(S)ex workers

We do not have good estimates regarding the total number of sex workers in the world. We cannot even obtain an accurate number of sex workers within an area as small as a city. We can, however, reasonably assume that whatever that number is that there are even more people who have done sex work at some point but no longer do.

For the vast majority of those who sell sex at some point, prostitution is far from a long-term career. Many people engage in it only for a short time to meet specific goals, only do it whilst homeless and stop once they no longer are, or dabble in it for extra money but never in any structured way. For those who sell sex on occasion when the opportunity arises, just like those who sell sex as their primary income for a finite time, there will be a last time they do it.

Ex sex workers are everywhere. They must be. When the population of any given country is surveyed, we find huge number of people have paid for sex, and thus enough workers are out there to meet this demand. If a lot of people are buying sex, and the sex industry has a high and fast turnover of people, it stands to reason that we have a huge number of ex sex workers in the population. Why do we rarely hear from them?

We don’t hear from active sex workers because of the stigma associated with our work and the risk of being fired or losing our homes or families or friends if people know what we do. That stigma and risk doesn’t disappear if we stop selling sex. Even when years have passed, knowing we have ever sold sex could be the cause of family breakdown or the loss of friends.

The material reasons are some of the most significant, forcing people with a history of sex work to keep quiet about it even if they wish to come forward, but there’s also something to be said for the internal shame and the traumatic nature of many of these experiences. People often don’t wish to discuss things which were traumatic for them, especially when the topic is so taboo that people are prone to asking invasive questions or reacting poorly.

If I imagine a world where after my first stint selling sex I stopped permanently instead of just taking a break, I don’t think I’d have told anyone. I didn’t even conceive of myself as a sex worker or as a prostitute, even though I was literally selling sex. I would’ve described myself as a sugar baby if forced to do so at all, perhaps been flippant about it and would have lied about sex being involved if anyone had found out. I’m sure that by now, many years later, I wouldn’t consider it a part of my identity and instead would have seen it as a traumatic period I did not discuss.

The longer a person does something, the more likely that thing is to become important to their identity. Even when I take breaks from selling sex, I think of myself as a sex worker. It is integral to how I view sex or money and to how I am viewed by people when they find out I have sold sex. I can’t donate blood or travel to certain places or adopt in this country because of it, and you’d be surprised how much sex work comes up in media or Never Have I Ever games while drunk.

Almost all of us who sell sex will eventually stop. I don’t ever see myself quitting, barring coming into sudden wealth, in the sense that I’ll always see selling sex as an option and at minimum sell sex on occasion to pay for my needs. But… eventually one of the times I sell sex will be my last time, even then. I probably won’t realize it’s my last time selling sex when it is. I’ll get fucked or suck some client’s dick and pay to get my phone screen fixed and then a year will pass where I don’t get financially desperate and I’ll realize I’ve let all my escorting profiles go dormant and I haven’t checked my work phone in many months. I sometimes take breaks of months at a time when I get a new job, and one day it’ll just keep going. It won’t change my history or how integral my time selling sex work has been to who I am.

When I imagine a future where I no longer sell sex, the idea of never being able to discuss that fact feels stifling. I don’t imagine that everyone who has ever sold sex will feel the same, but it remains a concern for me. How often are the people around me biting their tongues? How many people have I known who have sold sex but cannot discuss it with anyone? There are so many people who have no-one in their lives who knows they have ever sold sex, and so they have no-one to talk to about it.

The sex worker movement keeps various discussions to active sex workers only, and this especially goes for various groups providing resources or organising protests or sharing information about blacklists. Given that much of our activity could be (or is) considered illegal, and many people seek to target us, it is vital that we don’t risk allowing people in who might harm the sex workers that these groups exist to support. Outside of these context we have broader movements or use social media to expand the conversation and activism… and still there is a strong focus on listening to sex workers first.

I do believe that people who are currently selling sex should be the ones who are consulted on what policies should exist for us. What I don’t believe is that no-one who isn’t actively selling sex has valuable thoughts on the subject. In the case of ex sex workers, they’re much more absent from the conversation than I’d like. Part of that concern is selfish, imagining I’ll one day stop sex work for good and be expected not to express myself, but part is that as a group pushing for rights we are so much smaller if we lose activists or supporters as soon as they stop selling sex.

A lot of people have messy and brief experiences selling sex. A guy being offered some money on Grindr by a guy he’d usually ignore and sleeping with him for it is undoubtedly prostitution in the eyes of the law, even if the person in question likely wouldn’t see himself as a sex worker and might never do it again. Without talking about these people who sell sex occasionally or spontaneously like this, they have no idea they’re included or that we’re fighting for them to be less at risk too.

One of the few places that ex sex workers have that they can go to talk about their experiences is into the arms of Nordic Model supporters and conservatives fear-mongering about prostitution. Among people who want to abolish the sex industry via criminalisation are huge numbers of people eager to consume the traumatic stories of those who stop selling sex. They obsess over this ideal of the prostitute who “exits”. There needs to be a space for people to share their experiences that doesn’t weaponize them in this way.

I want to encourage people to talk or write about their experiences, but I can’t in good conscience suggest that they go to their friends or family to do so. Those people often aren’t supportive and that’s the reason they keep quiet. It’s important in our conversations about sex work that we listen to what people who don’t sell sex any more have to say. Especially with the fast turnover, or how some people only ever sell sex briefly, many people who aren’t active sex workers have so much vital information about our history despite that. The closure of Backpage wasn’t that long ago, and I was around for it but many sex workers I meet now were not. The number of us who understand the devastation that the loss of advertising platforms does will only get lower as times goes on (until the next crisis) and that makes it harder to fight.

With all of the legislative changes surrounding prostitution that are occurring worldwide, we can all benefit from learning what it was like to sell sex in our countries when laws differed or prostitution was viewed differently by wider society. I often feel as though I am both too worried about how people will react and not worried enough, simultaneously.

Among the many benefits to hearing the perspectives of ex sex workers is the fact that we can see proof that people can indeed stop selling sex, if that’s something we aspire to. For those of us who come to sex work out of desperation, sometimes it feels like we’re going to die before we’d ever have the financial means to stop. Seeing people who have been through the same thing and who have not only found preferable circumstances but are also happy is so valuable. I cannot overstate that. Hope is absolutely vital to our continued survival.

When my history of selling sex comes up, I usually let people think precisely that it is a part of my history and not ongoing. I have told work colleagues or friends-of-friends about working in brothels or escorting, but it’s always past tense. I don’t manage to avoid much stigma that way, but I do avoid a lot of invasive questions about my current work. Crucially, when they don’t think my prostitution is ongoing they don’t over-express concern about my safety. I suppose to the people I’ve told, this gives them the opposite impression to my own from being in sex worker communities – they presume that only people who no longer sell sex tend to speak about it. I wonder how many of us have given people this impression.

Part of why we protect our anonymity so fiercely is so that we can keep other jobs and keep future prospects open to us. Almost no sex worker expects sex work to function as their main income forever. Those of us who forego our anonymity at least in some contexts (whether that’s speaking out as an activist under our real name, using a fake name but our face being visible, those who have an activist persona under which they do speeches in person) tend to be assuming that we’ll be selling sex for a long time and aren’t picturing our future without it. I certainly didn’t picture a future where I don’t sell sex, when I started to write and speak about it, but now that I can imagine such a future I wonder where my place will be in the conversation if I eventually do.

Despite all of these concerns about how we include ex workers, and all the reasons they might not wish to be open about their history, we should gain hope from considering their number.

Part of what makes sex work activism so difficult is that we’re not only a small minority, but a highly stigmatized one. Our number grows massively when we include all of those who’ve ever been a part of the sex industry. So many people want to reframe why we should decriminalize sex work around the rights of clients, who are the last group we should be worried about in this conversation, purely because clients make up such a big portion of the population of men in any country.

I know many people who’ve sold sex at some point, most of them for short periods of time and some of them only a handful of times. They frequently don’t see themselves as sex workers and I’m not going to push them and suggest that they have to see themselves that way. Instead, I think it’s important that we destigmatize the label of “sex worker” or (perhaps more controversially to people who hate the word) the label of “prostitute”. Us framing sex work as work, which it is, is vital to us obtaining workers rights… but just like gig workers often don’t consider themselves employees or even workers, plenty of people who spontaneously sell sex for some extra cash don’t see themselves as sex workers. If they never saw themselves as sex workers in the first place, it’s hard for them to see themselves as “ex” anything.

I find that those who have the most comfort and confidence in talking about the needs of sex workers, even once they leave the industry, are people who were involved for a long time and were well-established. Or those who were abused and are being used as mouthpieces for anti sex work organisations. This leads to a bias in the kinds of people we see who’ve left the industry, and contributes to the skewed view many have of sex workers. When you see no-one who has made it out, it’s easy to assume that is the case because those in the more precarious situations have died or never manage to leave.

I want to hear more stories from people who sold sex in the past, both to learn what the differences are in their experiences and to encourage them not to give in to shame. I sometimes feel that my own lack of shame comes from necessity rather than having genuinely worked through all my internalised whorephobia – I can’t afford to show weakness or embarrassment at what I do for work because it’s still ongoing. Seeing people who have stopped and aren’t humiliated or ashamed of their history brings me hope.