How do We Know We’ve Changed? White Lotus and Becoming a Better Person, Whatever that is.

This week I finished watching White Lotus. Yes, I know the show came out ages ago and no one is talking about it anymore, but I'm a busy person, and so I didn't get to watch it, or write about it until now. The White Lotus is a limited-series on HBO that focuses on the high-end luxury resort of the same name located in Hawaii, and the interactions between its staff and the wealthy guests who visit the hotel. It is equal parts cringy, suspenseful, heartbreaking, and hilarious, centering on guests who at times attempt to be woke to their privilege and advantages, but in time slip back into the complacency that wealth and huge amounts of resources can afford you.

Like an American version of Parasite, it's hard at times to know who is taking advantage of whom; is it the guests who use their immense wealth as a tool to get what they want, or wax depressed on the incredible burden of wealth while not even acknowledging the labor of those immediately around them? Is it the college age girls who read books about colonialism whilst lazily exploiting their rich parents, or the surrounding staff. The most painful part is the glimmers you see of realization, and self-knowledge that peek out; the acceptance and understanding that 'yes, I hold immense privilege and power,' and there is an opportunity to use it that just floats gently by. Tonya, the wealthy socialite who has come to the resort to heal and let go of her mother's death; leans on the spa manager Belinda for emotional support, while bribing her along with the promise of helping her open her own wellness center. She is aware of herself enough to know she is deeply insecure and reaches for temporary romantic safety over actual self-reflection, and yet when push comes to shove, she chooses to pursue a romantic interest that she knows will most likely end up in heartache rather than doing the harder work of helping Belinda achieve her dreams. Paula tries to help Kai rebalance the historic injustices that have harmed his family and taken their land by proposing a plan that ultimately ruins his life. When she has opportunities to own up to her part in it, she instead chooses to read books about deconstructing racism, comforting herself with academic self-righteousness over concrete action. In all their own ways, they are confronted with their own issues and the weight of their privilege and the potential good, or harm, it can do. When faced with situations where they can learn and grow, they instead choose complacency and stillness.

The show is scathing, painful to watch, and yet thoroughly consuming. It forces us to confront our own privilege and power, and see how the ways in which we move through the world can knowingly or unknowingly impact others. It demonstrates that empty gestures are often just as dangerous or harmful as actual actions, and most of all, I think the show asks us, how do we know if we've ever actually changed? All the resort guests go home feeling like they've learned some sort of important truth, and perhaps they even feel like they've learned an important lesson, but how do we know that they, or we, have actually changed?

I was confronted with this a couple of weeks ago when an ex asked me whether I felt like I had properly processed our breakup, or if I had moved on to soon. The lines are gray when you are in multiple relationships simultaneously. Polyamory means the support of a community when you are hurt or grieving, but perhaps it also means that sometimes you don't do the heart work that can be accomplished when you are alone. What are the important things you learn as you move through life, and how do you know that you've applied those lessons? Sitcoms are shows all about how people will never change. Despite how many seasons they air, what makes them hilarious and bingeworthy is the inability of the main characters to adapt or truly transform themselves. In mythology, we learn all about characters such as Tantalus who, no matter how hard he reaches, cannot reach the tree branch above him bearing fruit, or the pool of water below him; thus being cursed with an eternity of deprivation. We also have Sisyphus, who rolled a large boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down once it neared the top for eternity. In many ways, the idea of eternity or unchanging, is itself a form of punishment, like the idea of hell, or the restlessness of a vampire; someone who is not alive and yet cannot die. We are fascinated by things that cannot change, and yet the world around us is constantly changing. We aspire to growth and yet find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over; falling for the same people, reaching for the same unhealthy coping mechanisms, and more.

Often it feels like it takes something catastrophic to change us for good; something to really shake our foundations. As demonstrated by Shane in The White Lotus however, sometimes even that doesn't break through to us. And Rachel is a perfect example of someone who wants so badly to change, and still finds herself absolutely incapable of doing so. She knows that she CANNOT change, and will not, even if the thought makes her absolutely despise herself.

So how do we know we've changed? Maybe it's that we act differently when we are put in the same situations that test us before. Maybe you no longer yell in arguments, but speak calmly. Maybe you are kinder where you used to get frustrated, or maybe you see need where you previously would've ignored it. We don't know that we've changed until maybe even the surrounding circumstances do, or the people. Maybe it's when we are confronted with bits of the past that we see how we've grown older, or added a couple more rings to our trunks. Or maybe we ask the people around us, trusting that they will be brutally honest. Maybe you just hope you're a good person, and you start spending the rest of your life desperately trying to prove it.

How Sex Work Exposed My White Privilege

In 2020, people throughout the US and beyond have taken to the streets to protest systemic racism and injustice—yet how many of us have considered the effect of racism on sex workers? In my six years working as a professional submissive and switch at a commercial dungeon, I’ve seen firsthand how racism and other prejudices affect the entire sex worker community. In fact, my personal experience as a white sex worker, witnessing and questioning how to respond to acts of racism against my coworkers, is now mirrored by the way many white Americans are examining their own problematic attitudes and assumptions about race. 

When I began working at a commercial dungeon in Los Angeles in 2013, the diversity of the dungeon community was one of the aspects I most appreciated. I worked with Black, Latinx, and Asian-American women, and ladies who’d grown up in countries including Ireland and Russia. Our community was also diverse in many other ways—we were different ages, came from different educational and economic backgrounds, and had different life trajectories, with some of us in college, others who were artists and still others pursuing successful business careers in addition to our dungeon lives. 

The magic of our dungeon environment was that, as sex workers, we all shared a secret many in the outside world would judge us quite harshly for—and that one commonality frequently overpowered the other elements that might have divided us. I felt an instant bond with my coworkers that only grew stronger over time, as we all got to know each other in the often long waits between sessions. In the dungeon, I found a place where women didn’t judge each other by skin color, any more than we judged each other for our histories or our achievements. 

Yet even as entering the dungeon allowed me to join an inclusive community of women, working in this environment also showed me, perhaps more than any other experience in my life, my own white privilege. It was common knowledge that women of color at the dungeon booked less sessions, especially when working as submissives. As my Black coworker Violet puts it, working as a submissive was “not as lucrative as I thought it would be” for two main reasons: One, the dungeon’s clientele consisted mainly of older white men who wanted to spank, tie up and tickle what they considered a sweet, innocent-looking girl. As Violet points out, these men were “trying to relive their youths, [which] did not typically include interacting with Black people in general, so they saw right past me and opted for the slim, pale-skinned, soft brown-haired girls-next-door.” Secondly, clients who were younger were still predominantly Caucasian and typically “felt a sense of white guilt, and were uncomfortable beating a Black woman.”

Similarly, Lulu, who was the only Mexican-American woman at the dungeon when she began working there, noticed “I wasn’t getting as many sessions as the other girls” and “came to the realization that clients favored white females.” Lulu decided to “get better instead of bitter” by “investing more in my fetish outfits” and attending workshops to “expand my experience as a player”—however, her efforts were not always as successful as she hoped.

Due to the exact issues Violet and Lulu describe, in my early days at the dungeon as a submissive, I was often in session making money while my African-American and Latinx coworkers sat in the waiting room downstairs—and the only reason I was working when they weren’t was the color of my skin. Violet describes the frustration of quitting her job to “dedicate my full-time hours to the dungeon,” while “only managing to score three to four sessions a MONTH”—and also having to “listen to my white coworkers complaining that they didn’t have a minute to rest between sessions.” Lulu similarly noted that while her hard work and skill “helped some,” white girls “who put in little to no effort in their craft continued to get session after session.”  

Clearly, as women of color, Violet and Lulu had very different experiences at the dungeon than I did—ones that impacted their relationships with coworkers in addition to clients. And yes, I was one of those women complaining on days I had back-to-back sessions, without considering how my words might affect my fellow dungeon workers. My blind spots kept me from realizing that for some women, the dungeon might not always be the same welcoming, inclusive place I experienced—and my behavior directly contributed to that disparity.

Photo by Deon Black via pexels

As a white woman at the dungeon, I also didn’t have to deal with being confronted by stereotypes related to my race, the way many of my coworkers did. Asian-American submissives booked many sessions—as long as they were willing to play the “Asian schoolgirl.” My coworker Aimi, a first-generation Asian-American, says “there was definitely stereotyping—the worst of which was probably some guy calling to ask if I could speak English. When the desk mistress confirmed that I could, he was disappointed because he wanted an Asian girl who couldn’t.”

African-American women were also asked to take part in sessions that engaged directly with race. For instance, Violet recalls that her “very first client request was a plantation slave/master roleplay.” Women at the dungeon were never required to take these sessions, but even in being asked to do so, they had to deal with preconceptions based on the color of their skin—and I, as a white woman, did not. I was able to do my job without having to think about my greater ethnic identity, an added burden in an occupation that is already emotionally draining.

However, even as a white woman, I found that I couldn’t escape the negative effects of racism at the dungeon, just as none of us can deny the fact that racism affects us all in the larger world. At the dungeon, we had a repeat client we not-so-affectionately nicknamed “Racist Joe,” who liked to session with women of color and took every opportunity to comment on and ask about their ethnicities. One day, Racist Joe booked a double session with me and Lulu. By this point Lulu was a talented dominatrix, and I was always happy to session with her—with Joe, not so much. The two of us had sessioned with Joe before, and we knew what to expect: he wanted Lulu to “teach” me how to dominate him, how to give him a spanking and so on, even though I had already been a switch for a while and I knew how to do my job.

Lulu and I were suffering together through the session, trying to avoid Joe’s sweaty body as much as possible and pretend we were excited about the prospect of “torturing” this out-of-shape old white man, when out of nowhere, despite the fact that neither of us had uttered a curse word, Joe looked straight at Lulu’s lips and said: “You know, I’ve always wanted to wash a Mexican girl’s mouth out with soap, because you all have such dirty mouths.”

Lulu turned and walked right out of the session room, and I didn’t blame her. My shock had overtaken my own emotional reaction, and I knew my responsibility for the moment was to keep Joe occupied for however long Lulu needed to collect herself. I don’t even remember what I did for those minutes she was gone. I was panicked, caught up in a conflict that felt like it was both mine and not mine at the same time. I was disgusted by Joe’s words, but at the same time, I had no idea what Lulu—the person the comment had been aimed at—was experiencing. I could do my best to empathize, but since I had never received a derogatory comment based solely on my race, I couldn’t truly understand.

Eventually, Lulu returned holding the bottle of liquid hand soap we kept in the bathroom down the hall. She showed it to Joe and said, “I’d like to wash your mouth out with this right now,” but because she was a professional—even in a situation where her client was being completely unprofessional—she put the soap down and we finished the session. 

As soon as Joe left and we were cleaning the room, I said, “I can’t believe he said that!” 

Lulu replied, “Yeah, I just…I had to get out of there for a minute.” I wasn’t sure what else to say—or if Lulu even wanted to discuss the matter any further—and for better or for worse, that was the extent of our conversation. When I interviewed Lulu for this article, she said, “I remember feeling so angry and insulted I walked out of the session.”

Although I couldn’t understand exactly what Lulu was feeling, I was angry too.

Shortly after that session, I decided not to session with “Racist Joe” again. There were plenty of other things I disliked about his sessions, in addition to the offensive comments. But somehow, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. I was writing a novel at the time, and without my consciously choosing to include him, “Racist Joe” became a part of my story. He morphed into an unsavory diner owner in the 1950s, who could assault his waitresses and spit out racial slurs with impunity. I spent hours imagining a scene where one of those waitresses—secretly a powerful dominatrix—corners Joe and nearly cuts his balls off until he promises to behave himself.

Clearly, even though the real-life Racist Joe’s comments weren’t aimed at me, they had a strong effect on my psyche. I’m still thinking about what Joe said—and about how I reacted, or didn’t, and what I could have done differently—more than two years after the incident took place. Maybe a part of me sensed this was about more than one isolated experience; now, a few years later, I’m seeing my own struggle reflected on a much broader level. White people who consider themselves on the side of equality are now acknowledging that they’ve contributed to the problem of systemic racism, simply by going along with the status quo. 

I still don’t know what exactly I might have done during this situation: Should I have voiced my disapproval of Racist Joe’s comments to his face, even though he was a client? Should I have offered more support to Lulu after the fact, or would doing so have only made her uncomfortable? But I do know that in the greater upheaval we’re all living through at the moment, white people can’t remain inactive, paralyzed by our worries. We can’t go on blaming the “Racist Joes,” the people whose behavior is blatantly problematic, without acknowledging the larger system of inequality that allows injustice both obvious and insidious to continue.

If the escalating problem of police brutality and the higher impact of COVID among people of color has made one thing clear, it’s this: our society won’t change unless people of all races take part in dismantling systems of oppression. We have to ask the uncomfortable questions. We have to think about how racism, prejudice and inequality affect every aspect of our society, even the ones—like sex work—we might consider unimportant or overlook. 

We have a long way to go, but one thing is clear: silence and inaction isn’t an option. Until we can acknowledge the impact of systemic racism in even the most marginalized areas of our society, we can’t truly take steps toward equality for all humans.

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SC Stephanie is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at USC, and I have been published in the HuffPost, Entropy, and many other publications.