On Resentment and Misplaced Envy
I wrote a thing. It’s targeted toward civilians, but I’d love to know if this resonates with any workers outside my own experience. Thinking of changing the narrative voice from second person, but it’s how I speak so it’s the easiest way to get my thoughts down. First time writing anything other than drunken, sloppy erotica in years so be gentle, but I welcome all constructive thoughts and criticism!
Many sex workers keep their jobs under wraps not only for legal reasons, but for social reasons. There's the obvious threat of the second waver or bro who "doesn't pay for strange, no offense", but one of the worst social repercussions of systemic sex worker silencing is unavoidable resentment by friends, "allies" and others who love you dearly. Due to the dichotomous third wave paradigm of the trafficking victim vs the wealthy, independent and oh so empowered sex goddess, sex workers constantly have to keep up a facade of financial and emotional perfection. We're expected to be both in love with our work and roll around in piles of cash on the floor of our swanky east village apartment. When I was doing amateur porn, I had a friend who was pretty successful but she lived on the road. When she stayed at my place for a few days, my partner at the time overheard her talking on the phone. She was exaggerating the amount of clips we were shooting and lying about booking fetish sessions she didn't have. At this point she was already making a decent amount of money, but I immediately understood why she still felt the need to embellish her success. If you're not successful, then you're not happy. If you're not happy, then you don't fit our image of "empowered sex worker", therefore you must fit the other image of "sex worker".
It becomes very difficult to open up about anything work related to even the most well meaning of friends, because you're constantly putting up a front to keep people from treating you like a victim. On the other hand those same well-meaning people can quickly become very resentful of your flexible hours and their own fabrication of your massive income. It's a constant balancing act between not appearing too poor or too wealthy. Many sex workers feel especially guilty about being in a poor financial situation because they've both internalized the idea that they should always have money, and others' thoughts and behaviors constantly reinforce it. This means that we're less likely to reach out for help if we're in a bind and we're also less likely to receive it. Once your average third waver or "sex positive" person unlearns their more overt whorephobic sentiments, they'll settle into a comfortable lull where they forget (or just don't think about) the many risks and disadvantages that come along with your job. That's when the feeling of resentment slowly starts to rear its ugly head. It's almost like every person who doesn't subscribe to the idea of "I could never do that!" ends up with the notion "well I could do that." Expect double the resentment if the person is more conventionally attractive than you. Your work is no longer an evolving business that requires time, dedication, amazing social skills, physical labor, extra safety precaution and constant upkeep, but merely you reaping the rewards of being able to cross that nasty, nasty line of "selling your body". People become so fixated on the fantasy of overcoming the stigma and engaging in sex work for the first time, that they forget it's actual, constant work. It's work that requires real mental and physical labor to be successful. It's work that carries risks that one will never truly understand unless they've lived it. And for survival sex workers like me, it's work that is our only option.
