There is always a significant amount of risk that is associated with seeing clients as a sex worker, especially when you are meeting them in your own home. The difference during the pandemic, is that risk is now not only on a personal level.
Every time I see a client, there is a risk that they could be infected with Covid-19 (and if they are, kissing and having sex means I will almost certainly get it). If I catch it, it will take two weeks for me to start showing symptoms, in which time I will have seen other clients and potentially passed it onto them, potentially becoming a vector for the disease. It is the common portrayal of sex workers as vectors for disease come to life, not with STDs, but with something perhaps more damaging to the health of those who catch it.
Working in the UK right now, in any job, poses a significant risk of contracting and spreading the virus. At my “vanilla” workplace, none of the staff wear masks and we are regularly in close proximity with each other as well as customers. Not as closely as when I’m swapping spit with a client, but enough to be of concern. If a member of staff at my job caught it, we wouldn’t know until they’d spread it to a considerable number of people, if we even knew at all since young people can have it in a way that is entirely symptomless.
Being a sex worker, due to additional stigma, means that selling sex is seen as somehow worse than working at a bar or a shop selling non-necessities. It is expected that I would stop, due to the health risk, whilst other people continue on in their jobs that are still causing a significant risk of spreading the virus.
When a client comes to see me during this lockdown, they do so knowing the risk. For me, the risk is higher, especially when I have neighbours who may notice the coming and going of men from my home if another lockdown is imposed – yet I don’t find myself with more options.
My experience with sex work is that I have a consistent “background” amount of clients I will see when things are okay. I’ll see a few clients a month, when I have another job and I’m earning at least minimum wage and don’t desperately need money for something. Eventually, I will need money for a deposit that I can save no other way, or I am saving for a purpose, or I will lose my job. The pandemic has meant a total lack of job security for me, so I need to be saving for the possibility that I will lose my job at the end of the government scheme that is making sure I still get paid whilst my work hours are reduced due to lockdown. Upon losing my job, assuming that eventually happens, I will need to return to sex work full time until I can get a new job (and that’s going to be hard during mass unemployment).
I am deeply tired of people expressing specific concern that I will contract Covid from seeing clients, when I come into contact with hundreds of people per shift while I am at work in my vanilla job, wearing no mask.
Is it riskier for me to see 5 clients a week, which tends to be what I aim for when doing sex work full-time, than it is for me to come into contact with hundreds of people per shift? I actually don’t know the statistics on that, given that I would be physically intimate with those five clients, then getting close to people but not touching them and maintaining maybe a metre’s distance with most customers. What I do know for certain, is that selling sex as a job is so stigmatized that most people won’t even consider the comparative risk. They will see selling sex as an illegitimate profession, therefore treating any risk as unacceptable.
Due to government guidelines which restrict my profession, even whilst allowing bars and pubs and schools to open, advertising sites are forced to change their functionality and pretend to discourage people from booking escorts. Sites I use have disabled the booking function, but allow mobile numbers to be displayed and for sex workers to list ourselves as “available today” because they know we are still working and want our money for advertising us as such.
When I am forced to hide that I am still working, I am pushed into riskier behaviour. Since I cannot book through the site, I can now only do so by phone – this means clients are more likely not to show up, since I can’t leave him bad feedback (visible to other workers) on their profile, now. I’m also in a position where I’m breaking lockdown rules by working, even when groups and congregate in bars with no consequences. The last thing I need is to be judged on top of all of that, by people who see me as choosing to flout lockdown rules without cause. I need to earn money, the same as all the people going to work in shops and bars and offices do.
For those who seek to criticize my choices, to afford the things I need to live, they can pay up or shut up.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 