‘Each orgasm I experienced for money shattered three decades of conditioning regarding the meaning of work and play’

In her new book Subjectified, sexologist Suzannah Weiss recalls a youth spent feeling disempowered and disconnected from her body, and how she learned to reclaim her own sexuality, independent of the male gaze

Suzannah Weiss: ‘Sex workers are often scapegoated despite so many of us doing stuff for money that we don’t like’

Suzanne Harrington

When Suzannah Weiss was 13, she began to realise that her body, changing through puberty, no longer belonged to just her. It had become something more public. Objectified. Boys at school would admire specific aspects of it (“nice ass”), while an older man noted she looked “developed” and her dad began telling her to ease off desserts to “maintain her figure”.

“I grew aware that I was no longer just me,” she writes. “I was ‘you’. I was ‘her’. Even to myself,” she recalls. By 15, she was anorexic.