When you think of September, what comes to mind? Children returning to school? Apple cider in the markets? Autumn colors? New beginnings?
What about abstaining from porn and masturbation?
That’s a new September tradition that recently formed subreddit, r/NoSimpSeptember, is hoping to make a reality. The group of now more than 2,300 members encourages men to avoid online interaction with women—particularly with online sex workers and porn performers.
The following is an edited transcript of a brief talk I gave as part of the Women of Sex Tech Virtual Conference given on May 2, 2020.
I’m an online sex worker; I’ve been doing this work for the last five years. If you’re unfamiliar with sex work— and in particular if you’re unfamiliar with online sex work— it is an umbrella terms that covers any erotic performances or interactions that are sold and mediated online. This includes sexting, selling nudes, porn, phone sex, amateur clip making, sexual Skype sessions, and more.
As digitally mediated erotic
labor, online sex work sits at the intersection of tech, intimacy, and
business: it’s quite literally the commodification of virtual intimacy and
sexual gratification. It’s the business of pleasure.
Jessie Sage is not my legal name. Shocking, right? It is, however, my public identity. At this point, so many of my interactions happen through this name that it often feels more natural to me than my legal one. As someone who works in and covers the adult industry, it is the name under which everything I do related to sex work and sex work advocacy falls: my writing, my podcast, my profiles, my activist work, etc.
There are very obvious reasons for this. Sex work is highly stigmatized. And even for those who have only done legal sex work, like myself, there can still be dire consequences to being connected to the sex industry: from social ostracization, to loss of vanilla jobs, to custody battles, to threats of (or actual) violence.
It is no wonder then that nearly everyone who works in my community works under a pseudonym. In a world in which a Google search that links your name to porn can shut down your bank account or prevent you from crossing international borders, it only makes sense to not link your legal identity to your sex work.
The last couple weeks have been rough for sex workers on the internet. Adult content creators are reporting that their porn videos are disappearing out of Google Drive; Microsoft has announced that they will prohibit profanity and nudity on Skype; Patreon has changed its terms of service to exclude pornography; Facebook is censoring events that are related to sex – including even sex ed by refusing to allow for paid promotion (I recently gave a Dirty Talk workshop for a Pittsburgh based sex-positive sex education collective, and their ads were rejected); Twitter is shadowbanning sex workers at alarming rates; and several platforms related to erotic services have shut down entirely: Craigstlist personal ads, several sub-Reddits, The Erotic Review, MyRedBook, CityVibe, Providingsupport, to name a few.
Much of this is a reaction to the passage of FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) in the House, and SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) in the Senate. These bills are a response to the government’s inability to prosecute trafficking cases against the online classifieds site Backpage (a competitor to Craiglist known for being more hospitable to sex workers like those from Swallow Salon). These bills would amend Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act of 1996, holding websites liable for content posted by 3rd parties and making it easy for plaintiffs and state attorney generals to sue websites that “knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking” (a phrase that the bill does not clearly define and often seems to conflate will prostitution more generally). In other words, once these bills are signed into law, Craigslist, for example, could be sued because of something that a user posts, if an attorney general from any of the 50 states decides to interpret it as vaguely related to sex trafficking. And, many proponents of FOSTA/SESTA seem to be indicating that they view all sex work as equatable to sex trafficking. more...
I was recently asked to run a “Sex School” seminar on dirty talk at a sex club in Toronto. This invitation came by way of Twitter, in large part because of the profile I maintain in part to advertise my phone sex services. Toronto is half a day’s drive from where I live, so I drove up on the morning of the event. For this reason, I primped at home beforehand, which included full makeup appropriate for the role I was playing as sexpert at a club (read: heavy eyeliner and fake eyelashes – sexy for the club, a bit over the top for daylight).
What I didn’t anticipate was the way that my appearance (in conjunction with my role as a paid speaker in a sex club) was going to read to the Border Patrol. Indeed, while they didn’t say it explicitly, they flagged me as a sex worker, and detained my husband and I under that suspicion.
The line of questioning went something like this: Where are you speaking? What do you do to get such speaking gigs? Is there money involved? How much? Did you bring a contract? How will they pay you? I told the Canadian Border Patrol agent that this was all negotiated on Twitter, and she asked for my phone, making sure the social media apps were accessible. We were told to return to our seats, where we watched her comb through my phone from a distance.
I was surprised to receive this level of scrutiny, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Just a few months earlier, I was at an industry event in Miami where several sex cam models on the Canadian side of the boarder were denied entry into the United States after they had their social media profiles examined, which outed them as cam models. They had to forfeit their tickets and hotel accommodations, not to mention presence at an event that was meant to help bolster their careers. So, I suppose it shouldn’t have been too much of a shock that this sort of scrutiny would also flow in the other direction.
I have a confession to make. I am an outsider. I never saw the original Blade Runner, and I don’t particularly even like sci-fi. Going in, I also didn’t have a clear idea about what the movie was going to be about, though my partner did give me an excruciatingly long history of the movie’s relationship to noir/sci-fi/western films on the way to the theater. (I literally had to check to see if my ears were bleeding).
Perhaps this makes me unqualified to speak about the merits or faults of the film. On the other hand, for this reason—and reasons of my own personal history—I may have related to this movie differently than other reviewers.
I write this reflecting as an online sex worker—someone who professionally plays the role of virtual girlfriend. Someone who, despite the fact that I am a living breathing human being with my own life and agency, takes on a role in my work that looks strikingly similar to Joi—the holographic AI girlfriend of K, the protagonist. more...
In a recent post that discussed why revenge porn victims feel such a strong sense of violation when images of their bodies are shared without consent, I argued that “the conversation about non-consensual pornography needs to be recentered from property rights, or even privacy, to the concept of ‘bodily integrity.'” In particular, I suggested it might be useful to reimagine our pics and profiles as “digital prostheses” that we incorporate into our sense of self. I concluded that “our pictures and profiles are not merely representations of us; rather, they are us, in some important sense.”
Reflecting on my personal history as a cam model, I want to talk about a related topic: How online sex workers experience loss of control over the images, videos, live streams, and profiles that we produce. A key question I want consider is how we ought to think about context and bodily integrity in a situations where we, as models, commodify our own bodies. Additionally, I want reflect on what role consent plays in such situations.
I did my first cam show in 2013. My graduate assistantship had ended, and I was looking for ways to pay rent while finished my comprehensive exams and tried to figure out if wanted to write a dissertation. I thought it might be a convenient part-time gig that I could fit in between school work and other small jobs I picked up. I was also just curious about it and whether I could make it work. more...
The lies told to artists mirror the lies told to women: Be good enough, be pretty enough, and that guy or gallery will sweep you off your feet… But make the first move, seize your destiny, and you’re a whore.
– Molly Crabapple, Drawing Blood
The question of how to handle adult content is difficult and unavoidable for any social media platform. Sites that host adult content usually find it very hard to get adult backlinks since not many sites are interested and some are even indifferent towards the adult industry. The complexity of the issue is such that companies’ responses are all over the map. Before talking about what companies lose out on when they ban adult content, it’s probably helpful to look at where the largest social media platforms stand on the issue. more...
Snapchat recently released a new feature called Snap Map that lets users see the the location of their friends’ snaps organized on a map. The feature is opt-in only and carefully avoids unintended disclosure of user data. Snapchat even nudges users to actively manage who they share their location with. The Snap Map support page says (only half-jokingly):
Only the people you choose can see your location — so if you’re friends with your boss, you can still keep your location on the down low during a “sick day” ?
This cautiousness in introducing features—particularly ones that reveal location data—is laudable and also not surprising. Many social media users may not remember the ill-fated rollouts Facebook Beacon and Google Buzz [1, 2], but Silicon Valley designers remain acutely aware of how intense the backlash can be when new features fail to incorporate sufficient privacy protections.
While Snapchat has been careful in their implementation of Snap Maps, the feature has raised serious concerns for cam models, clip producers, phone sex operators, and other online sex workers, many of whom are very active on Snapchat and rely on it as a significant source of income. more...
Exxxotica, a large adult-themed expo that started in 2006, was held in Chicago last weekend. While the event is broad and claims to be a “love and sex” catch-all event (including seminars and presentations related to BDSM, swing lifestyle, sexual health, toys, etc.), it is largely focused on the adult industry. Indeed, since its inception Exxxotica has hosted large name porn stars like Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy, and it promises to connect fans with their favorite stars.
In its 11th year, changes in the expo have reflected changes in the industry itself. Most notably, there has been a huge shift away from mainstream studio porn production to that of independent content creation. J. Handy, the director of Exxxotica, recalled that the first year that MyFreeCams was present was in 2012 with a 10×30’ booth and 8-10 cam girls.in contrast, the same site exhibited with a 50×60’ booth and over 200 cam models in Chicago last weekend. In addition to MyFreeCams, other cam sites such as Chaturbate, Cam4, and LiveJasmine were present. more...
