sex work

Why You Should Pay For Your Porn (At Least Sometimes)

Kate Sloan

One of my personal pet peeves as a creator is when people brag about refusing to pay for the art they enjoy, as if it’s something to be proud of. If you like art, it’s important to pay for it – at least some of the time!

Now, don’t get me wrong – obviously financial difficulties can make this hard or impossible, and I see art as a basic human necessity, which is why I think it’s so great that plenty of art (including porn) is legitimately available for free.

But if you can afford to pay for artistic works that matter to you, I think you should, at least some of the time. I’ve partnered with Bunny Agency for this post, in which I’ll tell you a few key reasons your favorite porno babes deserve your cash…

 

Money allows art to continue to exist!

This is really the crux of the thing. Art can’t be made (at least not consistently and well) without money, because artists are people, and people require money to survive. It’s as simple as that.

It’s hard as fuck to be a creator these days, especially in the adult industry. Social media algorithms deboost us, search engines derank us, payment processors ban us… As a result of all this, many of us are barely scraping by. But the more money we make from our actual art, the more time we can spend making that art – since we won’t have to spend as much time stressing about money and working other jobs to make ends meet.

It drives me completely nuts when I see people complaining about paywalls on news articles, and in the same breath, complaining about news publications’ incomplete coverage of certain issues, or lackluster factchecking. Consumers paying for their news is what enables newsrooms to hire more/better journalists and factcheckers! And just like the news, porn cannot continue to exist if no one pays for it, because creators gotta have food, shelter, and the tools of their trade in order to create.

 

Get exactly what you want!

For those of us with very particular erotic tastes, we may have trouble finding porn that lines up with our desires. But many porn performers offer custom clips, so you can lay out your fantasy and receive bespoke porn that fulfills it.

In talking to friends of mine who’ve created and/or purchased custom clips, I’ve come to think of customs as being almost like tattoos, in that you should pick an artist who’s well-versed in the style and content you’re looking for, tell them what you want, and let them put their own spin on it. They will often surprise you in ways that your own limited imagination cannot!

 

Own, not stream!

Often (although not always), if you pay for a porn video, you can download it and keep it on your own hard drive, rather than being beholden to fickle hosting sites and inconsistent streaming speeds.

Ever gone to watch a porn clip you bookmarked online, and found yourself on a 404 error page instead? Ever gotten horny while stuck in a no-cell-service zone? It’s in these situations that I’m most grateful for the videos I have bought and saved!

 

Support artists!

Despite whorephobic rumors to the contrary, Onlyfans modeling (& similar) is not an easy gig! Creators often act as their own photographer/cinematographer, editor, marketing director, and business manager. They endure sexual harassment, malicious credit card chargebacks, and sex work stigma. They go through a lot, and they deserve to get paid for their hard work, same as anybody else does!

Just as Bandcamp sales are wildly more lucrative than Spotify streams for musicians, porn performers get way more money when you actually buy their content than when you just stream it for free (which earns them about 69 cents per thousand views). So, if you like your favorite porn stars and want them to be able to stay in the biz, support them when you can!

 

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

3 Gorgeous Sex-Related Aesthetics I Admire

Kate Sloan
All images in this post were assembled using UrStyle

When I think of fetish aesthetics, I think of Bettie Page, and of the SuicideGirls. Although these two cultural phenomena hit their peaks decades apart from one another, I think it’s obvious that the SuicideGirl aesthetic was very much influenced by Bettie Page and other midcentury fetish models, and we also see these influences in aesthetics associated with pro dom(me)s and even with the later mania centering around Fifty Shades of Grey.

Sharp nails, sharp heels, sharp eyeliner wings – these are just some of the elements I associate with this type of look. One of the reasons it feels so transgressive is that women’s style is traditionally “supposed to” be subdued, soft, and conventionally feminine. When we incorporate elements that feel tougher, stronger, and scarier – think Sandy at the end of Grease – it can come across as threatening to traditional Western gender roles and even to Western conceptions of heterosexuality as a whole. For many of us, that transgression is exactly what is so appealing and sexy about this type of look.

Obviously the idea of a “sex worker aesthetic” is a problematic oversimplification, since sex workers are not a monolith by any means; even to break down the category of sex workers further and argue that, for instance, escorts in London have a particular sartorial style would be wrong, because they’re all individual human beings with individual aesthetics.

That being said, there are some stylistic elements that are often associated with sex workers in the popular imagination, whether or not these associations are accurate. Some of these come from Hollywood depictions (think Vivian’s thigh-high black leather boots in Pretty Woman) and some come from actual sex workers (such as the pops of red and pink often found in the looks of MF Akynos, founder of the Black Sex Worker Collective). Leather, leopard print, sky-high heels, and fishnets are just some of the stylistic elements commonly associated with sex workers, though of course one’s outfit selections will depend largely on geographic location, weather, the type(s) of sex work being performed, any safety concerns that may limit style choices (including the likelihood of being targeted by police), the type of clientele one is likely to have, and other such factors.

When I did online sex work of various sorts and was briefly a sugar baby, I enjoyed reflecting on the aesthetic legacies of sex workers, and incorporating elements into my look that I associated with them in order to subtly reference those who came before. Obviously these looks can be incredibly powerful and sexy, and they – like sex work itself – have a fascinating history.

Sundresses have come to be discussed as symbols of sexuality in and of themselves over the past few years; “getting railed in a sundress” has become a widespread idea and many women-attracted and/or femme-attracted people rejoice about the start of “sundress season” each year.

If kinky and sex work-influenced aesthetics are conceptually based around transgression, danger, and perversion, I think there’s a certain variety of sundress sexiness that is more about (the illusion of) innocence, inexperience, and immaturity. I don’t mean the fetishization of actual children, which is of course not okay, but rather the fetishization of a certain play-acted naïveté that is seen as feminine, youthful, and fun, but still quite adult in its manifestation.

The vibe, to my mind, is “getting fucked at a picnic,” or maybe “what if the Garden of Eden was a porn scene.” Pretty ideal aesthetic, if you ask me.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex Work is Work

Kate Sloan
Part of a display at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago

What with increasingly puritanical laws like SESTA/FOSTA jeopardizing the livelihoods of sex workers on a daily basis, there’s a lot of discourse these past few years about the validity of sex work as a profession. I think people on both sides are arguing with (what they think are) good intentions, but one side is just flat-out wrong.

See, one of the primary arguments against sex work is that it’s inherently exploitative and bad for society because “selling your body” is somehow more evil, less virtuous, and less valid than other types of work. Critics often make the case that someone can’t freely enter into sex work and agree to “defile” their body in that way because there are inherently a lot of financial (and sometimes social) pressures that push them into that work.

The thing is, a lot of these anti-sex work bigots (or SWERFs – sex worker-exclusionary radical feminists) are either operating from a deeply religious and archaic ideological framework, or don’t even realize how much Christian values have seeped into their thinking. I know this because they hold sex to a different standard than any other activity one might be paid to do, and there’s no reason it needs to be viewed that away aside from the fundamentally Christian belief that sex is somehow simultaneously sacred and special, and taboo and dirty.

If making money using one’s body is what you have an issue with, you’d need to be equally angry with athletes, actors, dancers, personal trainers, lifeguards, models, etc. etc. in order for that position to be ideologically consistent. If you consider “taking something into your body” to be an act so sacred that no one can willingly do it for a living, you should be yelling at food critics and circus fire-eaters too. If you think “inserting part of yourself into someone else’s body” isn’t valid work, why aren’t you harassing surgeons? If touching someone for the purposes of pleasure and relaxation crosses a line for you, why aren’t you mad at masseuses, acupressure specialists, and manicurists?

Some of these examples are a bit ridiculous, sure – but that’s because the arguments they’re refuting are ridiculous too. For me, the wildest thing about anti-sex work criticism is that it points out some of capitalism’s fatal flaws, but rarely goes so far as to actually criticize capitalism – largely because many such critics are well-off, conservative-leaning people who benefit from, and advocate for, capitalism’s deepest inequalities. These people will say that no one can truly consent to a job they take due to financial pressures, that sex work is inherently bad because it’s exploitative and can be dangerous, that it’s gross that someone can pay to access someone else’s body – but all of these are problems with capitalism itself, and not with sex work in particular. If you truly believe financial pressures should be eliminated so everyone can make free choices about what they do with their time, advocate for socialism and a universal basic income. If you think no one should be subject to exploitation and danger at their job, advocate for better worker protections and higher pay. If you think having a lot of money shouldn’t give someone control over other people’s bodies, maybe take that up with Jeff Bezos, for starters.

Humans are prone to trying to come up with “logical” explanations for feelings we hold deep in our gut – and far too often it’s immoral, insulting, dishonest, and ineffective. It’s the reason bigots argue that queer and trans people are the downfall of society, when they actually just think queer and trans people are icky. It’s the reason some racists will argue that they have valid reasons for their prejudices, when actually they’re just propagating the racist values they were raised with and chose not to challenge. And it’s the reason lobbyists and lawmakers would rather make sex workers’ lives harder and more dangerous by, say, banning online sex work platforms, like the Craigslist personals section, Backpage, and escortsliaison.com on the basis of “protecting vulnerable people,” rather than admit that those people either need a different kind of help or don’t need “help” at all.

I’ve only dabbled in some forms of sex work, but even I have encountered these shaming narratives, so I know that people more entrenched in the field are struggling and suffering needlessly under the oppressive weight of discrimination. Sex work is work, and as with all other kinds of work, it can only be done safely if there are proper protections in place for workers, which in this case includes having access to websites that allow them to find and screen clients. And as with all other kinds of work, sometimes it’s freely chosen and sometimes it’s chosen out of financial necessity, and neither is more valid than the other, since we live in a capitalistic system and financial pressures are built into our daily lives by design. If your issue is the danger, take it up with the conservative lawmakers making sex work more dangerous. If your issue is financial hardship, take it up with the conservative lawmakers creating those conditions. And if your issue is just that you think sex work is icky, take it up with your therapist, and leave sex workers the hell out of it.

 

If you want to help sex workers, consider donating to sex workers’ rights organizations like SWOP Behind Bars and Red Light Legal, advocating for sex workers’ rights to your local politicians/lawmakers, and even just donating directly to individual sex workers. This post contains a sponsored link; as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Things That Surprised Me About Camming

Kate Sloan

I haven’t done a lot of cam shows, but there was a period in my life where I was being paid to do them once or twice a month or so, and even had regular clients who would book my services again and again. It wasn’t my favorite way to make money, but it did indeed make money, and was certainly much better than some other gigs I could’ve taken, so it made sense to do it when the opportunity arose.

However, despite having long admired the work of cam performers (like those on AnaCams.com) as well as other online sex workers, there were things about camming that I just couldn’t have known until I was doing it myself. Here are a few of those things.

 

1. There sure are a lot of time-wasters.

This is a common complaint you’ll see if you follow any sex workers on social media, but I didn’t truly understand how annoying and disheartening these time-wasters are until I experienced them for myself.

A classic example is the person who, still to this day, sends me emails every so often, asking me what my rate would be for a cam show in which I’d wear “closed-toe business shoes” on camera. Every time this person emails me, I politely send them my rates, along with a note that if they have a specific style of shoe in mind that my current collection does not contain, they are welcome to buy me a pair and I’ll wear them during the show. And every single time, this person neglects to email me back, likely because (if my 15+ years of dealing with internet creeps have taught me anything) they are jerking off to the fantasy of what they have requested, but don’t get off as much on the actual follow-through. Sigh. Please don’t be like this person.

 

2. Cam show prices are variable.

As with many services, while there is a range of standard rates that clients may be more used to, there’s no rule that says you have to charge a standard rate. It’s all about managing supply versus demand and setting a price that doesn’t scare away too many clients but that also respects your time and labor.

Back then, I was always scared of overcharging, thinking that clients would see me as entitled or self-important if I charged “more than I was worth.” But many of these clients had sought me out because they liked me and me specifically, so I imagine they would have been willing to pay more than the relatively low amount I charged. These days I wouldn’t do a cam show for less than $300, but that’s because a) I don’t really like doing them that much and b) I know that it’s okay to set a rate that feels good and tell clients to take it or leave it, provided that I have the privilege (as I fortunately do) to be able to make ends meet either way.

 

3. Not everyone wants to see you do explicitly sexy stuff.

I had regulars who preferred, for example, to hear me tell stories about sex I’d had with other people. This makes sense, given that I tell sex stories for a living (albeit usually in other mediums) and would therefore tend to attract people who are into that.

I liked doing this type of show, because it didn’t require me to take my clothes off and touch myself for a stranger – something that I sometimes found fun but sometimes found terrifyingly vulnerable – and because it made me feel powerful to recount tales of being desired, pursued, and fucked, all while a stranger was paying me for the privilege of hearing these stories.

 

4. Sometimes it’s educational.

One of my favorite regulars was a newly-out-as-queer woman who wanted to learn more about how vulvas worked – anatomy, sexual responses, preferred types of stimulation, etc. Since I’m deeply passionate about sex education (and, arguably, much better at it than I am at being sexy on camera), I delighted in explaining this stuff to her, and was thrilled every time she booked another show.

These days I’d be interested in doing kink education or live sex toy reviews on cam, if someone paid me enough to make it worth my while. Edu-tainment at its finest!

 

5. Sometimes there’s orgasms.

I had initially assumed I would be faking a lot of my cam-show orgasms because I usually just can’t get off within a 15-minute window, especially if I’m aware of the proverbial clock ticking and I’m naked in front of a total stranger. Hello, anxiety!

But while I certainly did fake some orgasms during my shows (mainly in situations where the client had asked me to do something that definitely wasn’t gonna get me off, but there seemed to be an implicit expectation that it would), I also had many real ones on cam. This was particularly likely to happen if a client’s sole instruction was, “Do whatever feels good for you, and I’ll watch.” I’d grab my favorite toys du jour and go to town on myself. Sure, sometimes I had to totally tune out my surroundings and fill my head with fantasies in order to get there – but whenever I did, I was always proud of myself, and (naturally) left the session glowing with endorphins. Yay orgasms!

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

6 Reasons I Sucked at Being a Webcam Performer

Kate Sloan

I have the greatest respect for webcam performers, in part because I have done small and infrequent versions of what they do, and have found it to be almost insurmountably difficult for me (as I think it would be for many people). Here are just some of the numerous reasons I wasn’t cut out for this type of work, though I admire it deeply…

 

It takes me a while to come and I don’t enjoy faking orgasms. There was a constant tension, in my camming days, between what my clients wanted to see and what I was physically capable of showing them. When someone would book a 15-minute session and say they wanted to see me come, I got tense immediately because I knew it likely wasn’t possible. Either I’d have to get myself very close to orgasm in advance of the session (which was time for which I should’ve been, but wasn’t being, paid), or I’d have to fake an orgasm.

Of course, a third option would be to just tell the client that there was no way I could get myself off in that amount of time, especially in a way that was picturesque (i.e. not just holding a Magic Wand against my clit for 15 minutes), but sometimes this was perceived as cash-grubbing. Sigh.

 

I’m not an exhibitionist. Like, at all. This became pretty clear to me after my first few cam sessions. I had heard friends and colleagues of mine discussing the unique sexual rush of performing for an audience, and aside from a brief glow of pride whenever someone complimented my body, I never really felt that. It just felt like work, because, well, it was. But I’d been hoping I’d enjoy it more than I did. Ah well, diff’rent strokes…

 

The amount of work it involves is gigantic, and I have limited energy. Back when I thought I might take camming seriously and try to make it into one of my income streams, I read tons of articles with headlines like “8 Things Every Camgirl MUST Know” and “Tips for Chaturbate Performers,” and realized I had barely scratched the surface of how much work is actually involved in camming.

It’s not only the on-screen performances, which are taxing enough, but also the self-promotion, audience-building, administrative labor (like answering emails and filling out tax forms), emotional labor (like chatting with prospective clients via DM and filtering out the ones who demanded freebies), graphic design and editing of promotional images, personal branding, etc. etc. etc. I’m tired! I don’t know how cam performers do it all, especially ones who live with chronic illness like I do, but kudos.

 

I’m way too anxious. Are they having a good time? Am I moving at a good pace? Should I be nakeder than this? Are they regretting paying for this? Are they screenshotting this? Are they secretly recording video? What if I don’t orgasm in time? What if THEY don’t orgasm in time? How do I gracefully exit the conversation once the clock runs out? How do I ever expect to make money doing this when I look like THIS? Is my face doing pretty things? Is my body too contorted? Are my vibrators too loud? Are my dildos obscuring my vulva? Are they getting what they paid for?

I’ve never been great at shutting off the anxious voice in my head, but this was especially true during webcam shows. They’re just not my medium, methinks.

 

Sometimes it required tech know-how that I don’t possess. Granted, I do have a spouse now who’s very tech-savvy, so this is addressable if I wanted to address it… but that doesn’t necessarily mean my feeling of overwhelm and incompetence would go away!

When I read articles about optimizing streaming speed, troubleshooting platform glitches, and why it’s important to customize your Chaturbate profile, I just get stressed out and tend to shut down emotionally + shut down my computer. I know the tech side of things is largely handled by whatever streaming service you use these days, but I just don’t think I have the bandwidth (emotionally or internet-wise!) to handle the rest.

 

I kept getting distracted by the other performers on the site. Listen, I’m very bisexual. Any website where hot people of various genders are touching themselves live on camera is pretty hard to resist at least perusing. And if I peruse, I will watch. And if I watch, I will totally forget why I went to the website in the first place (i.e. performing myself). But I don’t mind that – it’s a pretty good dilemma, as far as dilemmas go. 😉

 

Any of you also dabbled in cam performing and found it wasn’t for you? Or did you eventually figure out how to make it work for you?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at Designurbate, who will make you a Chaturbate profile template free of charge. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.