Selling sex is highly stigmatized and there are many situations in which sex workers are much better off if certain people don’t know they sell sex. This is a guide which discusses the options sex workers have for hiding their work in various situations, both personal and professional.
Many sex workers will be pushed to commit certain types of fraud to avoid experiencing discrimination for selling sex, like giving a fake reference to a landlord or job. However, lying is not illegal in all contexts, and I’ll walk you through your options that are perfectly legal.
Hiding sex work from your landlord:
A landlord will likely require a lot of information from you that could out you as a sex worker. They’ll ask for things like proof of income and bank statements. You should have a plan to combat each of the ways you might be outed.
- Make up a job which matches your income and the way you earn it. If you pay cash into the bank every month, don’t make up a fake job that would never pay cash-in-hand. The same goes for a situation where some of your income is through various sites, don’t make up a job where it wouldn’t make sense for you to earn money from multiple sources. Some fake jobs which work well for this are things like being an entertainer (think: character actor, comedian, singer, dancer, musician, model) or a freelancer in an industry that correlates with a hobby you have. As long as the income is genuine, it is not illegal for you to misrepresent the specifics of your job.
- Keep your bank account looking trustworthy. If you pay cash into your account that you make from selling sex, make deposits in uniform amounts which you can explain. Any money which comes from other sources, like payouts from porn sites, should also be removed as uniformly as possible. If payments are made at the same time every month in similar amounts, it looks a lot more like regular employment and is considered more trustworthy.
- Have a reference that your landlord can call. You can do this by taking a part-time job before you move, so that you have a direct employer who can serve as a reference for you, if that’s viable. If a second job isn’t possible, even in the short-term, the reference you put down can be a past job or your previous landlord. Knowing you are self-employed, landlords who are willing to take you should make exceptions, but the less exceptions you cause them to make the more likely they are to see you as reliable.
Hiding sex work from an employer:
- Have excuses for the gaps in your employment history. Omitting things during a job interview, or lying about what you did during gaps in your CV, is not illegal. Putting down a fake job on your application is, though it is rare that someone would be prosecuted for it. If you have been selling sex as a large portion of your income and have been unemployed for significant periods, you can explain away those gaps. If you’re applying for a job childcare, you can say you were taking care of children for relatives during that time. Get creative!
- Keep your real name from being associated with your sex work. Same goes for your phone number. Get yourself a work phone and make sure you don’t link back to any social media where you use your real name from your sex work account. Before applying for a job, try googling your name and seeing what comes up. If there’s anything related to sex work, see if you can get it taken down or take it down yourself.
- Turn off availability in certain locations for your porn content, where possible. Many sites allow you to control what regions can see your videos, so go to your settings and check whether that’s possible for you, at least whilst working at another job. That may lower your view count and sales, but it means you’re less likely to be discovered.
- Avoid showing your face in your escorting ads. Even if you’re already face-out, even making it so that the first picture that shows on your escorting ads does not show your face can make a huge difference in how likely you are to be recognized. You’re much less likely to be picked out of a sea of escorting profiles if someone has to click on the profile and look through it to be able to recognize you.
- Don’t promote your ads more than necessary. If you’re able to make enough money from seeing regulars, and keeping your traditional job is important to you, don’t mark your profile as available or bump how high up it shows in the search results unless you need to.
Hiding sex work from family and friends:
- Excuses, excuses, excuses. Prepare reasons for everything that your friends or family might notice that are related to you selling sex. You’ll want an explanation for your income, for any health consequences or visible marks on your body. If you live with anyone you’re hiding your work from, or they visit often, make sure that anything you order for work arrives in discreet packaging. Don’t leave sex work resources lying around. Hide condoms and lube in places they won’t snoop through.
- Have a second phone and keep it on silent when you’re around them, or don’t bring it with you at all when seeing them. As far as they are concerned, your second phone does not exist. Once someone knows you have one, they’re likely to suspect you of criminal activity or of selling sex.
- Be careful when signing up to social media under your sex work persona that you don’t have discoverability turned on. When you sign up to social media, use your work phone as the number you connect to it. Any e-mail you connect should also be an e-mail you use exclusively for sex work. Do not follow your main account or those of anyone you know in real life. Stay away from smaller accounts, even if you don’t know the person outside of being aware of their online presence, to keep yourself from being discoverable to people who know you well. Log out of one account and into the other, rather than connecting the accounts to be able to click between them quickly.
Hiding sex work from your partner:
There are many reasons someone might need to hide their sex work from their partner, particularly if their partner is abusive and controlling and they are saving money to escape them. In that situation, you should have support without judgement.
- Claim to have a physical ailment. This made-up illness should be used to explain away side-effects or exhaustion from selling sex. One example could be migraines, another could be persistent nausea – it should be something that is vague enough that you won’t be tripped up when asked specific questions, and which it is reasonable to have continuously without being cured. You can also use this to explain away genital irritation from sex, by saying you’re very prone to thrush or to hemorrhoids.
- Find other sex workers to corroborate your excuses for going out. Have friends whom your partner is aware of who would cover for you if your partner asks where you are or wants to check the truth of your story. If you’re going out with a client and say you’re out with someone, you want that to be believable and verifiable. Take pictures with people when you can, posting them to social media, to keep up the appearance that you are doing things other than selling sex.
- Avoid having your face on your escorting ads, if you use them at all rather than an agency or working in a brothel. Maximum lockdown on anything identifying. Blur or hide any identifying marks or tattoos.
- Tell no-one who you aren’t certain you can trust. The need to talk to other people can get extreme, so many sure you have some people around you who know, but ideally keep those people separate from your other circles of friends and from your partner. Talk to other sex workers when you need to confide in someone.
- Have somewhere you can keep anything that relates to sex work. In cases where you can, that means renting out a storage space or leaving your belongings at a friend’s house. Keep condoms and lube and sex toys elsewhere, along with clothing specifically for work.
- Refuse gifts from clients if you don’t have a way to hide them or explain them, and ask for cash instead.
- Make sure you have a location where you can shower before you get home. That might take being creative, like having a gym membership if you don’t have friends whose shower you can use on the way home from an outcall, but showering as soon as you get home can seem suspicious. Side note: body spray, make-up for covering stubble burn, and wet wipes are all additional helpful things to have.
Hiding the fact that you sell sex from anyone in your life can be hard, and there’s always a risk that it’ll come out, but there are plenty of things you can do to mitigate that risk and get by. Despite all this, if you’re found out anyway and there are consequences, please reach out to other sex workers for support!
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