Category: Professional Relations

I love the slogan ‘Sex work is work’ because it helps reform the conversation from the morality of sexual activity to the labor issues of exploitation and abuse. I think it’s beautiful that it acknowledges the effort that goes into erotic and emotional labor. In this post, however, I’m going to point out the slogan’s biggest weakness.

I don’t really agree that sex work is just like any other service industry. There are enough parallels that, practically speaking, labor rules governing other intimate service industries (massage, mental health, etc) work well here and so on a policy level I think we should frame our arguments from there. Emotionally speaking, it is different.

Pretty much anyone can, with minimal training and little emotional fallout, stock shelves, operate a Zamboni, clean a house, or serve food. Most people in general find service Industries tolerable or at least not morally repugnant. Even if they can’t see themselves behind a check stand, they have no strong moral opposition to someone else doing it. Unfortunately, sex has such strong moral stigma that sex work carries double that.

But not with everyone. Sex workers have a wide range of feelings toward their ‘work sex’ from seeing themselves as a conduit for God’s love to seeing their clients as worth nothing more than the cash they leave behind.
One colleague, talking about seeing a male provider for personal pleasure, put it like this: “With work sex, it’s 90% me, 10% them sweating and grunting. With civvie sex, it’s still 70% me, 30% them expecting me to be grateful for their attention. With a male provider, I get to do exactly what I want and put out exactly as much effort as I want. I don’t have to worry about them ripping off the condom or whether they come or not, it’s all me.”

Another colleague will cancel appointments if she’s not in the mood so she rarely sees full service clients unless she’s genuinely interested in sex. Yet even her ease to orgasm and sexual interest doesn’t satisfy her the way sex with non-clients does. There’s a selfless and perform active aspect to it that makes it distinctly different.

Yet another provider I know is a lesbian and only has sex with men for cash, never for fun. We fall everywhere in between on our feelings toward ‘work sex’ but we all know there’s a difference and we all share one critical attitude: we all consent to sex we wouldn’t normally have in exchange for a financial incentive.

For me, when I was escorting, it didn’t feel different than my ‘regular’ sex because I was banging people who sucked at it. This was before I learned about my body and what it was capable of. If I were to take up FS work again, I’m not sure I’d be able to just show up for whomever and settle for ‘work sex’. Three years ago, I was happily done when he was done. Now, he’s not done until I’m done, and that’s not how sex work works.

So even within my own self, I have complicated feelings around sex. My colleagues all have their own feelings around sex. Our friends, families, and strangers on the internet have their own feelings about sex and until we can acknowledge that feelings are the root of most policy disagreements, we can at least be more thoughtful in our discussions of it.

This is why I have to question the simplicity of the slogan “sex work is work”. I don’t question the truth of it; anyone who has been an erotic services provider whether it’s a porn performer, escort, cam girl, whatever knows that work sex is work, even when it’s awesome. The exclusion of emotional issues around sex gives the slogan a weak point. No one wants to think of the sex they’re having with their partners as work; they don’t want to complicate an already complicated issue and that’s smart.

So how can we strengthen the slogan? Focus on the strength of it: that labor issues are universal; exploitation and abuse is not limited to sex work and this industry can be regulated like many other intimate service industries. So maybe “Sexual service is a service” or “Erotic laborers need labor rights”? Something that acknowledges the difference between the sex you have at home and erotic labor however it’s rendered and focuses on the need for non-criminal regulations to prevent or mitigate abuses instead of painting the entire industry as some combination of morally wrong and inherently exploitative.

Because until you’ve been a provider and had work sex, you can’t know the difference and that’s ok. You just need to listen to those of us who have when we ask for what we need.

When I first started full service escorting, I charged 300USD for one hour and 200USD for each additional hour. I chose these numbers after looking at dozens of other websites to see what the going rate was and after reading a bunch of Maggie’s advice columns. I required a half hour of social time, for free, in public in order to reassure myself and sometimes these half hours turned into several. It was a hobby, I felt like I was making huge wads of cash (when normally I only made 10.25 an hour), and my clients seemed satisfied.

When I switched to massage and had no training, I felt self-conscious about my perceived lack of experience and charged 160USD for my first few hour long appointments. This was when Adelle was allowing me use of her incall and helped me gain experience. She was the one who strongly encouraged me to raise my rates and eventually find my own place.

When I moved into my first solo incall it was inexpensive, small, a little dank, and at 180USD I slowly grew my client base and savings account. After a pair of singularly unpleasant client interactions I reinstated my social time requirement. Instead of offering this time pro bono as I had before, I charged a nominal (for this industry) 50USD for it.

That was the first time I felt actually uncomfortable about my rates. I felt guilty that I charged for something I required. To me, 50 bucks was a lot and I didn’t like to feel as though I were taking advantage of my clients’ desire to meet me. I didn’t want them to feel as though I was bilking them prior to a get together and I certainly didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t come see me because of this one-time deal. But my friends encouraged me so I did it.

After making a few exceptions to my rule and regretting it, my guilt disappeared. I realized that, for me, the social, emotional, and mental connection we establish in those few minutes is not only important for me but creates a much more intimate and fulfilling experience for my client. I have had a few prospective clients refuse to pay for my social time which tells me that my requirement is screening out folks incompatible with my needs.

For my birthday the year after I graduated from Massage school, I bumped my rates pretty significantly. I decided to do it because it was my birthday, I had completed an educational and professional milestone, and looking around at my colleagues, I felt comfortable settling into a higher tier. Having done duos and received bodywork from several other providers, I felt as their equal and chose to change my rates accordingly.

I settled for a year or two there, with my one bedroom apartment well placed and well priced, my squishy comfort zone wrapped around me, happily complacent with a steady clientele and major goals just over the horizon.

Last October a lot changed. I returned from Europe, moved into a smaller yet more expensive space, stayed crazy busy and since then I’ve lost weight, revamped my wardrobe, and my emotional relationship with my offerings has changed. More recently, I had a new photo shoot done, I’m building a new, safer, more sleek website, I’m expanding the ways and places in which we can meet, and beginning to see the outlines of my next goals solidify in the hazy future.

And so we come to my current wrestling match: my thoughts and feelings about my finances. Generally good, don’t get me wrong, but complicated.

You see, I care a great deal about my clients. I recognize that this is, for many, both a luxury and a need. I know some ladies who have charged the same for years and others who charge as much as they think they can get away with and both have an emotionally stable relationship with those rates. I have clients from all over the socio-economic range. For those of you who couldn’t care less what you spend on me, awesome, thank you for tipping. For those of you who save, agonize, budget, or simply consider rates before meeting me, please know that it is not easy for me to set my rates, particularly as they creep higher. It is the reason I added snuggle sessions to my repertoire: to give you a break without taking a hit to my emotional stability and energy levels.

Because emotional stability and energy levels are the base on which my rates sit. In order to be fully present with you and in order to focus on you for hour(s) at a time I have to have enough off time and down time, not just for boring stuff like cleaning and writing, but for emotionally restorative things like receiving bodywork of my own and sharing time and society with supportive friends. As my sense of self grows, so does my sense of what I could ask for.

Providers set rates all over the map for all sort of reasons and I’ve had tons of conversations with my colleagues about why their rates are where they are and how they feel about them. We have to handle a ton of weird stuff and, more than physically, we need to maintain our emotional presence. This post, as written, was about three times as long as the edited version ended up because my colleagues are all over the map in every way and I kept trying to categorize us. Smart, simple; young, old; hot, not; big, small; magnetic, cold; expensive, bargain; every color, every economic background, every idea, every personality, every religion, every sexuality, everything. All magnificent, all desirable, not a single one of them agree on what to charge and why. If I tried to parse out all the reasons they set their rates where they did I’d be writing all day! In the end, it’s all about how we feel.

I’ve tried in this post to give you an insight into how deeply I’m invested in my rates as one aspect of my personal, successful sole proprietorship. In attempting to write it I’ve realized I can’t. The question comes up on provider/client boards all the freaking time and I always want to say something but the things I have to say about it take way too much space. I thought I could address it here but I’ve discovered that I can’t.

So I’ll leave you with this: We are complicated humans with big complex feelings. If you’re not ready or willing to pay what I ask, that’s ok. I’m not mad, I understand many, if not your, reasons why. I get it. I’m definitely on the higher end for bodywork and I’m not done climbing. I feel like I’m worth it for dozens of reasons but this is SUCH a personal industry that while I may be worth it for many, I may not be worth it for you. For you who do come see me, please know that I don’t take it lightly and I very much appreciate my beloveds who have shown me not only respect in honoring all my requests but appreciation for my work.

After all these words only two matter: Thank you.

At the panel a few weeks ago the same question came up in several different forms. One person asked

“What would you say to my intelligent, feminist, female friend when she says all prostitution should be outlawed due to the harms of trafficking and underage workers?”

Another asked

“How do I respond when someone posts and anti-sex work text or link on Facebook without dragging myself into a huge discussion?”

And at the private provider’s social one person asked

“What can I do if I can’t come out as a sex worker to destroy the stereotypes?”

The base of the questions is “What can I do every single day (sometimes as a well-intentioned, middle class person) that doesn’t jeopardize my social, financial, and physical safety?”

Here is what I do.

I am out to my closest friends and some semi-close friends who I knew wouldn’t react too poorly. I am not out at all to my family. To everyone in between, I am out as a sex workers rights activist. I support the Sex Worker’s rights movement, I work as a sex positive massage therapist to sex workers, and I do my small daily part to educate people when it comes up. I do that by admitting that I’m an ally and through my ally-ship I have met actual, real, honest-to-God sex workers and found them to be at the least normal, more often interesting and powerful women. I can talk about SASS and what I learned, the literature out there, the effects of decriminalization in other places, and I’m doing it not from a place of ‘you’re wrong, stranger’ but from a place of ‘dude check this out! I had no idea but sex workers actually care about themselves!’ I find that, as long as it’s not someone with strong moral beliefs, a different perspective from a trusted source (you, their friend) can begin to change the conversation.

So what can you do when someone posts a link on Facebook? First: recognize that they are not your audience. They’ve already made up their mind and while it’s possible you can change it, it’s unlikely. Your audience is not the poster, it is their friends and yours. Engage with the poster, knowing they are providing you a platform on which you can show others alternatives to the narrative. If you’re really serious about it, keep a note on your phone with links to interesting news articles like Liz Nolan Brown’s long form TRB essay or Maggie’s number crunching post. That way you can just copy/paste with a comment.

What can you do in real life? Next time someone makes a ‘hooker joke’ don’t laugh. Next time someone says something you know to be untrue, ask them why they said that (don’t correct them, facts don’t change hearts). If you’re brave, bring up the article you just saw about how young women are turning to camming and ‘sugaring’ to pay for college and how you had no idea it was so normal/widespread. Talk about the panel you just went to and how you met some interesting sex workers fighting for their rights. Send them one of my blog posts with the naughty stories and maybe they’ll stumble on something else interesting (you can play dumb and say you found it linked somewhere and didn’t read the rest of the blog).

The opportunities don’t come up often for me but when they do for you, don’t be ashamed to be an ally. Don’t be afraid to tell people you know real sex workers in real life and they’re actually surprisingly cool. And don’t fight so hard you lose the love and trust of your true friends. First it won’t work and second you’ll lose something important. I want decriminalization (Toni mac’s TED talk is a great link to explain that) but not as much as I want everyone to move forward, together.