Conception and Rejection: Sex Work and Pregnancy

On the rare occasion that sex working parents get any sort of public attention, it is in the context of highlighting how single mothers are driven to sell sex by terrible economic circumstances. We are fed a narrative that their sex work is justified because it is noble, being used to feed and clothe the innocent – babies and young children. These mothers serve as an entry point for empathy towards sex workers in general. Whilst single mothers who begin selling sex are often in extremely precarious situations and may require additional support compared to their peers, this framing ultimately does not and cannot serve them. It certainly doesn’t serve pregnant sex workers or those intending to become parents in the future.

When we view selling sex as a horror that desperate parents only suffer as a sacrifice for their children, what does that say about sex workers who choose to become parents and remain in the industry? As someone who sells sex and has chosen to become pregnant, I am regularly confronted with the answer: people view this as a foolish and selfish act which makes me an unfit parent. Add in the usual narratives about how it’s a moral failing to have children while poor and you have the perfect recipe for whorephobic and classist reproductive control. It’s a lot easier to blame a poor hooker than to fight against the systems harming them.

I knew before I chose to get pregnant that I would face additional stigma for that decision. I have no viable alternative to selling sex for at least some of my income at the moment, prompting others to view my situation as far too unstable to bring a child into, ethically. I don’t have the shield of saying I had no idea I’d need to sell sex for a living when I decided to start a family, nor am I interested in justifying something I do not see as wrong in the first place. No matter the difficulties I face, I know I’ll find a way to provide for myself and my family. Others seem to have less conviction in my capabilities; scrutiny comes from my peers and the general public alike.

It’s a lot easier to blame a poor hooker than to fight against the systems harming them.

Overwhelmingly, non sex workers who know about my pregnancy and my sex work feel entitled to know if I’m still seeing clients. Plenty then have strong opinions about whether I should disclose my work to my midwives or doctors. Any choice I make is picked apart. If I work too little, I am seen as failing my child by bringing them into the world with a father who is poor. If I work too much, I am seen as a willing vector for passing on STIs to my baby. There is no consideration for how I might feel about selling sex or my fears that a medical professional might mistreat me or call social services because of their prejudice.

The question of what I will do after I give birth is equally fraught. I am asked when will I tell my child what I do for work and get shocked reactions when I say I’ll explain it in age-appropriate ways but never hide it. People imagine I have failed to consider the logistics of selling sex and caring for an infant at the same time. They speculate as to whether I’d be willing to bring clients to my home with my baby there, unaware of how sex workers most often operate: taking outcalls or using a secondary venue if where we live isn’t a viable working space. All because they fail to understand that sex workers who are working in less than ideal spaces are doing so out of desperation rather than a callous disregard for their child’s safety.

Since I cannot safely talk about my profession in general parenting groups or expect understanding from civilian acquaintances, the only place I can turn for support is to the sex worker community itself. There I find far more acceptance, though often little understanding. Activist circles are generally filled first and foremost with those who do not have children, doubly so for sex worker activist spaces. Sex workers with dependents often cannot afford to be in the public eye or find sex worker events and protests to be inaccessible due to a lack of childcare. Among colleagues whose first response to pregnancy announcements is usually offering to accompany the person to an abortion clinic, I find a lack of knowledge of the struggles that come with parenthood. Their ignorance isn’t malicious, yet I can feel my closeness with hooker friends slipping through my fingers with each day that passes as I approach my due date.

Even when I try to seek out the few people who should understand both my pregnancy and my sex work, primarily other sex workers who have also decided to get pregnant or to keep accidental pregnancies without planning a retirement, being trans still makes me an outsider whose specific struggles are not understood. They encourage me to leverage the pregnancy kink market to pay for cribs and nappies, unaware of how much harder that is for me to do as a transmasculine person who has had top surgery. I hear them discuss how they saved and waited until the ideal moment to try for a baby so they could afford not to sell sex while they recovered from childbirth, and I think about how my medical transition placed me on its own timeline for having a baby that couldn’t account for that.

Since I cannot safely talk about my profession in general parenting groups or expect understanding from civilian acquaintances, the only place I can turn for support is to the sex worker community itself.

What motivates me to keep seeking connection with other sex workers and to challenge these bigoted attitudes towards parents like me is the knowledge that I will need community more than ever once I’m a father. After dealing with an abusive client, I am going to come home to a crying baby or an excited toddler expecting love and affection who I must protect from that reality. Gatherings I once found comfort in through the sharing of similar experiences will become more difficult to attend when I have to arrange a babysitter first. The payment from each client I see won’t stretch as far with another mouth to feed. I cannot afford to drown in feelings of rejection and ostracization.

Uplifting sex workers who are parents must include those who enter the sex industry when they’ve already had a baby as well as active sex workers who have children along the way. Every sex worker who has a child is helping to create a generation who will not subscribe to the same whorephobia that this one does. Shame only smothers that possibility, making us hide our work from our children well into their adulthood because we fear the same judgement from them that we do from others. Rejecting sex workers because you don’t like our reproductive choices will only make us and our children worse off. Punitive disgust helps no one – not you, not me, and certainly not my baby.

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