SESTA/FOSTA

Camshows in Cramped Apartments: Online Sex Work During the Pandemic

Kate Sloan

Online sex work has become even more of a booming business since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Some sites, like OnlyFans and www.panamecorte.com, have experienced boosts in new memberships as high as 75%. More people than ever are turning to online sex work to supplement their income – and likewise, more people than ever are stuck at home with no access to partnered sexual experiences outside of their interactions with online sex workers. It’s no wonder this industry has seen a massive uptick.

But it’s important to note, too, that the past few years have been some of the hardest ever for sex workers, including those who work predominantly or exclusively online. Laws like SESTA/FOSTA, signed in by Trump in 2018, have severely limited sex workers’ ability to advertise their wares, recruit and vet clients, and get paid for what they do, among other things. There’s also still huge stigma surrounding sex work, despite its proliferation being such that you probably know at least one person who does it, even if you think you don’t. It may be the “oldest profession” but it’s nowhere near the easiest or most fun.

I’ve never been a full-time sex worker, but I’ve done cam shows, made porn videos, and sold nudes occasionally over the past several years – and I have to say, the pandemic has been an interesting time to be in that biz. I’ve gotten more unusual fetish requests than I ever had before, including some that were so extreme I didn’t feel comfortable fulfilling them. It makes me wonder if some people have been exploring their sexualities more deeply over the past year, since “normal life” is on pause and many of us have more time for self-reflection. (Kudos and congrats to those folks for their discoveries!) I think there’s also an element of touch-starvation here – sometimes when you’ve gone a long time without sexual contact, your fantasies can become more “out-there” to make up for the lack of physical stimulation with some additional mental stimulation.

My clients’ communiqué has been different, too – some of them are unusually polite and sweet, presumably because we’re all living through a difficult time so kindness is paramount, while some have been surprisingly brusque and rude, presumably because the conditions of this pandemic are stressful AF and have also atrophied many of our social skills. You would think people would be nicer to sex workers, given what the folks in that industry have been put through these past few years, but nah…

I’ve also had to be more careful about the ways I take payments than ever before, having been burned by whorephobic payment processors and the puritanical laws that try to keep sex workers off all such platforms. It’s gotten so bad that many times I’ve considered giving up sex work completely, and focusing only on my more “respectable” writing work. If you care about sex workers’ livelihoods (which you should), please reach out to your local lawmakers to make that clear, and to demand that they work to repeal laws like SESTA/FOSTA that make sex work much more dangerous and precarious than it needs to be.

Despite all these roadblocks, I’ve still found comfort and solace in doing online sex work (sparingly) over the past year. When a client pays me to put on a cam show or make a sexy custom video, I have to put some effort into my appearance, something I’ve often let slide during this depressing hell-year despite how good it tends to make me feel. I also have to cultivate sexual energy in myself, because it’ll be super obvious if I’m not turned on at all – so sometimes I’ll take the time to do that by using sex toys in a hot bath, or spritzing on a perfume that makes me feel like a bombshell, or just giving myself a sensual mini-massage before filming. Most of my life over the past year has existed inside a computer or a TV, so my connection to my body feels somewhat weakened – and these little preparations help.

It’s a difficult, interesting, painful, yet uplifting time to be a sex worker. If your favorite sexy service provider helped you get through this past year, I hope you’ve been tipping them accordingly, treating them well, and writing to your congresspeople to express your concerns about how sex workers are being treated in the legal system. Shit’s tough out there, and anyone who brings more pleasure into this world – sexual pleasure included – deserves to be praised and rewarded for that tenacious effort.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Ways to Support Sex Workers

Kate Sloan

Have you heard? Sex workers’ rights are being eroded more and more every day, and they were pretty scant already in most places. The shitty laws known as SESTA/FOSTA – ostensibly designed to prevent sex trafficking – have only succeeded in fucking with sex workers’ lives and livelihoods (in addition to jeopardizing the free internet for everyone else). This cannot stand.

Here are 5 things you can do right now to help sex workers. They need help more than ever.

Donate to organizations that fight for sex workers’ rights.

Red Light Legal, SWOP Behind Bars, and the St. James Infirmary are three of the most popular ones I’ve been hearing about. They are doing important, difficult work, and they need money (as well as, in many cases, volunteers) in order to keep doing that work. If you’ve got enough extra cash that you can afford to donate to causes you believe in, consider picking one of these.

Contact your political reps to demand action on sex workers’ rights.

Communicate clearly to your representatives that you are against SESTA/FOSTA and pro-decriminalization. (If you need some help understanding why decriminalization is preferable to “the Nordic model” and legalization/regulation of sex work, Google ought to set you straight.) If enough people kick up a fuss, they’re likelier to listen, and to actually do something about it.

Speak out against whorephobia.

When you hear someone talking shit about sex workers – even if they think they’re being hilarious, which they often do – push back! It might seem small, but popular perceptions take a long time to shift, and one-on-one persuasion can be a big part of that. Let your shitty bro know that it’s not okay with you when he mouths off about escorts and strippers. Share facts about sex workers’ struggles and the massive positive impact they can have and have had on the world, and maybe even on you personally.

Boost sex workers’ voices on social media.

A lot of non-sex-industry people are afraid to do this, at least on their main accounts, because on some level they’re embarrassed or ashamed to be publicly affiliated with sex work. But SWs need allyship and support now more than ever. You don’t have to retweet porn onto your vanilla coworkers’ timelines (!), but don’t be afraid to retweet and share stuff about decriminalization and SESTA/FOSTA. You never know who could see it and potentially get on-board with the mission.

Book sessions with sex workers!

The “sex trafficking” laws are making this harder than ever, by eliminating many of the boards where sex workers used to be able to advertise their services, like the Craigslist personals section and Backpage. Twitter and Switter still have lots of SWs (though Twitter is getting shittier and shittier about adult content), so take a look there. If there’s a SW you’ve been wanting to see for a while, now is a great time to do it – they’re probably struggling under these laws. And if you don’t actually want a sex worker’s services but want to support them anyway, consider just… giving them money! That’s definitely an option.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Escort Echelons: What is the “Whorearchy”?

Kate Sloan

I think I first encountered the term “whorearchy” in a podcast hosted by Tina Horn. She’s done sex work in various forms and is thus, I would assume, intimately familiar with the ways people in that community can turn against each other, judge each other, and speak ill of each other. Porn performer Belle Knox says the whorearchy is the name given to the phenomenon in which “sex work segregates itself along perceived social and legal lines.” It is – like so many systems of (de)valuation and “respectability” in marginalized communities – a form of infighting, of internalized oppression, of people keeping each other down when they might instead lift each other up.

Though I’ve done very few forms of sex work, sparingly and sporadically, I have seen this dynamic in action. In sugar baby communities, for example, there’s often tons of hostility aimed at escorts and escort agencies, the implication being that sugar-dating is somehow classier than full-service sex work because it’s not directly transactional, even though… in most cases, it is. There are also phone-sex operators who disdain in-person sex work, escorts who think camming isn’t real sex work, and pro dommes who think their lack of genital contact with clients makes them better than service providers who do have sex with johns, just to name a few examples.

These squabbles remind me of the internalized misogyny displayed in, for instance, bookish brunettes claiming busty blondes are stupid and setting feminism back, or TERFy second-wave feminists insisting third-wavers are betraying the cause by embracing promiscuity and trans rights. This type of infighting mostly just encourages marginalized people to police each other’s behavior rather than banding together to take on their oppressors.

It’s worth noting, of course, that different types of sex work do come with different levels of risk, difficulty, and stigma. Street-based sex workers are particularly vulnerable to violence, for example, and racialized and/or disabled escorts face discrimination and mistreatment that white and/or able-bodied ones don’t. Acknowledging and understanding these differences is part of intersectionality: the feminist idea, coined by black feminist theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, that oppressed people (in this case, sex workers) all have different experiences based on their identities and the systems of oppression they face. However, someone having a different experience than you in the world doesn’t mean they have to be your adversary.

In fact, it’s been wonderful to see sex workers from various different areas of the field band together to fight against SESTA/FOSTA, the “anti-sex trafficking” laws that have seriously eroded sex workers’ rights, freedoms, and livelihoods. I’ve seen escorts and camgirls chatting online about the problems they face, pornographers boosting phone-sex operators’ tweets about their struggles, online findommes telling their audiences to donate to Red Light Legal. There have been stunning incidences of solidarity, because, as is so often the case, marginalized individuals are stronger together than splintered.

A while ago, an escort friend of mine asked if I wanted to come to a sex workers’ play party she was organizing. I was surprised: “I’m not really a sex worker,” I stammered, “I just, like, do cam shows and sell nudes and make amateur porn and sometimes sell my panties and I was a sugar baby once…” I was so used to having my sex work experiences diminished, or to feeling like I had to preemptively diminish them myself, because what I do isn’t “real” sex work. But here’s the thing: it is, even though it’s different from other types. I’ve seen more and more recognition in my online communities over the past few years that the whorearchy doesn’t serve anyone it comprises. Sex workers’ problems have gotten worse and the community is suffering more than it has for a long time (and it’s suffered a lot) – but sometimes it seems the internal landscape of the group is shifting for the better, even if only a little.

My friend smiled. “That totally counts! You should come!” I smiled, too.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

8 Pieces of Useful Wisdom From Sex Workers

Kate Sloan

Each time I’ve dabbled in forms of sex work, like putting on cam shows and selling my used underwear, one of the best things about these endeavors has been connecting with other people doing similar work. I can’t think of a group more passionate, open-hearted, and resourceful than sex workers. They provide crucial services to people who need and want them, despite frequently encountering crushing stigma and legal roadblocks like SESTA/FOSTA. (See the last point on this list for more on that.)

So I’m delighted that I’ve partnered with Escorts & Babes – Sydney Escorts to put together this list of some of the major lessons I’ve learned from genius sex workers in my social spheres. Anyone who says you don’t need skills or smarts to do sex work is fooling themselves.

Trust is hot. Sex and kink, in my experience, just seem to get better and hotter the more trust there is between the participants. I imagine it must be hard to establish this trust as quickly and thoroughly as you would need to in a sex work context, which makes it all the more impressive that so many service providers do it on a regular basis. Their work invites me to look at my own sex life and ask: Where could I be more trusting, and how might that improve my experiences? And, inversely, where am I being too trusting, and how can I solve that?

Dirty talk is magic. After all the many, many hours I’ve spent having phone sex and being erotically hypnotized, I’ve come to think of dirty talk (and related sexual oration) as a form of literal magic: like casting a spell in the Hogwarts universe, you say some kind of incantation and it has real, observable effects in the body and brain of the person you’re talking to. Sex workers tend to wield this power better than anyone I know; it’s often a sharpened and well-loved tool in their toolbox, and part and parcel of what keeps their clients coming back. Hearing these stories makes me want to step up my own dirty-talk skills!

Disabled people can be (and often are) sexual too! I can’t believe there are still so many people who don’t understand this, but there you go… While it sucks that our ableist world too often tries to paint disabled people as unsexy and unsexual, I know some who’ve sought sex workers’ services and found them immensely healing and helpful. Obviously it sucks that this route is financially inaccessible for many, and that ableism continues to exist, but I’m glad some disabled folks have the option to pursue sexual touch on their own terms by hiring a sex worker. (Did you know there’s even been a recent push in Australia to get sexual services for disabled folks covered by national disability insurance? I hope the Aussie government comes around on this eventually; it could be a big life-changer for many disabled folks, as well as Australian sex workers, like those at Escorts & Babes – www.escortsandbabes.com.au.)

When it comes to kink, more communication is better. I admire the thorough negotiations many sex workers (especially pro dommes) insist on doing before sessions, and I think every sexually active person could benefit from adopting similar practices in their own sex lives. No partner can give you the mind-blowing sex you’ve been dreaming of if they don’t know what gets you hot. Share your likes and your limits – it can only make things better!

Kink can be startlingly intimate. Granted, just like vanilla sex, kink can feel awkwardly distanced, deliciously connective, or anywhere in between. But I find that intimacy and kink tend to go hand-in-hand moreso for me, and I can access depths of connection through kink that I didn’t even know existed back when I thought I was vanilla. I’ve heard from sex worker friends and acquaintances, over and over, that a large part of what their clients are seeking isn’t just sexual gratification but some sense of emotional communion with another human being. That’s what kink feels like to me, when it’s at its best.

Asking for consent isn’t hard. It’s sex workers’ job to ensure their clients have a good time, so of course they would tend to prioritize consent highly in their transactions. We all should take a leaf out of their book, and weave consent check-ins into the tapestry of our sexual encounters. This doesn’t have to be as unsexy as some people insist – as Lo points out here, there are tons of super hot turns of phrase you can use to make sure your paramour is into what’s happening and wants it to continue. You truly have no excuse.

Knowing what you want is half the battle. This is a major lesson I’ve taken from kink and repeatedly applied to my own life: you can’t progress toward the objects of your desires until you’ve identified what those desires are. Sounds simple, but it’s often deceptively difficult to figure out what your heart is actually calling out for. This type of soul-searching is worth doing, and is one of the initial steps on the path to enduring happiness.

SESTA/FOSTA is killing people and must be stopped. This is the most important item on this list, so listen up. If you don’t know, SESTA/FOSTA are “anti-trafficking bills,” signed into law in early 2018, that have actually taken aim at sex workers by raiding and shutting down escort listing sites (yes, this is why Craigslist’s personal ads got slashed) and getting tons of adult content banned from various platforms. It will come for us all eventually – and has already started to – but it mainly impacts sex workers, especially those who live and/or work in the USA. You can help by raising awareness about these laws in your networks, donating to sex work advocacy organizations like Red Light Legal and SWOP Behind Bars, contacting your political reps to demand they take action, and supporting sex workers directly by hiring them, buying their content, and giving them money.

 

What wisdom have you picked up from sex workers in all their industrious brilliance?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at Escorts & Babes – Sunshine Coast Escorts. As always, all writing and opinions (except, of course, in quoted tweets) are my own.