So, What is Sex Work Anyway?
To start, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cali, and I’ve been a cam model for three going on four years, and an (exotic) dancer for almost six years, but no matter how I sugar coat my areas of expertise, it all falls under the same category. Sex work. So, what is sex work?
Despite the glamourous light, the media has been putting sex work under thanks to celebrities, pop culture, and influencers praising the crap out of it since the rise of the rapper Cardi B and the popular fan site OnlyFans. Sex work is, for lack of a better word, work. Hard work at that. Whether it be creating content for the NSFW side of fan sites like OnlyFans, and Pateron, using live stream cam platforms like My Free Cams, Chaturbate, or Cam Soda, using private cam sites such as SextPanther, Cam Model Directory, or Nite Flirt, being a dancer at a club like Spearmint Rhino, Deja Vu, or Hustler, or being a Domme in a full bown dungeon. There’s a lot more that goes into it than making a boat load of money just by being pretty.
Before I continue, I want to make one thing clear. If you work in the sex work industry, you’re what is known as an independent contactor, and in this line of work, no matter if you’re a cam model, dancer, or any other form of entertainer, you do not get paid hourly. So there is no hourly pay, and no overtime. The only money you make is from what your customers pay you for whatever service you provide, along with the occasional tips. After you’ve paid to work, of course. Whether it be platform fees, or house fees, no one works for free, your time is your money and the only thing that controls how much, or little, you make is yourself…. Okay, and maybe where you work and the kind of clientele it attracts. Bringing me to the entire purpose of this blog. The ugly side of sex work.
From rude, and sometimes flat out disrespectful clients, dismissive and money-hungry cam site admins and club managers, lackadaisical club security, to flat out dangerous, and sometimes lethal situations as a result. These are all very real things that sex workers have to deal with every day. Clients demanding refunds for a service they received. Site admins nickel and diming their models for anything from a disgruntled customer reporting them for no reason other than a model may have turned them away, so admins punish models by making their site rank suffer, resulting in less customer traffic despite that model being a top earner. Or fining models fees for accepting a payment from a customer anywhere other than that particular platform despite the model being on several platforms. To club managers, and security demanding tips from dancers in order to keep dancers safe from abusive customers despite managers and security being paid hourly to do their job. For myself, along with a plethora of other cam models and dancers, this is our reality… So I decided to do something about it, and all the juicy details will be in the next post.
