On Sex Work
Words: Anonymous
Images: Saskia Hughes
I moved to London from Poland in 2016 for a year long study exchange. In 2017, after I finished, I decided to stay in the UK and continue to work as a stripper, as I had been doing for the past four years back in Poland. The work was hard, but from the very beginning I felt the stigma of sex work in UK was less prominent than in Poland. Somehow, people in UK are a bit more open to talk about sex, and less conservative than in Polish society. There, I have found your average man won’t like his girlfriend to be a stripper, cause “obviously it’s something disgraceful”. Moreover, this is often expressed not only by the men, but also women, who partly blame themselves for being sex workers, as society doesn’t accept their jobs.
In London, I had support: I joined the East London Strippers Collective, later the union for sex workers — I made friends, met allies and had protection at work. I was planning to finish with sex work at some point next year, and focus more on my passions and getting different job. To do that, I decided to go travelling and work abroad in the industry for a few months so that I could save money.
I was on holiday outside the UK when the virus hit the country, but I was able to make it back before lockdown came into place. Over the next two weeks, I watched as the sex industry worldwide collapsed. I realised I was out of a job: my plan to work and save money had failed. I watched from my phone as people from the industry informed each other and gave updates through websites and social media channels.
As the virus spread, clubs were gradually shutting down in more and more countries: in Spain, Italy, France, Holland, England, Switzerland, Czech Republic, in California and other states in America. The only potential jobs were online. Back in London I had no place to stay — I ended my tenancy when I started travelling — and no money. In the end I had to come back to my home country, Poland.
The quarantine law is very strict here. The borders have been closed since mid March, and Polish citizens travelling from abroad must be quarantined for two weeks. This means no human contact at all; no leaving the quarantine space. The police run daily checks. The self isolation was a very hard time for me. I was trying to do some online sex work to stay productive and decided to launch websites selling nudes.
I set up the accounts on OnlyFans.com and AdmireMe.Vip — both websites let the people upload explicit / adult content and monetise it. OnlyFans is a page where money is made in US Dollars and AdmireMe.Vip in British pounds. To get the customers from real life to follow you online and get them to the point where they are willing to spend any money is a long term process and hard work, one that requires creating content, constant self advertising, promotion on social media, endlessly engaging with the people online.
On top of that, online promotion on some platforms like Instagram has become impossible, as sex workers there are being censored, with their accounts being deleted by site moderators. Some of my customers weren’t interested in seeing me in the pictures and videos, but wanted me to consider online strip / sex shows. I didn’t want to get naked or even topless as the online stream carries the risks of being recorded, but I felt like pushing my boundaries to just make any money.
I did a fully nude sex show once for a customer, and it wasn’t on any webcam page, but just through a video call. The webcam pages are usually safer: they are made for the sexual entertainment, the money transaction is covered by the page policy and the whole business is legal. Doing individual work and being paid by the customer online on my terms is much more complicated and risky. On PayPal, customers can claim refunds easily. More importantly, PayPal’s policy is against sex work. Once the income is tracked and linked to sex work, the user’s account is blocked and the money lost.
The whole experience with the virtual sex call made me feel uncomfortable and I decided I would never do it again. I’m good at reading people and entertaining them in the real world, where I can also interact with them.
The whole process of online sex work was new to me and I had to deal with a lot of stress. I was staying on my phone 24/7 taking pictures and videos, trying to get some customers and talk with people, promoting my website, helping to organise an online strip event that me and my colleagues were trying to run, and as you might imagine doing all of that, while being alone in a room for two weeks, caused me a mental break down. This was a really hard period for me, faced with both total isolation and worries about my financial situation as my income had disappeared. After two weeks of the obligatory self isolation, I moved to my parents place. I am lucky to have them — they always knew about my profession and supported me.
I’m trying to figure out what my next steps will be: getting even the minimum wage job like working in a shop will be very difficult. If I want to do sex work in Poland, assuming the pandemic will be over, I can try to get back to the industry, but working here is much more risky and complicated than in UK. In Poland, prostitution is legal, but brothels and living off of someone else’s prostitution is prohibited. That means working as an escort isn’t fully decriminalised, whilst other professions in the adult industry aren’t classified as work. Sex workers have no help from the government at all: no insurance, rights to sick leave, holidays, and some of them are often being fined.
Another problem is stigma: I fear being recognised in Poland as a sex worker might jeopardize my chances in getting hired somewhere else.
I’ve been doing sex work for past eight years and apart from that, I was also performing at events. All my work was face to face, which is no longer possible in the current situation. Doing my work at a computer is not something that at the moment I can adjust to — I don’t have space for sex work or performing online while living with my parents.
What is my future looking like? At the moment my first priority is to take care of my mental health. “What kind of a job I can do?” and “when can I get it?’’ These are the questions I’d like to know the answers to myself. Currently, the money I’ll receive for writing this piece is my only piece of income.
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