The Rent Is Killing My Sex Life
What a dominatrix taught me about universal basic income
Would you join me in a thought experiment? We all have basic needs, such as food and shelter. And most of us have to cover these ourselves. Even though governments promise to provide our basic needs, people are starving and sleeping rough. We fudge through life trying to make sure we have somewhere nice to rest, and that we can go to bed on a full stomach.
I have friends whose work is much more valued than mine, so they can cover their basic needs and have a huge surplus every month. I have friends with partners who subsidise the costs of the home they share. I have friends who don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage at all, because they were given a home. I have one friend with a second home! All of these ways of living are currently beyond me.
This is not a sob story, or a jealous rant. But I’m thinking through the different freedoms that we each have due to the meeting of our basic needs. I’m wondering how it changes your life if, for example, somebody gives you a home to live in. Forever. I’m wondering about all the ways that this impacts on your work, your social life, your wellbeing, and, yes, your sex life.
Every month I pay around £1,000 to house myself, and keep myself warm, in a shared flat with two friends. (None of us will eventually own the flat we rent.) This amount represents nearly half of my net earnings, as a freelance writer and podcast producer. So I’m wondering: if my home was given to me for free, would I have better sex? If I moved in with a partner who could cover most of our housing costs, how would my sex life be different? If I owned my own home and I lived alone, would I host the sex parties I want to see in the world?
I know it might sound impossible to think this through. But it’s a thought experiment, so let’s try. That’s what the Free Sex project as a whole is about: thinking about the different ways we could set up our lives for sex. This is both a personal and political project, and I think it’s always worth spending time with. If I didn’t pay rent, would I have free sex?
In asking these questions, I’m under the influence of two people I spoke to recently. First was Eva Oh, who I interviewed for the Free Sex podcast. She’s an extraordinary person with a fearless character that has helped her to become incredibly successful as a dominatrix (earning lots of money) and a community leader who supports and helps other perverts in BDSM. Eva is a legend, and our episode is a real highlight of the feed. You might have expected me to ask her how she became a sex worker or to share some of her favourite sex stories. Instead, we talked about economics. Yes, I paid for an hour with an internationally renowned dominatrix and we spent it discussing Universal Basic Income (UBI).
When Eva was at boarding school aged 15, she didn’t want to return to her family home for the holidays. So her parents stopped her $200 monthly allowance. But for Eva, something else was more important. “I’ve always prized my freedom,” she told me, “over being able to eat.” She set herself up in a rented flat above a pub, worked three jobs and ate rubbish noodles. “It didn’t matter, because I had my independence,” she said. In the same spirit, later she quit her corporate job to work for herself as a dominatrix, and hasn’t looked back. The thing about Eva is that she’s fearless. Her curiosity to explore new ways to be, and her confidence that she will survive any challenges, are the characteristics that have made her into who she is.
Eva’s fearlessness came up in our interview because it’s something that she wishes on other people, as it will help them to have the sex they like. Eva knows that not everyone is made of the same stuff as her; you can’t just inject people with fearlessness. But — and this was the second big part of our interview — you can remove some of the obstacles that make people scared. This is how we got onto UBI, which is the idea that every citizen should be given a regular standard monthly payment that covers their basic needs such as food and shelter. UBI is a huge idea, and it would revolutionise how we relate to each other. I’m not writing this essay to try to convince you to support UBI. I’m writing this to try to place sex into the debate about UBI. There are so many ways that our lives would be impacted by UBI, and many of them have been studied in pilots and research projects — but sex is less considered. Eva is doing us a service by talking about sex in the context of the debate about UBI, and by association, the debate about class, wealth, and work.
The second person who I spoke to recently who has inspired this essay is Prince, who I met at The Common Press bookshop. I was there recently speaking on a panel at an anti-Valentine’s Day event. The discussion wandered through various topics, such as romantic love, and whether it was possible to make it queer. The chair, the other panelists and the audience members were all great, and we had a stimulating conversation. I think I came across as dour, and ‘against’ the concept of romantic love. I’m still thinking about that, and will maybe return to it here in another essay...
My conversation with Prince referred to the fact that financial dependence (including housing) often keeps people in damaging relationships. The natural question is: how much more freedom would we have to avoid toxic relations if our basic needs were guaranteed to be met anyway?
During the conversation, Prince noted that our relations are all happening under systems of power — such as capitalism, racism, sexism. These are some of the systems that cover our relationships in feelings of possession, jealousy and hierarchy. So Prince was saying that as a polyamorous person he’s trying to relate to people without being dominated by those feelings. All power to him, and his partners, and everyone else trying to live an ethically non-monogamous life. (Me, too!)
What I realised in the conversation with Prince was just how interconnected are the themes of basic needs, financial dependence, toxic social and cultural systems, AND relationships and sex. For example, so many of our social/cultural systems divide us: things like sexism and racism create false hierarchies of value, and often a competition between us based on our bodily characteristics. It’s why the best sex is the kind when you feel fully connected, merged, integrated with the other person(s) — your body is their body; your mind, their mind; no difference that can be used to make any of you feel lesser or more; just you and them, transcending.
The greatest system of division is capitalism, which makes us trade and compete for resources, including food and shelter. It’s interesting to think how I have to work so I can earn money which I then trade for my home; whereas other people just automatically have a home because they were given it. It looks like they’re doing better at living under capitalism than I am, even though in many ways they’re benefiting from charity, which is seen as the opposite of capitalism.
This is how Prince raised the question of needs. It’s funny that I met him in the same week as I interviewed Eva Oh for Free Sex! Prince wondered how our love lives might be different if our basic needs were met. Perhaps he was thinking about how he, as a polyamorous person, is able to live somewhat outside of our oppressive systems, ie the ones that fuck up our relationships. Being able to observe and process troubled feelings such as possession makes him more likely to have his emotional needs truly met in his relations with others. The implication of our conversation was that if basic needs like housing were guaranteed, people might be freer to:
live separately from partners if they choose
form non-traditional household arrangements
make relationship decisions without economic pressure
navigate multiple relationships without financial dependencies complicating things
This list is a good example of thinking about the interplay between our romantic and sexual relationships, and our tangible needs such as housing. That’s why I said to him, “Let’s talk about universal basic income!”
I hope you can see how all these things connect, at least in my thinking, right now. If everyone had their basic needs met, then maybe we’d have fewer of the divisions that create the hierarchy that this body is better than that body. We’d also have more time to pursue our interests, and less fear about what might happen if that goes wrong. These are the reasons why a UBI could lead to a future where we are more likely to have the sex we want. I would say capitalism makes for a toxic form of society, and a UBI has the chance of a more benign form. A better society, where we take care of each others’ basic needs, is a prerequisite of free sex.
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