Sex work has meant a lot of things to me. It’s meant sex, of course. Learning to play and have sex with so many different kinds of people is no mean feat. The things I’ve gleaned about techniques, ways of communicating, worlds of kink, and about myself, will stay a formative part of my sexuality for a long time.
And it’s meant work, too. Emotional work, physical work, sexual work, spiritual work, healing work, administrative work, executive work, legal work, community work … I could go on. When you make money a certain way – any way – for a while, you form an attachment to it. I feel attached to sex work as my work. I’m proud to have learnt all the skills I have, to pay my bills the way I’ve needed to.
When I sink in a little deeper, past the history, past the pride, I feel another kind of meaning – the meaning of my early 20s. When I really consider what sex work means to me, I catch a sudden glimpse in my mind’s eye of myself at that age. I was just poised to embark on sex work, much more fresh faced than I realised I was, and about to learn some of the most complicated, bittersweet lessons I’ve ever learnt.
When I started sex work, it was just something I was doing to tide me over while I studied. Yet I surprised myself, or rather, sex work surprised me. The more clients I saw, the more invested I got. The reason was simple – this job worked for me. I could learn and apply a dazzling number of skills, to make money my own way. I started to pour hours and hours into website design, HTML coding, SEO, blog posts, photoshoots, copywriting, domination training, and so much more.
When I started sex work, it was just something I was doing to tide me over while I studied. Yet I surprised myself, or rather, sex work surprised me.
This was my first major lesson of my early 20s – that I was so much more capable than I knew. Not just in terms of working, but in terms of adapting, and thriving on my own terms. Before sex work, I had assumed that I would have to be on someone else’s payroll and and schedule to survive. Through sex work I saw myself as someone who could forge her own world. Confidence blossomed in me for the first time.
Before I knew it, I had spent a few years walking deeper into the role, forgoing other possible life paths to focus on this one. There were twists and turns of good and bad days, but through them all I was convinced sex work could keep working for me. I wanted – needed — to keep feeling confident and capable. So I navigated all the ups and downs, investing in this role the way one might invest in a house – with great intensity and hope for the future.
That house came crumbling down. I can’t pinpoint a specific reason. Partly, I am someone who needs variety. Dressing up in all black lingerie to meet executives at the dungeon, knowing I’d soon be turning our social roles upside down, was once thrilling. After a few years, it took on the feeling of drudgery that any daily commute does.
Partly, increasing criminalisation made the job harder and harder. Once, having two separate phones was enough to feel safe. By the time I was in the middle of my career, surveillance technology had ballooned so that any attempt at using a device felt like a liability. Horror stories about being banned from apps, evictions, and deportation seemed to be circling closer and closer.
Mostly though, I felt like the work was less and less worth the returns. I knew that my time in sex work had been interesting and valuable to me. Yet, due to stigma and criminalisation I couldn’t exactly share my skills and experience with anyone outside of the sex worker community – ie, on my CV. So sex work felt pretty useless. When I looked around my life, what was once a testament to my self worth now seemed like a monument to wasted time.
Due to stigma and criminalisation I couldn’t exactly share my skills and experience with anyone outside of the sex worker community...
This was the second major lesson of my early 20s — my self worth was more vulnerable than I knew, and that might be the end of me. I had put so much of my time, effort and self into sex work, that I started to measure myself by it. Even as I felt increasingly bored, unsafe, and unhappy, I clung on increasingly hard to the vision of myself as someone who would succeed at this. Because underneath it all, I needed a source of that confidence that had profoundly touched me, right at the start. The source of my self worth became the source of my despondency.
It was only when my despondency became my daily routine that I had to really look at myself. There was no one else telling me that my self worth was dictated by sex work. There was certainly no one telling me that losing my source of self worth should mean losing my happiness. I started to accept that sex work was just one means to embracing my skills. My losses in sex work were just losses, not a permanent mark on me. Jobs change, people change – I didn’t have to cling on to one idea of myself. Just as sex work once blossomed confidence in me, it now bloomed into an easygoing attitude I’d never had before.
I took a step back, but not fully away. This isn’t to say sex work wasn’t my main source of income. It just wasn’t the cornerstone of my life anymore. I pursued other interests, some of which I’d discovered through sex work, and others that had nothing to do with it. Some were dead ends, and some were promising. I succeeded a lot more, and failed a lot more. I found that the more I relinquished my control on my life, the more difficult and bittersweet things seemed to feel. At the same time, the more opportunities and people seemed to flow my way; the more paths seemed to open up. Soon enough, I found myself on the path I’m currently on. This is a rich and fulfilling path comprised of many interlocking paths, of which sex work is just one.
This has been the third and ongoing lesson of my 20s – to move with the flow of life. Perhaps if I’d entered a more vanilla, stable job at 20, I would have stayed on the same path for the rest of my life. Through the ups and downs of sex work, I’ve learnt the art of letting life go, and seeing what comes to me.
Learning self worth, learning that you’re not dictated by that self-worth, and learning to accept life as it is are lessons every human being learns on their journey through life. Some learn it from books, others learn it from their families. I learnt my formative lessons through sex work, and so for me, sex work is intertwined with my growth as a woman in this world. As I write this, I’m acutely aware that many social forces and lawmakers consider sex work to be meaningless, or actively detrimental, to sex workers’ lives. But the profound lessons of sex work will always hold deep meaning for me.
Are you a sex worker with a story, opinion, news, or tips to share? We'd love to hear from you!
We started the tryst.link sex worker blog to help amplify those who aren't handed the mic and bring attention to the issues ya'll care about the most. Got a tale to tell? 👇☂️✨
