Editors note: mentions of transphobia, whorephobia, abuse, violence, and suicide.
Besides being a job and a skill, for me, sex work is also a battle front - just as being queer, vegan, disabled and many other things can be. All things are political in a “passive” way, but choosing to make them an active battle is somewhat different. Being a proudly queer whore, despite the guilt fascism obligates us to internalize is fighting one of its core control methods; shame.
Being a queer whore sharpens your instincts, betters many of your skills, and teaches you how to treat all kinds of people with empathy. Obviously it's not all good: you are constantly grieving colleagues and friends, and almost every time you say you're a sex worker it's a scandal, but despite that I wouldn't change what I do. Many people joke about sex work being their Plan B if everything goes wrong, which I think is disrespectful towards us. For me sex work is my plan A. I don't dream of being capitalism’s automaton in any way, and though sex work is my job, for me it's also a battle front – against fascism, morals, transphobia, whorephobia, etc. Because I can still survive doing what people think is wrong in a society that works in such a moral-immoral/privileged-underdog way. I prefer to go hand in hand with what's considered “wrong”.
Being a queer whore sharpens your instincts, betters many of your skills, and teaches you how to treat all kinds of people with empathy.
Often sex workers are seen as victims, even through all the violence society pushes onto us from a place of ostracism, or the personal trauma many of us carry. I refuse to fit in this idea of a fragile, helpless person, a stereotype of a victim, and if I were a victim, I'd be a bad one. Victims are the bigots and aggressors of a disgusting system that uses them as a conduit while they use the system as a weapon to replicate violent ways. They are the real fragile people who use their systemic power to attack us, because deep down, they are afraid of losing that power. We do suffer violence, but sex work isn't the aggressor, it's an excuse people use to hurt us.
If you look around, you'll notice how we're living in one endless panopticon/control/prison inside another. An example is the laws and police force that enforce capitalism. A more subtle one is as I said before: shame.
This is also a matter of eugenics. Being neurodivergent often means being shamed for not fitting “correctly”, from something like not reading into non genuine social cues that to neurotypicals seem obvious, to the very common neurodivergent experience of disrupting cis-heteronormativity. It's also very common for queer disabled people to become sex workers, because eugenics – as an arm of fascism – not so passively tries to eliminate us. This is done by seeking “cures” for autism, by making traditional jobs, public spaces, transport, and many other things inaccessible to us. Sex work can be accommodating to us in different ways, and the moral rules are less strictly applied. We create our own personal and community ethics, and practices like BDSM offer us a more open and genuine communication while also giving us space to explore sensory experiences.
I refuse to fit in this idea of a fragile, helpless person, a stereotype of a victim, and if I were a victim, I'd be a bad one.
I try to aim to be as indigestible as I can to fascism. Obviously it can get hard in many cases, but for me it's important to fight every battle I can, no matter how little. Being shamelessly a whore: expressing my gender the way feels better to myself (even if dysphoria sometimes gets in the way); relying on community and not cops; shouting back at people who catcall me, say transphobic things, or attack me (this isn't always safe to do, choose wisely). It means befriending outcasts like other anti-fascist queer whores, including and especially the poorest, “crazy” and homeless ones; not forgetting the political prisoners; learning ways of care within our communities; and learning self defense skills that can be adapted to different personal and situational contexts; spreading to as many people the crude but abundant experience that one acquires living as queer and “weird” at a young age and also from later living openly as a trans disabled whore.
The empirical grasp that being marginalized in many ways from a young age teaches you a lot about how unfair things are under capitalism. It is not something any rich best-selling theorist can give you at its deep feral core, and I say this as a person who still has privileges, like being a white latin. It's like understanding a poem in structure and theory versus knowing exactly what feelings are referring to. An intellectual cis gringo could try to explain how it's like being a queer sex worker in South America, but he'll never get news of how everyday another whore colleague dies, how another fellow trans person is attacked, or how enraging and sad is how your loved ones or yourself have been so close to suicide, which is also a social matter.
I see and live it every time one of us talks of how crushing is being discriminated against, not able to get the necessary medical attention, or watching and feeling l how cruel it can be living under a crude system like this one.
What I'm trying to say is that there's things that you'll deeply understand without the need of an academic book, because you have it ingrained in your flesh, and there's things you can feel sympathetic about while giving the space to others flesh to bleed it out. I think it's important to tend and share our mutual wounds and not be silent about it, to throw the blood back at them.
Are you a sex worker with a story, opinion, news, or tips to share? We'd love to hear from you!
We started the tryst.link sex worker blog to help amplify those who aren't handed the mic and bring attention to the issues ya'll care about the most. Got a tale to tell? 👇☂️✨
