu: No. I think that that was another thing too. I do have siblings but I do have two older half siblings on my dad's side who I did not grow up with because they're basically old enough to be my parents and they were starting their own families at that time.
Mistress Molly: I see.
Wu: I think that that was another thing was that I was the only one receiving their attention. They didn't have another child at the time to compare me to.
Mistress Molly: Yes. In what ways did your views on intimacy impact your relationship prior to starting sex work?
Wu: I remember that I have a a relationship with this boy. He was my first boyfriend, and I remember that he had a lot of thoughts and opinions. I don't know how I came into this, but I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be poly and queer. I don't know how I knew it. I was dating this boy, and I remember telling him something along the lines of, "Hey, if you want to date other girls, that's okay. That's fine."
That is something that is actually really in line with my values, and he's just like, "Wow, I can't believe that you would ever say that to me-- That hurts my feeling a lot." I was just like, "Oh, that's weird that you're feeling hurt by that thing." Then he and I developed this relationship in which he didn't even want me to not wear bras out in public because he was like, "Because your nipples are precious to me."
Just really, really stupid shit. At the time, I was just like, "Oh, yes, that's fine. You know what I mean? "That's okay." Then it ended up being very much not okay in the long run.
Mistress Molly: I'm sure that goes back to what you said about the possessiveness with intimacy.
Wu: Yes, definitely. That intimacy is precious but not in the idea that it's precious as in sacred but that it's precious as in limited. Do you know what I mean?
Mistress Molly: Yes.
Wu: Or rare.
Mistress Molly: Then in platonic relationships?
Wu: I think that I definitely have very intimate platonic relationships. I don't know if I would use the word intimacy for those relationships because I feel like that was not vocabulary that I understood even back then. It is not the way that I understand it now. Do you know what I mean?
Mistress Molly: Yes.
Wu: I definitely had friendships that were like, "This is a friendship that is very special. We're very close—In what way do we love each other?" Do you know what I mean?
Mistress Molly: Yes.
Wu: Which I see is a lot of roots for how I now want to style my relationships with people in my personal life. At the time, it was just like a raging full of hormones like that.
Mistress Molly: You started sex work young so it definitely altered some things. Do you believe sex work specifically has altered your views and practice of intimacy?
“I have to be willing and ready to step up to those relationships and to be prepared to receive them. That whole experience of receiving and allowing is something that is really difficult to learn and so crucial. That’s sacred.”
Wu: Absolutely. I think that it also heavily challenged a lot of things that I think about intimacy. I think one of the easiest things that I can think of is it challenges what I consider to be real intimacy. How exactly do I consider a relationship to be real or fake? The idea that intimacy is this thing that is pure and untainted by the world around us is simply not true. Something that I feel I've learned in sex work is that the intimacy has to exist within a larger systemic and structural context. One of the first things that you're asked to question when you enter into sex work is your own relationship to pleasure when you engage with sex work. I don't know actually if that's the first thing but that was one of the things that I had to reckon with myself was just like, "I like what it is that I'm doing. I like these interactions that I'm having with these people or else I wouldn't be here. I'm enjoying the fact that I'm doing this for a living." What does that mean about the fact that I'm asking for money from it? Sex work, I feel like, has really taught me a lot about how intimacy isn't necessarily extracted from things like labor and capital and how actually there are ways in which we're performing moments of intimacy and we've been told many lies about the separation between your professional life and your personal life. Actually all those things feed into each other.
Even if you're not doing sex work, it's the way even for a couple that's monogamous, not doing sex work, the way that a person will come home to their partner interact with their partner and be in that relationship and in that dynamic and then will go to work. It will impact the way that they go to work. The way that they interact in this space for them of creating capital and work and whatever that is. Then they go home to their partner, their work will come home with them. You know what I mean?
Mistress Molly: Yes.
Wu: It is impossible for those things to be, extricable from each other.
And then of course, this is something that almost every sex worker will say, which is that sex work has changed the way that I view my time and boundaries. Has given me some real clarity around what is it that I actually need from my partner to show up correctly for me. Right. This is something that I think about when it comes to my clients and I know that this is the case when I show up for my partners that are unpaid.
Like a client, if they're interested in showing up for the type of service that it is that I provide, will usually need to have to do some sort of work on themselves to be able to show up fully to that experience. They have to be ready for that experience. Do you know what I mean?
In that same way, it's like, well in partnerships that I have that are unpaid, like primary partnerships that I have with romantic partners or even leather family and friendships and things like that. I have to be willing and ready to step up to those relationships and to be prepared to receive them. That whole experience of receiving and allowing is something that is really difficult to learn and so crucial. That's sacred.
Mistress Molly: How do you think it's impacted your personal intimacy or how you've navigated creating personal intimacy?
Wu: I think that once I got into sex work, it really solidified the fact for me that I am polyamorous because the work that I'm doing has to do with intimacy and is relationship-based and I'm not willing to give that up. It's like the people in my life and the partnership that I create, they need to understand that just because those relationships are paid, it doesn't diminish the value of those relationships and the value that those relationships give to my life. Right.
photo of Empress Wu and Mistrix Sunmi, by Alexandra Kacha
The versions of myself that I'm discovering in sessions is no less real than the versions of myself that I'm discovering when I'm in my own bed. Because that is my work and because that is my primary source of labor, that comes first or that is at least equal to my personal relationships. Being poly is definitely one thing, sex worker community, is also another thing. I often joke that my style of poly is essentially, like, different scales of romantic intimacy; I have one or two primary romantic partners. I have a leather family, which I love romantically as a collective unit, who are also all sex workers. Then I have a romantic kind of love for my community as a whole that, sometimes is also sexual, you know?
Mistress Molly: Yes.
Wu: Yes, but service is a huge part of each of those categories.
Mistress Molly: Love that answer.
Wu: Thank you.
Mistress Molly: Do you think if you had chosen a different line of work you would've felt as fulfilled in the capacities of intimacies you hold as you do now?
Wu: [sighs] I don't know. [laughs] I think before I get to the second part of whether or not I would've felt fulfilled, I need to think about the first part of what would I even be like if I chose another line of work?
Mistress Molly: Yes, it's a tough question to even consider.
Wu: Yes, I know. I don't know. I think that it's possible. I think that it's also possible, because I find a lot of love and intimacy, and I think a lot of my values are helped by people in queer community. I'm sure that it's possible to lead something akin to the life I am currently leading without having been in sex work, but then I'm also like, I don't know if I would have the viewpoints that I currently have if I hadn't entered sex work at such a young age, you know? Yes.
Mistress Molly: What would your favorite form of intimacy be in the current moment?
Wu: Well, I always say that my ultimate love language is when I feel like I'm creating things with other people. All the different times in which I've felt really empowered and humbled at the same time have been when it feels like I'm creating an entire other world with another person or other people. I would say that that's what that is. That feels like the clearest manifestation or embodiment of what intimacy feels and looks like to me, these days.