When I first began escorting 16yrs ago, I was full face, no tattoo-photoshop. No one ever popped up in public to identify me. I was extremely open about it to friends, family, and nowhere near as discreet as I usually am now. I knew it wasn’t harmless, I recognized that review culture was toxic, that I had to screen to avoid cops and bad clients. But I never felt unsafe with my face online at that time.

But the more I’ve experienced and seen and heard, the more I keep my head down and do what I can to be a mystery to potential clients (and how to keep it vague in person with almost everyone). I can’t say I experience much backlash for hiding my face and other details escorts often share on their sites or social media. I reveal other things instead that are of no matter to me but act as fodder for those who want “more.” (A similar concept to my fake real name when I was a stripper.) I also screen like hell because the risk has just gotten worse. I get way more backlash for my screening requirements than my photos or social media gaps. I practice personal privacy assiduously in my real life too, though laws are making it tougher in that realm as well.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that a microscope has been turned on us now, both as sex workers and citizens living in the US. You have to be able and willing to cultivate double and triple lives/facades in order to be safe, IMO. No, clients often have little clue of the value of what they’re asking for and yes, young sex workers often have little clue in the value of what they’re giving away. I wish more sex workers would shout from all their social media that they’re not going to reveal (whatever privacy lines they decide) and why. For more pieces like this to encourage sex workers to cultivate the age-old sense of mystery the profession usually has. It’s seductive, sure, but it’s also such an important part of harm reduction these days.

PS: BBBJ was extremely common in Texas, and most cities I toured, well before 2008. Ironically, most of the ladies who offered it charged less than I did, who did not. I always thought that the greater the risk, the more you charge. I see sex workers monetizing their social media, probably with that maxim in their head. I never think they charge enough.

I badly wish this was otherwise. There is almost nothing (other than maybe trying to be a client) where I would, in my life, have to choose between the risk of doing what I feel is perfectly sensible, and not at all wrong, and what society “allows”. Even something like nudism, one is merely confronted with the choice of denying the impulse, and living with everyone else, or giving up conveniences, in trade for being some place where its allowed. And.. ironically, I see the trend actually **changing** in that, such that, maybe even in my own lifetime, it will be acceptable to the point where the laws that allow it, some places, are not just “You could do it in theory.”, but actually, “You can do it in fact, and no one will call the cops on you.” But.. there is no “safe zone”. No place, for sex work, that doesn’t come with costs, like travel bans, when it doesn’t come with the cost of outright destroying lives.

Still.. Invisible may not be something that can be afforded, when the goal of whole nations is to turn “invisibility” into “non-existence”. I don’t, at all, envy the position this puts all of you in, but at least I can be a single voice in the storm in opposition of the madness, as much as I am able.