Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.

Public Perceptions of Sex Work are Changing, but that Doesn't Mean Sex Workers are Safe

“Rather than stand up for the stigmatized and vulnerable, OnlyFans made the decision to lose out on millions, possibly billions in revenue to bow to the pressures of the conservative minority, and to reinforce negative stereotypes about the sex work industry, conflating it with trafficking and child abuse rather than doing the basic work to support and understand the members of the industry they were serving. ”

In the past two weeks, we've seen one of the biggest names in digital sex work, OnlyFans, first vow that they were going to remove all adult explicit content from the site, and then after a week of getting butt-fucked by the press, by the hundreds of thousands of sex workers who they were ostensibly and suddenly forcing out of work in the middle of a pandemic, and by the millions of subscribers and members of the public who think sex work is work, OnlyFans then magically reversed their ban, having miraculously figured out a way to make their bank/payment processors work after all.

It was a cop out that everyone saw from a mile away. OnlyFans had long been hinting that they wanted to distance themselves from the very people that the majority of their profit comes from (99% of their top earners are sex workers) because of the stigma of being part of the adult industry. However, OnlyFans would be nothing without the sex workers who use it, and most importantly, the sex workers who started creating content on it during the pandemic, which established OnlyFans as one of the giants of the digital sex world industry. However, it was clear from the start that they were uncomfortable with the sex workers who used the platform, often banning or freezing accounts with little explanation given, and last year when Bella Thorne infamously started an OnlyFans account only to back out and explain it all away as some sort of joke or flimsy attempt to support sex workers, OnlyFans used it as an opportunity to change their terms to make it harder for sex workers to get paid out; which stymied the income of thousands. With the soft launch of their app earlier this year, OnlyFans saw the stringent ToS of the iOS store as a chance to once and for all get rid of those pesky sex workers that they made their fortune on. (Don't worry Apple, we haven't forgotten you and what you did to Tumblr and all the other apps like it. Your Draconian approach to gentrifying the internet via our phones won't work forever).

Any idiot with half a brain could've told you that yanking the rug out from under your biggest earners was not only a bad business move for your company, but that turning out thousands of vulnerable people and removing their sole source of income in the middle of a global pandemic was, ummm, not a good look. OnlyFans went from being a platform in which sex workers could reclaim economic independence and power to being reviled as a money-grabbing, selfish and cruel website that never cared about anyone but their own bottom line. And that was definitely true. In statements following up their initial announcement, they explained that the move was an economic one, motivated by how difficult it is to get banks and other financial entities to fund and process sex work payments/subscriptions. It's not impossible though, on Pornhub you can pay for premium content, give creators tips, subscribe to channels and all of that. Chaturbate, ManyVids, and other contemporaries of OnlyFans also show that it's not impossible to support and host adult content on your site. It took less than a week for news sources to find out that OnlyFans was just using money as a cheap excuse to cover up the fact that they didn't want to stand up against pressure from anti-porn groups that were campaigning against OnlyFans to take down adult content because "OnlyFans is host to the most trafficking of anywhere on the internet" (an unverified and completely false claim). Rather than stand up for the stigmatized and vulnerable, OnlyFans made the decision to lose out on millions, possibly billions in revenue to bow to the pressures of the conservative minority, and to reinforce negative stereotypes about the sex work industry, conflating it with trafficking and child abuse rather than doing the basic work to support and understand the members of the industry they were serving.

In the year of our Lord and of Covid variant delta 2021 however, public perceptions about sex work have changed. Increased exposure to sex workers through social media and news sites have led more people to understand that sex work is work, and that sex workers are just like us, people who are trying to eke out a living despite the iron hand of capitalism trying to crush us all. There is more understanding that sex work does not equal sex trafficking, and that for many, turning the patriarchal structures of objectification and sexualization into something empowering and economically viable can be very healing. The reaction to OnlyFans' decision to boot sex workers was swift and harsh. Thousands of people publicly condemned the company for betraying the very people who made them such a successful company in the first place, and after merely a week, OnlyFans was forced to abruptly turn around and change their mind. Many saw it as a victory, seeing it as David defeating Goliath, but by no means does it mean that sex workers are safe.

Many sex workers on Twitter complained that within the week of uncertainty, they lost hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers, costing them a significant amount of income. The abruptness with which OnlyFans magically found ways to process payments/deal with banking systems proved that it was never an insurmountable problem, just an inconvenient one. And OnlyFans has still not promised to never ban sex workers from the platform. They've 'suspended' the exodus, but by no means cancelled it. Sex workers online have been telling one another to move to other platforms, to publish their content upon multiple websites so that the cancellation of one platform isn't as devastating, and finally to try to offload their content entirely, and to move back to private websites by which subscribers can reach them personally. They are surviving the turmoil, not because OnlyFans is 'saving' them, but because sex workers are resourceful, resilient, and ever-determined to not be erased.

Accountability is important. Accountability and public shaming forced OnlyFans to reverse their decision on banning explicit content. But that doesn't mean that sex workers are safe. It doesn't mean that we've built a world that thinks about their needs, that offers them protection from predators or the religious conservatives who wish they didn't exist. Sex workers are still as marginalized and uncertain as ever, forced to continue using platforms like OnlyFans that they know will drop them at any moment. So while the OnlyFans reversal is a small victory, it is by no means a permanent change. We still need to be vocal and persistent, that sex work is not something that will go away or disappear or turn its head in embarrassment, but it is an intrinsic and important profession, one that carries its own risks, and that by consistently normalizing it can we really help protect and support sex workers.

The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.

Guest Author 6/14/21 Guest Author 6/14/21

How Sex Work Helped Me Reclaim My Sexuality

Trigger warning: this piece contains mention of stalking, grooming and sexual harassment.

When I first met M. P. at a Writer’s Meetup, I didn’t really notice him. To me, he was just another adult in a room full of them. The Meetup took place in the back room of a restaurant not far from my parents’ house. I was there with my mother, because I was still just a kid. At the time I was seventeen years old, a high school senior, and exceedingly sheltered for my age. My Catholic parents hadn’t given me “the talk” yet, and they’d opted me out of Sex Ed at school. Aside from a brief “relationship” (we only kissed once) with a girl at summer camp, I’d never really dated. My Asperger’s Syndrome made me something of a loner as well. I didn’t know what a serious, adult relationship was supposed to look like. Nor was I interested in one. I was attending Meetups to make platonic friends. Isn’t that what meetups were for?

M. P. began direct messaging me via Meetup. Before long we were messaging each other on a near-nightly basis (he worked the night shift at a local apartment complex, where he manned the front desk and waiting for something - anything - to happen). From the very start he made sexual comments and claimed to be in love with me. I knew that M was 33 - seventeen years my senior. I didn’t mind, despite the large age difference, because I was so glad to have someone to talk to. I thought it wasn’t too bad since my grandparents were sixteen years apart in age. Anyway, M claimed that our relationship was totally normal and I (foolishly) believed him. All kinds of perfectly ordinary situations - from hugging a relative to watching certain movies with the sound on - distressed me, thanks to my autism. So I generally relied on other people - friends, family, teachers, even strangers - to tell me what “normal” looked like.

M. P. soon began stopping by my parents’ house nearly every afternoon, bringing gifts. He also began to grope and touch me, as well as describing his favorite kinds of porn. When I asked him not to, he explained that - as his girlfriend - I owed him. Supposedly, I had to do what he wanted, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. He’d also tell me that my writing was horrible and that I ought to become a prostitute because I was too stupid for anything else (which just proves that M. P. didn’t know what he was talking about, given that sex work actually requires a fair amount of business savvy, emotional labor, and raw intelligence). Of course, I believed him. Many of our visits ended with me in tears. I became increasingly gloomy and miserable as the months went by. Yet I kept everything hidden from my family, fearing they’d hate me if they knew.

Finally, around my 18th birthday in May, I tried to break up with M. P. I did this at one of the Writer’s Meetups so that there would be witnesses. I also confirmed over text. He agreed that we were broken up. Then, the next day, he refused to acknowledge that anything had happened. The next few months were even worse. I felt increasingly hopeless. Finally, I decided to cut him off completely and block all of his accounts. I also blocked all our mutual acquaintances and stopped going out. Though M. P. managed to send a few more harassing emails using new accounts, he eventually gave up. I was free, though still shaken and frightened.

By then it was September. My parents had decided to send me to community college. I’d wanted to take a year or two off, to recover from everything that had happened, but they wouldn’t allow this. Even more frustratingly, my parents had signed me up for a kind of mentorship program. One of the mentors (a man in his 30s) began texting me nonstop, telling me I was sexy and that I should become a stripper. He’d show up everywhere I went at school, probably because (as a mentor) he had access to my schedule. He also kept trying to get me to meet him alone on an isolated part of the campus. This terrified me. When I went to the man in charge of the mentorship program, he was apparently fairly shocked, yet he didn’t seem to know what to do. The campus police weren’t any help either, because the mentor hadn’t actually broken any laws. I ended up dropping out before my first semester ended.

Soon after that, I began taking classes and volunteering at a local public access television station. It was there I met J. M., a handyman in his 50s, who produced a horror hosting show there. He cast me as one of the kooky characters. From the very start, his behavior was vile. He’d barge into the women’s dressing room without knocking, send me explicit sexual messages, and threaten me when I didn’t do what he wanted. When I insisted that I was uninterested in him and probably gay, he responded by becoming aggressive and angry. He’d call me various cruel, sexist names and say that most women would love attention from him.

Eventually, after about a year of this, I gave in to his heckling. I let him kiss me with his horrible mouth, I let him grope me. Though I promised, constantly, that I’d have sex with him someday (usually to get him to stop yelling at me), I never did. He soon became impatient. He claimed that I didn’t have the right to say no, not after “dangling” myself in front of him (I suppose he saw me as a piece of irresistibly delicious candy, rather than a human being). One day, while I was at his house, he convinced me to flash my breasts. I thought that if I did so, he’d leave me alone. Instead, he pinned me to the couch and licked my torso. He tried to take my skinny jeans off as well, though between their tight fit and my struggling he couldn’t, so he eventually gave up. I found this incident exceedingly traumatizing. I had nightmares for many months. Everything startled me. I was terrified of the dark, of sleeping, of strangers who looked like J. M.

Finally, a little more than a year later, the nightmares stopped. By then I was still living with my parents. Aside from a brief stint as a cashier during the Christmas rush and a number of unpaid internships, I’d never really had a job. My income came primarily from gig editing work and publishing my essays. My autism and shyness made it hard for me to get through job interviews. It was then that I began hearing about sites like OnlyFans and ManyVids. I knew that selling porn or nudes could be a fairly lucrative side-hustle. It was also something I could do from home, without having to see anyone or go anywhere. I also felt that no matter where I went or what I did, I’d be objectified and taken advantage of by someone. Sexual harassment seemed inevitable so, cynically, I figured I might as well find a way to profit from my youthful looks and curvaceous body.

I began filming themed striptease videos and posting them on ManyVids. To my surprise I actually enjoyed the process. For the first time, I felt as if I were in control of my sexuality and sex appeal. I no longer felt as if I had to look or act a certain way to appeal to aggressive, controlling men. Instead, I could wear costumes that made me feel sexy and act out scenarios that I enjoyed. I soon branched out, filming masturbation and fetish clips as well as more themed stripteases. I played a variety of strong, confident characters in my videos - from vampire countesses to drill sergeants. I also “invested” some of the money I earned in props, as well as fabrics which I used to sew more costumes for myself.

For the first time ever, being sexual was about me instead of the men in my life. Plus, since I did everything - from setting up the camera to editing the footage - I was completely in control of the content I produced. If I didn’t like how something looked, I could shoot it again or cut out a few seconds. If someone requested a custom video that made me uncomfortable, I could always say “no”. After years of feeling trapped by the vile men in my life, being able to have complete control over something (even something as simple as the videos I post) has been so helpful in helping me heal and regain some autonomy in my life. Not only that, I’ve been able to make a couple hundred extra dollars every month from my video sales. When I live-cam, I can make that much in only about five to eight hours. This has made me more financially secure, which in turn reduces my anxiety and makes me more confident. The fact that I’ve been able to run my own business and make a profit has also helped me. It’s proved to me that, with enough determination and hard work, I can be legitimately successful at something. I’m not the useless idiot M. P. insisted I was. Quite the contrary.

M. L. Lanzillotta is an AFAB transmasculine freelance writer from the Washington DC metro area. Before his transition, he dabbled in online sex work under a female persona and name. His many hobbies include painting, acting, cooking, and complaining via Twitter.

Guest Author 4/5/21 Guest Author 4/5/21

Review: Velvet Collar Issue 2: Rough Trade Secrets

The second issue of sex worker Bryan Knight’s comic series Velvet Collar, “Rough Trade Secrets,” depicts the aftermath of Rentman’s shutdown, the series’ thinly veiled fictionalization of rentboy.com. Abel, still chasing the wrong men, has shifted into freelance graphic design work. Storm’s precocious daughter, now a teenager, has become a high-school decrim activist, to the chagrin of her dad. (It’s hard to keep it on the low when your own child is blowing up your spot). Billy had to live in his car for a while, but has since joined the other gig economy as a Lyft driver. Indomitable Daddy is in a relationship with a trapeze student hunk and steering clear of sex work. Rica Shay is barely scraping by, increasingly relying on his side- side-hustle of selling blackmarket steroids.

Into this morass of disruptive fallout from the Rentman raid stomps Ten, a butch/femme switch in a men’s suit, high heels, and a shock of red hair falling over one eye—with two bodyguards in leather dog masks in tow. Ten lays out a proposition, claiming that the Rentman servers are full of personal data incriminating important politicians and businessmen, a “political nuclear bomb.” He proposes to pay them $50,000 apiece to steal the servers out of federal custody. This bonkers scheme is greeted with scorn until Ten reveals that he also has dirt on our five workers—Rica Shay for selling steroids, Daddy for tax evasion, etc. Abel is summarily evicted from his apartment as proof, and Ten threatens to ruin the lives of the rest of them if they don’t help.

Ten then directs their anger towards a notorious troll, a “seventy-one year old real estate tycoon from Queens,” (get it?) who has “spent years collecting personal information on hundreds of sex workers…” fingering him as the villain behind their blackmailing. It falls on Storm—who is revealed to be a secret agent of an organization called NAAMAH—to convert our five into a special ops team and undertake this high-stakes mission. Storm enlists his brother Star, who is also a down-low sex worker and possible secret agent to help. In the final frames, Ten is revealed to be the lover of the new lead prosecutor on the Rentman case, lamenting how he will have to betray his fellow workers.

Issue 1 represents a strong start to a promised 9-part series, with clearly rendered characters, concise and neatly interwoven plot lines, and some graphically beautiful frames. Issue 2 departs from established facts to speculate on what might be the true motivations and consequences of the Rentman/Rentboy raid. The graphics are less consistent than in Issue 1—there are two artists on inks, and a third on colors and the cover—and the palette is generally murkier. This might reflect the plot, a hairball of conspiracy theories, double-crossers, and secret agents. It will take some Daddy-level acrobatics to untangle all the strands and resolve them into a plausible conclusion over the seven following issues, however a sneak preview has been released of Issue 3, entitled “Performance Anxiety,” showing our stalwart team fucking their way into a federal storage facility.

With that said, Velvet Collar breaks ground in chronicling the new realities of sex work in the SESTA/FOSTA era, in which once-reliable platforms have vanished, leaving workers scrambling. The observational work that the creators have undertaken to depict relatable sex worker characters will go a long way in getting us through to the end of a story that is surely unfinished and untold.

Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com

Guest Author 3/29/21 Guest Author 3/29/21

Review: Velvet Collar Issue 1: Unhappy Endings

Velvet Collar, a comic book series written and produced by Bryan Knight and drawn by queer comic artist Dave Davenport, depicts the lives of five male escorts. In Issue 1, “Unhappy Endings,” their escort listing service is shut down by the feds, making it a thinly-veiled representation of the 2015 Rentboy raid.

Davenport had previously represented a sex worker in his homoerotic series Hard to Swallow. Set in fictional Fogtown, the series features Doug, a compact young tough who works as a stripper at a gay club. Doug has a special bond with two supernatural characters: a preppie gay who transforms into a sexually ravenous werewolf (Feral), and the Ghost Skater, a skateboarding ex of Doug’s, now a horny ghost. With each story line, the characters’ unashamed, raucous sexuality is an instrument of resolution. The supernaturals rescue Doug from danger, then fuck him silly.

To date, two full-color issues of Velvet Collar has been realized and financed through crowdsourcing, with a third in production. Volume 1 opens with expository blocks offering the backstories of the five male sex workers. Each is based on an actual worker who consented to participate in the project. Some names are changed to avoid disclosure. For their likenesses, Davenport worked from photos and videos.

Davenport’s hand in drawing Velvet Collar v. 1 is tighter than it is in Hard to Swallow, perhaps because there are more characters and interwoven storylines. The characters are faithfully rendered and colored, and the New York City settings are drafted with precision. The reader shifts from one character depiction to the next via a chain of phone calls gathering up the group to attend an event at the offices of “Rentman,” the world’s largest online escort listing service. This narrative device centers technology, reflecting the current reality of technology-mediated sex work. As with Hard to Swallow, many of the depictions of sex—both personal and transactional—are explicit, raucous fun.

Part of the mission of Velvet Collar is to depict sex workers as fully realized protagonists with complex emotional lives. The five represent a range of ethnicities, body types, and ages. The character Abel Rey is based on a Latino worker active in New York. In his frames, he is seen arguing with a love interest who has “discovered” that he’s a sex worker, despite a previous disclosure “on (their) second date.” The sequence, charged with emotion and sexual heat, resolves with Abel giving him a worker-in-relationship go-to: “Other people pay cash, all you have to do is pay attention.”

Bearish Billy is shown in the midst of a call with a submissive who worships his hairy body and big belly. The character Rica Shay is a composite, partly inspired by the Los Angeles-based gay hip-hop performer and dancer. Frames depict Rica Shay saying goodbye to a loving partner while he pursues his music career, which is in turn financed by sex work. One of his regulars is shown being supportive of his musical ambitions. The character navigates a romantic relationship, his creative aspirations, and client expectations.

African-American Storm is based on the true experiences of a “down-low” escort who requested that his name and likeness be withheld. He is married with a wife and child; in the opening sequence, the silos between his sex work and family life come crashing down when his young daughter announces, “Dad, I know you’re a prostitute.” This story line grapples with deeper questions of disclosure in the lives of sex workers. While his daughter is understanding, his wife raises serious risks: “If child services finds out, they’ll take her away from you.”

The last of the quintet is Scott, aka Daddy. Daddy is a trapeze instructor and a sex worker at 62. The characterization draws on a veteran worker whose longevity also defies stereotypes. These five convene for the launch party of an ad campaign in which they are featured at the offices of Rentman on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary. Federal agents in black crash the party, and overrun the office with force, to the astonishment of our five, who are turning the corner just as Rentman’s handcuffed employees are being perp-walked towards a police cruiser.

The cover art depicts the founder of Rentman bound up in yellow crime-scene tape. While stylized, it accurately conveys the circumstance of founder Jeffrey Hurant, who—after being arrested and charged with promoting prostitution and conspiracy to commit money laundering—was convicted and sentenced to six months in federal prison. The acting U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case described the business as an “Internet brothel.” Before it was shuttered by ICE/Homeland Security, Rentboy.com was the single largest global platform for male sex workers. Prior to 2015, it had operated without any significant federal scrutiny. The raid was part of a coordinated effort—in advance of the passage of SESTA/FOSTA—to shut down websites with prominent sex worker presence (Backpage was seized soon afterwards).

In its detailed frames, Unhappy Endings does an excellent job of presenting its five main characters navigating sex work in their individual lives. It also establishes the Rentboy raid as a turning point in male sex workers’ access to online platforms, a topic to be unpacked in subsequent issues.

Guest Author 3/22/21 Guest Author 3/22/21

Breaking into Male Sex Work and Society, Representation in Comics

Have you lifted the 500+ page Male Sex Work & Society? The 2014 textbook is something of a staple in gender studies programs around the country, but the publishers got some flack from the sex worker community for relying on researchers and excluding the voices of, you know, actual sex workers. A funny thing happened after my interview with sex worker Bryan Knight and artist Dave Davenport—collaborators on the Velvet Collar comic series depicting the 2015 federal raid on rentboy.com--posted on Tits & Sass, the long-running sex worker blog with the tag line ‘service journalism by and for sex workers.’ Some time after the post ran, I was approached by Harrington Park Press, the book’s publisher, and asked to contribute to their follow-up title, Male Sex Work: Culture & Society, volume 2. I buckled down and wrote a whole damn chapter on the wide breadth of representations of male sex workers in comics, starting with Seven Miles a Second by artist David Wojnarowicz. So yea, we can represent ourselves, and we can also talk about representing ourselves.

Tits & Sass, currently on hiatus, has also reviewed the work of Canadian stripper and writer Jacqueline Frances, known as Jacq the Stripper. Her crowdfunded graphic novel Striptastic! is a satirical look at the world of strip clubs. The author’s ear for the dark humor in interactions with choice customers, and the banter between strippers, is well-served by her irreverent, stripped-down (pun intended) drawing style. Striptastic! skewers male patrons’ sleaziness and turns the judgey things civilians say (“How can you do this job and call yourself a feminist?”) back on them, all while paying tribute to strippers’ backstage camaraderie and sisterhood.

But back to my assigned topic, representations of male sex workers in comics. There are not that many examples, so I endeavored to consider them all. Seven Miles a Second, which dates back to 1996, is pretty dark. Its narrator/protagonist recounts his origin story as a teen street hustler in New York’s Times Square circa late 70’s. From the outset, desire is entwined with violence and degradation; his first customer goads him into watching a female sex worker service her customer through a peephole, while the narrator is serviced by his customer. In a graphic frame, the woman turns to reveal extensive slash marks on her torso. The teen’s intro to sex work couples voyeurism and violence. In subsequent panels, artist James Romberger illustrates the protagonist’s apocalyptic rage against the cruelties of the universe—in particular the U.S. government’s indifference to gay mens’ suffering during the AIDS epidemic. As a comic book figure, Wojnarowicz’s superpower is his ability to transform suffering into art.

Seven Miles a Second demonstrates that for sex worker creators, comic books can infuse our narratives with requisite emotional depth and complexity. A level of artistic control is possible, keeping the work and the narratives in our hands. It’s an accessible, character- and action-driven medium for bringing stories based on true experiences to a receptive audience—without risks of disclosure.

Despite the fact that representations of male sex work in comics covers a brief 25-year period, the works I examined track the general migration of sex work from analog spaces like Wojnarowicz’s Times Square to online spaces like rentboy.com and locative apps such as Grindr to the present reality of increasingly scrutinized (and prosecuted) online platforms— from street trade to SESTA/FOSTA. In subsequent posts, I’ll review Velvet Collar to assess how it tackles the latter period.

*The book project has since changed publishers, and will be brought out as Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society from Routledge Press (UK) this April.

Guest Author 12/15/20 Guest Author 12/15/20

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.

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.

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.

Guest Author 11/22/20 Guest Author 11/22/20

Unfinished Solidarities

N is a seemingly quiet, perceptive woman in her late 20s whose only caveat before she came in for her first therapy appointment was to ask that she be the last client of the evening. She didn’t fill her intake form which is a preliminary information gathering sheet that helps me get some basic medical and personal history of clients/patients before the appointment in order to better understand them.

A lot of clients either forget or need several reminders to fill it before an appointment. Nothing unusual there. N dropped me an email and asked me if it was ok for her to verbally give an intake when she came to the clinic. I agreed.

We began our session with a cup of tea; she seemed apprehensive, uncomfortable. Again, nothing unusual for first timers in therapy. I assumed it was the sudden exposure to the contemplative silence of a therapeutic setting. Suddenly she burst forth with a single, shaking sentence –“Ma’am, I have to tell you about my job.” My assumption was that she perhaps was unemployed and maybe needed pro bono help or wanted to inquire about sliding scale payments in which clients pay as per financial wherewithal per session. Before I could ask anything, she sighed – “I work as an escort. I am not sure if you counsel people like me. I am sorry if I am wasting your time.”

“People like me” is a phrase that can carry such translucent contradictions; evident yet indistinct. A person using it either feels mousetrapped, isolated in their identity or very sui generis. The only response that felt suitable in that moment was to sit back and listen rather than assume what was N’s story.

Over a period in time as I have gotten to know her, I reckon she is a rarity among those who use sex work in India as their main source of income. N works on her own, can exert some autonomy and makes choices based on her own discretion when it comes to her clientele. This has not come easy to her. She is a high-school dropout who was slung headfirst in Bombay’s chaotic riddle when she was barely 16. The map to her present has been involute. Over the years as she moved from being a dancer in one of Bombay’s infamous dance bars to her current profile of being what she calls a date-for-pay. She is incredibly smart and she has taken time and effort to educate herself on her rights even though the realistic expression of those rights is usually negligible and compromised in a country that pivots on patriarchal supremacy dehumanizing and delegitimizing the personhood of women.

Accessing mental health help is already a thorny path in most parts of the world. Common cultural stigmas, limited funding, poor practitioner-to-patient ratios, disorganized psychiatric epidemiology and a widespread inclination towards a pathologizing, purely bio-medical model that often doesn’t factor psychosocial causation for mental and emotional wellness all contribute to this quagmire. This is especially flagrant in the Global South where poverty, climate apocalypse and increasing ethno-fascist regimes have impaired an already derelict public health infrastructure, if at all one call it that.

“In South Asia, depressive disorders accounted for 9.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 6.8–13.2 million) or 577.8 (95% UI: 399.9–778.9) per 100,000 population in 2016. Of these, major depressive disorders (MDD) accounted for 7.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 5.3–10.5 million). India generated the largest numbers of DALYs due to depressive disorders and MDD, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.”

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Ogbo, Mathsyaraja, Koti, Perez & Page)

The high prevalence of depression-spectrum conditions cause a massive overall health challenge to physical well being leading to increased co-morbidity for diabetes, coronary diseases, poor infant mortality rates and neo-natal health, increased self-harm and suicidal ideation as well as substance abuse. This complex weave is rendered more inelastic due to prolonged wait time for getting any reliable medical assistance and a general lack of affordability. This is exacerbated when you are positioned at the intersection of caste, gender, class and sexual orientation in such a way that disenfranchisement is means to keep an electoral imbalance for cheap political wins.

Sex work till date carries its own taboos irrespective of how progressive a society claims to be. While studying for a forensic course, I was always appalled by how victims of “serial offenders” especially murderers who started their trajectory by attacking sex workers were referred to as “high risk” as if the nature of their work was solely responsible for the inhumane treatment meted out to them, not the internalised misogyny of the those who committed the violence.

In a no-nonsense essay, “How being a sex worker affected my mental health”, British sex worker and activist who uses the pseudonym Mitzi Poesener wrote -

“However, contrary to popular view of sex work, it is not a one way ticket to a breakdown. The difference between us and workers in other industries is that when we seek help we are asked to look at the ways we’ve kept ourselves out of poverty as shameful.”

N’s hesitation towards revealing her profession became more palpable when she described her attempts at visiting a psychiatrist while in the throes of a heavy depressive spiral brought about by her mother’s death a few years ago. She was both mentally and physically violated in a place designated to be refuge away from judgment. This had put her off from seeking any further help till, wait for it, a regular client of hers convinced her to try therapy again and passed her my details. Apparently, he had a significant social media presence and that’s how he’d chanced upon me. She researched me for days before she called my practice for an appointment.

The National Human Rights Commission of India has recently issued an advisory that now lists sex workers as informal workers in India. This move came in the wake of COVID 19 and also to take cognizance of the fact that a lot of sex workers in India are from marginalised sections of the society. The real-time impact of this declaration is something we can only wait and assess over time. A close friend who works towards providing affordable healthcare to sex workers in remote, often neglected red-light districts in two-tier and three-tier Indian cities is not as jubilant about this new development because they believe that systemic corruption coupled with a pervasive casteist, sexist bent of our society won’t let such proliferation make any real dents. Their pessimism has its own historicity.

There is also the more vicious and embittering side of this coin which involves human trafficking, sex tourism and forced prostitution that often sweeps up the most defenseless amongst us. Young girls, particularly from oppressed communities (e.g. lower castes in India or BIPOC and immigrants elsewhere) are often sold into flesh trade and these rackets stretch across a vast geopolitical radius. Socio-economic disparities are growing as capitalism fails to realise most of its promises. Once again, there is limited community-focused work on rehabilitation for those who have experienced these atrocities.

In a study titled “Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting”, the researchers drew a valid and significant conclusion –

Women in sex work faced disproportionate social and health inequities compared to the general population.
Evidence-informed interventions tailored to sex workers that address intersections between trauma and mental health should be further explored, alongside policies to foster access to safer workspaces and health services.

The key challenges to mental health help for sex workers can be listed as follows –

Compound Stigma– Even trained professionals often show stringent biases stiffened by inflexible echo chambers in which they exist. It is harrowing for someone to wade through all the aforementioned complexities that make mental health care usually unreachable to then face reproach or flippant remarks about the nature of their work or worse, character. Clients of mine have narrated abdominal experiences of dealing with GPs, psychiatrists and psychologists that bordered on uninformed, invasive and prejudiced/small-minded abuse. In a world that often invisibilizes people who engage in consensual sex work or, worse, makes them feel chronically unsafe, trusting a professional is an act of courage. This courage extinguishes itself when the professional is unable to remove themselves from a regressive and essentialist understanding of sex and sexuality. For example, a former sex worker and single mother who visited a local hospital for guidance about what she believed to be PTSD and vaginismus, she was repeatedly chided about her past just because she chose to be honest while providing her medical history.

Affordability & Access – Sex work– for a significant percentage of people who willingly engage in it– is still an unsteady source of regular income. If you are not covered by sufficient insurance which again is hard to access if you are primarily working as a freelancer within an irregular setup, being able to find a reliably inexpensive psychiatric or therapeutic intervention is often a pipe dream.

Individualizing of Harm – The most popular contemporary models for assessing mental health tends to lean heavily towards a biomedical model that has its uses but often doesn’t make enough space for psychosocial factors involved in a person’s suffering. One can’t deny that neurochemical and biological markers are relatively important when discussing mental health and illness but we need to be more receptive to the formulation around social inequities linked to race, class, caste, gender and sexuality based discriminations that dent people’s wellbeing on several levels. The DSM or the Diagnostic Statistic Manual which of often used by mental health practitioners to code and diagnose mental illness is a debated creed and for good reason but still it considers/includes both disorder/disease and distress models of mental health. Yet, there is a disproportionate attention paid to pathology where a person’s wellness or illness is often attributed to faulty wiring on an individual level v/s ecology where a person’s response to acute and persistent exposure to debilitating circumstances is relegated to the back-burner.

Marginalisation – Queer and trans folks are further penalised for engaging in sex work and often experience the most dreadful consequence – an ever looming threat to their lives. Fighting for a dignified acceptance of identity is compounded by limited vocational options that respect the whole human being. In a report published by National Center for Transgender Equality, it was noted that in the US nearly 40% of the respondents were denied shelter when homeless and almost 60% reported that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. In India, the presence of caste further stigmatizes a transgender person’s right to safety and acceptance. This often enables hyper-sexualization of transgender identities by cisfolks to devastating consequences. Till date, there is little to no inclusion about trans rights in most mental health syllabi used in colleges in India. Queer theorists and academics are working to change this but it is slow. Most research around their health and wellbeing is often carried under a cis gaze as well.

The sizable role played by law enforcement’s frequent viciousness against those in sex work is also undeniable. Most sex workers report frequently barbaric encounters with members of the police force. There have been various news stories and investigative journalism pieces that refer to collusion by members of such agencies in sex trafficking rings.

Sex work is a complex conversation that can’t take place if we begin viewing its entire existence with a jaundiced eye. It involves precarity for those who participate in it. There are evident dangers to mental health and wellness for sex workers but let us also understand and pay attention to how much of that is caused by social prejudice against sex and sexuality. On the one hand, independent sex workers who engage is mutually consented activities are pathologized, limited rehabilitation is available for those women/persons who have been rescued from illegal sex trade that festers across the landscape of the Global South.

Mental health practitioners need to educate themselves and be open to learning as they go. Accessibility for on-time healthcare is a matter of human rights. Antipathy cloaked in “traditionalism” is an offshoot of social conditioning and it needs to be disassembled. This has to be a process that rests on unconditional compassion, not a one-time event hinged on dubious charity. Challenging our own programming as therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, our implicit scripts built on vague morality and questioning the lack of support for folks merely on account of their profession is only the entry point of this change. Centering the needs of our clients in therapy is the first rule of therapy. This shouldn’t be forgotten or compromised.

Citations:

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Felix Akpojene Ogbo, Sruthi Mathsyaraja, Rajeendra Kashyap Koti, Janette Perz & Andrew Page) https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-018-1918-1

How being a sex worker affected my mental health (Mitzi Poesener, Dazed Digital)

https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/35938/1/how-being-a-sex-worker-affected-my-mental-health

Criminalisation of clients: reproducing vulnerabilities for violence and poor health among street-based sex workers in Canada—a qualitative study (A Krüsi, K Pacey, L Bird, C Taylor1, J Chettiar, S Allan, D Bennett, J S Montaner, T Kerr, K Shannon)

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/6/e005191.full

Psychiatric morbidity among female commercial sex workers (Marboh Goretti Iaisuklang and Arif Ali) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806326/

Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting (Nitasha Puri, Kate Shannon, Paul Nguyen & Shira M. Goldenberg) https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-017-0491-y

Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning psychologist, writer, educator and a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass — a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. Her work is published or forthcoming in Medium, Berfrois, Quint, Vice, HuffPost, Feministing, Jubilat, The London Magazine among others. She is the author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Bluest Kali” ( Lithic Press, 2018). Find her @zaharaesque on twitter. Send her chocolate and puppies — nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Tweet at her @zaharaesque.

Hayley Headley 11/18/20 Hayley Headley 11/18/20

My Sex is For-Profit, Just Not Yours

Our whole lives, women are taught to fear sex, sex work, and sexuality. Whether the message is given directly by our parents or indirectly by the society surrounding us, we learn it. Often, we don’t unlearn it.

Cautionary anecdotes tell us that a woman who enjoys sex as a form of liberation is nasty or somehow lesser. While folktales remind us that a woman who relegates sex and family life to mere duties is virtuous and reverent. These stories are told to indoctrinate us into a world that would rather use female sexuality for profit without compensation. The problem is whether we are getting paid or not; women are constantly partaking in sex work. Not because we voluntarily entered into that field or even consciously chose to be sex workers, but because businesses and individual men alike continue to profit from the female form. It is a part of the unmonitored “market for sex and affection.”

Our society doesn’t value female work; this goes beyond equal pay and touches on every aspect of women’s rights. The labor that goes into being beautiful, or even just presentable, goes uncompensated but not unutilized. This is the same with the work that goes into housekeeping and motherhood and speaks to why our society isn’t eager to pay for those tasks. They are a woman’s place - it is a duty, not a job.

In a capitalist society, women are like nature; we hold no value unless we are broken down for profit. This manifests in the unconscious competition that plagues the female psyche. On top of that, the lingering knowledge that men are free to consume and discard women at will pours fuel onto the fire of female insecurity.

Whether it is using women in advertising, free to enter clubs, or inviting us out to a party - the idea that women are products or currency is everywhere. This keeps us vying for attention and value at the expense of not just ourselves but for all women. In the eyes of the capitalist world that surrounds us, we are no better than a tree in essence. The only difference is that we can partake in the market, in so far as we can change ourselves to be more appealing - ripe for the taking.

Ashley Mears, a prominent sociologist, and former model, thought of bodily capital when writing her first book and developed it even further in her second book, Very Important People. It is the sum of all the potential value we have to offer to this market. In an interview with Tyler from the Mercatus Center, Mears makes it clear that we can only access that value with the help (manipulation) of a third party - usually a man. She writes about how this plays out in the context of the high-end party scene where promoters recruit young, broke models from the streets of New York to be pretty near rich men. But this concept of needing a third party to manage or reap the (minor) benefits available to pretty women spills over into every other part of life.

“Women can be gorgeous, but our society reinforces and maintains that beauty is worthless when she controls it. ”

We all need a “promoter,” someone who manages our beauty for us in some way, someone that unlocks its monetary value. If a woman is beautiful, she must pretend to be ugly or not comprehend her beauty. That way, a third party (a man, generally speaking) can explain to her the depth of her attractiveness. Not only does this put the man in control of her capital, but it distances her from understanding the underlying labor and value therein contained.

When we are merely submissive participants, lame objects in this market, we forget how much value there is in that bodily capital, which we do have.

That doesn’t mean we can’t reject this structure, but it does reframe how we can view sex and sexual relationships. Even if we can recognize all the micro and macro impacts of this invasion of capitalist logic on interpersonal, sexual, and friendly relationships, can our partners?

Understanding the subtleties of a market system should make us question what it means to have respectful and healthy sexual relationships.

Ornela, who works with the feminist organization FENA in Argentina, argues that we can’t be having good sexual relationships. Saying, when I spoke with her: “La relaciones sexo afectivas se han convertido en transacciones, sean capitalizado. Sean vuelto capitalistas”

“Sexual and emotional relationships have become transactions; they have been taken advantage of. They have become capitalist currency.”

Both in the sense that sex with powerful men gains women clout and in the sense that being seen with hot women gives men access, leverage, and power. The problem is that this power is not evenly distributed. Women don’t gain enough from these interactions for them to be fair, but oppression is built into the capitalist superstructure.

This extends beyond consensual sex. Part of the alluring nature of the superstructure is that it imbues the undeserving with power. When men hold all the tools to unlock the intrinsic value that is trapped within the female form, they are inclined to feel that they own it. That female sex, sexuality, and to an extent, labor is theirs for the taking. This leaves a gap in the system that turns sexual violence in all its forms into another malignant transaction. Yet another way that men can exert their unearned superiority.

In a way, capitalism has come to pervert the act of sex on a whole. Making it a perpetual form of structural violence that forces women into a subservient role. The unpaid laborers upon which this market is built. Much like the arbitrary use of a fair trade label, “consensual” sex is a rubber stamp that negates the oppression that is embedded in this market.

She goes on to say: “No estamos en relaciones sexo afectivas responsables y libres sino que las mujeres somos objetos de un mercado de consumo. Hablamos de un mercado sexo-afectivo donde los hombres son los que compran, los hombres son los que tienen poder, los que tienen la plata, son los que tienen mejores trabajos, [etc].”

“We are not in affectionate/sexual relations, responsible and free; instead, women are objects of a consumer market. We are talking about the market for sex and affection where the men are the ones who buy, the men are the ones that have the power, that have the money, that have better jobs, [etc.].”

There is an undeniable truth to what she says. Men have access to better salaries, better jobs, more money, all of these things from which women are deliberately excluded. Everything about our various cultural understandings of the role of bodily capital in society predicates on a system in which men are the profiteers in this market. They hold all the power.

When you apply this logic to relationships, as we have come to do, we can never have equal partnerships. Moreover, women are continually partaking in this unspoken sexual commerce - unwitting participants in this nuanced form of sex work.

Ultimately, your sex is always for profit because someone is gaining something from your implicit oppression.

Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Shelby St. James 11/10/20 Shelby St. James 11/10/20

I’m a Sex Worker and This is How I Spent Election Night.

I’ve voted in exactly four presidential elections, and that makes me feel both older and younger than I’d like to admit. This is the only one I've participated in where I've been an actively working sex worker however, and it really changed how I felt both about politics and about my role in our greater society.

The first time I voted was for Obama, and he won my first year in college. Life felt hopeful, and inspiring. The second time I voted, I was living on the west coast pursuing my dreams of being a writer, with barely two pennies to pinch together. My friends and I celebrated with cheap beer and stale weed, in a basement apartment in LA. It was dirty and grimy and I loved it. I felt like we had really taken a positive and permanent turn as a country, that things were turning out alright. We had gotten out of the worst recession in living memory and all my friends and I had jobs, had places to live. Hey, I was living in a closet under the stairs (earning me the affectionate nickname of Harry) but it was where I wanted to be, and I felt like I was playing a part I could easily escape at any time. We were lucky, then.

The next election in 2016 found me living abroad in Berlin. I had gathered a small group of friends in my flat to celebrate in anticipation of a Hillary win. As the night wore on, we stopped cheering, and eventually, there were tears. I couldn't believe that I was so far from home, and that we not only missed our chance to elect our first female president, but that we had handed our democracy to Trump. The cheap wine tasted like vinegar in our mouths, and I stayed in bed the next day, skipping my classes and not answering my phone. For the next couple of weeks as I wandered the streets of the city, shopkeepers or random people would stop me when they heard my accent and ask 'are you American?' For a long time I lied and told them I was from Vancouver, that what happened down there in the United States hadn't happened to me. I was in denial, and I was ashamed.

That was four long years ago. Now, I live in New York City and make art while also doing sex work on the side. The impact of Covid on my professional life has been unbelievable, and turned my incredibly busy intimate life into a barren desert. In some ways it was a crisis, as I found myself jobless like countless other people in the country, and yet because of the nature of my work I wasn't able to apply for unemployment relief. I did have many clients who still wanted to see me, but what had been for so long a safe haven for men to come and see me, and to escape the stress of the world became just another risk. I started setting up digital-only appointments, and answered many, many emails from clients who worried about me, and who were struggling to take care of their mental health under all the stress.

The past couple of months have seen a slow but steady return to some normalcy, with many sex workers such as myself becoming more and more familiar with ways in which we can minimize our risk, and with increasing ease of access for Covid tests making it easier for our clients to meet with us, it’s been getting gradually easier. While it was nowhere like it used to be, it felt good to be able to see my darlings.

Last week was the election and it put me in a very different sort of space. For months I'd been binging podcasts, watching the news until nearly sunrise, and feverishly scrolling through social media, consuming every poll and new article or projection about the election, and that was when my inbox started flooding. Loads of clients old and new started to contact me, with subject lines such as 'need to escape the news cycle for a bit' or 'I can't bear to watch this election alone.'

The night of the election, I met with a wonderful man whose only request was that we didn't talk about the election. We laid in bed and held hands and stared at the ceiling like we were in a French new age film. For awhile, we forgot that there was an election at all, and while it was always lingering somewhere in the back of my mind, it felt really good to get away from it for a moment, to have a valid reason to not look at my phone.

The next day, even though the election hadn't been called yet, I met with another regular of mine who wanted me to meet him in Connecticut, which I gladly did. When I saw him, he looked exhausted, and had the washed out and messy appearance of an unmade bed. I haven't slept all night, he told me sheepishly, and I just wanted you to help me feel like things were going to be okay.

I saw two other people that week, who both said things along the same lines. I don't want to worry about the election for awhile. I'm so tired, and so worried. It's too late for me to do anything about it, all we can do is wait, and I want to wait for a little bit with you. I felt the burden of their exhaustion, and I was tired from caring for them, and yet I felt like it was an essential duty in many ways.

It reminded me of something I saw being shared earlier in the pandemic on twitter, that while we have relied first and foremost on the medical experts; the doctors and public health leaders to tell us what's going on and how to protect ourselves, after that, we turned to the artists. Many of us started reading again for the first time in a long time, or we watched shows that we had never gotten around to seeing before. Loads of us bought art supplies and took online classes in painting, DJing, or playing guitar. We turned to the artists, to the writers, to the creators and the creatives to hold us up and give us hope. And in the same way, as the stress of the year wore on and the trauma and anxiety of the election outweighed the fear of the pandemic, I was reminded of the ways in which in times of emotional need, my clients can turn to me for healing and escape.

So I didn't spend my election night, or week, watching the news and chewing my fingernails. I spent election night holding hands with someone while talking about our favorite sushi restaurant that does super cute takeout boxes, and about Schitt's Creek. I spent election week going on an urban hike to get a great view of the city and talk with someone about how Max Richter's take on Vivaldi has been keeping them sane. I got to pet a client’s dog. I got to write emails to people to give them hope, and to suggest reading Normal People by Sally Rooney if they needed something to distract them. I spent the election caring for people who were exhausted, worried, hurt, and afraid, and it felt good.

The election ended for me on Saturday, when I heard my entire neighborhood erupt in cheers, clapping, and honking. The war isn't over but a big battle was won. And I am reminded by my week, even though it was exhausting, that the way we move forward isn't isolation, anger, or obsession. It's with gentle care.

The Whorticulturalist 8/22/20 The Whorticulturalist 8/22/20

Where the Dancing Never Stops – an Essay

A personal essay addressing how sex work can be empowering at times, but also very traumatic considering the misogynistic framework in which sex work often operates.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about how shaming sex workers makes you a bad feminist, which you can read here. It was an argument that women who shame other women for their line of work was not uplifting, but instead incredibly harmful. One thing that this article failed to review however, is that sometimes the cost of empowerment is high; and the labor of feeling empowered in the face of misogynistic men in a sexist system can be overwhelming. We support all types of sex workers and think every reason to do sex work is valid, and understand that it is an excruciating job, while at the same time this essay is a different perspective on some of the potential effects working in such a marginalized industry can leave on a woman.

The walls are strange. They slant so the roof skims above my head in the darkness and a far off light shows what I’m wearing: suspenders, a black bra, thigh-high stockings. In this sloped room, the shadows are dancers, or should I say strippers, and the shapes around them their customers. My dream soon finds me in the changing room surrounded by fluorescent lights and big mirrors, the reflection showing something unformed, and when I stare at the beast, time stops. I’m in a night terror. I have them regularly in different variations. Here’s another: I’m in a Victorian-style house rich with velvet curtains and rugs and I’m crawling between rooms because a man is chasing me. I don’t know who the man is or why, but I keep going. I scuffle between rooms until I can’t tell one from the other. I never know how the dream ends because I usually wake before it ends, stiff with anxiety. I don’t tell anyone these anxieties because empathy is limited to those from the sex industry. There’s a level of shame implicit to sex work which sticks like warm molasses and marks every aspect of life, no matter how forward-thinking people are. I’ve danced for most of my 20s and still have a bitter taste in my mouth whenever asked of my past.

It’s not strange for a feminist to decry the sex industry, but it’s also not strange for feminist sex workers to tell of the empowerment they find from using their bodies as they wish. The dancers have agency when it comes to the right to choose, and a wield sexual mastery not otherwise seen in everyday life through pole dancing and expressing themselves sexually. You can be a feminist and a sex worker, but when considering the industry as a whole, the bitter taste only sours.

When writing this story, I contacted an old friend I’d stripped with to ask her perspective on the industry since she’d danced for almost a decade and was one of the biggest earners I knew. Quickly, she declined. She was doing the same thing I’d done since quitting, a voluntary witness protection program hiding her identity from society. Even for the most confident of dancers, anonymity is vital for self-preservation, both mentally and spiritually, something I understood well.

For a short while in 2012, I took it on myself to be proud of my job, mostly stripping, and told people about it honestly. Of the reactions I received, here are a few: one man asked what it was like to sleep on a mountain of cash for fucking men. Another sent a long, detailed email listing the reasons I was an embarrassment and disgusting, and some men asked for favors, either a boob flash or a 'private show' depending on their confidence and how well they knew me. Although the women's reactions were more supportive, there was still an air of concern for my career choice and that I was doing something wrong.

Sometime later, feeling discouraged, I looked up the nicer things people wrote on blogs and forums, finding perspectives from strippers. I read about sexual liberation and the choice to use the body and having a say over who could and couldn't use it. This was when the industry started to leave a mark, and something in those words resonated. I'd first started dancing for the rush of using my body and wanting to emulate the women who worked hard and saved for their future. They were confident, beautiful, interesting. But I was drained. I'd told myself I'd get used to the late hours, and the bruises on my knees, and the spiteful words, and the grabbing, and the managers trying to fuck me, and the security guards groping me, and the waitresses looking down on me, and the expectation of giving something for nothing, and the need to party, and the burning taste of vodka, and the 'extras' you needed to do to earn money because everyone else did them, and the dirty looks from women with their friends, and the men who got too attached, and the men who waited and followed me after my shift, and the constant bodily assessment, and the fingers that probed too close to my vagina, and the men who threw beer and coins on stage to make me feel cheap, and the way even after I showered the grime stuck to my skin and never quite washed out.

Looking back, the liberation is faint and unclear. Where is the liberation in an industry formed by a society that shames women? The job is sexually liberating but within a short spectrum of acceptability dictated by the men and club owners. I've never seen a hairy dancer. Nor have I seen larger dancers. I've seen curvy dancers and older dancers (I was told at 25 I'd soon be put to pasture), but on the whole, dancers are expected to look the same, dance the same and alternate the same outfits provided by the sex stores, usually lycra and seven-inch heels. On induction to some clubs, a pamphlet is given with the accepted attire and the places to get it.

In 2014, before I quit dancing, I started at a club known for its beautiful women and luxurious outfits. After my audition, I received a guide on the weekly outfit changes. Wednesday was lingerie, Monday bikinis and swimsuits, weekends for ballgowns, long spandex numbers provided by the club at a $150 fee. With fines for not dancing the correct way or wearing the correct outfits, we were the unified, undistinguishable embodiment of male desire.

The liberation fades further when I consider agency and the choice to dance, choosing who to strip for and when. Private dances work on a commission basis with a 70/30 cut between the dancer and the club, and when you're having a bad night and the money is slow, it's hard to say no to a half an hour private show paying a hundred dollars. I recall picking the bad eggs from the crowd when dancing on stage and groaning when they approached me afterward for a private show as I'd only earned fifteen dollars and couldn't say no. These were the men that grabbed too hard, probed too close, and requested things like 'spreading my lips apart' so they could get a better look. And for the right price, I indulged them because everyone else did. My threshold was someone else’s payday. But the point is if men didn’t feel the need to be sexually placated and need to indulge in a spectacle of feminine sexuality, these clubs, these requests wouldn’t exist. There’s also the drug use: customers constantly looking for a coke hook-up and the need to re-examine your limits each night if you want the big money.

Strippers aren’t always the victim in this narrative, but they’re not respected either, and the ramifications for working in the sex industry are far-reaching and insidious.

After I made a clean break from the industry, I experienced something beyond my usual anxiety, which kept me tense and unable to forget the past. At night I'd wake in a sweat with nightmares reliving a bad night dancing, or I wouldn’t dream at all, just wake frightened and lost. In the daytime, I’d have flashbacks. I’d stop and be lost in a private room or on the stage in a club while my chest squeezed around my heart, aching. The feeling was so strange and vague words can’t describe it, though it’s somewhat like being adrift in time and reliving the worst days, every day.

I approached a therapist, and after telling her my history and symptoms, she informed me I was experiencing PTSD. The words themselves felt strange on my tongue. I'd heard of soldiers and people with trauma experiencing PTSD but not for stripping and entertaining drunk men. The symptoms under the disorder include 're-experiencing trauma' through memory or flashbacks, 'physical and mental distress', 'avoidance of thoughts and feelings', and others like restlessness, anger, and sleep problems. I recognized and knew all the symptoms, but I couldn't connect my experience with the words. The place where the issue stuck was the fact I'd chosen to strip. There was no coercion or desperation. Usually, there's the perception workers of the sex industry are trapped with the need for money, but the money was only a bonus for me, and I never felt forced to maintain the lifestyle only that surrounding circumstances made it difficult to leave, like having a five-year gap on my resume and not adapting to the nine to five day. I wasn't a victim yet my body was telling me otherwise.

After leaving my therapist’s office, I thought about all the times I’d come home after work and cried, either from being groped in a private show or being shamed by men when they’d ask whether ‘my parents were proud of me’. I thought about this last incident in particular. On a Thursday or Friday night, I’d been dancing on stage and just finished my set, when two men called me over. Their table was on the path to the change room, so I walked over, holding my bra over my breasts. 'Your parents must be really proud of you,' one of the men said. The other laughed, and I didn't say anything. In isolation, this seems insignificant, though when taken in context with the physical harassment and countless other slurs, the abuse becomes more apparent. But an answer to this is why not leave? And an easier response is it didn't seem so bad at first. The first year, you mark it off as drunk men, not knowing what they're doing. You're sure he didn't mean to slap you that hard or touch your breasts that way. The second year, you expect the insults and the grabbing, but you're weathered to the fact. You make sure you're always watching for wandering fingers or unwanted slaps. The third year is when you start thinking about getting out, but it's harder than you think because the money's so easy and the work's so easy if you just put in the effort. Everyone else does, so why not you? The fourth year is when you question things in detail, like the motive of the man who verbally abused you in a private show for lying. He asked several times if I had kids and only got madder the more I said no, but that’s not the point. It’s not relevant whether I had children or not, the goal of this man, and most other men that I experienced who go to strip clubs is to enforce a level of power over women either physically or psychologically. This is where the trauma started for me.

For some, dancing is a way to control the narrative, to take back control of bodies and feminine power and sexuality. But if society weren't formed around a culture that shames and reduces women physically and psychologically, would these impulses need to be fulfilled in the first place? We can choose who we dance with and when, but we don't choose how men speak to us and how men treat us. It's them who choose, them who pay and they who decide to come back if we're good enough.

Lisa Easey is a recent university graduate completing a Bachelor of Creative Writing and is currently a freelance writer on Upwork. She also hosts a small book review podcast called Book Island that you can follow on Instagram @bookislandthepodcast.

The Whorticulturalist 4/22/20 The Whorticulturalist 4/22/20

Shaming Sex Workers Makes You a Bad Feminist

How shaming women for earning money on OnlyFans just makes you look bad.

It’s really annoying that we have to keep saying this but nevertheless we will persist in screaming: shaming sex workers doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a villain.

COVID 19 has disrupted national economies, thrown entire communities into turmoil, and has left our cities looking like wide-shots from I am Legend. Millions of people around the world have lost their jobs, while people employed in sectors of the economy that were previously ignored or taking for granted, such as grocery clerks, postal service workers, public transportation officers, and more are now finally being appreciated for their value to our societies as essential workers. The virus has highlighted the disparities between the people at the top, who are sheltering-in-place in country houses with swimming pools and an army of staff, and a struggling majority that now has to figure out how to pay rent or take care of children while trying to maintain jobs, if they're lucky enough to still have one. It has caused us to reexamine the weaknesses in our societies, such as the paper thin/non-existent social welfare nets we have in place, what access to healthcare should really look like, and how do we serve the most vulnerable in our communities.

Amongst some of those vulnerable are sex workers, many of whom rely on face-to-face meetings with their clients as their primary form of income. A lot of them now face eviction or worse as they make decisions between trying to earn their income and trying to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from the deadly virus. Online communities of sex workers have been thrown into a panic, of trying to develop new strategies to stay connected with their clients while riding out waves that, like the rest of us, seem to have no clear end in sight.

One strategy is that many in-person sex workers, many of whom already have large online followings, are moving towards digital work. In particular, many are flocking to OnlyFans.com, a platform sort of like instagram for which subscribes pay monthly fees to receive online content. In a recent company email, OnlyFans revealed that they’ve seen a 75% increase in signups since February, a huge upmarket tick, and many long-time established escorts on twitter have posted about starting new OnlyFans pages to help them continue to generate income.

It’s not just well-established sex workers though; many young women who’ve found themselves out of work because of Coronavirus are turning to online sex work for the first time as a way to make ends meet and put food on the table, according to this huffpost article.

Inevitably, the whorephobic backlash was quick and ruthless. This article by Julie Bindel in the Spectator glosses over the fact that sites like OnlyFans are taking the power back from big-porn moguls like XVIDEOS and Pornhub, where most content is free because it's illegally stripped from paid websites, a result of which is that very little of the money goes to content creators. and instead tries to inspire horror and disgust by describing the process of producing requested content (surprise! Sex work is work!) or exploits the fact that these women were already vulnerable because of the greater socio-economic shortcomings of our societies lack of fairly-distributed resources. Her attempt to put OnlyFans content creators in the same category as victims of sex trafficking is not only harmful, but downright degrading and dangerous to those who find empowerment from being able to earn an income during these hard times. As one twitter user commented on the article, 'there's nothing empowering about having no source of income during a pandemic."

This meme puts in simple relief the hypocrisy of many 'feminists' who think that by shooting down sex workers in the name of empowerment, they are helping them. But shaming sex workers doesn't make you a good feminist. Helping women in need who are struggling during a pandemic is. Supporting women who find their work empowering is. Supporting women who don't find their work empowering (who says work has to be empowering, and why do people mythologize sex work as HAVING to be an empowering act? Sometimes sex work is really rewarding, but sometimes sex work is just a job, just like any other job) is. Supporting work that keeps women in their homes is feminist.

In a time when we are seeing many of our most vulnerable populations being the ones at the most high-risk during this pandemic, is signaling your sense of moral superiority really the most productive use of your time? Shooting down people who are already struggling is hardly classy. It perpetuates the myth that sex workers are victims of sex trafficking (they are not, and in fact many of the loudest anti-sex trafficking voices are sex workers) or that sex work itself is not a valid form of labor. the SF Chronicle gave voice to several women last week in the ways in which OnlyFans and other online platforms have become places to give them financial stability and security during these times. Because you're in charge of your own content you can make your own decisions about what you feel comfortable posting, and at what sort of frequency. As one woman said, "“I think OnlyFans has this huge appeal because it feels very authentic. You follow me on Instagram, you see all the nonsexual content I post, you know my dog’s name and you know my band and now you get to see this other side of me.” If you are struggling and you have the energy and resources to generate some income during the worst recession since the Great Depression, then girl, you do you. And if you're not in the space to be able to do that, cheer on those that can. Feminists support each other. <3