@aotdiamond 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.

Whether you smell good. Whether you’re freshly shaved. Whether you’ve bothered to put on a clean shirt. When you make an effort, your worker knows you’re investing more than just money into the encounter - that you see the meeting as a special occasion.

One of the best things about getting on social media as an out sex worker was seeing other queer, gender nonconforming, trans, gay as heck people in this industry.

Setting up business as an independent sex worker means putting a lot of information about ourselves online: our photos, our carefully-written advertising text, and our working names. This content is valuable because it brings in clients (and income).

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.