Those who sell sex often have a very different relationship to our bills and recurring costs than people with traditional full-time jobs, especially compared to those who are on a salary. When I’m hit with an unexpected bill, my first thought is always to sell sex to earn enough to pay it in time. If someone who works full-time is hit with an unexpected bill, they may think to pick up extra shifts, but where that isn’t possible or the person is paid a salary… they look toward borrowing, pay-day loans or larger ones.
Most sex workers I know have terrible credit scores, making it impossible to be approved for loans. We rely on each other, on our friends, and on selling sex to make our income. Much more frequently than other groups, we cannot prove our income or demonstrate how consistent it is.
In situations where the average person fails to pick up an extra shift at work or cannot get a loan to pay an unexpected bill, they’ll call up the company and ask for an extension or simply will not pay it. This is where the difference for sex workers is the most stark – usually there is a way for us to make the money, but it gets riskier and riskier the most desperate we are and the lower demand is and the sooner we need it.
Usually, I have rules against meeting clients in their cars the first time I see them, these days. I used to take incalls at my home where I’d watch them through the window as they were walking up to my building, which I only gave them the address for after they’d arrived at the postcode. I’d watch them, try to assess if they were police or seemed to be acting erratic or as if they were on drugs. I’d be able to see if more than one person showed up, intending to rob me. These days, I can’t use my home for incalls and so I take outcalls to people’s homes. I use an application to see if prospective clients have been reported via their phone number for being violent. As soon as I become desperate, these screening procedures fall away. I stop checking if the number has been reported, or I see clients who have reports against them, because I badly need the money. I might see a client who has assaulted me before, or who scared me. I might meet a client and fuck him in his car, even though I could theoretically be caught and fined and receive a criminal record.
If your boss at the supermarket you work at won’t give you extra shifts and there’s nowhere for you to work cash-in-hand quickly, you’ll simply be unable to get the money. That situation might even be what pushes someone into sex work for the first time. For people who sell sex, their options are broader but much more dangerous.
A couple of years ago, my laptop broke. I’d just moved house, owed a lot of money to a friend for having had to pay 6 months of rent upfront, and I was sleeping on the floor because I didn’t own a bed. Every time I’d sold sex before that, I’d used a condom (except for oral). Out of desperation, I took clients who wanted bareback. I was fortunate not to catch any STDs as a result. I risked my physical health because I needed the money, and I’d do it again. I went to the homes of clients who were clearly very high on drugs, or saw clients again who had pushed boundaries of mine like shoving fingers in places I’d told them were off-limits.
With this current cost-of-living crisis, the client pool is shrinking. Clients who might usually see sex workers every couple of weeks now see them once every couple of months, because they can’t afford to. People lose their regulars they trust and have to see more new clients, meaning that they’re at much higher risk meeting people they barely know each time. Some people stop buying sex altogether because they don’t have the money. A smaller client pool means that sex workers have to take on more dangerous clients, or more difficult ones, just to make the same amount of money… except we don’t need the same amount, we need more, because our energy bills have gone up just as much as anyone else’s.
It’s not that being a sex worker means we’re less capable of begging the electricity company for an extension on paying our bill, or asking our landlord if we can pay them a few days late, it’s that our work always fluctuates so much and every month we’re taking on clients to match our bills. For those of us who actively dislike the job, which is most, we tend not to take on more clients than we have to. We see clients until we meet our needs for the month and then we often stop or get much more picky with which clients we’re willing to see. If we get lucky and our bills are lower one month, many of us work less. If we get unlucky and they’re higher, we try to work more. When the clientele of our usual standards don’t exist for us to make enough, well, what option do we have besides lowering our standards?
Another way I see the cost of living crisis impacting sex workers is within brothel work, where managers will use the excuse of higher electricity bills to offer lower rates. Places that were previously keeping 40% of their workers earnings change that to 50%, or charge extra fees on top of what they’re taking to account for these costs. We need more shifts, and now we’re making less money per shift we work. In my experience there’s always work going in a brothel somewhere, but the quality of the clients and the amount you can make in a day can vary a lot.
All of these issues are compounded by the fact that the largest driving force for people to get into sex work is a sudden need for money, particularly bills which could result in someone losing their housing. The possibility of becoming homeless, or recently losing your home, causes many people to put up an ad on an escorting site as a last resort or to take to the street. This cost of living crisis, combined with cuts to benefits, creates a perfect storm for people (particularly women) to see no option but to sell sex to keep surviving. You have a large number of people beginning to sell sex en masse with minimal resources and no idea how to keep themselves safe. Since many predatory brothel managers want people who are brand new to the industry and easier to manipulate, they’re who gets targeted. Clients who are blacklisted can always find new workers who don’t know about the blacklists yet.
Sex work is an industry that is constantly oversaturated in times of national financial struggle. People who’ve been in the industry for a long time will often see it coming and try to see as many clients as they can without burning out, to save for the difficult times to come. Others cannot, and struggle regardless. Having to see more clients means less time to organize or meet with other sex workers, and that also means there are less resources for the new people joining the industry. They have nowhere to go for help, because everyone else is trying not to drown.
You’ll hear a lot of talk about single mothers in the cost of living crisis, desperately trying to afford to take care of their kids. Single mothers make up a noteworthy percentage of sex workers, though the exact numbers are… sketchy at best. So frequently I see people say “these benefits aren’t enough to live on”, only to receive the rebuttal that if people are living on it then it cannot be truth that it’s impossible to live on. What they are ignoring, and what people on benefits cannot directly admit to without having them taken away entirely, is that when the money isn’t enough people on benefits will turn to other work to fill the gap. Sometimes that’s cash-in-hand, but often its sex work.
For people trying to leave sex work, or sell sex much less, a recession or personal financial difficulty is enough to pull us right back in. I’d like to stop. Sometimes I even convince myself that I will. On occasion, when I’ve found a good full-time job and inquiries have already been very low anyway, I’ve gone a few months without selling sex. Ultimately I’m pulled back in, either by debt repayments for top surgery which even a full-time job above minimum wage can’t cover, or by having to leave an abusive work environment and having to cover for the time unemployed between that and a new job.
The more factors limiting your client pool, the less money you’ll charge per client and the more danger you’re in because you can’t afford to screen heavily. I don’t ask for deposits, I don’t screen beyond not meeting clients who directly threaten me, I ask for condoms but I often fail to enforce their use, and I’ve met clients in cars after giving them my real address despite not taking incalls from it. My standards used to be stricter, but after moving to somewhere with a smaller client pool AND transitioning AND being in a cost of living crisis, I can’t have the standards I used to and still get clients. I charge less than 2/3 of what I used to charge for an outcall appointment and I’m still having to take every single credibly inquiry I get. I used to be able to turn people down if I just felt a little too tired that day, knowing I’d be able to make it up the next.
Whilst this happens, we still lack any material support from the government. Brothel raids continue to happen, depriving people of the little access to income that they have, and benefits continue to be cut despite that being one of the forces driving people to sell sex. I don’t want to act like every one of us hates it and lives in this kind of desperation, but it’s a large portion.
Journalists are being paid to write articles about how we’re struggling, interviewing us without pay to ask how we cope when the answer is resoundingly that we don’t cope. We’re barely keeping our heads above water, burnt out and scrambling for every penny we can get as the client pool thins out and we take on people we never would have before. How are we coping? We’re risking our physical and mental health more and more each time our electrical bill goes up, that’s how we’re fucking coping.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 