I thought I’d had a plenitude of sexual experience when I started—I... had a sex blog where I would write about OKCupid and Craigslist hookups—but most of those encounters were things I was hazing myself through.
What’s it like starting out now, when ads have shifted from the back pages of the local paper to almost exclusively online? When everyone talks about being ‘on brand’ and a social media presence is essential?
I am a New York City-based dominatrix and cultural activist. I started doing BDSM professionally in 2016 after finding a dungeon on craigslist (those were the days) and then mostly did online work for a year or two while I finished college before transitioning to full-time in-person BDSM.
I think we live in a world that hates poor people and sensationalizes sex in a really nasty way. I feel that ideology constantly harms sex workers and excludes us from social liberation movements by objectifying our labor while rejecting our existence in the same breath.
I started full service work in 2018 as a way to supplement my student loans and feed my desires to just buy things. I had come out as trans in 2017 and found that it had become shockingly difficult to get hired in any civie job