An excellent thread, Rachel.
The concept of 'independent' in the sense of escorting is a grey area in my opinion. Some people think an 'independent' escort should be one that works on her own free will. That is fair enough. Some state that an 'independent' escort should not have to hand over their money to anyone else. This is where is gets blurry for me.
We have all seen the threads about escorts having to fork out for the costs of accommodation (say an average of €100 per night for arguments sake), then flight/travel costs, food, cost of an advertisement (€100 a week on E-I or €70 for three days). So let's say that an escort advertises for a week; that's €700 rent, €100 advertising, let's say €200-€300 for travel costs and about €100-€150 to feed themselves (I'm only guessing a ball-park figure here by the way). That would be up to €1150 in expenses. If an escort sees around an average of three clients a day at €200 an hour, that's €600 a day, right? Some days there may be five 30 min clients, others there may be four or five 1 hour clients; it's not set in stone. So let's say that it's even €400 a day, multiply that by 7 days, there is around €2100 made in the week, minus expenses, an escort is looking at a profit of about €950-€1000 a week (give or take). Again, all hypothetical, so please don't hang me for it. Plus, many escorts pay taxes too
Now look at an agency escort. From what we know, it is standard for an agency worker to pay 50% of their income for services rendered. Travel, accommodation and other expenses taken care of. Many of these escorts don't speak English as a first language, nor do they know Ireland very well or how to get around, or they need someone to create their profiles for them or take bookings for them. If they see the same amount of clients as these 'independent' escorts, aren't they earning more or less the same without the hassle of trying to do all this stuff themselves? What if they are happy to pay for these services? Why should they be condemned for it?
You hear these stories of children in America being brought up by their nannies because their parents are far too busy to look after them. I've read these stories about some of these children only being able to speak Spanish because their nannies are Hispanic and don't speak much English. These American parents think their child has a speech impediment or are deaf, but they speak perfectly, just in another language. The point of this really is that parents have to work so they will hire someone (an agent) to look after their children while they are doing so; if there is nobody to watch the children, the parents cannot work so they don't make any money. It's the same thing.
Why don't agency escorts advertise as agency then? I agree that they should advertise as agency if they are agency, but is it any wonder why they don't? It is common knowledge that MOST 'independent' escorts have at some point worked for an agency themselves, and that is fine, everyone has to start somewhere, right? If an escort works in Ireland under an agency, they are publicly hanged, drawn and quartered by the public and by the media. The issue is this;
clients assume that agency = coerced and trafficked. This is NOT always the case, in fact, it is not the case
MOST of the time.
This is a problem we see all the time. "She uses fake photos, so she is trafficked/she is pimped/she is agency". It doesn't mean an escort is trafficked! How many cases do we actually know about of any escort that was legitimately trafficked AND forced to work against their will? There are cases of 'trafficking', but this is usually when an escort is caught out working with other escorts and are shipped back home.
So, in my opinion, there is a difference between being 'independent' and 'thinking independently'. An agency escort may make the independent choice of working for an agency. Agency does not always equal trafficked or coerced. Technically, if someone else pays for a ticket for a travelling escort, they are 'trafficking' her. It is a very grey area and the media have a field-day spinning that one. This is the stigma that is being conditioned all the time and it's time that people thought more about it before rhyming off the usual template of common misconception.