Conversations with a cam girl (part 2)
“Cam girl — a girl or woman who poses for a webcam” (Oxford English Dictionary)
The word “posing” in the above definition can cover a multitude of acts and interactions, some hilarious, some terrifying.
If you have not already done so, please read the first part of this piece here.
Trigger warning — discussions of graphic sexual themes from the start.
How does cam girl sex compare to normal sex?
It’s not the same as masturbating for yourself, at all. It’s much more performative, and you have to be aware of different things like camera angles, you have to change position every minute or so. You have to be very aware of what you’re saying and what the viewer wants.
It’s made me realise how much porn has affected how people think the female body works. Alot of people don’t have a clue. They don’t really understand what a clit is, or they don’t understand the process of anal, like they think they can just shove something up there with no lube and stuff like that. That really annoys me! [laughs] They’ll expect me to shove an array of things up there with no preparation. That’s not actually how it works.
Do you have hard limits?
Before you become a cam girl you have to be really clear about what you won’t do, but that will probably change over time. There’s stuff I thought I would never do on cam that doesn’t really phase me now. I won’t do anything that’s against the sites’ guidelines, but that’s stuff I wouldn’t want to do anyway, stuff like bestiality, child porn, all the obvious stuff. And anything that would cause any damage to my body, permanently. Sometimes I just won’t do stuff if I don’t feel like it because at the end of the day it is my body, and I don’t want to shove stuff up my bum all day every day!
And if there’s anyone reading this that fancies giving it a go, what advice would you have for anyone who wants to be a cam girl/boy?
It’s really similar to working in a shop so try and see it like that. You want to make the customer feel like they’re your friend. Don’t feel like you have to jump into doing stuff straight away. There’s a lot of “Hey, how are you? Where are you from?” that kind of thing first. You want to prolong that as long as possible because the more they’re typing, the less they’re wanking, and therefore, the more money you’re making. There’s also loads of stuff online as well . There’s lots of awesome online communities for sex workers, like Sex Workers’ Open University in London or Stripper Web, which is basically a huge forum of every question you could ever have about camming or working in strip clubs and stuff. It’s got everything on there down to outfits, software, technical stuff . Or there’s threads which are just ranting, or embarrassing things that have happened on cam, things like that. Or there’s stuff on there to keep you motivated, like schedules for you to follow. It’s a really good community and it helped me a lot when I was starting up.
Do you have any thoughts on how this work relates to feminism?
Some feminists are against sex work. Alot of the mainstream feminists you see in the mass media like Emma Watson or Lena Dunham all banded together to try and end prostitution . They did that without talking to any sex workers. I find it really frustrating that people want to make these decisions about sex work but will never include sex workers’ thoughts on it. There’s a really good Ted talk on what sex workers want as laws . It’s so good, I kind of want to spam it everywhere! Obviously, sex trafficing is awful, but it’s not the same as consenting, and some people just won’t listen. They’re like “Oh you don’t understand, you’re just a poor, oppressed woman” which is pretty frustrating. It depends on the person.
There’s loads of different types of feminist, but it’s usually only the shitty middle class feminists that have a problem with it. It’s particularly frustrating when people want to criminalise it as they put the workers in so much more danger by doing that.
There’s loads of documentaries about this sort of thing at the minute which is a good thing in a sense because people learn and it becomes more out in the open. There’s some that are really good but there’s one on Netflix at the moment called “Hot Girls Wanted” which pretty much all sex workers hate. It’s horrendous! There was this sex worker who was outed at her university because she did porn . Her response to being outed was to say “I’m happy doing this, I’m empowered, I make money, blah blah blah” . Netflix put this girl in the documentary but didn’t interview her. They pulled up articles about her and basically said “it’s all bullshit, she obviously doesn’t like it, no one can possibly like this”. There was girls on that documentary who were obviously being abused which is awful, but that’s not everyone’s experience.
How has being a cam girl affected your romantic relationships?
Fortunately most people have been really cool about it but there have been some guys that treat you like a totally different person once they’ve found out. Some people see it as I’m not just doing it to pay my rent, I’m doing it because I’m a sexual deviant, which is kind of true but you don’t have to be a dick about it. They think that it means I want to have sex all the time, it’s kind of like they see my job as my consent. Now when I tell people I use it to gage whether or not that person’s an arsehole.
What about friendships?
There’s some people who say they’re cool with sex work but when they know someone who actually does you can see they’re actually really uncomfortable with it. Part of the reason I got a vanilla job a while ago was that some of my friends kept pushing me to get a normal job. They assume that I’m getting trafficed or something. It’s really not even comparable to that! I did it, and lost all my free time. I was miserable, and I thought, how is this better? Surely if you’re my friend, you’d want me to be happy?
Alot of the problems that sex workers have, I feel like if you applied the problem to any other job people just wouldn’t react to it in the same way. For example if I say I’ve had a shit day at work some people will react by saying “Well you need to get a normal job” but if I was working in a shop or something they’d be like “ Me too” blah blah blah. For a while I just didn’t tell anyone. I really convinced myself that people would make negative assumptions about me on the basis of my work because they had done in the past. I’m at the point now where I’m not going to lie about it, this is what I’m doing.
Family must be a difficult one. Do they know much about what you do?
My Mums side of the family know, well they know about the phone line stuff I do, people are much more accepting of the phone line stuff. They think it’s really funny and they like hearing little stories about it. I would never tell my Dad though. He’s just got that small town mentality, and I think realistically no one wants to hear that their daughter’s doing that. I always get really paranoid that he’s seen my profile because I’ve been on his laptop and I know he looks at sites like that! It’s one of my biggest fears that he’ll accidentally come across my profile.
I’m not sure where it’s going in the long term. I used to think I can’t do this for ever because it is dependent on how I look. But nowadays there’s cam girls out there who are in their fifties, there’s alot of older women out there doing it. But then again I don’t know what the laws are going to be about it, cam girling might not be legal in a few years. I’m also worried about the fact that doing it for a long time is going to leave a large gap in my CV.
There’s a weird hypocrisy that goes on. Everybody’s seen porn, and loads of people use it at least occasionally, but if you’re actually in porn you’re seen as in some way bad. Like with this article, there will be people reading it thinking “this is terrible” whereas some people will be getting a thrill from it. It’s either fetishised or condemned. Getting to the point where it’s just seen as normal seems difficult.
People are more accepting of it if you say it makes you empowered but why can’t it be seen as just a job? People struggle to get their heads around that. Sometimes I do really really enjoy it and I have a great time. And somedays I’m doing it to pay my rent.
That’s how I’d like people to view it, as just a job.
Interviewee kept anonymous by request, though the identity is known to the writer. All images intellectual property of the writer.
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Love, Johnny K x