I feel like the biggest misconception muggles have about sex work is who our clients are. They assume that men who pay for it just want to “buy” and “use” our bodies. I heard some radfem the other day saying the reality of sex work is being “anally raped by gangs of men” and I was like… where the fuck do you get these ideas from?
I can only think of one client ever who treated me like I was a series of holes to put his wang in, and he wasn’t even the worst kind of client. The men we see are your boyfriends, your coworkers, your brothers. When they’re shit clients, it’s for the same reason men are shit in other aspects of life - because they think they know best, because they’re entitled, because they have all of this unexamined privilege.
The vast majority of them are there for an interactive experience. They want kissing and intimacy and GFE and someone to laugh at their jokes and listen to their dumb stories. The guys who are specifically looking for a woman to use or degrade or abuse come to see us because we’re stigmatised and we don’t have a whole lot of legal recourse, not because that’s the kind of man who pays for sex.
But if I share my experiences, I get told I’m not representative of *real* sex workers and I don’t know what *real* clients are like.
I know everyone thinks they’re representative but honestly, I think I’m the most middle of middle-class hookers in my country. I work in mid-range brothels, not on the street or privately. And to be clear, I don’t believe in a hierarchy of sex workers and I think all of our stories and experiences are equally valid and important. But muggles seem to have this idea that the bulk of sex workers are survivalists on a street corner and anyone else is just NOT REPRESENTATIVE. You’re either a high-class happy hooker or a victim working on the street and nothing else exists.