Charlotte Rose has an aura of confidence about her: she is cool and collected, not overly friendly, but brisk and efficient. Perhaps this confidence is derived from the prospect of spending the next ten minutes watching three student journalists who have limited experience of the world of sexual liberalisation squirm when talking about porn. 

That said, Rose does little to assuage our immature nervousness by stating that “we can talk about porn until the sun comes up!” Indeed at the end of the interview, my colleague from The Tab was given a friendly reprimand by one of Rose’s entourage for physically recoiling every time the word ‘sex’ was mentioned.

Rose has had a varied life as a sex worker, sex trainer, dominatrix and political candidate. Indeed, laughing, she tells me, “Lord Hope from the Monster Raving Loony Party invited me to be chief whip”.

We begin by talking about feminism, which is a concept that Rose does not subscribe to, on the grounds of not “lik[ing] labels. I have views on feminism,” she tells me, “yet I don’t declare I’m a feminist – I’m a humanist.”

“Why aren’t we teaching our children about other aspects of sex education — identity, diversity, consent?”

She continues, dismissing feminism as a result of what she sees as the “hypocrisy” of some people who do subscribe to the label. “The word ‘feminist’ has lost all meaning to me. My understanding of being a feminist is arguing for the right of a woman to choose. But then you have some feminists arguing against sex workers who have chosen to go into that industry. So I find it very hypocritical. I prefer to be happy and if I were to define myself as anything it would be just equality all the way through. I believe that everybody should be treated fairly, no matter what sex, race, height, colour, creed or anything like that.”

Continuing on this theme, Rose challenges my question about whether the sex industry and feminism are reconcilable. In a characteristically plain-talking manner, she gives me just two sentences:

 “Are they? You tell me.”

Following a few awkward stutters, I inform Rose, in a way that in retrospect seems surprisingly courageous, that the readers of Varsity are not interested in my views on the matter. Fortunately, my gamble has paid off and she relents, explaining that it is possible to be a feminist and work in the sex industry.

“There are lots of feminists that work in the sex industry.” She tells me. “There’s lots of feminists that don’t work in the sex industry. You’ve got bankers that work in the financial trade. That doesn’t mean that they support finance. People do what they want to do, or people do what they have to do. So whether they have to coincide with each other – you’d have to ask a feminist on that one.”

I ask Rose why there is a disparity in the number of male sex workers (42 per cent of UK sex workers are male) compared to female sex workers.

“Well there are [male sex workers],” she says, dismissing my question. “There’s been a 33 per cent rise in the last few years in the number of male sex workers. There’s also been a rise in transgender people coming into sex work. It is male-dominated in that men are more horny than women. I think the easiest way for me to be able to answer that is to look at it in the sense of who wakes up in the morning the most horny out of the male and female species?”

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This feels like a somewhat outlandish theory to me – is there really a significant biological discrepancy in this area? Perhaps Rose recognises this too; she is now pondering it more, and I feel a better interviewer as she says, “that’s a really good question” halfway through answering. Indeed, I have interviewed enough Members of Parliament to understand that that translates broadly into: ‘give me a minute while I work out if I can come up with a half-decent answer.’

Inevitably, she does, somehow managing to explain why she thinks men are more biologically disposed to desire sex via the prism of basic market principles.

“I think that’s supply and demand really. If there were more women waking up in the morning more horny, then there would be more males. It’s supply and demand.”

In the remaining time, we talk porn and careers. Interestingly, Rose does not offer a polemic against the evils of porn: “It’s an equilibrium I’m afraid. Porn has taken over the responsibility of education in schools. This has been where the problematic aspect comes in. People are wanting to find out more rather than just procreation, but more about how to be a better lover, how to enjoy sex, how to do different sexual activities and things like that”. 

“Sex work has given me an opportunity to see life as it is”

“The problem,” she continues, “is trying to understand the fine line between reality and fantasy. There’s a lot of young girls that go to hospitals with injuries from where they’ve had dry anal sex at the age of thirteen. This is because they’ve watched it through pornography. If we want to eradicate that, then why aren’t we teaching our children about other aspects of sex education – identity, diversity, consent? This is what exploring passions and relationships and marriage is.”

Rose’s belief in the merits of the sex industry – forged through her own positive experiences – has resulted in her being open-minded about her 16-year-old daughter pursuing the same career path. “If she chose to go into that,” she says, after some thought, “then as long as I can ensure that she is safe and well educated to the business practices that go alongside it and the mental stability, then I would support her 100 per cent as any doting parent would. But she doesn’t want to do that, she wants to get into art.”

She concludes, in almost poetic fashion. “You get one go at life. And through the years of doing sex work, I have become independent and confident. I’m empowered. I have the flexibility to spend time with my family. It’s given me an opportunity to see life for what it is and experience new things, and new challenges and all these different sexual explorations of passions, emotions and feelings and sensations within the body. I’m really blessed in the sense that if I were to die tomorrow, I know that I’ve lived 36 years of my life the best way I could”