What I’m Reading
I learned early in my public career as a writer and online sex worker (which I did for many years before moving into escorting) that the key to longevity and stable mental health is to never read the comments.
Indeed, there is no shortage of online trolls who have nothing better to do with their time than to try to make those of us who work to create something feel bad about ourselves. Personally, I’ve had everything from my body size and shape, to my politics, to my life and career choices, to my parenting criticized and picked apart by people who have never met me.
For this reason, I stay off forums, message boards, escort review boards, subreddits about sex work, etc. I know who I am and why I do what I do, and I don’t need that kind of energy in my life. Also importantly, those trolls are not the ones who pay my bills, so as far as I’m concerned, their opinions are irrelevant.
That being said, recently I decided to advertise cuddling services on a popular cuddle site and couldn’t help but notice a thread on the site’s forum dedicated to escorts advertising on the site. Given that I am in fact an escort who was using the site for advertising (albeit the service I was advertising was cuddling) I couldn’t help but look.
I was not surprised when I saw that the way sex workers were being talked about was almost wholly negative. Professional cuddlers who were not also sex workers were blaming us for the boundary crossing behavior of clients (important side note: we are not responsible for the bad behavior of clients!), while clients were working hard to disassociate themselves from us by calling us whores. There were even discussions about how to spot the sex workers among the “professional cuddlers,” with the idea that everyone should avoid us and our unwholesome motives.
You will just have to take my word for this because I can’t quote any of it given that while I was in the middle of reading the forum, I was kicked off the site.
At first I thought it was a glitch so I tried refreshing the page and re-logging in, just to get a message that said that my account had been permanently suspended for “advertising non-platonic services off the site.” In other words, I was not suspended for breaking their TOS, I was suspended for being who I am outside of their site. Meanwhile, they still took their cut of the money I earned through them (of course).
What I’m Thinking About
I was obviously upset about being deplatformed from yet another site. Any sex worker will tell you that fighting to stay online—which is absolutely necessary for our livelihood—is a constant struggle, especially post FOSTA/SESTA, the 2018 legislation that made online platforms legally liable for third-party posting.
While FOSTA/SESTA has almost never been used to prosecute platforms of “promoting or facilitating prostitution,” it has created a shuttering effect that has pushed sex workers further and further to the margins. Indeed, I was not directly advertising sex work on the site, but the site was afraid that my simple presence as a sex worker put them in jeopardy.
I have so many thoughts about this, too many to get into in a short blog. Yet, the one thing that I have been thinking about is how nebulous and porous the boundary between sex work and other intimate services is.
In my career I have done many different kinds of sex work: camming, phone sex, subscriptions sites like Onlyfans, clip production, solo and partnered porn, and escorting. And, for a very short time before I got kicked off the site, I did professional cuddling. The difference between professional cuddling and other forms of in-person sex work is thin (perhaps as thin as a single layer of clothing). And given that in much of the sex work I did my body didn’t come into contact with clients’ bodies at all, this feels like a distinction without a difference.
An obvious question comes to mind: What is sex work? The folks on the cuddling site seem to imagine a world in which this particular distinction is significant. In other words, they imagine that the defining characteristic of sex work is “non-platonic” contact (we can all imagine what that means).
And yet, anyone who does sex work can tell you that sex is a small part of the value of our work. Once, for example, when I was interviewing clients for a piece I wrote on why men seek out sex workers, one person succinctly said, “Sex gets put on the table, everything else is a hidden agenda item.” What he meant by this is that sex workers, for him, meet a lot of emotional and social needs, not just sexual ones. In asking for sex, he found that the needs he wasn’t directly asking for were also being met. Sex is important, to be sure, but so are all of the other things that come with sex: intimacy, connection, skin-to-skin contact, etc.
These are the same services that professional cuddlers provide, and for these reasons, sex workers are perfectly positioned to provide professional cuddling. Maybe, if we didn’t live in such a whorephobic world, it would be easier for everyone to recognize that cuddlers and whores are not two different classes of people, but rather variations on themes. I would say that the services I provided as a cuddler have more in common with escorting than escorting has in common with the online sex work that I did.
But again, these distinctions seem less important than the overarching point which is that folks of all kinds come to sex workers for so many reasons. These reasons may include sexual release, but they cannot be reduced to it. Perhaps if everyone spent less time trying to distance themselves from sex workers, they would be able to have their needs met by people who are uniquely skilled to meet them.
Also, I offer cuddling services, don’t be afraid to ask me about them!
What I’m Excited About
On a personal note, I have been struggling for the past six weeks because my kid’s school shut down unexpectedly and I haven’t been able to find a suitable situation for him. Yesterday I finally was able to connect with the district to get him what he needs and deserves and I was so happy I wanted to cry. (Okay, maybe I did cry a little!) He is going back to school starting next week and life will regain some normalcy.
In addition to being happy for him, I’m also happy to have some more time to myself (full-time caregiving is time consuming!) to get some writing work done.
Availability & Booking
I’m traveling to Buffalo next week, a city that is quickly becoming my home away from home. Make sure to check out my complete travel schedule on my website.
Buffalo, NY | Apr 14-16
Richmond, VA | May 6-7, May 11-12
Miami, FL | May 15-18
Cleveland, OH | May 18-21
Flagstaff, AZ | Jun 16-20
Pittsburgh, PA in between
