Zach and the City: How Can You Be Inclusive When You’re an Exclusive Sex Club?
I was once teaching a kink workshop for a sex club, and a follower slid into my DMs to say, “Oh, you’re working for that sex club? They’re problematic.” When I asked how the club was “problematic”, the follower told me bluntly, “They’re not inclusive.”
(I thought it was pretty damn inclusive two weeks earlier when I got pegged by one woman and fucked by two men. But I guess that’s my hole being open to everyone, not the club.)
Now, I’m not going to specify which club this was. For one thing, I’m not trying to be a messy bitch who starts drama, but more importantly, every sex club that’s been around long enough has at some point been deemed “problematic” or “not inclusive.” Every. Single. One. It’s an inevitability.
I was always confused by this. More often than not, sex clubs are not supposed to be inclusive — or rather, they’re not inclusive to everybody; they’re inclusive for the people your sex party is for. A sex club is a private, members-only organization with a rigorous application process, and it says so right there on their site. Besides that, these communities try to cater to a specific clientele, whether it’s rich people, queer folks, artists, creatives, swingers, or just your basic hot person. But we now live in an era where everything needs to be inclusive — even a space that previously prided itself in being only for a certain demographic — which raises the question: How can you be inclusive when you are supposed to be an exclusive sex club?
Before continuing any further, let me clarify. Obviously, I support inclusivity. This shouldn’t need to be said, but I’m already thinking about the negative comments I’m going to get for this article. Diversity enriches a space; it doesn’t take anything away from it. Having people from all races, genders, and walks of life also allows people to interact who typically don’t interact. This is crucial because we know from studies (and anecdotally) that simply knowing one trans person makes you significantly less likely to be transphobic.
But a sex club isn’t a typical space. For one, you go there to have sex. It’s in the name, after all. (And if you’re me, you end up having a ton of goddamn sex. I once fucked 10 guys anonymously at a sex club in Amsterdam. Just this past month, I fucked four women, got pegged by another woman, and fucked my boyfriend at a sex party in Brooklyn. I was a goddamn animal.)
There are specific challenges involved when absolute strangers get naked together. There’s an element of attraction that comes into play. Attraction really matters when you’re having sex. What I mean by this is you can be friends with people you’re not attracted to, and you can work with people you’re not attracted to, but you really can’t have sex with people you’re not attracted to. Okay, maybe technically, you can. I’ve definitely had sex with folks I wasn’t the most attracted to more times than I care to count. But it’s not ideal.
Second, there is the issue of safety. There are creepy people, both men and women (but predominantly men), who are predators in these places. They will try to take advantage of unsuspecting people in a supposedly safe space. Needless to say, these creepers cannot be permitted to attend any sex club. It is imperative to exclude them.
I’ve known of inclusive sex parties that allowed everyone to attend, and they rarely lasted more than a few months. They achieve a reputation for not having sexually desirable folks or for having “creepy old dudes” in the mix, so people don’t go, and they shut down.
When I’ve been to these parties, I usually end up leaving within 20 minutes. I mean, I still have sex because I’m a horny boyslut, so I find the person with the fattest ass, bust inside them, and then I leave, but still! That’s not worth the $50 dollars to attend. It’s not worth me douching for 45 minutes, putting on my sexy undies, taking a 55-minute train to the city, and a 55-minute train back! I could have stayed home and had a guy from Grindr come over! If I fucked him extra well, maybe he would have even ordered me pizza after! Free dinner! But I digress.
If you are a sex club, you want to have two reputations. One: you’re safe and free from predators. Two: you have a lot of “attractive” members. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we all have different types, but I think we can agree that some folks (celebrities, porn stars, models, influencers, and so on) are generally deemed much more universally desirable. Clearly, sex clubs are different from any other space, so they cannot be held to the same typical inclusivity standards.
That said, a sex club owner doesn’t admit a person based on whom they find attractive; they admit the people they think their club members will find attractive — the people who they cater to.
So, if you find yourself at a sex club, and other members aren’t attracted to you, then it’s not the club for you. It doesn’t mean that you’re unattractive and undesirable. It just means you don’t fit in this particular space. You could be a classically beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed cheerleader type, but if you’re going to a goth sex party (yes, they do exist!), you’re not going to be accepted. So if you’re not accepted or don’t feel the most included, find a sex club that celebrates you, and get a ton of dick and/or pussy there!
Still, I would never attend a gay, all-male sex party that said it doesn’t allow trans men to attend. While I believe it’s within the rights of a private club, I think it’s harmful and transphobic, and I wouldn’t want to be associated with it. Similarly, I think it was anti-Semitic and racist in the days when yacht clubs refused membership to Jews or black people, but even in that case, a private club has the right to include the kind of members they want to include. If they wanted to be bigoted assholes, they were certainly free to have the kind of club that would attract other bigoted assholes.
But back to my point, and the crux of it, which is that there’s a difference between being exclusive and not being inclusive. I feel like many well-meaning progressives often conflate the two.
Most sex clubs will let in people of all races, body sizes, and sexual orientations — at least, every sex club I’ve known and been a part of. However, sometimes they’re simply not inclusive.
Take this party I wrote up recently in The Daily Beast. On their site, they said that men had to be accompanied by women in the playrooms. For this reason, I didn’t bring my boyfriend. Instead, I brought a female partner. Now I wasn’t mad that they said men couldn’t be in the playroom alone. I understood why they had the rule: to stop solo men from being creepy/predators.
They could have said, straight unaccompanied men couldn’t be in the playroom alone, but that feels oddly exclusionary of straight men (I personally don’t give a fuck about straight men TBH, but it still seems weird), not to mention the fact that straight guys could easily just say they’re bi or bi-curious in order to evade the rule. So, it’s easier to make a blatant rule that says all men need to be accompanied. I get it. Was I bummed I couldn’t bring my boyfriend? Yes, of course I was.
When I was at the party, I asked the masseur (there’s a massage table set up) how many times he’d seen two men having sex at the party. He said he’d worked at roughly 75 of these events and saw two men having sex with each other “maybe once or twice.” He then followed up, saying, “Gay men are of course welcome, but I feel like there are probably other sex parties that would be better suited for them.”
He was 100% correct. Clearly, this sex party was not made for queer men. Lord knows there are plenty of parties that are. Still, I would never have called this place exclusionary. It simply does not go out of its way to be inclusive to queer men, and that is 100% okay. Don’t get me wrong: as attendees, I think it’s in our right to absolutely protest and condemn sex clubs that are exclusionary. But seriously, if a sex space simply isn’t for you, why bash it online when you can just go out and find one that is? There’s no shortage of them out there, all catering to different demographics, and you can absolutely find one that makes you feel comfortable and addresses your specific desires and needs.
So, to answer my initial question more directly: you can’t be an inclusive sex club for all when you’re a private sex club. It is a matter of safety, a matter of staying in business, and a matter of giving the members what they want. That is different from being exclusionary.
As hot as I feel, I realize I‘m not everyone’s favorite flavor. Not every sex-oriented space will cater to people just like me — and that’s okay. It’s up to me to find a place that does.
Published Jan 5, 2022
Updated Apr 19, 2024
Published in Issue X: Clash of Ideologies
