The Hobbyist
Source: The Hobbyist
Harlotry: On Sex Worker Vocabulary–And So-Called “Hobbyists”
People make much of hooker slang.
In every movie involving sex workers, the women (and almost all cinematic whores are women) throw around all sorts of special terms, “john,” “trick,” “stroll,” “daddy,” “rabbit,” and so on. While these terms might be common in outdoor work, I’ve never heard any of them used and I suspect most of them are invented by imaginative screenwriters and equally, or more, imaginative abolitionists.
Sex workers are a career subculture–like firemen, military personnel, farmers, or construction workers. It isn’t that we don’t have our slang, it’s just that we don’t speak a language made entirely of unintelligible, bizarre words that mean nothing. I’ve only ever done indoor work, most of which was medium to high end, I’ve never had a pimp, and the only time I’ve ever called clients anything but just that, “clients,” was when I worked in a peepshow where we referred to our clients as “custies” (short for customers). Still, I doubt things are much different on the streets. I suspect the slang used among sex workers is no different than the slang used among the demographics that comprise our groups.
There is, however, one word that I’ve encountered in various different sex worker groups: hobbyist. Hobbyists are clients, in that they pay us for our services, but at the same time they are also very different from normal clients. The name pretty much says it all; seeing sex workers is their hobby. For most of our patrons, seeing a sex worker is a fun and relaxing way to let off steam, a special treat for which they save up, an escape from their lives, or simply a sexual outlet that comes with no emotional obligation.
The first hobbyist I ever encountered was “Grant.” Had I been a more seasoned hooker, I would have been able to tell from his stories of other women he’d seen that he wasn’t an average client, but I was just a little baby prostitute getting the rookie mistakes out of my system. He remained, until very recently, the most serious hobbyist I’d ever encountered, and now firmly occupies second place. It’s rare that I meet a sex worker in my city who hasn’t seen him, and even rarer to meet a female sex worker in my city who has seen him and escaped without a horror story of him stiffing her or managing to talk her into doing more than she originally planned.
I’ve written before about how I think the stigma against clients is nearly as damaging as the stigma against workers themselves, but hobbyists take the destigmatization concept way too far. In their eyes, seeing sex workers is something to be proud of. They have review boards with elaborate ranking systems and they talk about how many sex workers they’ve seen in any major metropolitan area. Some of them, like a client who once told me every “hot girl” should be legally required to spend a year as a “hooker,” actually go to other countries to take advantage of great deals on babes, brought on by bad economies and social climates that hold sex workers in a regard even lower than America does.
“Hobbyist” is probably the one slang word that I’ve heard in almost every sex work situation I’ve ever worked in. I’ve never heard a stripper use it when describing a customer, probably because the strip club environment is one that lends itself to paying several different girls per trip, but everywhere else, girls have talked about hobbyists.
The term is probably so prevalent because hobbyists are all terrible, terrible people. It’s not just that they are so sickeningly proud of paying ladies for their attentions, it’s that so often they use their power as upstanding members of sites like The Erotic Review to coerce extras out of new girls, or girls looking to build their reputations. Very often hobbyists will promise excellent reviews in exchange for acts beyond what a girl would otherwise offer. Whether or not the hobbyist delivers on his promise depends on how much of a scumbag he really is.
Unfortunately, since indoor sex worker culture is so heavily review-driven, plenty of men are drawn to boards like TER, first to look and then to post. I’ve had clients actually apologize to me because they “don’t hobby” and are therefore unable to post reviews that will carry any weight. I always explain to those guys that not hobbying is a good thing, that reviews are not always accurate, and that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, no mater how reliable the source is supposed to be.
I’ve always thought it was cool the way the sex workers in movies had their own little languages of slang, and I kind of wish I’d encountered more hooker talk in my life, but sadly “hobbyist,” the most negative word of all, is the only one I’ve really encountered. Maybe one day hobbyists will be wiped out, TER will be a thing of the past, and people will be entirely apathetic about seeing sex workers, but until that time I’ll continue to thank everyone who tells me they “don’t hobby.”
Written by Harlotry
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Originally Posted by dob
