{"id":24302,"date":"2020-05-26T17:23:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T21:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=24302"},"modified":"2020-05-26T18:11:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T22:11:42","slug":"online-sex-work-during-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2020\/05\/26\/online-sex-work-during-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Sex Work During the Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The following is an edited transcript of a brief talk I gave as part of the Women of Sex Tech Virtual Conference<\/a> given on May 2, 2020.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m an online sex worker; I’ve been doing this work for the last five years. If you’re unfamiliar with sex work\u2014 and in particular if you\u2019re unfamiliar with online sex work\u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As digitally mediated erotic\nlabor, online sex work sits at the intersection of tech, intimacy, and\nbusiness: it’s quite literally the commodification of virtual intimacy and\nsexual gratification. It’s the business of pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As such, it’s not surprising that\nduring COVID-19, when shelter-in-place orders and social distancing have pushed\nmost of our social and professional interactions online, clip stores, sexting apps,\nporn platforms, and phone sex sites are seeing an uptick in sign-ups from both\nnew customers and new performers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forbes<\/a> has reported that adult chat and\nvideo sites have seen increases in traffic sales and sign up with some of the\nbiggest sites seeing more than a 75% increase. Subscription site Onlyfans, for\nexample, has seen more than a 75% increases in new signups, amounting to 15,000\nnew users every 24 hours. Manyvids, a clip site, has seen a 22% increase in\nmodels launching live webcam sessions. Additionally, Rolling Stone<\/a> has reported\nthat IsMyGirl has seen a 300% increase in new sign ups, and the CEO is quoted\nas saying that he believes that most of the people who are signing up are\nrecently laid off from vanilla jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conditions of COVID-19, in\nother words, have led many non-sex workers (folks that we call \u201ccivilians\u201d)\ninto wanting to get into online sex work. As someone who has been working in\nthe industry for some time, I have seen an influx and messages from civilians\nwho’ve lost their jobs and are looking for a \u201cquick and easy way\u201d to make ends\nmeet sheltering-in-place. I understand their logic: Online sex work seems like\na good way to make money while at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My kneejerk response to these\nrequests for advice on how to get into the industry, though, is to tell them not\nto do it. Or, rather, my more nuanced position is to not do it if you believe\nthat online sex work is a low risk path to quick and easy money. Online sex\nwork is neither low risk, nor is it quick and easy money. And I’m going to lay\nout the reasons for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a personal aside, I want to say that when I first started doing online sex work, a friend who had been camming for years told me that the risks aren’t worth it unless you’re willing to put in the significant time that it takes in order to really get an online sex work business off the ground. Dabbling, in other words, doesn’t get you very far. She also said that you must be willing to accept the whore stigma that comes with being naked on the internet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I wasn’t actually ready to hear this, I wanted to think that it was possible to dip my toes in the sex industry and exit whenever I wanted. However, her voice rings in my ears every time I see a civilians in my DM\u2019s, asking me how to break into online sex work during this pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be worth it to do online\nsex work, but you can’t actually know this if you’re only given partial truth\nthat highlight the most successful models and gloss over the risks. In my\nexperience, dabbling in sex work has long term consequences that newbies should\nbe aware of. The image of online sex work as quick and easy money obscures the\nlabor that actually goes into sex work and offers an incomplete picture of what\nit is that our lives look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do people get these\nimpressions? Sex workers themselves projects success, and they should. What\nwe’ve learned from being in this industry is that clients will pay a premium if\nthey believe that we’re popular and that our time is limited. But, also,\njournalists, who are really hungry for sex work stories right now, typically\nonly have access to sex workers who are highly visible and who have large\nplatforms. I say this as somebody who feels implicated: I am a visible sex\nworker who has a large platform who quite often gives press interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality is different than what\nour own marketing and media stories depict, though. Making online sex work\nlucrative is not something that just happens overnight. You don’t just start\nselling nudes on OnlyFans and have a windfall of money. I so wish that was true,\nbut it’s just not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of interest to this conference, there are tech reasons for this. Platforms themselves algorithmically favor the already successful, making it really difficult for newcomers to break in. Any success that one has on a platform depends on what kind of traffic that person can drive, and in order to be able to drive traffic, you need to already have a large social media platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, the number of\nfollowers that you need to have in order to make this work, to make it\nprofitable, also opens you up to scrutiny and whore stigma. The tech itself\nbecomes a weapon that harms online sex workers. Piracy, for example, is so\nrampant that we don’t have control over our own images. The biggest porn sites\non the internet\u2014PornHub being a notable example\u2014were built on a business model\nof piracy. And this isn’t true just for pre-recorded content. Even cam shows\nand other live performances are routinely recorded and distributed without our\npermission or even our knowledge. And many of the sites that host this pirated\ncontent have offshore servers so they simply do not respond to our DCMA\ntakedown requests. I know this because my family members, including my mother,\nfound a lot of my porn on PornHub, a site where I have never uploaded my\ncontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, importantly, facial\nrecognition software is making it increasingly likely that your images in non- sex\nwork contexts are being easily linked up to adult entertainment sites and to\nyour sex work persona. We’re already seeing this with companies like Marinus\nAnalytic, who are ostensibly creating facial recognition software to locate\ntrafficking victims, but, in the practice, identify the images of sex workers<\/a> and link them up with their non-sex work social media presences. [This\nsoftware is sold exclusively to law enforcement.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Facebook\u2019s \u201cpeople you\nmay know\u201d algorithms notoriously out sex workers<\/a> to their\nfamilies and doxs them to their clients. This is why I’ve given up on having\nany social media at all that isn’t my sex work persona, and this is true of a\nlot of sex workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, regardless of whether it’s criminalized (so much of online sex work isn\u2019t), sex work is heavily stigmatized. And, the stigmatization itself leads to problems with employment, custody, border crossing, banking, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, getting into online sex work during a global pandemic means taking on these risks while at the same time stepping into an already oversaturated market. This market’s oversaturated by current online sex workers who’ve been at this hustle for a long time; in-person sex workers who’ve pivoted their businesses to online during this pandemic; newcomers like the people whose messages I keep getting; and also just exhibitionists who are creating some of the same content for free on exhibitionist community forums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s no shortage, in other\nwords, of naked people online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there’s an increase in people, in customers or in clients who are signing up for these sites, individual clients aren’t necessarily spending more money. In fact, in my experience and in the experience of a lot of my friends and colleagues<\/a>, they’re spending less. There are handful of reasons for this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, clients are dealing with their own economic insecurities and in some cases, layoffs. Another reason is that they’re quarantining with their family, with their wives and their kids, or with roommates. This leaves little privacy for spending time with online sex workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, there’s a plethora of\noptions for sexual gratification online, many of which are free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, also, I want to point out\nthat the work itself during the pandemic is a little bit different; it’s more\nemotionally intense. As sex workers we’re spending a lot of time (metaphorically)\nholding people’s hands through these really difficult times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that being said, I’m not suggesting that no one should go into online sex work during the pandemic. Sex work has always been a really important fallback for people in crisis. It’s relatively good money with low barriers to entry and it’s more flexible than many other forms of work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s irresponsible, however, for journalists and other figures to continue to promote the idea that it’s quick and risk-free way of making money. Doing online sex work is neither easy money nor is it risk free. And I think that anyone who gets into it needs to have a picture of what our lives look like, and how theirs will change when they enter into this industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessie Sage (@sapiotextual) is a sex worker and freelance writer. She is also the co-host of the Peepshow Podcast<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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