The Sex Worker Community Won’t Let Me Retire My “Happy Hooker” Badge
By: Andre Shakti
Tags: Sex Workers, Trauma, Sex Work, Sex Work Is Real Work, Feminism

As my readers bear witness, I officially relinquish my performance as a “happy hooker” in favor of not giving a single solitary fuck.

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, sex workers are only allowed three roles in our society: victims, criminals, or “happy hookers”. Popular mainstream media continues to uphold and perpetuate these reductive caricatures. “Alabama” in True Romance? Victim. “Belle de Jour” in Secret Diary of a Call Girl? Happy hooker. The depiction of real life murder victim Julissa Brisman in Lifetime’s The Craigslist Killer? A criminal. The list is longer than a CVS receipt, trust. For the remainder of this essay, however, I’m going to focus on the dichotomy between forced victimhood and glamourization of the profession.

This dramatic contrast illustrates a classic example of how the discussion on sex work more often than not has little connection to sex workers’ realities. Are there victims of coercion or circumstance active in the sex industry? Absolutely. But those individuals are sadly either casualties of sex trafficking or are performing survival work out of necessity. Sex workers not only repeatedly consent to the labor they’re performing, but they also typically identify with and engage in relevant sociocultural and political subcommunities. Labeling sex workers as victims automatically dehumanizes us by erasing our personal agency and autonomy. It promotes the idea that we’d never do this kind of work unless we were forced into it, and if we staunchly claim otherwise, well, we’re not qualified to speak on our own behalf anyway. Because we’re sluts! Or something.

A natural behavioral response to assumed victimhood is for sex workers to hide the nuances of the work they do from the public for fear that even the mention of a single “bad day at work” could mobilize a mass savior initiative. So, they instead promote one dimensional representations of themselves flaunting the benefits of their work, taking care not to show a single crack in their glamorous facades. They become “happy hookers”.

We see these representations reflected all over social media. Happy hookers are always physically healthy and mentally stable. They do not engage in behavior that could be categorized as “drama”. They are always either naked (and in excellent shape) or well-dressed (in expensive, flattering attire). They share life updates almost exclusively restricted to meals they’re eating, travel destinations they’re visiting, or gifts they’ve been given. They’re never hurting for money, because their business is always successful. They create online polls asking people to vote on whether their hair looks better “up” or “down”. They never engage in discourse concerning religion or politics, unless it’s to say how “blessed” they are. Happy hookers don’t fart, they don’t shit, and they are perpetually horny and #DTF. Who WOULDN’T want to be a member of that club, amiright?

Far from nuanced, both victimhood and “happy hooker” characterizations rest on a simplistic binary opposition between free choice and coercion. Too often the debate on sexual labor gets sidetracked into questions like “but if they didn’t have to do it, would they?”, “if they could do any job would they choose sex work?”, or, most frustratingly, “but do they like it?”. Requiring that everyone must genuinely enjoy their job — to the point that they would still choose to do it if they didn’t need the money — is absurd.

We don’t hold participants in any other labor industry to the same standard, and that’s a fucking problem. Do you think your waiter at your favorite restaurant would gladly volunteer to work their shift without pay? Are all physicians such bleeding hearts that they’d commit to seeing patients out of pure selflessness alone? Do you need your gas station attendant to convince you of their eagerness to work before you give them your money? Of course not. So why should sex workers be any different?

As someone who’s been militantly “out” since entering the sex industry at eighteen, the excessive labor of having to strategically cultivate the projection of my life on a day-to-day basis takes an enormous emotional toll. While I happen to enjoy my work most of the time, I should not be obligated to be happy in my work in order to have a voice (or for the consensuality of said work to remain unchallenged). I should be able to post a new set of nudes accompanied by text explaining how I’ve been bogged down by depression lately and not have that impact my perceived fuckability. I’m a complex sentient being, after all, not a sex robot.

Rock on!, you may be thinking. Authenticity all the way! Ehhhhh not so fast. Because see, my sex worker community doesn’t actually want me to be authentic. And it breaks my heart.

As a community leader, there’s pressure to lead with my privilege at all times, particularly if I’m calling attention to my own struggles. That concept in and of itself makes perfect sense to me, and I abide by it. However, thanks to the well-intentioned birth of digital phenomenons like the “woke olympics”, public activist shaming and “call out culture”, I’ve been struck down for vulnerably sharing with my own community just as aggressively as I have been by incel trolls.

I once shared vulnerably about being self-conscious around certain physical aspects of my body and was told by several other sex worker activists that because I was able-bodied and had “pretty privilege” my challenges were less valid than theirs’. Another time I was heavily chastised in my DMs for daring to share an experience I had with a shitty client because I’m not a survival worker and could have “easily” declined the session altogether. I’ve been harangued into hiding the reality of what sex work is to me, and boy can I be a fast learner when I’m motivated. What results is a flat, one dimensional digital presence who is stuck in a loop of pure ecstatic promotion, whether I’m promoting my platform or someone else’s. It feels impersonal, sure, but also safe. “Check out my next strap-on class!” “Don’t miss out on special deals in my online store!” “Come visit me at the strip club today!”

That all being said, I do see a shift happening. I see workers with online presences being more transparent about mental health, chronic pain, poverty, trauma, and many more topics that move us away from the “happy hooker” archetype perpetuated by mainstream media.

I’d say that this has a lot to do with two things:

1. Workers consciously rebelling against our current administration’s war on sex work by finding their voices and unapologetically sharing their neutral and adverse experiences of sex work in public spaces while continuing on in the industry, and

2. Increased direct access to sex workers via social media.

Let’s take the porn industry, for example. Gone are the days of XXX performers signing exclusive deals with big agencies and letting hired hands be solely responsible for any branding, promotion or marketing on their behalf. Due to a combination of anti-porn legislation, cost of operations challenges and the media pirating epidemic, big companies are struggling and more performers are choosing to go independent, managing their own businesses and likenesses. This means that porn consumers can easily find their favorite personalities on Twitter or Instagram and connect with them in a way that is both unprecedented and uniquely intimate. The same goes for escorts, professional dominants and submissives, sensual masseuses, dirty panty peddlers, and a wide range of other erotic service workers.

For the very first time fans, customers and clients can be privy to pictures of a performer’s dog, their personal rants waxing poetic on political turmoil, flirtatious exchanges with other industry workers, and much more. This further humanizes the performer in the consumer’s eyes and presents them as a complex, nuanced being as opposed to just a “body built for sin” (or a sex robot!), and many performers are learning how to capitalize off of this increased access.

It’s my sincerest hope that this consumer trend of appreciating sex worker authenticity and vulnerability in digital spaces — as opposed to attacking those who dare to present anything less than three dimensional representations of themselves — will continue in our favor. It is also my hope that we as sex workers create more space for all of our peers to share openly and honestly about their challenges — not just those we personally deem more “deserving” than others — and that we recognize the potential ramifications of unconsciously forcing workers into “happy hooker-dom” as a result of letting our own insecurities and trauma narratives impact our empathetic response to another’s pain.

I love sex work, I’ll jump in front of a bullet for sex workers, and I am continuously grateful to be in a position to perform what I consider to be my life’s work. But y’all are done shaming me for my humanity.