#whorearchy

[thecaffeinatedwhore]

Sex Work Has A Class Problem

Achievement is equated with cash flow, but promiscuity is shunned.

An interesting breakdown of the TER rating scheme, laid out in a way I’d never seen before: 

“The highest score a provider can receive is a 7, unless they: 1) kiss with tongue 2) offer oral without a condom 3) are bisexual 4) offer anal sex, or 5) participate with more than one man (assuming that the client is a man) at the same time. For each service, a provider can earn one point. In some cases, earning a full 10 points is impossible without crossing personal boundaries, and often confusing when the provider doesn’t identify as a cis woman; furthermore, ratings are not selected by clients, but by TER administrators who read a client’s description of the meeting.

That means that a less verbose client may have had a 10/10 meeting, but the TER staff (who are anonymous, but presumably all straight men) may read it as a 7/10 experience, or some lower designation. For a provider who isn’t a cis woman, it’s easy to imagine that higher ratings are regularly unattainable under this specific male gaze, and especially in a place where ads for transgender sex workers are listed separately under a “Transsexual” category (here and on Eros). As a result of this unpredictable rating system, many high-class providers have removed their listings from TER or adopted a “no review” policy, which effectively bans you from advertising on the site. For those providers, it’s no big deal; for survival sex workers, it’s self-destruction.”

– From, Sex Work Has a Class Problem, Emily Smith.

[hailblackmamba-blog]

Hierarchy Explained

Stop bitching about what people are doing/thinking/controlling at the top

&

Get to the top.

[prae-arx-pacis]

There is a sex worker who is part of at least one of the SW Facebook communities I follow of FB who really bothers me.

She cannot seem to make a post without referring to herself as “very upscale” or “high-end” in her posts. She does FBSM and tantric healing stuff I won't pretend to understand.

I am all for being self confident and being into yourself but this is a community where sex workers regularly discuss feelings of lack of worth based on their pricing, having specials, etc, and SWs who identify as addicts openly discuss struggling because they spent rent on drugs, and people talk about having to do calls that make them feel violated to feed themselves.

We also are a community that celebrates each other’s gratitudes, successes, and good months.

But everytime this particular member posts, it’s something like, “As a very high end worker….” (this is never phrased as “as a very privileged worker, btw, in case anyone is wondering, though this is a skinny white woman who named herself as an Egyptian goddess as a stripper)

Anyway, she posted today, and I was reading through the post, waiting for her to tell us how fancy she is, surrounded by all the posts about people making rent…

She told a story about meeting a sex therapist and talking to her, and THE WHOLE STORY WAS A LEAD UP TO HER QUOTING THE SEX THERAPIST CALLING HER AN "EXTRAORDINARY WOMAN.”

She just wanted to let us know that a sex therapist thinks she’s extraordinary. Good for you and your full body tantric healing.

Now back to our regularly scheduled ho-ing.

[mashingitlikegailthesnail-blog]

"I'd be good at being an escort but only if I was, like, REALLY high end" - every civilian woman ever

[mashingitlikegailthesnail-blog]

Called to apply for a job, the owner got pissy when I told her I referred to my old work as a parlour, felt the need to emphasise that they were NOT a parlour bcuz they were "boutique" & "upmarket". Like, you provide incalls with multiple workers using the same venue, a brothel is a brothel. What exactly is the big difference????

[tartfuldodger]

[leighalanna]

I thought that “Top Ten Escort Tips” post going around was trash that couldn’t get any worse, and then I saw someone “refuting” it ending with “how do you think they got all that money in the first place? clean yourself up and raise your prices!” 

and I just wanted to add that that’s stellar, bankable advice, and when you’ve done that, you should just go out to your personal orchard and clip some pocket change off of your money tree, and try to book a rocketship back to earth, since whatever fucking delightful planet you’re living on doesn’t need your obnoxious ass. 

[leighalanna]

what do u think of people who are forced into sex work vs. ppl who sugar for new shoes

I think that you’re weird and ill-informed for seeing these two groups as a) somehow inherently in opposition with one another and b) two distinct groups with fixed identities. 

The lie that people either fall into a group of privileged, wealthy side-gig sex workers and people being forced to trade sex (and can only ever be one of those things) is a lie that only serves the people who persecute sex workers. Law enforcement benefits from that lie — they can arrest and assault us without consequence, they can take our money and our earning power ‘for our own good’, and abolitionists can cement their lucrative, decades-long careers on the bases of this lie.  

More importantly though, let’s stipulate for a second that all sex workers look like one, and only one of those two types of workers you’ve conjured up for this question.  Here’s the thing: both of these groups are best served by the same legal policies, the same social justice, the same push for the rights and freedoms of people to trade sex.  People being exploited and coerced in the sex trades are even more harmed by criminalization and whorephobia than wealthy dilettante workers, but both are harmed by them, and both benefit from decrim and the eradication of cultural stigma.  The notion that decrim is something that helps the privileged and undermines the oppressed is ridiculous, and again, a calculated lie that benefits only those that make their money from the arrest of sex workers.