Dr Hilary Caldwell shares research on the rise of women using male escorts

Mum-of-four Hilary Caldwell kept her life as a sex worker under wraps for years, but now admits there’s only one true barrier stopping women enjoying sex as much as men.

Dr Hillary Caldwell has used sex workers and has been a sex worker

Hilary Caldwell has been on both sides of the chequebook when it comes to sex work.

The 58-year-old, who wrote her thesis on women who pay for sex, has been a working escort for the past 21 years.

She’s also been a customer, securing the services of a sex worker and an erotic Thai masseuse during lonely moments on trips overseas. And she finds it all tremendously liberating and validating as a woman.

“When women feel sexually empowered, when they control their sexual lives and they know exactly what they want and how to go about getting it, they have a lot more confidence,” says Dr Caldwell, who was a part-time nurse and struggling single mum of four girls when she started working as an escort in the early 2000s.

“Women I interviewed and who bought sexual services said they felt they were investing in themselves. They say that it has transformed their lives. Some said buying sexual services even saved them money they might have spent on therapist fees.

“Sex is so personal and such a big part of us.

“It actually forms part of our identification – I’m a queer woman and that’s part of who I identify as and that’s to do with how I enjoy having sex.

“So if you are feeling fantastic about sex then you feel fantastic on a level that can’t be really accessed in any other way, so it sort of underscores all of your confidence.”

The Canberra-based sexpert interviewed more than 20 Australian women who pay for sexual services in her groundbreaking 2018 thesis – the first of its kind in the world.

Six years later, Caldwell has combined her academic and on-the-job experiences to expand that thesis into a new book, Slutdom: Reclaiming shame-free sexuality, which argues that the shame and repression all women are conditioned to feel about sex are the biggest prohibiters to gender equality.

The book celebrates female sexuality and encourages women to embrace the traditionally archaic and repressive label of “slut” – to flip it on its head and steal its power.

“We are culturally conditioned to have different attitudes about our bodies and sex. And that’s what makes women have less sexual enjoyment than men,” says Caldwell, who also interviewed 17 sex workers and sexual health professionals during her research.

“Women can be slut-shamed in a way that men can’t and that much shaming affects how much enjoyment you’re going to have in sex. Fifty per cent of Australian women say they are not satisfied with their sex lives.

“All men have to think about when they’re going to have sex is their pleasure but women have to think about their safety and their reputation. That means we, from the very beginning, don’t have the same advantage of enjoying our own bodies. That’s fundamental and a gender-equality issue.

“That’s why I wrote my book, really calling it out – slut-shaming is the reason for gender inequality.”

But despite her strong belief in the empowerment of female sexuality, Caldwell – who calls herself a “public and professional slut” in her book – also fell prey to its control.

For 21 years, she kept her sex work a secret from friends and family – only deciding to reveal it last year after feeling the strong need to detail her own personal experiences in the industry to help prosecute her book’s arguments. A

s she prepared for Slutdom’s release, the grandmother-of-nine ended her years of silence and finally shared the truth with her four adult daughters.

“I couldn’t come out when they were little because it would have been really unsafe,” she says.

Caldwell still practises as a sex worker – “it’s the best way to pay the bills” – and has clients that have been with her from the beginning. “I did sex work to try to make our lives better and if they went to school and everyone teased them because their mother’s a whore, our lives wouldn’t have been better.

“The kinds of stigma and discrimination against sex workers is massive so I really could not afford to come out as a sex worker until I had a reason that was more important.

“If you hide your sex work, it’s because you’re trying to avoid slut-shaming and that perpetuates it. I realised when making a book about sexual empowerment that if I hid it, I was a fraud.

“I really had to stand up to it, to say ‘slut-shaming stops with me’, it’s not going to be passed on to the next generation.”

Caldwell says she was “terrified” when making her confession to her adult daughters, who are all happily married with children of their own and living near her in Canberra.

She says her girls had, of course, known that their mum worked as a part-time nurse when they were growing up and that she had then retrained to become a sexologist.

“It was a good cover for the sex work but I’m also very interested in it and I was able to help a lot of people,” she says.

But Caldwell says all of her fears about finally telling the whole truth about her work life were unrealised.

“The girls were really good, so supportive when I told them,” she says.

“Because they’re married with children, they now realise how hard it was for me to be a single parent with four kids. I let them see me for the first time and it’s really empowering. We have a great relationship, it’s really improved our relationships and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Now approaching 60, Caldwell says she is now at a stage of life where many women – long repressed by society’s inhibiting beliefs about female sexuality – decide to “shut up shop”.

“I hear it all the time because I’m at that age now,” she says.

But the active sex worker says post-menopausal sex is better than ever. And she believes that being intimate is key to staying healthy and vital.

“Sex is better than exercise on every single measure … it’s so good for you, it’s like an antidepressant,” she says.

“But we don’t talk about it. If we change sex for everything where they say exercise is good for you, we’d be having more fun.

“If you are continuing to have sex all through those post-menopausal years, you’re exercising the muscles of the vagina in a way that exercises the bladder and the bowel muscles, you’re putting blood flow to an area that really needs blood flow. And if you’re not having sex, then all those sorts of muscles can shrivel up and that causes a lot of incontinence and prolapses.

“We could be having sex to help us through so many of the difficult times in life. And if we close up shop at 50 and still have to live ’til we’re 90, that’s 40 years of dealing with all this without sex. That’s not intuitive.”

Dr Hilary Caldwell interviewed women and sex workers from Australia for her book ab out reclaiming shame-free sex. Picture: Supplied

Caldwell has been on all sides of the ledger when it comes to sex work.

As a sex worker, she is paid for her services. As an academic, she has heard many stories of women who pay for intimacy and connection. And on long, lonely stints travelling overseas for scholastic conferences, she has also been a paying customer. In Peru, she had a “girlfriend experience” with a male sex worker over several “fun-filled days”. And in Bangkok, she had a “soapy massage” from a “very skilled woman”.

“I was pretty lonely – I’d been away from home for a while travelling, going to conferences – but I didn’t feel like just hooking up with someone, so when the opportunity arose, I went for it,” she says.

“It gave me a lot of confidence and power to know that I could do it. And it was so satisfying.

“You’re paying for it to be a black-and-white transaction. I think in some ways it is an act of rebellion. And if we didn’t have such a sorry system, we wouldn’t need to rebel.

“It saves time and emotions. Even hooking up, some have fantasies of it being a relationship that goes on and the other person doesn’t and there can be hurt feelings. But with a sex worker, it’s very clear … and that’s protective in a way.”

Now, Caldwell is forging ahead with her mission to banish the shame inflicted on women’s sexuality. “It’s time that women showed we’re not afraid of being called a slut.”