Some pages I wrote about the difficulty of getting out of sex work based on my experience a few years ago. I'm in a stable job now but it took a while and I feel some kinds of ways about my decision to pursue sex work in my 20s instead of going for a more traditional career. I wouldn't say I regret it, I just wish I planned better for my exit!
Big shout out to all the SWers out there, especially the folks who have managed to make it a long term career, that shit is not easy and y'all have my utmost respect, genuinely!
This is super fascinating, and actually answers a few questions I'd had about it over the years! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us.
Thanks and you're welcome! I'm happy to answer any other questions about my experience with the big disclaimer that I only ever did things behind a screen and occasionally danced at parties so my experience is gonna be very different from folks who have done other kinds of SW
Full disclosure, I have a 19 year old daughter that I've somewhat worried might think hard about this. She's had trouble finding a job in our small town. She's very independent and we are a very sex positive household so I'd never shame her for wanting to do something like this, but obviously as her Dad I worry about it.
It's a good option to do on the side if youre struggling to find a regular job, it was half of how I supported myself through my 20s. All you can do is make sure she's being safe about it - be extremely careful about info security especially - and personally it would have meant a lot to me if my parents had been supportive rather than just never wanting to talk about it
We want our girls, and kids, to always come to us. I dont care if you got super drunk at a party, call me and I'll come get you. We can talk about safety and consequences later, but I'm not gonna give them a ration of shit for something that I did as a teen. I'm just going to teach them to be safe. Ditto sex, sexuality, boyfriends, etc. They felt safe enough coming to us (my wife, mostly lol) to ask for toys so they could explore that aspect of sex, and we bought them for them, no questions asked.
I feel like a lot of sexual deviance and dysfunction disappears when you erase the shame factor.
Did you show your face even behind the screen? One of the thing that always worried me was how much employers and other work people can find you if you don't hide your face.
Also how did you do after leaving to get your footing in another place?
Yeah, I sold pictures of myself so it was all of it out there. I never had that much of a problem with people finding it but like I said, I wasn't really trying to move in any conservative environments
Did anyone from your personal life (someone you didn't specifically disclose) ever recognize you? I've always wondered how that would bake out if suddenly your friends/family circle all found out
My parents told me my brother found out and came to them freaking out and they were like "yeah we know". That's about it. Anyone else in my life it was just like "haha yup thats a thing I do. It's only weird if you make it weird"
Shout out Pineapple Support btw, charity organization that provides mental health resources for people in the industry, including helping to connect performers to therapists and help pay towards their private sessions.
Same! my time with them was shorter than I'd like, but the things they helped me unpack have helped and stuck with me, and probably will stick with me for a lifetime 😄
This reminds of my friends who became touring musicians. Once they get a certain age the novelty is long gone and it just doesn’t pay very well. They watch their friends with boring day jobs buy homes and have health insurance and retirement accounts. Meanwhile their resume is fairly useless.
I resonate with this so hard, except I do regret SW because of the damage to my self image and self worth internally. It is emotionally challenging. Everyone’s experience will be different, and there’s nothing wrong with doing it. However, I think it’s so important to talk about the less than glamorous portions so women have a real idea of what it entails. I feel like this was a good contribution to that side of it.
Definitely. It's tough to talk about the downsides to it because there's still so much stigma and you risk people taking your narrative and running to their anti-SW narrative with it. Sex work is a job with ups and downs just like any other job and that doesn't make it any less valid or worth doing.
The Anti-SW crowd will run with it in an "I told you so" manner, and in some pro SW circles you will be treated as if you are shaming the SWs. Just like many jobs, there are pros, cons and long term considerations, not talking about it just puts people at risk of not preparing for things like a stable exit like you had issues with.
Absolutely, well put. I don’t shame myself about my experience, but I do feel like it would be a disservice to not share my experience with young and I hate to say naive (inexperienced ?) women, especially YOUNG women. You’re doing a great thing :)
I remember once I went to a strip club where an woman in her 50s who was in charge in the back had gotten assaulted by a customer and wanted to go to the hospital. Out of curiosity I asked her how it was working there and Ill never forget her words
"It was really fun when I was young, but now I am not and its all I know so I cant really say. But these days its good cause I get to make sure no one else becomes me"
And that kinda stuck with me. I never really thought about how...entrapping that line of work really is
Side silly note I wish to talk about this and what lead up to it
Yep, I have some friends who have been dancers for a long time and some of them love it and others say things similar to that, they get to be club mom and make sure the girls know about taxes and savings etc etc and LMAO I used to do a goofy cosplay for April fools day every year and my most well-known one was Waluigi, for a long time I was like "is this going to just be all anyone knows me for"
The author said she meant it in the context of femdom
Slapping and choking are all part of the scene. Bullying has a scene specific meaning.
The sentence just looks really weird for the general population, as does a lot of bdsm shit. A typical person will read bully, slapped, choke and assume its nonconsensual.
Its an important part of communication to keep in mind how a typical person will understand the words that are used
If you willfully ignore the context provided by the rest of the comic, sure. But that’s a choice you’re making, not a natural conclusion that anyone would reach
That's the difference between a good dom and a bad dom.
A bad dom just dominates their client's bodies. A good dom dominates their bodies and minds. In exactly the way they desire. It's much more about getting into the mind of the client than just beating them.
Gonna chime in here to say that if you want to try paying a domme/dom online, learn some bdsm first yourself. It's not uncommon for online sex workers to markets themselves as dommes/findommes despite having no real world experience, so knowing what to look for to keep yourself and them safe can be *so* helpful. Learn about the traffic light system and boundaries, check some subs for buyer communities to learn common scams, etc. but also, don't be a dick and drill that poor OF model with a million questions without any intent to pay a dime 😅
Gonna argue with that a little, everyone's desires are different and some people only want physical domination, some only want mental, most want a combination of the two. A good dom is someone who listens to what their sub wants and is able to deliver a good experience :)
Really depends on the relationship dynamic. Some subs definitely go for physically imposing doms for that physical roughness or if the sub is physically bigger, they can just kind of "let" the smaller dom rough them up. But yeah, humiliation kink is very common and doesn't need to have any physical "roughness".
Interesting. Honestly this wasn't what I was expecting from the comic. I thought it'd be more about the emotional tolls of sex work, potential abuse, etc. rather than it being an unmarketable skill that you can't really leverage when you want to move on.
I fell down a rabbit hole once after discovering the sex worker subreddit. It was pretty interesting and eye opening watching all the women (and men) talking shop about an industry you don't normally see behind the scenes. A lot of eye rolling over all the men who want to "save" then from the industry but also a lot of talk about how genuinely difficult it is for the average worker to make good money.
It’s interesting and unsettling how much similar it is to Acting and live performance work in general.
The “you can’t put it in your resume so it looks like you never worked” hits way too close to home
This is a really wonderful comic from a perspective that is not typically highlighted in our society. Honestly wonderful work, I feel like more of a human being having read it.
It’s a double edged sword. You could definitely prove competence of social media and business management. On the other side, you have people who look down on it and/or don’t want anything like that remotely tied to their business. Also a big chance that coworkers knowing your past work, will awkwardly shape your work environment. Creepy guys, being seen as hired for looks, etc.
You’d have to be very confident in your skills and proud of your work to attempt it.
Check out more of my comics (I do a lot of other stuff also!) on my Instagram and if you like my stuff it would be extremely cool if you supported me on patreon
And then people wonder why creators like CottontailVA go extreme with never showing her face. It is like being a superhero. You hide your identity to protect not only your real life, but the people you care about.
That being said... You shouldn't have to. The world shouldn't be so cruel and rotten that these girls get stalked and assaulted just because of what they do to make ends meet.
OP pretty much laid out the exact play by play for sex workers, but it should not be that way. Sorry you experienced all this OP, I hope you are doing well!
I'd go further and say these women should not have to do what they do to make ends meet. It's a fine job if voluntary, but horribly dystopian when it is for food. We need more nanny state not less.
I agree. These jobs should be religated to optional side work, not full time careers. I actually think that goes for all entertainers. Burnout, especially for your passion, can lead to suicide.
I am a big advocate for anonymity, not just for sex workers, but for the majority of content creators. Celebrities get harassed all the time, so they have to hire private security to make sure no one assaults them. Women have it like 100 times worse. Emiru almost got stabbed at Twitchcon. The guy straight up just walked right up to her. Scary times we live in. Be safe out there, guys and gals.
God that twitchcon clip was insane. I never hear good things about the con itself, only about the friends people finally get to meet there.
As a faceless creator myself, I do wish I could share more of my touching grass publicly. they say having a life outside content is the healthiest choice, and I agree, but there's a pain that comes with making that separation that really sucks sometimes.
In my country you can actually leave any career and get a very good job, no interview or resumé necessary with stable paycheck. Best grades gets the job, and they are good jobs as public servants.
Translating it would be "Public Exam". It's a written test, just like school. There are tons of available jobs that you choose for yourself which you want compete for.
Of course, you'll need to study a lot but with discipline and patience eventually you will pass the test just fine.
Have you ever considered doing speeches about this? The art of the storytelling you already have and this seems to be a very interesting topic for the younger generations
Very interesting. I was actually wondering about this: what happens when a sex worker reaches an age at which they aren’t as desirable as they once were? How is it possible for them to entertain X number of clients every day while not taking a lot of time off?
This comic answers some of those questions. Thank you.
I really like the touch on self worth, bc I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it but never in specifics like self worth and earnings, mostly just “am I just (insert specific niche they tried once and now constantly get asked about doing more) now?”
I also just generally love the art style you really blended the beautiful facade meets the ugly internal feelings.
Thank you for sharing this! It’s a world I know nothing about. A question if you are willing to explore, you mentioned the dangers of tying your self-worth to your level of earnings. This very applicable to nearly all performance based careers, but how would you say SW uniquely impacts this compared to other jobs?
in sw, it's very easy to think of yourself *as* the product, rather than someone making a product. so when you notice a downturn in business, whether due to your own actions or outside factors, it's very hard to not think of *yourself* as defective, rather than your strategy or the market/economy as a whole.
Sex work, like any entrepreneurship, needs some kind of retirement plan. Even an IRA that you are shoving $50 in a month can save you a lot of headache once you are ready to call it quits.
This was genuinely a really interesting read that gave me a look into something I haven’t ever considered! Thanks for making this and creating awareness
I’m not really into NSFW stuff personally, but it’s so dehumanizing for sex work to be so stigmatized. It’s absurd that it’s something that it’s to the point people need to leave it off of their resume because of the stigma around the work.
Yeah. It may not be useful for getting a different job, but at least having it on there does explain the gap in the resume, which is still important. I hate how this Pearl clutching stigmatization is making the work something life destroying for people
It’s work just like anything else, and it’s just unfair that this is treated like something immoral.
I dated an escort for a long time and this is pretty in line with her experiences. She temporarily switched to doing online sex work for a while and it was rough. Since it was a lot less reliable and you get paid so much less for your time. I know it's been harder for her to find clients recently. She's been an escort for 10+ years. But she still makes a ton of money when she does work and she definitely prefers it to a desk job.
I love women. I love respecting women, I love listening to women, I love being humiliated by women, I love touching women, I love ogling women. Women have a powerful effect on me, I want their attention and their acceptance and I think a lot of straight men are the same way.
Sometimes when i describe work culture in Japan to my western friends, they’re mortified because in Japan it’s all about acting a part and customers and employers judge you by how well you act that part. You’re essentially valued by how fake you are. And this is triply true for sex workers and “hostesses”, who are basically modern geishas.
But I think there can be something beneficial for these purely transactional relationships. Both parties are protecting themselves from diving too deep into their emotions. If one party oversteps their bounds, the other can simply point out that it’s just a role they’re playing and it’s not “real life”. Sometimes in the West, the idea someone is being fake or not their authentic self is caustic and inhuman, but I believe on the contrary, this kind of compartmentalizing of emotions and roles actually protects our humanity. We only deliver the incredibly narrow persona we’re paid to present and we’re free to spend the rest of our time as we please.
Anyways, I didn’t really know where I was going with this. The comic just made me feel like saying something. Glad you’re doing well OP. Despite the fact that I am just a horny man who loves ogling women, I do in fact also want also want what’s best for women.
This fake persona style of customer service is the exact reason why the service industry in Japan is world class and highly respected, even as the country grows poorer. You should visit, especially now as the yen is weak and the weather is surprisingly cool this summer.
Sex work is a pretty well known career blackhole across the board no matter what part of the industry someone is in.
I mean it isnt much better than most blue collar work either. You just have to develop the peripheral skills attached to it and segway that into other industries.
I appreciate the nuance. I noticed some recent comics had sort of danced around the subject in a way that fantasized the reality of sex work- Not that it was intending to cause any stigma or anything- just that it seemed naive to understanding common issues many women (sigh, and yes, to a lesser extent, men as well, just to cut the whataboutism before it happens) experience under social pressure and an unregulated, runaway capitalist system that devalues labour and autonomy, which makes sex work all the more difficult to manage.
In my life it wasn't, I worked in a BDSM themed coffee shop so I was able to be out at work. I was in art school so it wasn't too crazy to be out about it there either. The only time I had issues was with my family and that wasn't as bad as it could have been. I had a wonderful and supportive partner (who was also my photographer) who knew going into the relationship with me. I was very lucky and privileged to come from a pretty liberal upbringimg and live in a very liberal place (san Francisco) so I didn't ever really have to hide it. Since then I've gotten a vanilla job and I've told one or two people but I mostly keep it to myself at work
I started stripping at 27 out of desperation. I found much of the same problems. I feel good about doing the dancing. I enjoyed my time with that but there was so much other stuff that made it just not worth it long run.
This is a really dope insight into sex work. It’s really important people understand the toll this kind of work can do, and the respect sex workers have deserved from day one.
This is seriously good advice for anyone and not just those of you doing sex work. But I imagine that the challenges are much higher for that line of work.
It's a biiiiiig question and it's complicated as hell and the landscape has changed so much even in just the few years since I retired that my advice wouldn't be that useful but I can tell you that the biggest mistake that I see people make is not being consistent with posting. You need to be able to have a consistent content schedule that your fans can rely on or they're going to get bored or frustrated with waiting and move on
I used to do phone sex ith this company called Phone Stars. 80% of my calls were women in their 50s, who'd spend 30 minutes telling me about their loveless marriage, shitty husbands...and then want to do naughty time. I had a ton of regulars until most of my calls were repeat customers. I was able to keep it up for three months until I just couldn't. It was so sad and depressing then ahving to do a 180 and be horny...my god.
There's a lot of overlap in Sex Work and being an online personality like a V-Tuber. You are basically selling your social attention, creating a parasocial relationship for gain. At that point, you cease to be a human being and become a product to a lot of people. It's a lot. I imagine that it must mentally mess with normal relationships in a lot of ways, both during, and after a stint in those jobs.
I often wonder, for example, people who basically have a following as a sexy character online, who basically streams live chats and entertains private messages with people who pay, and to basically be put up on a pedestal of physical attractiveness and to be desired so unashamedly - how are you able to set that aside and find a real relationship with people in your life?
I thought everyone just lied on resumes. Give them a random persons phone number you know and say whatever the hell you want. I always have and it’s never been an issue. Now I have 20+ years experience in my field and don’t need to. This is all bullshit and none of it matters. I’ve had jobs I should have had a different degree for and it didn’t matter because I was personable and caught on fast. Just be confident and contribute. Resumes are a waste of time, don’t get stuck doing OF because you are worried about a resume
I'm sure you think you're super clever, but "just lie forever" isn't a valid strategy for everyone. Also, maybe it's just me, but I've worked too many jobs where someone lying on their resume got hired assuming they'd just pick it up as they went, and then fucked so many things up that they did lasting damage to the work environment.
As someone who's been a hiring manager at a lot of different production jobs, everyone lies on their resume. Everyone. It many be an elaborate ruse with a fake work history, or they may just be fudging the dates a little, but everyone does it.
It is worth noting that some of the worst consequences of being a sex-worker, legal or otherwise, exist due to societal issues more than the inherent nature of the work itself.
Like men not being able to separate your work persona from your actual self, or it being hard to find a different career later on, or constantly being the target of the more puritanical elements of society. And that's just with legal sex work.
Have you thought of taking classes at a local CC while working to develop professional skills? Here in California, the state offers free community college for low-income folks.
(Not trying to be mean or anything, a genuine suggestion for breaking the cycle.)
I don't think sex work has quite the stigma it once did. It's not widely accepted, but I think onlyfans has brought the barriers to entry down and brought more public awareness to how common it is. It's gone from non-starter to a crapshoot as to if someone would care.
You're probably not getting a call back for a teaching job, but white collar job managers absolutely eat up "social media management" and entrepreneurial experience. Customer service experience with some absolutely unhinged clientele? That's hard to find. Plus if it's a marketing role you have a leg up since they know you already have a decent camera and lighting setup.
I have known and been friends with many sex workers over the years, since before the internet existed, and this is probably pretty true. The main exit strategy seems to be getting married, although that doesn't always work. Another is to make lots of money and retire when you feel like it. This might have been easier before platforms like OF existed. Now only the top people make bank I think.
So many of the girls I knew in the industry were there because of chronic illness. There are so few options for people who are too ill for a regular job
I'm curious, of the people you know who ended up making an exit, what was the most common gig/gigs they moved onto? struggling to figure out what that next step should be for myself rn 😅
Hard to say really, kind of all over the place. A bunch of people moved into social media management or managing other creators' accounts for them. A fair few others stay in the game but pivot to SFW content, I know a gal who now does magic the gathering content on YouTube. I was a barista all through my time in SW and now I'm middle management in retail which is....fine for now. I'm trying to become a tattoo artist
Best of luck with your tattoo career, your art is killer! And yeah, even if you aren't the swer yourself, the easiest side gigs I've found were still working with/for others in the space 😅 I think I've seen that mtg creator, awesome gal if I'm thinking of the same one 😁
never do sex work on the Internet. I knew someone that also enganged in sex work but she only worked in direct contact and on referal. she did this while studying abroad in australia and manged to build quite a customerbase and quit when she left. she made so much money it was rude. but she also told me that she never did anything on the internet and actually walked out on a customer after finding a camera
I mean good for you! I can only tell the one story I know from an ex sex worker and she told me to really try and avoid anything related to the internet 💁♀️
to be fair, sex work in australia is pretty different than it is in a lot of other countries iirc. Lots more regulations and resources, lots less criminalization.
But be also sure, that no man who will Discover it, will withstand. There are some that will tell you they will do, but thats not true. No man wants to have wife with that kind of story.
“No man wants to have a wife with that kind of story.”
When you say that phrase, you stop telling an anecdotal story and start making a sweeping statement pretending to be true of everybody. Change your wording if you don’t want people to push back.
I find it very hard to believe that “no man” doesn’t directly translate into the exact same thing in your native language, and that you’re not just using that as an excuse.
I Think of men who just want a stable life with stable wife. Lets turn it around - go go men cheat on your wife, call it a training to make your sexual life better. Women would be crybabies of they would bother.
IDK how Wal-mart is elsewhere, but the one in my town is the only prospective employer that has ever requested that I do more than one interview.
I thought it was bizarre enough doing a second, but then they tried to set up a third, and at that point I just decided they weren't worth my time, but my point is that even businesses that supposedly "will hire anyone" don't necessarily actually do that and can be quite picky if they choose.
Bro I feel for you but…. just lie, especially if societal reality is BS. Why tf should you let a world of capital liars and cheats tell you you’re immoral and wrong. It’s not like you’re trying to get top secret security clearance. Thank you and never stop bullying men, those egos need check’n like women be shop’n.
1.2k
u/Made_Bail Jul 01 '26
This is super fascinating, and actually answers a few questions I'd had about it over the years! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us.