@Bigsam may have been here

We’ve come a few teeny steps forward on the stigma-front (to all the SW activists, thank you friends you’re so brave and so excellent, I wish I was brave too but I’m so fucking tired) but it feels like the only SWers that some of society is willing to accept are a niche bunch: ritch bitches.

On top of the standard emotional labor that comes with sex work, as a fat sex worker I’m often put in a position to help clients sort through their fatphobia as it relates to my own body.

Whenever my job is mentioned in newspapers, blogs, or magazines, the same tropes tend to pop up: moral panic, drug abuse, violence. Journalists quote us selectively, so that it sounds as if we’re living out the sex-negative, whorephobic stereotypes the public are used to consuming.

The lives of 19th century women are known to us today mainly through their letters and writing, but also through the then new (black-and-white) portrait photography, and the vivid paintings, pastels and watercolours of impressionist artists.

Clinical psychologist and sex therapist Dr. David Ley has long been critical of the sex addiction framework, and wrote the book The Myth of Sex Addiction to explain why. I sat down with him to explore why sex addiction is a problematic concept, and how it contributes to whorephobia.