Explaining sex work stuff to non sex working journalists, for the journalists to write a piece on sex work which they’ll be paid for, whilst you get nothing but the vague hope that more people might support your cause, will never not feel exploitative.
@ToluPopoola5
@VeeChattie
Yes. The state of Texas are truly winning by banning under 21’s from working in strip clubs overnight, without providing any of the workers another job/income whilst they look for another job, undoubtedly pushing young ppl into more dangerous forms of sex work. Yes babe, a win🙄
It’s interesting that over the last year we’ve seen non-sex workers on tiktok attempt an approximation of free styling, ppl wearing pleasers en masse, strip club style dresses sold as fast fashion, etc. but this hasn’t translated into any wider solidarity for sex workers -
The thing I hate about “money doesn’t equal consent” is that no sex worker is arguing that it does. It’s a false equivalency based on the presumption sex workers already lack the capacity to give consent. Our consent can be withdrawn even if you’ve already paid us, at anytime.
So, the brothel down the road from mine has effectively unionised against seeing UKP clients. They ID’d the clients who have previously written reviews on workers there and now collectively refuse to see them. We love to see it!
If you want to support this queen, and all other sex workers, check out
@ukdecrimnow
for template decriminalisation motions for your CLP or trade union branch, and more ways you can join sex workers in our fight for rights, safety and the full decriminalisation of sex work.
To add to this, in New Zealand where sex work is decriminalised, a brothel worker took her boss to an employment tribunal for sexual harassment and won. When sex workers have workers’ rights, we are able to fight back against bad and exploitative bosses.
@Spanish_Inn_Phd
@ToluPopoola5
@VeeChattie
That’s a loveeeely sentiment, but it doesn’t really solve the reason why young people are going into sex work (shitty job market, no support, no financial help) - all it does it push them further underground. Let’s try and engage that brain please.
Apply this to any other job people with fewer choices might choose to earn money. If you care, as you purport to do, about people in sex work, then you would not advocate for any form of criminalisation, as it only makes our conditions worse and more exploitative.
I don’t understand how politicians looking at a “sex for rent crisis” can immediately jump to criminalising sex workers, instead of…I don’t know…tackling extortionate rents and providing more affordable housing?
Being a sex worker, it’s very interesting to see so many people so outraged on behalf of the “banking discrimination” facing Farage, when sex workers have been excluded from financial services for years and it’s been tumbleweed.
@KatieCurtis
Yes Katie! I’m a prostitute and when I float over to my incall location, simply sit on a chair and have men present tithes of cash at my feet like a feudal lord, I often think to myself, this isn’t work!
We use ‘sex work,’ and call ourselves ‘sex workers’ to recognise that the labour we perform is work, and as workers, we are deserving of workers rights and protections. Giving workers rights is how we hold exploiters accountable and change our working conditions for the better.
Arguing against the sex industry has nothing to do with 'respecting' or not respecting so-called 'sex workers' (this term is idiotic and completely misleading, ftr — the only people you help by using it are the pimps and traffickers hiding behind it in an attempt to sanitize
To say sex workers “willingly undertake the risk of abuse and violence” and therefore, do not deserve protection is not only utterly repugnant, but implies that any worker in an industry with some form of risk does not deserve access to workers rights.
Or even any real recognition of where or from whom these “trends” originated. The fantasy of sex work re-packaged and sold as a lifestyle to aspire to, or a costume to wear, devoid of any connection to the community it came from, and the actual work behind it.
A client has just asked me if it’s okay for him to cum into a cup over a period of WEEKS and bring it over for me to drink it all. No, of course it is not okay? The only reason I’d drink that is if it was laced with enough strychnine to end my time on this Earth.
I hope sex workers leave Onlyfans in droves. I hope this galvanises sex workers to quit en masse and demonstrate that collectively, as a workers movement, we will organise and leave their profit in the dust. Let it be a warning to all other platforms of worker power.
Can we do a Spotify wrapped of all the ridiculous SW twitter discourse we’ve had to endure in this year of our Lord 2021?
All I can think of is Steak Girl, Sofa Hooker, & price tags are the reason ur poor, so please post your problematic faves below.
A lot of people genuinely seem to think hookers are an entirely other class of people, and not a friend, or a family member or someone you may already like and respect. We don’t cease to exist outside of dark rooms, only materialising into corporeal genitals at night.
We don’t fight for decriminalisation for clients. Client criminalisation leads to the surveillance & arrest of sex workers, it forces us to work in isolation, & it reduces our ability to negotiate harm reduction.
Punishing clients is not worth the expense of sex workers’ lives.
To all the women who think radfems and stigma are the problem with prostitution, please do go read the comments and see how the men you're fighting to not be criminalised think of you.
@sarah_st0ne
I’m glad you’re doing well enough to not be asking for donations. Usually, when I’m in a good position, I don’t use it to shit on already struggling. Instead of questioning the work ethic, maybe ask why so many people need to crowdfund their survival in the 1st place.
Lol where is the solidarity for sex workers rights though? Over 100 workers lost their jobs today due to a local council moralising instead of providing workers with safety & protections. Where are the statements of support from other unions? From commenters?
Lazy hooker tip! Tell your clients you find it soooo hot to watch them get themselves off, lie back, think about what you’re having for dinner later, touch your nipples occasionally and let them do 90% of the work themselves.
Sex workers can and frequently do say no, withdraw consent and set up/maintain boundaries. To say that we cannot is to imply we have no autonomy over our own bodies, that we are either being constantly r*ped or can never be r*ped - either way ur perpetuating violence.
If there were a hooker olympics, what events would you want?
I’m all in for the speed stocking fastener and one handed condom tie.
Btw if any client facings reply w something sexual, you will be sent to the pick me tent to think about how you can do better.
@MIAuniverse
Didn’t think two women celebrating their sexuality was porn, especially in hip hop where men have had carte Blanche to sexualise women for decades in a double standard, but please, go off sis. Super helpful contribution.
Pay sex workers to write about sex work. Strangely enough, we might just have a better grasp on the conditions of our work & lives than someone who is not, and has never been, a sex worker.
Police! At the brothel for our bi-yearly “welfare check” which includes: NINE of them coming in, trying to pressure us into giving them our details, despite having no legal standing to do so; harassing a worker they called vulnerable by making threats about taking her away
Clients must truly think I’m living the high life because I frequently disappear from my work phone for weeks and come crawling back saying I’ve been away on holiday. Little do they know a holiday means I’ve been in my lil gremlin depression cave w. zero will to work.
If you are on the left, surely by now you should realise that all work is exploitative, but that does not minimise or totally negate the need to give workers better rights, so they can improve their situation. That is not exclusionary of sex work, you daft fucking cunts.
Does anyone else just feel like a shit hooker sometimes? Even though it’s not something I particularly measure myself on, sometimes I see the 9-5ers clocking in, or people charging higher rates, or people getting gifts and I feel like I’m oscar the garbage prostitute.
Reddit slowly banning sex workers but leaving the multiple subreddits dedicated to random freaks swapping nude photos of women from their home towns w/o their consent alone is v interesting.
Widely accepted?! The majority of us are still criminalised in some capacity.
By denying us the right to be recognised as workers, you’re preventing us from organising against exploitative conditions in our work, forcing us to remain unsafe and precarious. That’s violence.
📍New Blog Post:
Challenging the myth that prostitution is work
The idea that prostitution is work has been widely accepted by society and is often seen as a viable job option for those in poverty.
I don’t know why some clients insist on flushing condoms down the toilet. Like don’t worry babes I’m not trying to impregnate myself w your demon spawn, am just concerned about the plumbing.
The prevalence of these videos just proves time and again that people do not understand what trafficking is & how it happens. No one is drugging the door handles of your Fiat Punto, when there are thousands of ppl trying to cross hostile borders, trapped w/o citizenship etc.
@420fatbrat
@t3rriax0x0
I don’t think it’s your intention but this comes across super whorephobic. People aren’t putting themselves in positions of poverty, or putting themselves in a position to be exploited, it’s not a choice? That’s why it’s survival sex work.
Saw the high end escorts on Reddit discussing buying little gifts for their clients around the holidays and now I don’t believe in worker solidarity anymore.
Well girlies, I think the recession has finally hit the brothel, the economy is down bad.
I’d like to propose an addendum to the stripper index - the brothel index. Whilst the strip club predicts when a recession is incoming, the broth dictates when we are really in the shit.
It always makes me cringe when we get a space to talk about sex workers rights & some sex workers start talking about how people don’t realise we also provide *support* or *love* to clients. I gladly provide neither, but that doesn’t meant I don’t deserve access to rights.
It’s very awkward to be a non-out hooker in a conversation where other people are talking about how dirty it is to sleep with a “prozzie” and questioning whether the guys who’ve slept with them are clean. Babyg’s a prozzie is in your midst and you’ve still yet to catch something.
It’s weird and horrific to be told my consent isn’t valid purely bc I’m a sex worker. The implication being that not only am I unable to consent to transactional sex with clients, but incapable of giving consent in every sexual encounter I’ve ever had & will have.
“Women and girls should be able to secure well-paid jobs, good housing and education without the need to prostitute themselves.”
Yes, but until those things magically happen, should I have to work without access to safety nor rights in the meantime?
These people are fantasists.
The idea that it’s not possible for a client to rape me, purely because they’ve paid me, is not just a fundamentally flawed concept of consent but the kind of stigma that prevents sex workers from reporting dangerous clients & creates/perpetuates dangerous clients.
The only demand that drives people into sex work is the relentless demands of living within a capitalist hellscape. Where our basic rights & necessities such as homes, food, a functioning welfare system & equitable accessibility to work, services, etc. are not being met.
The ‘demand drives people into sex work’ line that anti-sex workers’ rights campaigners keep parroting is absolutely farcical, because how does that work in reality? Do they think we all get a WhatsApp alert telling us that there is dick to be sucked 300 ft away and off we trot?
We’ve never painted it as empowering. We’ve always said that sex work is a JOB, it’s work. The only thing it ‘empowers’ me to do is to pay my rent & work myself out of debt. The only thing we’re asking for is to be safe whilst we work, to have rights, which you don’t like.
We approached
@bristollive
and
@bristol247
to ask for journalistic balance. We did not ask for coverage for BWC or that they stop platforming sex workers, but urged them to include more voices - former strippers, survivors & punters.
The thing I don’t understand about the relentless pursuit of criminalising both sex work and drugs, is that there are so many historical & current examples of it utterly failing to achieve any of it’s supposed aims.
People who use the excuse that sex work wouldn’t exist under communism as an attempt to deny sex workers their rights now, may as well argue that the existence of trade unions are equally useless, as they too function within capitalist systems, instead of dismantling them.
Hookers, what is the wildest excuse a TW client has used to cancel a booking with you? I’ve had a finger stuck in a drain and I dropped my money in a puddle.
If you critique sex work for being exploitative, why is the solution to criminalise us and reduce the rights sex workers need to protect ourselves from exploitation? It’s like 2 + 2 = 85489, swerf maths.
@RomanticHeather
@SovereignSyre
My Russian grandmother would only smile on the days relatives were born, when she won money, or when a woman in her building she hated, died.
Honestly quite livid at journalists using the free emotional labour of sex workers for clicks, yet refusing to show us an ounce of solidarity by simply *not* platforming groups who run horrific campaigns in favour of putting us in danger & seeing us as less than human.
I’m too tired to address all of the inaccuracies rn, but if pimps are our bosses and exploiters, why would they recognise us as sex “workers”? It is for their benefit to deny our labour is work, because we cannot then organise as workers for rights and labour protections.
Julie bbz, prostitution is already criminalised in the USA & surprise, surprise, does nothing to prevent trafficking. Recognising sex worker’s labour rights & removing stigma & criminalisation, is the only way to take power from clients/exploiters and protect sex workers.
If you defend and rebrand prostitution as 'sex work' and protect the buyers from prosecution and condemnation, don't be surprised when men feel entitled to pay to rape vulnerable females, and thereby create a market:
I know I don’t speak for all sex workers, but I am very tired of non-SW conflating sex work with empowerment. Not only do I rarely turn to any job I have to feel empowered, but the stigmatisation, potential danger, & lack of rights, really kills any feeling of power.
I’ve reached the point in Covid isolation where I’m just looking through stock images for the lols. Let me present to you, business woman with gun and goldfish.
And if you truly believe we have such little power, why are you not advocating for sex workers to have more rights, more collective power, & the repeal of things like the brothel keeping act, which forces us to work in isolation in fear of state violence?
I, like a lot of other sex workers, had to see riskier clients throughout the pandemic bc there was less work. Yet even tho economic need made me renegotiate my working conditions, I still could & did give/refuse consent within those sessions.
@420fatbrat
@t3rriax0x0
And survival sex work isn’t needing money to pay rent. It’s having no stable house and needing £15 to get a room in a hostel and get off the streets for one night. Don’t judge survival sex workers for surviving.
Diane, you thinking sex work is degrading doesn’t stop sex work from being the only choice some students can make to get through university. Would you rather those students were isolated, working w/o resources or support; or received harm reduction information?
Horrific that Durham University is offering training to students who want to be sex workers part-time. Sex work is degrading, dangerous and exploitative. Uni should have nothing to do with it
Obviously I appreciate it when journalists do write about the danger & harm of the Nordic Model/SEV closures, but why not just hire a hooker to write it? Don’t they think we’re capable?
No shade to male strippers, but it’s suspect that the same cities enforcing or debating shutting down female strip clubs, are very happy to host naked men in mainstream venues. I feel like there’s a name for this, but am prob not feminist enough to know it x
I truly don’t understand what’s so confusing about a marginalised workforce, that is subject to frequent state violence, border violence & policies made without us that result in our deaths, having solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine.
I only just caught the dog days of being a Craigslist hooker, but I truly do just miss the simplicity. I hate feeling like I’ve got to have a brand and marketing to do a job I’m only doing out of necessity. If I wanted to be a personality figure I’d have become an influencer.
Straight cis men are a different species. The amount of married men who constantly complain about the issues in their sex lives/cheat, but have never actually thought to TELL their wife their issues? Told a client to be clear w his wife & he acted like it was a radical thought.
Sex workers are workers. Just like all other workers, we need access to workers rights in order to unionise, tackle exploitation and challenge poor working conditions. The only way we can access those rights is through full decriminalisation.
As sex workers continue to organise within the labour movement, support for the decriminalisation of sex work is growing amongst trade unionists.
Multiple trade unions have now passed motions supporting the full decriminalisation of sex work, within branch and at national level.
@weirdfigs
@DianaJohnsonMP
@momentum
It’s almost as if there’s absolutely no evidence of any benefit to the Nordic model, aside from making middle class women feel safe from the entirely imagined risk that sex workers supposedly pose.
She wasn’t emancipated by having sex with lots of men, she entered sex work bc there were no other viable options to financially support herself. Her emancipation, altho aided by that £ stability, was built through her education, exchanging socialist ideas with fellow workers…
This is the most misogynistic film I’ve seen. A perverse man kidnaps a suicidal woman then transplants her brain (without her consent) with the brain of her foetus. She’s emancipated by having sex with lots of men (yawn). This film is not avant-garde, it’s glorified pedophilia.
Who is the real “pimp lobby”? Those who push for sex workers to work in further criminalised and exploitative conditions under the Nordic Model, w/o access to rights - or sex workers campaigning for access to their human and work rights under full decriminalisation?
We’re not saying the work itself is comparable but that sex workers, like all other workers, need access to workers’ rights for safety, to challenge poor working conditions, and fight exploitation.
But if you want to continue being wilfully ignorant, godspeed babes.
Has anyone else developed weird superstitions around cash since becoming a sesx wurker? The way I organise and count out cash post a long day of hooking is a whole ritual now.
You wake up at 7am. You know you’ve only got one hour of the overnight left, so you pretend to be asleep, hoping to wait it out. Something dry and clammy starts stroking your face. You open your eyes to see Keith, “one more for the road ey?”
I love how easy it is to get some clients to do what you want by dressing it up as a fun fantasy. Managed to not have to speak one word to my regular last night bc I told him it would be so hot if I pretended to be his bitchy girlfriend that ignores him & texts other men instead.
That workers have to put ourselves at greater risk to meet our economic need is not proof that we cannot make choices for ourselves, but that we’re making the best decisions we can within the limited framework given us. It’s evidence we need more rights/options, not even fewer.
If anything, enforcing my consent within those bookings became even more important bc those clients were the notorious boundary pushers, the ones who believe that bc they’ve paid us, or bc we need money, that we can’t or won’t say no.
I would like to nominate myself for the hooker most likely to go Aileen in ‘23. I have not eaten today because a regular wanted an anal session at 4pm, but guess who didn’t show up and is ignoring all texts.
Many of my coworkers at the brothel only work there because they are, understandably, too scared to work alone - the only legal way to work. The current laws surrounding sex work force workers into criminalised workspaces where we risk arrest/deportation and have no rights.
Under the current systems of partial criminalisation, in England, Scotland & Wales, and the Nordic Model, in N. Ireland and Ireland, sex workers cannot work together for safety.
Two or more sex workers using the same space, even without a manager present, is criminalised.
@VanessaSBerlin
We exit the womb as hookers! When I was born, I didn’t cry, I sang Roxanne and had a £5 note clutched in my tiny hand. All the hospital lights of the rooms I was in turned red. Then I simply hibernated until I was old enough to start slanging gash. No min wage for me honey!
My client bled on my hotel bedsheets because he cut himself with an axe 2 days prior and put a kids Batman plaster over it, which did not even fully cover the literal axe wound. Go home Barry.
This is what people who support the Nordic Model choose to ignore. The police are not benign entities, they manipulate and abuse their power over us, granted by law, to inflict violence. More police power equals greater danger for sex workers.
I think I need to start selling my GFE as a UGFE (unionised girlfriend experience). It’s like an ordinary GFE but instead of post-fuck pillow talk, I spend 15 minutes looking up which union you should join and expounding the virtues of collective organising.
When I spoke out about the last time I got sexually assaulted, which was by someone I considered one of my good friends, a few of our mutual friends just couldn’t reconcile the person they thought was their friend with an assaulter and found it easier to not to believe me.
No employment is a free choice under capitalism. There is always a price, whether that is your time or your physical labour. This is why sex workers want decrim, not bc sex work is good work, but bc it is work, and we need safety & labour rights to improve our conditions.
The hardest part of shagging men for money is trying to contain your laughter when they say, “I can tell you enjoyed that, I can always tell when women fake orgasms, and I could feel yours was real,” directly after you’ve faked an orgasm. Hun, this pussy is an Oscar winner.
Look, if we’re going to make anything regarding sex work into a law then it should be criminal for clients to send more than two sentences to workers without payment. Sir, I do not have the time, bank balance nor inclination to read your thesis about piss play for free.
Alternatively; here’s Billy Bragg lending support to a worker led movement fighting for access to basic labour rights, QT’d by a woman who has and continues to wholesale profit from the continued disenfranchisement of sex workers (maj. working class women).
Having the financial security to be able to simply leave a bad situation, or escape for a week when things get too much, must be absolute bliss. The claustrophobia of being in poverty, growing up poor or just never having enough, can be so intense.
I have a sub that keeps paying for a session in advance, turning up, getting nervous and then leaving after 30 minutes? Like okay keep paying me to do nothing but it is getting a bit annoying I keep booking hotels when I could’ve just kept the damn fee for free.