♡ THE UGLY REALITY TO SEX WORK ♡

 thanks to social media ( genuinely, not sarcastic! ) - sex workers safety concerns / what happens A LOT is now in the spotlight, which I personally love because it’s so many people using their platforms to inform other SW’ers as well as customers / etc & bringing a lot of awareness so that it ( hopefully ) happens less, or at least see the 🚩🚩🚩 in people & certain scenerios. 

♡ striptok specifically glamorizes the HELLLL out of being a stripper, & many IG pages / social media overall glamorize porn / OF,  FSSW, & others to *very* impressionable girls who are usually either new or considering getting into sex work. 

♡ well, while our industries *can be* glamorous, there are A LOT of ugly, dark realities that we have to learn how to deal with - mentally, emotionally & physically…. but also learn how to keep the awareness UP.

i’ll be covering a few topics i personally have been seeing a lot, so as always - if you have any others please add in the comments! ♡

                     ♡ SAFETY TIPS 101 ♡

1. ALWAYS carry a knife on you

2. ALWAYS carry pepper spray ( I personally love pepper spray gel because it can’t get on you! )

3. Carry a taser - it has a flashlight built in as well so two safety necessities in one! 

4. Share your location ( at all times preferably, but if it’s just for work until you are home safe, that is fine too ) with at least 2-3 trusted people.

5. Keep a whistle on your keychain, lanyard, or in your bag. It throws rapists off most of the time when they hear a whistle / know you are ONTO them. ( yes i googled how they think & very informative so here is the link: https://www.pixstory.com/story/through-a-rapist-s-eyes/35841 )

6. Take a self defense class: krav maga, jiu jitsu are the main ones coming to mind for me currently!

7. ( If you’re about guns or don’t mind them ) learn how to shoot at the range & keep a concealed weapon at home in a gun safe or lock box & make sure no one else has access to it.

8. BE. AWARE. OF. YOUR. SURROUNDINGS. No music when you’re walking at night ( headphones ), talk on the phone if you want!

9. Don’t think it can’t happen to you.

10. NEVER accept drinks from strangers & if you do - make sure you watch them the entire time or go with them when they’re getting your drink and get it from the waitress / them there. Also, here is a link for drink testing strips!

11. Screen your clients, please. I used to not, and it fucked me over BADLY. Ask for an ID, LinkedIn profile, picture of them next to their ID to confirm it is the same person - & from there: search on Google if they have any form of a criminal record, if they are on Megans Law, & *anything* with abuse/DV/rape/battery, etc.  —> I really like this article this massage company did on screening! https://respectmassage.com/be-prepared/how-to-screen-massage-clients/

12. When you are meeting with a client, send 2-3 trusted people your: location, photo of them / ID, how long you are supposed to be gone, when they should start calling / texting you if you don’t respond after x amount of time, & everything they would need to know in case you went missing.

13. GET A PO BOX 💘 Gifts are wonderful, stalkers are not.

14. Come up with a code word or emoji with trusted people that means “I AM IN DANGER - DO SOMETHING.”

    ♡ WHY WE STAY IN THIS LINE OF WORK DESPITE ALL OF THE RISKS ♡

1. We don’t WANT this to happen & realistically it can happen at any job - just more so with this. 

2. For the most part, we understand the risks & work very hard on our safety & choose to stay in it because of the many pros this industry has to offer. So please don’t just say, “Well why stay? Seems way to risky” etc. I get it’s most likely coming from a place of care, but I assure you we have heard it a million times & it just gets old & starts to sound like, “Well why not just go to college? Why not just do a job you hate?” Etc.

3. For people with: mental illness, general anxiety / depression, health complications, or just wanting to make their own schedule whether it be for family or for themselves & not wanting to make minimum wage or a regular 6 figure salary at something that requires experience or a degree, a lot more hours & usually less pay in the end - SW is optimal. For example with me, I had super normal vanilla jobs from 16 years old - 18/19 years old & I experienced sexual assault from management at my first job making smoothies, I made 3k in 1 year working part time / some full time hours & that now would literally cover absolutely nothing important in my life, let alone the stress. I have horrible anxiety & working *for* someone & having a completely set schedule made my anxiety so much worse - so I’d be having panic attacks ( mental & physical symptoms ) at work more often than not, so I started abusing substances pretty early because I didn’t know how else to manage that along with my other stressors. Same thing when I worked a really upbeat job, I had bad social anxiety & was super shy - so abused uppers to learn how to get out of my shell. Now that I work for myself in SW & the businesses I created, I rarely have anxiety at work ( & if I do, I can simply go home or take a long break! ) & surprisingly don’t abuse anything or use anything when I am working. Will I have a drink sometimes? Sure, but it’s not something I *need*. I only speak from personal experience, so this was just mine in the traditional vanilla job world. 

4. It is extremely: creative, empowering, ( amazing ) to find your own sexuality, & fun to do! And a great work out! 

                                   ♡ WHY PEOPLE TARGET SW’ERS ♡

Unfortunately we are a a group of people that is targeted by just what we do for work, and other factors of why people kidnap / kill anyone can be added in as well - but this is just why some fucked up people can justify targeting sex workers to themselves versus if they met us as “human beings”.

1. We are not seen as humans, really. Any news article for the most part if a SW’er dies or goes missing is known as a “prostitute”, “sex worker”, “exotic dancer”, whatever it is - versus our actual names & lives. 

2. There is a HUGE reason why so many sex workers do not like cops, and I am one of them. The fact that it is LEGAL is some states to essentially get off a prostitution charge by having sex with the cop that arrested you is 1) complete power play & 2) incredibly fucked up. They also usually could care less what happens to you, which is why the majority of us do NOT report getting raped or assaulted because of: fear of getting arrested, not being taken seriously, ( most likely ) knowing our abuser will get off completely free, & that honestly all feels worse than essentially just “dealing with it & moving on”. Another sad truth is that if a client ( incall or outcall ) raped or assaulted us, more than likely if it was reported - even if we had allllll of their info, the sex worker would be the one facing legal trouble versus the person who was looking for someones service. 

3. People who target us truly think they are “cleaning up the streets” & think that no one will care or notice if we are dead or missing, because if THIS is what we do for work - who would care if we are gone? ( is usually the thought process ) along with just being an “easy target”.

                                                       ♡ THE STATISTICS ♡

1. 88% of sex workers are women - over 70% being mothers.

2. Prostitution is increasing because poverty is increasing.

3. A study found that less than 6% of sex workers were being trafficked, that many prefer working in the sex industry over the “unrewarding and sometimes exploitative conditions they meet in non sexual jobs”.

4. Police ( not individual cops unless extremely crooked, but the department ) profit off of raids, arrests & convictions of prostitution. They keep half of the assets and cash they seize under the Proceeds of Crime Law & hold your assets / $$ for up to 3 years in evidence.

5. By decriminalizing sex work, ( this was in New Zealand ) 90% of sex workers said they had additional employment, legal, health, and safety rights. 70% were more likely to report an incident to the police. 

6. Sex workers have a 45-75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job.

7. Police violence against sex workers has a pattern that includes: assault, sexual harassment, public “gender searches” ( police strip searches for the purpose of viewing genitalia ) & rape.

8. Sex workers are often ineligible for rape victim compensation funds or receive reduced amounts.

9. 82% of women in prostitution reported being physically assaulted & 68% of women in prostitution reported having been raped. 100% of strippers had reported being physically assaulted in the club they are employed at with a 51.2% reporting being threatened with a weapon.

10. 90% of strippers come from religious backgrounds, and 91% are still close to their family. So contrary to popular belief, people aren’t stripping to rebel against their parents. So, fuck the “your parents must be so proud” type of people :-)

           ♡ HARMFUL THINGS PEOPLE DO ON PURPOSE THAT JEOPARDIZE OUR SAFETY ALL THE TIME ♡

1. Make stupid jokes like, “I could never date a ( whatever industry they are in ) because that just means they’re a hoe / etc” or just assuming no one would ever want to be with us seriously and only want sex from us. Yes, there are completely valid reasons why someone couldn’t date someone in this field ( their own mental health, insecurities, etc ) —but those other comments? it devalues us as a human being. We deserve relationships like normal people, we deserve families like normal people, and we deserve to not be mocked for what we do for a living because someone can’t handle what we do. 

2. Say our government names in public or online, along with other personal information. That is a legit form of abuse. You are putting that person in harms way, because now people will know: their address, real info, relationship status, etc and the millions of other things you can find on the internet. Leaking nudes / videos as well, whether it be from their content sites or if they got sent to you personally is also harmful along with being illegal. Long story short: That is how abusive past members of our lives find out where we are half the time, how stalkers begin to know where we live, & how we start feel less safe than we already do.

3. Glamorize ANY form of sex work and not show the negatives as well. I am alllll for posting about having a great night and all of that, but I am also not a stranger to talking about how shitty it can be and the realities of how it is more common than not. The people who are ONLY showing the good sides, while they may not be doing it intentionally at all, are showing a complete misconception to people who are thinking of joining / are new or to vets who then start to wonder if something they are doing isn’t working or isn’t good enough. It is never 100% good just like it is never 100% bad. I get that people don’t like talking about bad things in life in general, but this is something that deeply fucks up peoples mental states especially if they start and automatically assume they will make over 1k and then walk out with less than $300. For example, I totally thought Vegas would be a huge come up money wise and then learned very quickly it was ( for me ) really not much different, if not sometimes worse because of the shift minimum hours you work & usually you end up working well over 6 hours if you’re traveling - than it is at my small home club. I work at “good” clubs in Vegas as well, so…just do your research with friends that either live in the state you’re trying to travel / work in, use Dancers Resource app and page because they will have reviews of clubs on their Instagram and app that dancers comment on versus going on TikTok and assuming it’s great wherever. 

4. Photograph pictures of the $$$ you make and post publicly about the money you are making often. The people who you have to pay taxes to check for that often and they do keep tabs on that, whether they care or not in the end is different, but do not be flexing $$$ constantly especially if you are not paying taxes because that is a HUGE red flag to them. Just like when someone does an interview with you or whatever it is, always just say you made a “good amount”, “ decent amount”, whatever of money because saying actual numbers is what sends the red flags especially if doesn’t match up with what you claim tax wise! ( also: way higher risk for getting robbed )

                                             ♡ THE LAST OF THE UGLY PARTS ♡

1. There are many, many slow nights / seasons. Whether you are a high end escort or a stripper, the money isn’t always plentiful. People just don’t really talk about it.

2. The average monthly earnings on OnlyFans is $150.00 - which again, people don’t really talk about if they have a “bad” month and just show the good things along with civ girls saying they will “just easily get into OnlyFans or porn for quick, easy money and be able to buy whatever they want” - not at all how it works especially in industries that are already extremely saturated. 

3. To civs & our customers: yes, it is actually HARD to sell your body & services for the rates & respect you want. To make money in any SW job, we are the product. If someone doesn’t like our look off the bat, we usually will not get that person to: book us, dance with us, buy our content, or really care at all. Then, if someone DOES like our “product” - it’s a 50/50 gamble in person if they will even respect your boundaries, try and haggle your prices, not tip you, be rude, etc. & online: you never know who is on the other side of the screen unless you are in a private chat room with the video on. ( horror story time! : definitely had an ex boyfriends dad subscribe to my OnlyFans and join my cam sites when I would be online and I only found out when he came to the club and complimented my work ) So I’m going to say from personal experience, you have to seriously hustle HARD in person to make your low $$ goal during slow seasons and even harder to hit your general goals. You have to advertise EVERYWHERE for your sites to be seen which is getting significantly harder to do with Instagram and mainstream platforms deleting SW’ers pages - even if they didn’t violate any guidelines & being shadow banned at best. 

4. The girls you work with are rarely your actual friends. You can either take mine along with others who have done this for awhiles advice and stay in your own lane & bag, or you can learn the hard way like I also have and get burned 20842082x and then finally realize you really can’t trust a lot of the people you work with, because at the end of the day, everyone is mainly looking out for themselves. I have maybe 4-5 true friends in this industry and I’ve been in every form since I was 18. 

Anyways, regardless of the cons of this line of work - there are a lot of pros. This is why we *choose* to stay, so please do not comment or say to anyone in person, “Why are you doing this given all the risks?” I promise you we have thought about it and weighed out our options. I wrote this to spread awareness, to give validation, and to give tips maybe people didn’t know. 

These are honestly the questions / things to think about before joining the adult industry rather than “am I pretty enough?”, “will I be successful & make enough money?”, “will my friends find out?” because these are truly what the industry comes down to at the end of the day & what you really need to see if you are mentally ready for / willing to potentially deal with. 

xo,

emotional stripper ♡