The Things We Deal With (part 1)

Trigger Warning: R*pe mention, sexual harassment, misogyny

Sex work is a profession that has been around since 2400 BC. Its not the oldest profession but it’s pretty fucking old. These first records came from the Sumer people. The Sumerians didn’t shy away from sex nor from gender. Sex work continues throughout the ages and even though many try to “regulate” it, it has stayed unchanged for all this time.

Which is both good and sad. The lives of sex workers themselves has never been easy. Even for a Sumerian sex worker. They were usually only there to live for the temple’s enjoyment with little room for much else in their lives.

Cisgender women and trans women get the worst of the treatment in my opinion. Trans women getting it even worse because of the double dose of misogyny and transphobia.

This rampant misogyny makes being a sex worker a challenging and some times deadly profession. Even with sites like OnlyFans, its still a big danger to be a sex worker. Ask any sex worker and they will tell you the amount of bullshit they deal with on a regular basis.

I asked questions from different sex workers and it was all the same. One of my sources said she had to shut down her OnlyFans page when a man harassed her. Another source, DefNotACat420 (http//www.twitter.com/defnotacat420), was nice enough to send me screenshots of the types of things she has seen and put up with. (The men’s names and account names are not blurred because they should be shamed for what they do to sex worker women):

Men creating new Twitter accounts simply to harass her is apparently a common issue, like the cis man seen above made a new acct to harass my source after she blocked his main account (screenshot below). So when someone suggests “oh just block them”, that doesn’t really pan out a lot of times for sex workers.

This is just the tip of the ice burg of what she’s experienced. Most of these men are self-deprecating sexists as we see with Inquisition up there. These men try to make the sex worker feel sorry for them so that they can get something out of them; once again I’m using Inquisition’s DM above as an example of this. How many times this has actually worked for them is a mystery to me. My guess though is, not many.

Here are some other examples.

Canis here has some gall to ask for this for free. He also ignores the fact that she is busy with her children. Asking to jerk off for someone while they are feeding their kids is something I thought I would ever read but there it is. He ignores her time and he ignores her boundaries.

When a sex worker directs you to the places where they offer the services and a time to meet up, respect them. Just fucking do what they ask of you. If they offer the service of watching you jerk off a limp dick, then pay for it.

I’m waiting on the day when men can actually DM a sex worker with “Sorry to bother you but what services do you provide and where may I purchase them?” Or something polite along those lines. Nope! For now, its just more and more of this:

It all boils down to them wanting power. It’s about the power and control they feel. This all bleeds into rape culture. A lot of these men stalk, sexually harass, sexually assault and often times, think that the sex worker is their girlfriend/wife which just means they see her as nothing more than “property” they paid for. Which btw, you are paying for her TIME and SERVICE. You are NOT paying “for her”. Women are not objects for you to posses and own.

The attack on sex workers doesn’t just end here.

Many social media sites have banned porn. Tumblr being the most famous in its controversy when they decided to remove porn from their site. This harmed not only sex workers but people doing NSFW work period. Not even topless photos were allowed but only for women of course. God forbid we see a feminine nip.

Many sites since then have followed suit. Instagram being the most pain in the ass to NSFW creators. Even a hint of nudity could get you banned off the site entirely! They are even cracking down on pole dancer videos; which a lot of these videos aren’t all that sexual. People doing photo shoots as models with very little clothing, sex workers or not, are getting their work pulled off the platform.

Twitter, I believe, was the last to remove porn from its site (because no one cares about you Facebook). This is what led many sex workers to OnlyFans. There used to be preview videos and photos that sex workers could put up on their own NSFW accounts which they LABELED as such.

“Think of the children” is such a bullshit cop out. I was looking at porn from a young age because I would sneak my mom’s or my grandfather’s porn from their hiding places. All that did was allowed me to understand sex. That’s it. No harm done.

Kids don’t need to be shielded. They really don’t. In fact, kids should be introduced to sex from as early as 3 years old. Giving them a simple sex talk at first. Things like genitals and so forth. You keep that going until age 8 when you can tell them the big stuff.

My mom did that for me and I cannot tell you how much it saved me. I still made mistakes and things still happened because we are human of course but for the most part, it armed with knowledge many of my peers did not possess. This is all child psychology. So stop using kids as a political talking point for your war against sex or drugs or whatever the fuck else. For the love of God, please, stop.

I’m hoping there is some revolution in which social media is taken back or even better, new social media that is sex work friendly comes out. Until then, many are forced to advertise what they can censored and hope its enough to entice some customers. Hopefully good paying, not harassing them, customers.

For this article, all of my sources have been women. I didn’t get a chance to really speak to a non-binary and/or male aligned person. If you would like to reach out to me, I would love to hear from you (please see ways of contacting me on my bio). I would also love to hear from more trans women about your experiences.

Thank you for reading! I hope this may help some understand what sex workers go through.