The Eighth House: An Honest Woman
A Book Review
The Eighth House in Astrology is the house of sex, death, and other people’s money. It’s thought of as one of the trickier houses in the birth chart, and I think that’s because those things carry a lot of stigma. Truths of the Eighth House are often a little uncomfortable. One of my favorite things that I’ve read about the Eighth House was in Liz Greene’s Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil. To paraphrase, she calls hypocrisy on the institution of “the wife,” asking the question that if most women are married to their husbands for security, what makes them different from a prostitute, and why do they think they are so high and mighty?
Charlotte Shane’s new memoir, An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work, uses personal anecdotes to explore many Eighth House questions, primarily this one: what are the real differences between the wife and the escort? Shane, a writer and sex worker, writes about her sexual coming of age, the curiosity that called her into sex work, and a nine-year relationship that she had with one particular client, who she calls Roger. It is one straight white woman’s honest perspectives on the various economic realities of her relationships with men; and when I say economic, I mean the ways that all resources are transferred between two parties, not just money.
What drew me to this book was hearing reviewers hone in on the way that Shane writes about her love of men. Her interest in men started from her high school, casual sexual experiences that happened within a friend group that went to a different school from her, who she reverently refers to as The Boys. Early in her life she identifies sexual exploration as a priority, and so she goes about building relationships with the Boys that can sustain casual sex within friendship. She notices that because her friends don’t think of her as a potential "girlfriend,” they treat her with a lot of consideration and respect, and have a lot of sexual fun together.
Shane loves things about the way men act that I often hear people in my life complaining about. It was interesting for me to hear the way that she celebrates the reckless way that boys behave when they are in a pack. This love leads her to behaving with observably bad boundaries in the early part of her career as a sex worker, and she is rarely worried for her own safety. Shane’s privelege is definitely one of the sticking points of my experience with her book - she rarely writes about her bad experiences with sex work, instead focusing on the pleasure and adventure of the profession. Is it disrespectful to the institution of sex work, to those who are criminalized, policed, incarcerated or deported for engaging in survival sex work disrespected by these stories of women being drawn into the industry because they are horny, and admitting as such? Where is it liberatory to make space for fun, pleasure, commerce, and power, and where is it disrespectful? These are questions that reading this book encouraged me to contend with and listening to Shane discuss them in interviews is further food for enriching thought.
Throughout the book Shane expresses disinterest in the institution of marriage and remarks on the various places where she sees marriages failing. Many of her clients are married men who are paying her for the kind of intimacy that they are missing, for one reason or another, with their wives. The major arc of the book is Shane’s relationship with Roger, a client who she spends nine years in relationship with who is married to someone else. The book’s reflections on the types of intimacies that are possible in a relationship that is predicated on a financial arrangement are fascinating. Both Shane and Roger acknowledge that they would not be spending so much time together if they were “dating for free,” and yet as the book continues and Roger’s health deteriorates, the actual emotions that are a part of that arrangement become stickier. It is here, in the intersection of patriarchy, money, and intimacy, where An Honest Woman is the richest.
When we look honestly at the Eighth House, and those who feel comfortable living within the contracdictions therein, we can find a generative discomfort. Shane’s book is, above all else, honest. This is what comes up for a white, straight woman with a masters degree when she is working as a high class sex worker. Take it or leave it.
