Rate Shaming

The basic premise behind rate shaming sex workers over how much we charge is that our rates are viewed as correlated to our worth as individuals. Classist attitudes are present among sex workers just the same as any other population, and so many of us being poor doesn’t make them disappear, so rate shaming goes on within the sex worker community as well as outside of it.

Upon being confronted with whorephobic rhetoric, it is common for successful and wealthy sex workers to point to the amount of money they make as a justification for why their work is acceptable. This throws the rest of us under the bus, with the implication that sex workers who earn less are in a position that is reasonable to judge. These wealthier sex workers will sometimes make comments about how the rest of us need to respect ourselves enough to charge more or claim that they would never do certain acts for so little money.

Many successful sex workers are able to leverage their wealth to turn themselves into aspirational stories, conforming to conservatives’ ideal of a business owner with a “bootstrap mentality”. Of course, no matter how much notoriety and money sex workers amass, we aren’t actually accepted in the same way that other social climbers can be. Wealth can insulate us from stigma, but a little cushioning is no match for the knife of society’s whorephobia.

Fundamentally, doing sex work is not something inherently degrading which must be balanced out by an empowering sum of money. It is a neutral act.

There are all sorts of sex workers in different financial circumstances, and our backgrounds and future plans will change how much we charge: strippers working in clubs to fund their degrees; porn performers supporting sick and disabled family members; escorts selling sex to keep their kids fed. Once you bring in clients’ bigotries and how much they restrict what clients will pay sex workers who aren’t white or thin or able-bodied, it’s no surprise there’s so much variation.

We tend to select our rates not based on how much we think we deserve for our work, but based on how much people are willing to pay. By balancing volume and price, we can ensure that our needs are met. Those who can charge more for their pornographic content or private dances or for sex by the hour are often people who don’t need to worry about whether their potential clients will balk at the cost. When you can’t pay rent without your sexual services selling, you don’t have the luxury of not caring.

I’ve had other sex workers tell me I need to raise my rates and “know my worth”, and all I hear is that they tie their own self-worth to how much cash is put in their hands. My clients don’t determine my value and I don’t seek validation as a human being through how much money someone will give me for sexual services.

The level of shame projected onto a sex worker for our rates is also not solely determined by how much we charge, but by our rates combined with the type of sex work we do. The more physical contact with clients, the more people try to humiliate us from charging lower amounts. A porn performer who charges £50 for a custom video which takes over an hour to film and edit and send off to a subscriber is not shame for their rate to the same extent as an escort who charges the same for an hour-long private booking.

To compound the shame that online-only sex workers feel about their work and the rates they charge, it is common for them to be compared to full service sex workers. Framing porn as online prostitution allows additional stigma to be attached, thereby convincing others to view a small fee for access to pornographic videos more negatively. Still, it is those of us who actually fuck our clients who bear the brunt of the public’s classist disgust.

We see how ludicrous rate shaming is as a practice the most keenly by considering sex workers with flexible rates. I’ve upcharged wealthy clients hundreds of pounds for an hour and taken advantage of their deep pockets, only to show up to my brothel shift the next day and take a 15-minute quickie booking where I only earn £25 after the brothel manager’s cut. Did my value as a person, or even as a provider of sexual services, drop overnight? No. The only thing that changed was how much I could charge based on the clients available to me.

In efforts to keep rate shaming out of sex workers’ safe spaces, discussion of what we charge is often banned entirely. With all my love towards my fellow sex workers who want to protect the most vulnerable among us who charge the least – this is not the solution. We must talk about how much we charge so that we can know when we’re being ripped off or what sort of volume of clients we could expect to hear from if we raise or lower our rates! If we keep quiet, we make it taboo to say a small number as well as a large one… whilst plenty of us are left with no concept of what even constitutes a high rate. We can’t stifle these conversations to avoid the awkwardness that comes with calling out our peers if they try to shame another worker.

Early on, I sometimes didn’t recognize the ways other sex workers were trying to belittle me based on what I charged because it was unfathomable to me that they could be earning so much more. I sheepishly admitted to a new sex worker friend that I charged £140 per hour (in 2019) based on the rate my brothel manager had set for all of us, worried she might think I was bragging, only to break into a laugh when she scrunched her nose and said I was undervaluing myself. On a good day, after the brothel manager took his 50%, I might take home £500. It was enough to pay my rent and that felt like a miracle at the time, to do it in a day.

I refuse to feel shame for my rates and I want every sex worker to be able to do the same. I don’t care if it’s a £5 handjob or a 99p trial to someone’s porn subscription service. We are all worthy of respect.

The only shaming that should be going on regarding sex workers’ rates is towards the clients who try to haggle them down and the third parties who take an unreasonable cut.