Women are booking sex workers more and more often. As women rise, they are looking for safe places to move beyond the wounds of trauma and heterosexual, patriarchal-driven roles where women are supposed to be desired, while men desire. There is a groundswell of women owning their sexual desire, fantasies and pleasure for themselves.

They are looking for well-trained sex workers, erotic massage and BDSM providers, of all genders, with which to explore the depths of what is possible when their own desire is seen, understood, centred and celebrated. What happens when women are allowed to be hungry, and directly ask for what they really want in bed?

Dr Hilary Caldwell, author of “Slutdom: Reclaiming Shame-Free Sexuality”, talks about this new wave of women in her groundbreaking doctorate: “Women who Buy Sex in Australia”. Her study is a world first, and she writes from both academic and personal experience as a sex worker herself.

Caldwell says: “Women paying for sexual services can show us ways for women to design their own sexual experiences,” and “A desire to learn more about sex was mentioned as a motivation to see a sex worker by several (other) women as well.”

But she says that sex education and self-discovery are not the only motivations women pay for sex. Those are just the most socially acceptable reasons. Just like men and other genders, women who buy sex are also motivated by companionship, pleasure, desire, curiosity, and sexual tension release.

However, self-discovery does play a big role. Let’s face it, when you pay for it, you get the chance to focus on your own unique erotic wiring, without having to prioritise someone else’s sexual turns-ons over your own. You get to stop playing care-taker and ditch the pressure of female socialisation to centre another’s needs.

You also don’t have to play the socially-assigned role of “gatekeeper,” while your male lover plays initiator. You know, prescribed idea of heterosexual sex where the male is supposed to lead and is limited to focusing on their own sexual preferences, or trying to mind-read the woman’s.

When you pay a professional, you can focus on yourself, and therefore, discover your own erotic potential. You can be up front about what you really desire without fear that you are “too much” and you can discover what it feels like to take on different roles. 

Where can women go to have these experiences? 

The thing is, while there are a number of queer sex workers offering services to women, there is a shortage of well-trained straight or bi male sex workers who are willing to see women and non-binary clients with vulvas.

I get asked all the time by women if there are any male sex or BDSM workers who are trained in The deVinery Method of using your sexual fantasies as a map to understand your own erotic narrative and create real-life sexperiences that satisfy the real desire behind the story-symbolism.

Sadly, I have to answer no.

Sex Work is Skilled Work

There are a bunch of bros who hang their shingle out on escort advertising platforms, who think that all they need to be a sexuality professional, is a gym body and a big appendage. While well-meaning, these men unwittingly reinforce the problems women are trying to avoid by paying for sex. While choosing a sex worker who is a hottie is certainly one of the desirable factors for female sex work clients, that is not the only thing needed to create a fulfilling experience. 

While there are a handful of male sex providers that are skilled and have the respect of the community for their integrity, I am yet to fully train any male sex or BDSM providers in The deVinery Method.

Keep reading if this training has your interest peaked!

To be a good sex worker who offers your services to women, you need to:

Understand your target market’s social context and motivations

Women are indeed rising and claiming their right to sexual pleasure without shame or the excuse of “healing”.  This is an exciting time to be alive! However, if women are rising and claiming their pleasure, what are they rising from? What was preventing them from claiming their sexual pleasure before? How does that impact them physically, emotionally and psychologically when they try to access their birthright of sexual pleasure now?

Any sex worker who wants to be able to hold space for women to safely explore their erotic psyches and bodies - and co-create powerful sexual or BDSM experiences - has to understand the context in which women’s sexuality is emerging.

That includes having an understanding of the historical social structures, including patriarchy, that have prevented women from accessing these services, and parts of themselves, in the past.

It is essential to understand that while collectively, we are changing our understanding of gender and gender roles, we still carry with us intergenerational beliefs and traumas in our bodies that are based in sexism. This makes it feel dangerous for women to own their sexual urges in specifically gendered ways. This has a direct impact on how sex needs to be approached to meet the needs of female sex work clients.

If you cannot get on board with being patient, understanding and actively supportive in this process, then you are not cut out to be a sex worker who caters for women.

If you are cut out for this, I highly recommend taking training in trauma-informed bodywork because, given the sheer number of women who have experienced some degree of sexual non-consent, it is inevitable that you will have trauma responses come up in a client sooner or later.

Really, trauma-informed training is a good idea for all sex workers, no matter the gender of your target audience, because sex can be one of the places in which we have the opportunity to positively process trauma and change our story from disempowered to powerful.

Understand your target market’s biology arousal system

Just because your ex said you gave the best oral sex ever, does not mean that you understand the biology of women’s sexual arousal.

Just because you attended a sexuality, tantra, relationships and intimacy festival, and had sexual encounters that felt extraordinarily healing for your female lovers, that does not mean you understand women’s bodies, or can repeat that experience outside of the festival context.

There are many ways in which you can learn to uncover the physical pleasure pathways unique to each woman.

Sexological bodywork is one of those ways. Expect to take a deep dive. This is profound work.

I also recommend you read all the books about arousal and desire that you can. Focus on books that have been written by sexologists and check out their training programs.

You also need to be properly trained in BDSM skills, or even soft kink skills if you plan to be a more traditional sex worker. If you playfully tie someone up without knowing what you are doing, you may accidentally cause nerve damage. There is an art to spanking, anal play, and pretty much every activity in the BDSM arena.

I recommend getting in touch with your local kink community and going along to their workshops. There are also lots of online education forums that can give you health and safety advice but check more than one source because, the internet…

Many professional dominatrices undertake a minimum of 12 month traineeship under another professional dominatrix or in a professional dungeon before they are considered a baby dominatrix. There’s a lot to learn!

And finally, find out how to uncover the unique sexual psychology of your clients…

…And create transformative tailored experiences just for them.

Sexual fantasies may be make-believe, but the effect they have on us emotionally, physically and psychologically is very real. If you want to know how to create mind-blowing sex, you need to understand the role the mind plays in sex.

This is where The deVinery Method: Sexual Fantasy Training Program comes in.

It’s open to sexuality professionals and curious amateurs of all genders and was developed by Artemisia de Vine (me!), and is a radical new way of understanding and engaging the surprising wisdom of our sexual fantasies. It draws on my 30+ years of sex geekery and former roles as a sex worker and professional dominatrix.

It takes more than just trying to live out fantasies as they are in your mind’s eye. You need to know how to read the maps within them.

When you know how sexual fantasies work, you can co-create sex and BDSM experiences that hit all the right psychological buttons to help your sexual partner/s feel what they are really trying to feel.

Sexual fantasies hold the keys to transport us into an array of powerful and often profound erotic states of consciousness. That is because they are stories made up by our minds to help us overcome our natural, normal fear of vulnerability. They are the exact story our egos need to hear in order to feel safe to let go and “lose ourselves” in the moment.

This can mean letting go and just losing ourselves in the pleasure of sensations, play and intimacy, but when you know how, this can also mean surrendering our egos into temporary ego dissolution moments so we can access a powerful array of erotic states of consciousness: sub space, top space, erotic trance, bliss and ecstasy, and even spiritual experiences of Oneness where we feel connected with All That Is.

That’s right, when you understand how the erotic psyche works, and how to uncover each person’s unique erotic narrative, you can deliberately do So. Much. More. with sex!

Just like everyone else, women have a range of arousal styles that can include focusing on becoming turned on by their senses, the quality and flavour of social engagement with their lover, and drawing on sexual fantasies. Women’s fantasies can be every bit as taboo and wild as other genders, and they are looking for safe ways to explore them with sexuality providers.

But how to you interpret sexual fantasies? And how do you translate the hidden desires within them into real-life sex? That is what The deVinery Method teaches you how to do.

While I train folk of all genders, I am particularly keen to train straight and bi men who want to be able to create experiences for women to safely explore their erotic psyche because women want it, and there is currently nowhere for them to go.

How to apply for The deVinery Method Training Program. 

Please read the information on my website before booking a discovery call. I also recommend listening to any of my podcasts.

Artemisia de Vine