Youth

But for those whose profession falls into the category of sex work, the social distancing measures in place to combat COVID 19 now mean no more visiting clients, no more escorting, no more sex, and therefore, for many, no more income. We’re all missing the touch of other humans, but when skin-on-skin is a stream of income the social distancing measures have a whole other, decidedly more poverty-inducing ramification.

Obviously, this disappearing income applies globally to millions of independent contractors not just those in sex work, but for sex workers, the job’s associated (if by now wildly outdated) stigma, means that it’s not as easy to march into the local unemployment office to cross the is and dot the ts and walk out one COVID crisis payment richer.

The powers that be aren’t traditionally fans of people who admit to sex work and as Kate McGrew, the articulate and softly spoken Director of the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland, (who took time out of a busy schedule of completing a book manuscript to chat to us), explains, though workers are entitled to claim, they’re wary of the source.

“Everyone is so nervous and distrustful and wary of the government not passing information amongst each other, so it’s been very challenging to get people to apply. Nobody has said “sex workers can avail of this” but on the form, they also don’t explicitly ask about your work, they just ask are you out of work. It just goes to show that people [in the industry] feel the negative stigma, and it’s been very difficult encouraging people to apply for these payments.”

By definition, sex work covers a multitude of job titles and activities, including, but not limited to street in-person work, indoor in-person work (escort services, brothel work, massage parlour-related work), phone sex operation, exotic dancing, lap dancing, pornographic film performing, nude peepshow performing, webcam modelling, and online sex work. Consumers are no strangers to online sex work, some of you will admit to having used webcam models or at the very least some manner of online porn, and those who haven’t (or claim not to), have, at the very least, been confronted with cam spam pop-us when trying to stream a film online. Amateur porn has been widespread for years but the last two years have seen an exponential rise in subscription-based online work, especially the likes of OnlyFans, (described as Patreon for sex workers), which has been said to have put a lot of control and agency back in the hands of the workers themselves. [Read The Youth Labs insight on OnlyFans inexorable rise from 2019 here]

We spoke to Hope Adventure, a New York-based exotic dancer whose thriving Brooklyn strip club Pumps was closed in March due to COVID but she was thankfully able to fall back on OnlyFans having started an account the year before on a whim. “Since the onset of COVID 19 and my club shut down in March, I was lucky enough to have had an OnlyFans, I didn’t have to learn how to use it to start making money, I was able to pour all my energy into it and make more money on it than I’ve ever previously made on the site.”

That said, Hope misses her club work and the camaraderie with her colleagues not to mention clients. But in the absence of this, she’s taken to her online community with a renewed vigour and commitment. Hope is part of a growing number of women who leverage their online presence on Instagram to lead followers hungry for more explicit content to their OnlyFans pages. Hope’s brand of engagement on her Instagram (@bringmommahervodka) is refreshingly honest and infectiously positive, fusing charming self-deprecation with overt sexuality for a litany of IG stories that keep you guessing, laughing and always tapping in for more.

Looking at the ease with which so many sex workers have pivoted to video, and the reported 75% surge in uptake of OnlyFans accounts since COVID 19, you’d be forgiven for wondering why there’s an issue at all for sex workers in the wake of the virus.

Kate tells us, “Our work at SWAI since COVID has been absorbed by trying to help people get online, trying to help people pay for COVID emergency payments and trying to get money to them from our crowdfunded hardship fund.” Why can’t they all just go online to supplement their income? We asked why this apparent no-brainer was not the case across the board, and the answer made so much sense we were surprised we were blind to it from the start. As Kate McGrew explained: “Something that people might be surprised about, is that for a lot of workers, they’re more comfortable with in-person full-service work, than they are with creating content.”

“There are two main reasons for this. A big one is anonymity; when you create content there’s no way for you to have control of that content, you can watermark your pics and things like this. But this is such a new arena that it’s the wild west right now.”

Kate tells a sobering tale highlighting the lack of protection provided by sites themselves and subsequently by the law.

“We’re supporting a very young woman who was pressured by a guy when she was underage to send nudes, and then he did revenge porn on her. We went to the police with her and they said it's your fault you shouldn't have given them to him. She was underage so this should have been a crime on the man's part, technically procuring child pornography. So there's very little security and safety for workers. These online platforms, they really need to get it together. People can work wearing a mask but they feel they wouldn't make enough money wearing a mask the whole time and also so workers can still be recognised by tattoos and other bodily features.”

The second, and very understandable one is inhibition related. It may sound counterintuitive to the layperson to conflate inhibition and sex work, but that’s a fairly reductive view when you examine the situation more closely.

As Kate explains: “Even for myself when I'm doing full-service in-person work I still have to look good for one person, when you put this content out you're essentially performing for who-knows-how-many people!” This is entirely relatable and makes more sense, certainly from the female perspective. Outside the realm of sex work, you might choose to have sex with someone, but that happens in a moment, you don’t have to examine the way your body looks when you bend a certain way or look at yourself in a situation previously only experienced first person. Seeing this on camera, the potential for discomfort to the uninitiated is boundless. To put it plainly, gettin’ the ride is one thing, filming the ride, however, is quite another.

Kate continued: “Gratefully, I’ve had to take a very casual attitude as I’ve started camming for these months but I really understand why, for some people, that is daunting and even though we have to talk about sex work in order for people to understand and improve our situation, sex is still a private and personal thing and, for many, even if it’s impersonal in a work situation, it’s still private. I mean you’re naked, and it’s still very intimate. So, for many people, they’re far more comfortable with full-service in-person work as opposed to letting the whole world see them naked; that’s a very different thing.”

“I myself am very low maintenance as a cam worker but I think people are overwhelmed learning a different platform, with a new, exponentially huge increased amount of workers in the market to compete with so it’s all these kinds of things. And some people just don’t have the technical resources to do this, for example, someone working in the street might not have access to a laptop or a reliable internet connection, so it’s just not a reality for them.”

Kate’s sex work had previously been a mixture of online and in-person, but that has been driven strictly online in the last month.

“Before COVID, I would have done phone and video previously myself, but now obviously that’s only what I’m doing. And while we’re trying to encourage girls by saying you can do all kinds of things, you can be creative, you can do very little, I know a lot of people who aren’t very comfortable with sex talk, so the phones wouldn’t suit them either.”

“I’m a performer so it comes naturally, but I understand people’s hesitancy. We’re concerned about fellow sex workers in the wake of this, but we can’t be pushing them into an arena of sex work that makes them uncomfortable just because we’re ok with it.” This creates a frustrating catch 22 for less camera and phone shy workers, as though they’re trying to help, the decision and line on comfort lies within each individual and cannot be questioned.

While Kate was not new to online work, IrishJezebel, an ebullient and very open sex worker from Belfast, had previously only been a strictly in-person worker, now found herself thrust out of necessity into the world of camming and OnlyFans. We found her on Twitter where she makes no attempt to hide her face like many others who work strictly in person.

She opens by telling us why she’s very open about what she does, explaining that a bad situation with a stalker a number of years ago led to her being outed against her will, having her children harassed and ultimately having a breakdown, led her to come out on Twitter as a sex worker in the hope that the more vocal she was the safer she was, a theory that has proven true so far. “It disempowered anyone else from having anything over me, it’s our silence and shame that gives people leverage to abuse, but once you’re out, what can they do?”

Since COVID came to town, she immediately cast aside any previous inhibitions and pushed herself into the online world, something she’d only toyed with previously but always behind the barrier of “Ah, I’d only do that if I’d hit the gym for six months/had lost 2 stone” she says in a playful and relatable way.

That luxury of waiting was taken away with the onset of the virus and it was sink-or-swim. And swim she did into camming, skype calls and OnlyFans, indeed we spoke just after Skype call and she’d been very busy for the last two weeks.

Jezebel’s attitude to the work and specifically the first camera experiences is one that many can empathise with beyond the realm of sex work.

“I’d be seeing myself on camera and I’m looking at my rolls of fat thinking “god” and then the comments are popping up saying, “oh my god you’re amazing you’re so sexy”, she says laughing. I’ve had to get used to that and I’d never have done this unless I’d been forced to be in this situation, and now I’m finding it’s quite good and has me in a good headspace.”

She points out that she now realises customers don’t give a sh!te about rolls of fat and it’s women themselves who are hardest on their appearance. A tale as old as time that seems to traverse all professions.

Jezebel is a breath of fresh Belfast air to talk to and in between lampooning herself she explains the difference between her pre COVID life and her current situation.

“It’s different right now because I’m camming and I know I’ll be home during the day. Fair enough, the money isn’t anything like in person but I’m not getting Ubers everywhere, I can get my food in for the week, I just feel a bit grounded at the minute with it.”

As with any industry, everyone’s experience is different, and as Kate has outlined, there are many for whom pivoting online is not an option and for various reasons are hesitant about accessing the COVID payment.

That’s where the SWAI Hardship fund comes into play, a crowdfunding platform seeking to assist the most vulnerable and impoverished sex workers in the wake of COVID 19.

Kate explains: “We’ve been trying to give the fund to whoever we can, we can give them say €100 and what’s that, a shopping trip or two, we’re just doing what we can.”

The sex workers we spoke to were assured, articulate and resourceful professionals, trying to make their way in a global existential crisis, a bit like the rest of us really.

The current crisis has caused a seismic shift in how the sex work industry is doing its work, similar to all industries, and as has been seen in some trades, but not all, there appears to be a sense of community care in the more well off trying to take care of the lesser so.

It’s business as usual for sex work, as an industry that has always dealt with its challenges head-on and moved with the times to adapt to new circumstances and landscapes. Women in the industry have been the drivers of this change and they continue to commodify online platforms and maximise their situations.

Jezebel said it best when she said: “I feel sorry for people who buy into a date patriarchal belief system that thinks a woman who’s liberated enough to do this kind of work should feel shame. It’s a silly way of thinking”

If you would like to donate to the SWAI Hardship fund, click here.

Hope Adventure is providing free nude content for frontline workers during the COVID 19 crisis. If you are a frontline worker and would like to avail of this, contact her here.

To hear more about SWAI’s work in the community and the legal rights of Sex Workers follow them on Twitter here or contact them on 085-8249305 for non-judgemental, advice or support.

Follow Irish Jezebel on Twitter here and Kate McGrew here

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