Why not to be a sex worker
I'm currently watching the tv show called The Deuce which is based in the 70s-80s and it perfectly shows the history of sex work. From street prostitutes working under pimps, to brothels, to porn. It's been making me think a lot about how things used to be, how they are now and how much has changed in a fairly short amount of time. People who used to turn to prostitution were usually women without education who did not have another choice. Later on when porn started to be a thing, all of the escorts wanted to be in the movies. Prostitution was the “dirty” job whilst porn was the lucrative one. And I get that. What sounds better? Fucking random dudes for a minimum amount of cash one after another, day after day or just spend a day on set with other professionals, being fed during breaks and then enjoy the visibility and popularity the movie gives you.
But times have changed. Yes, many porn performers still look down on escorts and many high class escorts look down on porn performers. For me - it's all fucking. Neither is better or worse. I actually admire mainstream porn performers as I know my body would not be able to handle all the travelling, long days on set and hours and hours of fucking men who have monstrous dicks. That's why I prefer full service. Yes, pimps still exist, as do agencies, brothels, and street workers. But with the rise of independent escorts, self marketing and screening procedures, many of us have different choices. The choice of setting our own rates, the choice of keeping 100% of what we make and who we decide to see.
With the rise of social media and sex workers being open about their lives, people no longer just fall into sex work just because they have no other option. They actually want to do it. They want to succeed and they want to become popular. Whether it's porn, onlyfans, camming or full service. In a way I find it bizarre. Recently I was having a conversation with a friend of a friend and he asked me: “Have you always dreamt of being a sex worker?” I thought this must have been the dumbest question I've ever gotten as a sex worker. I highly doubt that the person would go to a cashier in Tesco and ask them if they always wanted to be a cashier in Tesco when they were little. So no Steven, when I was a kid I did not dream of sucking dicks to be able to pay my rent. I mean, I do remember watching Demi Moore in the movie Striptease and wanting to be as powerful and sexy as she was. Twenty years later I still wish I had the guts to be a stripper, at least for a little while, just to get the experience. But back to the dumbest question I ever heard - after thinking about it for a while I guess it wasn't as dumb as I thought. Because more and more young people dream of it. Every time I'm doing a Q&A on instagram I get at least one question from a woman asking me what I did to get popular, how to start, how to get more established. You know, just as other social media creators don't post the bad stuff in their lives, the same goes for sex workers. You don't really see the proud mum creator posting a fight with their oldest daughter who told her she hated her and ran away. You don't see the travel bloggers posting about the airbnb full of cockroaches. You don't see the fitness creators starving themselves and working out 5 hours per day. Sex work is not full of easy money, gifts, designer handbags and travelling. There's a lot of ugly and negative things that come with the profession and that's what I'm going to talk to you about today:
1) It's a hard fucking job - Do you think working 9-5 is bullshit? Imagine working 24/7. Being self employed might seem like a dream until you are actually self employed. Everything is about marketing these days and if you're not gonna stand out, you're most likely not going to succeed. Onlyfans had its peak during Covid when everyone was living their lives online. Starting now and trying to make it whilst there's thousands and thousands of other hot people is not necessarily impossible, but also not easy. I'm tired of civvie people and their comments saying that once they get bored of their job, they will start OF and will only sell foot pics. Okay Karen, go for it! I desperately wanna see your face after you make $5 in a week. You can also expect that people will be messaging you nonstop on all platforms and expect you to be ready, horny and to respond immediately. Doesn't matter if it's 3pm or 3am - sex workers never sleep and we don't have personal lives. Or that's what they like to think. Same goes for full service. There will always be girls who do it a lot cheaper than you're willing to do. What's gonna make you stand out then? Why would people pay the extra money to see you?
2) Safety - I get how sex work might seem appealing, especially when all you see is us going to expensive dinners, getting gifts, travelling and buying expensive handbags. It's almost like the posts where an escort said she was paid with fake money, robbed, or assaulted, don't get your attention as much as the champagne and oysters. Sex workers don't necessarily go around and casually talk about their bad experiences, because sex workers are people. It's not easy to talk about assault and rape no matter your job or gender. But especially us women, we are constantly blamed for so many things whether it's our clothing, behaviour or just our existence in general. Then imagine the comments a sex worker would get if they were talking about their bad experiences?
“What did you expect?”
“You're basically asking for it”
“Time to get a real job.”
“Isn't this what you're being paid for?”
During my first year I was with a client and he secretly took his condom off. When I first realised I was frozen, I didn't know what to do and was scared that if I was gonna say something I could get hurt. But the thought of STIs and unwanted pregnancy made me stop him, got dressed and stormed out. I was lucky enough I was leaving with my pay in my bag and that he wasn't violent. Experience like this is not limited only to sex workers. This shit happens to women more often than you think. Then one time I saw a client who I thought was a dick but completely harmless. After we met he was sending me inappropriate texts and messed me around about bookings, so I told him I will not be seeing him again. He was messaging me for another year trying to book me, pretending he was someone I've never met, or hoping I won't remember who he was. He's a dentist and his facebook profile is full of happy photos with his wife. Dangerous men are not just waiting for you in the middle of the night behind a tree. They are literally among us.
Not only full service workers are taking risks when it comes to their safety. At the beginning when I was doing only onlyfans and camming I received a random text on my personal phone from some guy and I ignored it. He followed up with a message of my address and the number of my flat. It scared the shit out of me and for the rest of the day I was walking around my house with a knife in my hand and eventually slept with it under my pillow. I blocked the number and luckily I've never heard from him again. It could have been anyone who just wanted to mess with me. My flatmate who didn't like me, a post man, a guy I once fucked or literally just a fan who got way too obsessed and decided to do some proper stalking.
The biggest problem is that it's already hard to go to the police as a woman when you're feeling scared or something happened. It's even harder when you're a sex worker.
3) Everyone you've ever known will know - Are you ready for your parents to see you naked? Or having sex? Are you ready for your old classmates to see you? Your exes? If you think you can stay incognito, think twice. Success comes with a price and the more successful you are the easier it is for people to randomly find you. Even if you hide your face, people might recognise you. I recently heard a story from a lover who once wanted to book a certain escort. She didn't show her face, yet her body seemed familiar to him. It didn't take long until he found out he knew her and fucked her once in the past before she became a sex worker.
Just because you put your naked photo behind a paywall, it doesn't mean it's not gonna get out. No matter what OF says, your content WILL BE stolen and put on so many random websites. You can try and pay companies to take it down, but then it will just appear somewhere else. You're basically fighting a losing battle. Even when you decide to stop, the evidence is still going to be there and you do have to think about the consequences. Your future partners may see it, perhaps even your future kids.
I really love hearing stories from sex workers about their supportive parents. But unfortunately that doesn't happen to everyone. In fact, that doesn't happen to most of us.
4) Stigma - Even though sex work is so glamorised lately on social media, it doesn't mean it's glamorised in real life. At the beginning it might feel super empowering and you will feel no shame telling random people what you do. But one day you will be surrounded by civvie people you just met,having small talk, and you will wish you just had a boring job that wouldn't make you stand out so much. This is something I definitely struggle with. I don't want to be telling my yoga teacher I'm a sex worker when she asks me what I do for work after a class. No, I certainly don't want to be telling the doctor who's in between my legs doing my smear test that I bang men for money after she asked me what my job is. You never know how the person is going to take it. Some might get uncomfortable, some might ask questions that make you uncomfortable, some might suddenly see you differently. I heard a story about an escort who told her therapist what she does for work, and the therapist said that she can't be seeing her anymore because she's not comfortable taking her dirty money. In a way I could compare it to veganim. For the first couple years I was always in activist mode, ready to win every discussion with a random person. But after 7 years of being a vegan I actually could not be bothered telling a stranger that B12 doesn't come from animals and that I am not protein deficient.
But it's not only civvie people who will be against you, the whole system will be. It doesn't matter if your work is legal where you live, you will be fought against. Are you ready to have your airbnb account banned and not be able to make a new one? Are you ready to lose your paypal account with money still on it? Have your bank account closed down? Those are things that are happening to sex workers on a daily basis. How about losing the site that is your main income? We were lucky enough not to lose OF in 2021 but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen in the future. Different sites where full service workers can safely promote themselves are also constantly shut down. It's a very tiring fight and we're still not winning.
5) Your love life might suffer - I do love to preach and keep saying how many SWers are in happy romantic relationships and have families, but that doesn't mean that dating as a SWer is easy. I mean, dating is incredibly hard even as a civvie person and unfortunately the fact you're naked all over the internet or you're fucking for cash is not gonna make it any easier. I believe that you should be upfront with a potential partner straight away, preferably before, or on a first date. It will tell you a lot about the person and you might save yourself from wasting your time. As I always say - the way he treats sex workers is how he treats women in general. In the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Hannah had made the mistake of first falling in love, building a relationship and then telling him she was an escort. Well, she did not actually tell him, he found out. And he did not take it well. I understand his side but I also wish he would have tried a bit harder to understand her point of view and educate himself a little bit about the topic. However, all he felt was disgust, betrayal and hate towards her. Even if people know they are about to go out with a SWer, they might seem okay with it but they are not. Even they think they are okay with it, but then the post nut clarity happens and they realise you're not someone they wanna introduce to their parents and share their life with. You were basically just a fantasy. An ego boost for them because they got to fuck a sex worker for free. It's the same when men are so desperate to make a sextape with a sex worker. Once you tell them you will need their ID (because all sites require it), that they need to get tested, sign a model release and you remind them that once it's on the internet it's there forever, they immediately change their mind. Even when you finally meet a decent guy who truly cares about you, it might not work out because of the job. It does take a strong, confident man. Every SWer needs support, needs to be able to ramble about their job, needs to celebrate their wins with someone and if the partner is not willing to do that either because of jealousy, hurt ego or something else, it won't work. Also the partner will also have to deal with stigma from society. Just a slightly different kind. Their friends might not understand and judge their decision, people from their workplace might somehow find out and so do their family members. It's their decision if they wanna go through it and face the world with you or they choose to take the easy way out, and then realise they just want something sweet and simple with someone else. I don't think you can judge a person for that because the majority of us would choose that. Life is hard enough already.
You might end up dating another sex worker and that's probably the easiest scenario as you both are going to be very understanding of the fact that this is a job.
Dating will also be easier for you if you're naturally non monogamous and preferably poly. Because the poly community is usually very supportive of sex workers and their life goal is to fuck and have a deep connection with everything and everyone. But what if you're a monogamous lovergirl who watched way too many rom-coms growing up? Then help us God.
6) It's hard to walk away from it - People keep asking me if I see myself doing this forever. I mean what even is forever? I always reply that I'll do it as long as it feels good and I find it fulfilling. But I see a lot of sex workers retiring and in a couple months or a year they are coming back to it. Obviously being all over the internet might make finding a vanilla job difficult. That's one thing. Another thing is that you will hardly find a job that will give you more freedom and more quick cash in a short time than sex work. I get fed up every couple months and think that maybe I should just quit. I might be just dealing with more idiots than usual, or it's slow and I miss the comfort of having a steady income, colleagues and a proper routine. And then sometimes I feel defeated as I think I'm not able to get where I want to be with my work. I know that I would get bored very soon having a vanilla job again. I would get annoyed that I don't have time and energy to workout seven days a week, no time to read all my books, I can't take days off whenever I want to and I have to go to work when I'm ill. But that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't wonder what if. What if I had a boring job, easy love life, girlfriends I would meet up with for brunch once a week to talk about clothes, kids and weddings. Rather than being in touch with sex workers and bitching about how many clients stuck their dirty finger into our ass without a consent again. But I don't think I was destined to have the classic, for me very boring life and so I just keep going.
It's not an easy life. Exciting? Yes, but definitely not easy. That's why you have to really think if this life is worth all the things and people you might lose on the way.