@anojatl may have been here

We’re not different from you. We’re just doing a job, the same way you are. Any kind of person could be a sex worker. You probably know more sex workers than you think you do.

Personally, I don’t get offended by genuine curiosity, even if the question is annoying or cliché. However, when someone asks me, “What’s the craziest thing you’ve done?” my response is usually a pretty dramatic and dismissive eye roll.

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.

Sex-negativity and whorephobia are the societal norm, and it’s very unusual to be in a relationship with someone who can handle my job without doing some serious work on themselves first.