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This week I had the best time attending an exhibition in Swansea, Wales. But it wasn’t just any exhibition; it was put on by Safety First Wales, an organisation ran in collaboration with sex workers for the decriminalisation of sex work in Wales – they had their launch in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) last year, which was very exciting to see decrim making waves in my home country. So when they asked if I’d like to contribute to their zine/exhibition, of course I said yes! 

I always feel so lucky when I get to visit new places, and Swansea was new to me and the people there are all so lovely. It’s a studenty town with a very artsy feel to it, lots of graffiti and independent shops all over the high street. The exhibition was put on in the theatre, and it was a gorgeous flourish of pink furs and bright colours, walls covered in photos from protests, placards, letters and poems. It was clear a lot of love had gone into the curation and setting up the evening, the exhibition was interactive and included lots of booklets to flick through, letters to read, headphones to listen to and a gooey pink postbox full of facts about decriminalisation.

The evening had a very safe community feel to it, sometimes as a sex worker I can be quite skeptical about events where civilians can attend (I guess I’m worried about our spaces becoming unsafe), but everyone there was so open and the audience was full of allies to the cause. The event had plenty of snacks and drinks (and even a decrim cake! Totally iconic, but of course I forgot to take a photo of it), and included a panel talk session and some audience speakers.

The panel included some amazing heavy hitters in the decrim movement, including ECP, Decrim Now and Scotland for Decrim amongst others. I got to meet so many people who I’ve looked up to online and I was feeling very star-struck by the time it was my turn to speak from the audience (so much so that I got incredibly nervous and forgot a lot of what I wanted to say…). It was incredibly informative, and to see these global movement groups come together is testament to the love in the community (and the effort made by Safety First Wales to put on an event inclusive of many nations). I always feel so full of love and community for the few days following events like this, and getting to connect with the community is always so heart-warming, I get a bit lonely living up North away from all my sex work friends so it’s always nice to get the chance to see everyone.

Thanks again to Safety First Wales for putting on the event and for inviting me to contribute and attend!

A. x

I’ve included some photos from the event below;

Disclaimer: I don’t speak for everyone in our community, just for myself based on my own experiences in the industry. I’ve had an issue with how these agencies work for a while, and finally got around to writing something up about it.

As a cam girl I’ve always worked independent of a studio or a manager. When I started my career in the industry I went in nearly blind, I had scoured the little resources and forums available to me online at the time, but I had never seen a cam show or even spoken to someone in the industry before – I just dove in. I’m not going to pretend that this was the best idea, my first cam show was a complete mess and I had no idea what I was doing, my first ever client spent their time explaining to me what to do and I think in the end just paid me out of sympathy for the clueless girl. But after years of doing this (ranging from full time to part time depending on my life, but never quite quitting) I have a pretty good understanding of how this whole thing works, how to “milk the clock” so to speak.

I spend a lot of time marketing on social media, and I get a lot of targeted ads and see a lot of the popular posts in our community. Something I’m seeing more and more often are ads for webcam agencies that promise the world for very little work – after years in the industry I can attest to the fact that being a webcam model is hard fucking work, it’s exhausting, sometimes dehumanising, and the pay is unreliable at best, but it’s still better than being locked in a 9-5 so I still do it. But it isn’t just typing and wearing cute outfits like a lot of these ads would have us believe.

I joined an agency once, years into my streaming career, purely out of a morbid curiosity – and it was a mistake. The support provided consisted of a group chat of other people complaining about not earning enough being ignored, while the one or two models who make good money are responded to and their numbers posted all over instagram stories to try and tempt new sign ups. I think I went to one laughable “training” meeting where they played it off like “don’t worry it’s just chatting, you don’t have to take your clothes off” as though the whole premise of the job isn’t virtual sex for cash (note: if we’re going to get nit picky here then yes you obviously don’t have to get naked, but you’re not going to make much in pyjamas chatting about the weather).

I still see the same agency (one of the 50 or so that have popped up over the last year or two in an already saturated market) posting top models totals from the day to try and get vulnerable people outside of the sex industry to sign up – of course so they can take their 20% cut of anything they earn. But what they don’t tell these models, or at least the one I was signed up with didn’t, is that the site already takes between 30-70% of anything you earn, then the agency takes 10-20%, so what do you actually get for ‘totally not showing your bits on the internet’? You get less than minimum wage, that’s what you get. But that doesn’t look very good on a nice pink sparkly background does it? I saw one just today promising earnings of £1,000 a week (a week?!), I have never made 1k in a week from camming in 6 years, nor do I know any cam girls that have. To advertise such false promises during a time where seasoned sex workers are even struggling to make a living given the current economy is mindless.

As an independent streamer my hourly rate often fluctuates but it tends to average at a good amount, depending on things like time of day and holiday seasons – but when I streamed via the agency I made $60 in ten hours after everyone else had taken their cut. It was laughable, so laughable that it’s still not been paid out a year later. This is only on one site though, in my suspicion about the agency I only allowed them to make one profile for me on a site I didn’t already use (no way was I giving them access to delete my accounts I’d built up over years) – the account they made is unusable to me now, and I’m not allowed to sign up independently for at least 6 months (the agency never told me this either, of course, the site did). 

I love the sex industry, I love the independence and the freedom, but I do not believe it’s ethical for these predatory agencies to be advertising all over social media for their “get paid to type” style scam. The comments on all the posts are always the same “Me please!” “Tell me more!” “I’m a (insert financially precarious situation here), I want to join!”, without telling them the god honest truth – you will be masturbating online for men to watch, you will likely be verbally abused by people you will never meet, nearly everyone you meet will now make judgments of you and your life, and you might not even make minimum wage for that privilege. 

It’s unethical and predatory to not be clear about the expectations of the services provided, to not ensure that individuals outside of the industry understand what is going to happen and the effect this could have on all other aspects of their life. I myself have done survival sex work, sex work is my main form of income still today, so I understand the feeling of pushing yourself into uncharted waters to try and address financial precarity. These agencies seem to prey on these situations, and that is shameful. If someone makes the informed decision to join the industry, this should be supported and information shared – we keep each other safe, after all – and I always try to help people who ask me about streaming as best as I can, I’ll share which sites I use, my spreadsheets, and safety tips, because community is important and I wish I had that when I started too. But you don’t need to sacrifice 20% of your income to an agency that doesn’t have your best interests at heart just to get started. 

Of course on the other hand, there are a handful of agencies ran by cam girls themselves that do offer community & support, that are honest about the expectations of the services provided, and don’t take an extortionate cut of your profit, but these are few and far between. 

I love webcamming, and I will probably keep doing it for a long long time, and the industry is going to change so much more than it already has, but I think it’s so important that we all make informed decisions. There is an amazing community of people accessible online, most of my sex work friends I’ve met online first, and you don’t need an agency that only provides a group chat to feel part of a community. You shouldn’t have to give a percentage of your money to people who do nothing for you beyond taking your money and setting up a profile (which is easy enough to do yourself). But the most important thing is going into it with a clear head and an understanding of what’s to come. Some days will be lovely, some days you’ll wonder why you even bothered, but there’s just something about it that keeps us coming back.

A. x

I recently had the joy of presenting a paper myself and my lovely co-author Carmela Morgillo have been working on for the last few months at the PGRSWN research conference at Leeds University in the UK.

It was so wonderful to attend and see the amazing keynote speakers and also get to present our work alongside some amazing researchers I met at the event!

Our paper is off to editing now, but once it’s live and available to read I’ll update here!

A. x

My newest article for Tryst is now live!

Here’s the link: Article link

(I don’t have a snazzy title or image for this one. I haven’t proofread or edited much, I just wanted to give myself the space to share. Disclaimer – as always these views are my own blah blah blah)

I’ve been feeling really violated recently. I keep circling other feelings but that’s the one I come back to.

I’ve always struggled socially, I’ve never enjoyed socialising much, small town politics will do that to you. I decided I was happy without for a long time. After getting into sex work I’d started to build out a little and got involved more, found a little corner I could feel safe. Entirely away from the brain rot of small towns. Having someone from this side of my life – someone I still to this day don’t actually know beyond they followed my instagram account and we spoke in a pub once – just stick their fingers into the life I’d built as refuge from it all, felt incredibly violating. It still does.

I’d built a nice little community that was now under attack by a barrage of messages from anonymous accounts and accounts linked to this person. On D-Day my inbox was flooded with emails and calls asking what the fuck was going on. Others, didn’t bother asking me about it, cut me off entirely, act like we’ve never worked together, and have come at me with a holier than thou sentiment. I’d say shoot first ask questions later, but they never asked me anything at all. They still decided to facilitate this harm, to allow this person to cause harm to me, despite being informed of what was going on. It’s really made me rethink how quick I am to trust civs who work with Sex Workers in Sex Work spaces, no matter how much they claim to create a “safe space”. The day my website received the most hits this year – all pinned on a map to my local area – was the day I had work planned with one of the groups the harasser “anonymously” contacted. Which the harasser knew about as they’d asked me about it at the pub a week prior. I’m sure they didn’t stake out my website all day to see if I posted any updates, to ensure they’d managed to harm me, now that they’d been blocked from all my socials. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence right?

Their fanfiction is entirely fictitious of course, I’m not going to sit here and defend myself when it’s all so entirely ridiculous and baseless – I don’t have reason or need to. I just want to share my feelings around the situation and ideas that have cropped up as a result.

I was around this person for a short time one night in a pub, I found out after this they’d done something very shitty to someone close to me – after they’d tried gloating about it in front of me, I removed them from my following on the social media they followed me on, and rejected their second attempt at speaking to me a few days later. I’ve not known them otherwise. Not spoken to them. Nothing. I later found out they’d asked a friend of mine to “keep tabs” on me, through their friend I haven’t spoken to in 12 years but still held some vendetta from a teenage spat in high school. My friend of course said no and told me, but as I’d never experienced anything like this before that felt very jarring.

It’s been hard. The initial harassment came with dummy accounts watching my social media, so I had to private everything and purge my following, this then escalated to fake accounts of myself popping up, then my work network started being contacted with a range of made up stories to try and ruin my career, a fake tinder profile using my work photos to try and ruin my relationship, my work content was posted on Reddit, my real name and town were posted online, then my personal phone (with a number I only give out locally and don’t use for work or events at all) started receiving calls all day, texts and then threatening voicemails. They even attempted to contact members of my family, who I keep very private and separate from my work life. I had to endure this for months because I rejected someone at a pub due to their inappropriate behaviour. I had to endure all of this for months because of someone perceiving a slight, being vindictive, and having absolutely nothing better to do with their time. It’s been quite alarming the extent that someone I don’t know will go to, all because they had their ego bruised.

I feel foolish too, I won’t lie – I’d been warned by practically everyone to stay far away, they’ve done this before, they get off on doing this to people because of the insecurity and self-hate etc., but I had assumed it was just small town bullshit. I was so fucking wrong. Sometimes, if multiple unrelated people warn you that someone else is “poison” and that this is a recurring theme with them, with examples, you should sometimes maybe listen. Or consider being more cautious at least – I don’t believe in cancel culture and I’m not going to start now after someone attempted to do it to me. Since this kicked off, three separate unrelated people have reached out to tell me they’ve experienced the same at the hands of this person and their gaggle.

For now, it has seemingly stopped. They’ve stopped contacting my network and harassing me directly – but I’m aware they still enjoy trying to badmouth the situation to anyone that will listen. I think the direct harassment only stopped due to being notified of potential civil proceedings, the cost of these proceedings, and because they’re now aware of a criminal investigation into harassment and have received their warning from the police (who have months of phone numbers, messages, voicemails and everything else). I’m still unearthing the extent of the reach of this person’s campaign of harassment, I’m still unsure what exactly it is I’ve apparently done that’s been imagined up by this person to try to justify their behaviour. Why they decided my life had to be cannon fodder for their own insecurity. But as it stands, it’s all slowed down since they received notice of the consequences of their actions. Any fallout from this they experience is a direct result of their own actions. Of their continued decision to continue with their harassment for many months and counting.

It’s been a long few months but that’s some solace. The damage to how I feel as part of the community is done, and bridges have been burnt as a result of this person’s harassment and the responses of some to that. But just having all of this end is enough for me, for now anyway.

This experience has also allowed for some wonderful moments, as ridiculous as it all sounds.

As a result of being wary of those around me due to the extent of the harassment I was able to connect more deeply with those that remained close to me. For the first time in a long time I felt comfortable to be vulnerable around other people, to be vulnerable in how I expressed my actual feelings and how I leant on these people for support, the people who checked in on me, who commiserated at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, those that supported me in listening to the voicemails when I didn’t want to. I had people I’d never spoken to reach out to me, online friends buying all my work so I could take time off to rest, even just people who sent me photos of their cats, it all really helped stifle the wound.

This experience has brought me closer to so many people, and I think that’s beautiful considering that this person’s goal was to destroy my link to my community entirely.

A. x

Here’s a link to the documentary! I’ll be writing up a full blog post about it all very soon.

Documentary link

My newest article is live on the Tryst Blog. Excerpt and link to the full article below;

“The media depiction of sex workers varies so wildly that it adds an additional element of confusion into the mix. Think the Cinderella like story of Pretty Woman followed up by a gritty dark-filtered, exploitative documentary on red light workers living on the streets. It’s a constant pendulum swing, like people can only grasp the most extreme ends of the spectrum, while entirely ignoring every reality that lies between. This became a bit easier to digest when I realised we are just a character to them, a narrative to fill in. A caricature or folk devil.”

Sex Work & Folk Devils