Thread by @CharlotteOU812

THREAD

I don’t need saving...but thanks anyway.

I guess.

I don’t need saving from sex work.

I choose sex work.

Because I choose the job best suited to my needs.

That’s my right as a human being. To choose my job, right?

I am a sex worker by choice.

And I know you’re going to hate to hear this.

But so are MOST workers

I’m not going to talk about a minority of trafficked workers where there is absolutely NO definitive data or studies on their existence or possible struggle. Because I’m no more qualified than anyone else to discuss the legitimacy of this claim.

But I am qualified to talk about women working by choice.

And if you give me a moment I’m going to explain why you’re wrong about us.

Yes, even if you see workers or support workers.

You still have internal stigma so this feed is for you too.

Society likes to reduce all female indentifying sex workers to one single stereotype.

Welcome to my stereotype

Ladies and Gentlemen....

meet The Victim!

This is what society wants to tell us most accurately describes a female identifying sexworker.

Broken, dejected, isolated victim.

“Bad men use me and degrade me for their own selfish pleasure”

poor me.

But wait. What about this sex worker?

Does he look like a victim to you?

I know the suit is a little unfair. I can put him in a tank top and shorts, in a grimy street with his head in his hands too. But I’m pretty sure he still won’t look like a victim of sex work

Ask yourself this. Do you imagine that straight male sex workers have agency and body autonomy? Do you imagine that straight male sex workers are victims of sex work? When you consider industry victims do you ever think of them?

Probably not.

So yeah, great.

My vagina makes me a victim while Mr Hotness over here has got it wired for sound.

I mean women actually pay him for sex! How awesome is that right?

But me, and all my sisters ( and a big shout out to my beautiful WOC sisters and my incredible and stunning trans sisters) who are also paid for sex.

We are victims. We are broken. We are used.

As my darling 98 year old grandmother used to say...

What a crock of shit!

If I had a buck for how many clients have said to me,

“I’d love to do your job.”

I’d be retired now, living on St Bart’s with David Beckham bringing me my Gin Slings while dressed in a thong.

Admit it. If you’re a guy, at least once in your adult life you’ve thought that being a male escort might be fun.

Yes you have...don’t lie.

And never at any point have you EVER thought of straight male escorts as victims that need saving.

And what about gay male escorts? Do you consider them victims? Think about it? Do you think we need to be saving gay males escorts?
What? The thought never entered your head?

How strange...

So the problem is not that I sell sex. Because hey, that’s an awesome job right? A job you wouldn’t mind doing, if you could. You said so yourself.

The problem with me being a sex worker and why I would need saving from this terrible and deplorable state...is that
I’m a woman.

Why is this so?

Society narrative decrees;

Men don’t need saving from sex work because women are nice and awesome to have sex with, but women DO need saving because men are bad, violent, gross and disgusting to have sex with.

This makes no sense. Women have sex with men every day. And for the most part the ones who do it for free don’t find guys THAT bad.

Yet, women who are PAID for sex are victims. If not by trafficking, then by their low self esteem, isolation and loose morals.

Yeah...when I explain it like that. It does seem pretty dumb, right?

Let’s go even further down this rabbit hole. 🐰

Let’s explore the men are bad and women are good excuse.

I have the privilege of knowing many male escorts and the even greater privilege of calling some of them dear friends.

And boy, when the drinks flow and the shoes are kicked off some of my straight male sex worker friends have some hideous stories to tell about female clients who were violent, abusive, manipulative, controlling, stalking, and cruel.

One feared for his life when a client stalked him. Feared for his LIFE
Another was locked inside a clients house and couldn’t get out
And I’m not even gonna touch on the stories of constantly overstepping boundaries, bad hygiene, hideous breath and general gross behaviour.

So your excuse that male sex workers just float around on a sea of sex honey while women workers are abused by hateful dirty old men who beat us, isn’t going to fly.

(Hey, a sea of sex honey does sound fun though, doesn’t it?)

So why are women considered victims in sex work and men are not?

Despite the fact that are experiences within this work frame are pretty much the same, because an asshole is an asshole regardless of gender.

The truth is

What pisses society off about female sex workers;

Is that,

We are women who do not follow the rules.

Think about if for one second. Let that thought really sink in.

Women who do sex work...are women who do not follow the rules.

We spit on your rules. The rules of your society. The rules that you set out for women. We don’t just spit on them.

We set them on fire.

We are rule breakers. We are rebels. We are outliers.

We exist on the outside of your society, looking in.

We are on the other side of the looking glass.

And we CHOOSE to be there.

The rules for women in case you didn’t know is that we have to belong to a man.
Just one.
And that man, owns our body. It’s his.
Not ours. HIS
He has sex with us. No one else.
That’s a good girl.

That’s the aim for all womenkind.

And that if a woman has sex with lots of men, she’s a slut.
She’s worthless.

And if she charges for it, she worse.
She’s a whore

And do you know where this ridiculous rule came from?
From men who wanted to control women’s choices
And they called called this scam
Religion

And do you know why the many religions hated women who did sex work?

Because the women who are always resistant to indoctrination, the ones who independently have money and control over their lives and are not interested in being powerless breeding mares for men are, yep you guessed it.
Sex workers

So you make up a decree that God hates sex workers. And when in one religion, you decide to adopt a Nazarene politician as a figure head who had an Ethel Kennedy by his side 2000 years ago. You discredit her work entirely, and you label her a whore.

Because this Nazarene politician didn’t have a problem with sex workers, in fact he often ate and laughed and joked with them. He often publicly defended them, and the gays too. But twist his words religion did and now you think women who do sex work are less than.

But the rot goes even deeper than this. Even deeper than a gigantic conspiracy to discredit independent women and reduce us to victims so we will heel to a massive cult

It’s not so much that we fuck men for money.
Remember you don’t mind guys doing it.

It’s really this rules thing.

Women who do sex work break the rules. We don’t follow the rules.

And somehow women not following rules makes a lot of men angry.

Other examples of not following rules,
Not shaving legs or armpits.
Being a lesbian.
Being angry.
Having an opinion.
Being a politician.
Not giving a fuck what men think of us.

So we are rule breakers.
We fuck lots of men for money.
And people are furious about that.
Because we probably break more rules than they do
Than they ever could, than they ever will.
More than they could ever dream of.

But society doesn’t articulate that rage against sex workers.
You don’t admit that’s where the anger originated. Where the judgement comes in.
No you fall back on your indoctrination that women who have sex with lots of different men are dirty and sinful.

And before you all jump in and say you don’t. Men out there.
You do.
You know why?
Because you are the same ones who say you could never “allow” your girlfriend or wife to do sex work and you can’t understand how our boyfriends and husbands do.

Because you are indoctrinated to believe a vagina is meant for only one penis. You are indoctrinated to believe your female partner belongs to you. You will not ‘share’ her vagina with other men.
And you think this thought is okay? That this control is okay?

Men out there who still need convincing of how ludicrously unfair this is. Imagine further. What if you and I started dating tomorrow, would you expect me to give up sex work?

Or would you be fine with me having sex with 6 different men every week?

Yeah....

Now let’s turn this around, what if we were dating and YOU were the sex worker having sex with 6 different fun and sexy women every week...and they were paying you for it?

Paying you for it. Like really good money. But it’s just work. But it’s just a job. A fun job.

Would I own your penis? Of course not.
Even bigger question.
Would that make you worthless and dirty? Would that make you less of a man. Would it make you less worthy of my love and commitment? Would I be allowed to shame and ridicule you for it?

Didn’t think so...
Not only are women not allowed to own their own bodies, or make decisions based on what they can and can’t do with their bodies. But women are not allowed the economic freedom that comes with this. Here’s why.

Do you know why governments want to keep sex work illegal? Do you know why they want to invent laws to control sex workers and to stop them advertising and making money?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s not to protect us.

Governments don’t give a crap about protecting sex workers. They couldn’t care less. You need proof?

Keeping sex work illegal in so many countries makes sex work MORE violent. It exposes workers to less favourable conditions, more chance of harm and murder. It puts workers in danger of police brutality. It makes trafficking easier. And government know this. FACT

So why do governments insist on making sex work illegal when it’s proven to make sexwork more dangerous?

Money. Of course it’s about money. What isn’t?

Sex workers make cash money. Cash is hard to tax. Even in legal sex work countries, most businesses that run on cash only declare some of their earnings.
Think about the hundreds of thousands of sex workers in the US. That’s a lot of cash. Untaxable cash

I guarantee you there is no other industry world wide (apart from drugs) where there is so much cash being passed through hands.
And the government can’t get its cut. And that’s bad. So sex work is bad for governments.

Which is why real slavery, like sweat shops and domestic slavery and farm slavery is ignored by governments, those forms of slavery are usually run by businesses, BIG businesses that pay....you guessed it. TAX

So governments don’t support sex workers because they can’t make money from them, of course they can’t say that. That would make them look bad, and heartless so how can they avoid this?
And how can they avoid you, Clueless Joe from working that out?

Gosh, you’re getting good at this now. That’s right.
By stigmatising sex work and encouraging the press to paint us as sub human.
And the muggles just lap it up.
You believe it.

You see you already believe that women’s bodies belong to men because religion has taught you that for thousands of years. You already believe that if a woman has sex with more than one man she’s a slut.
And surely all women want to only belong to one man right?

So it’s really easy for governments to use that already established myth to make you believe that trafficking exists on an enormous scale. A scale large enough to warrant SESTA/FOSTA and a bunch of other bullshit laws designed for one thing only.

To make sure sex workers stop making money that the government can’t take a slice of.

Church’s and governments with the aid of the media over the last 2000 years have conspired against female sex workers because they cannot control us any other way. They have labelled us morally repugnant victims so as to convince you that they are right in harming us.

Dont save me from my job.

I want to stay out here with the brave. The outliers, the cowboys.

I choose to think for myself.

But do me this one favour.

Stop buying the victim rhetoric, because not only is it not true. Not only does it insult your intelligence.
It’s a scam.

You have subscribed to a bunch of misogynistic lies about women, our role in society, and our right to control our own bodies and lives.
And yes some women believe this crap too. It’s called brainwashing.
Step away from the Kool Aid guys.

Stop believing everything you’re told, stop buying that women are victims, stop buying that sex work is a vile and degrading job (remember you only think that about women who do this job, not men) stop believing that the measure of a women is through male validation.

Stop believing that governments make any decisions based on anything but amassing more and more money and power and start to understand that everyone has a right over their own body and what they choose to do with it. Everyone
I already know all this. And I’m a sex worker.

You know, the funny thing is.

When all is said and done. When I look at the lies society expects you to swallow, and the ignorance you blindly swim in.

From where I’m standing, it’s not me that needs saving...

It’s you.

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