Its quite a lonely job being an escort. Most people you know don't know what you do. They stop inviting you to places because you've let them down in the past because you couldn't afford to turn down the two hour incall you so desperately needed the money from. They don't understand that having a day off work costs you money because your day isn't a 9 to 5 job, its a day that has quite antisocial hours.
I try not to socialise with other escorts. I am only really friendly with one escort and she's a female escort, we do chat every day on the phone about various trivial nonsense and comment on rubbish we see on Facebook and Twitter. Apart from that I don't really know any other escorts. Its not something that particularly bothers me. I managed to spend nearly 14 years in the sex industry without bothering with anyone else until recently when I've been using Twitter as an online marketing tool.
I hated Twitter to begin with. Until you get about 100 followers you're just tweeting to yourself. When you get followed by genuine people as opposed to company accounts, Twitter then becomes a whole lot more interesting. I've had my fingers burned on there too and learned what to think privately and say publically. When I was publically humiliated on Twitter I received a lot of messages and emails of support from people who didn't even follow me. They were from people appalled at the bullying used on Twitter for political and personal gain. They urged me not to lock down or close my account but to move on and learn from it.
I noted with keen interest in the last few weeks that some people don't like my blog. Some prefer just sexual content, others prefer more serious topics. I try to strike a balance between both. The blog is here as a marketing tool for me but also to talk about things that a gay male sex worker may observe from time to time. I'm not one of these self proclaimed activists I see every day on Twitter who are anything but activists. They've just got shouty angry tweets to post and don't go as far as their living room. Activists are people who actually get out there using their real name putting their own head over the parapet, not shouty twitter uses who think they're campaigners. You're not an activist unless you personally act as opposed to sitting at home telling everyone else what is wrong with the sex industry. Sex worker activism isn't about a womans struggle with the law and oppression, it's about sex worker struggles with the law and oppression. Female sex workers forget that's its not an inclusive little female only club. The outpouring of disgust that some female sex workers have made over the recent RadFem conference this weekend just shows how out of touch they are in their own community. They feel alienated by their own gender yet quite happily alienate their own co-workers because they happen to be male sex workers.
I read an argument online last week why female sex workers are so much more important. It's because they can charge more. Hmm that's quite interesting. Yes I charge less than many of my female counterparts but a quick scour of Adultwork using a 10 mile radius of my postcode will reveal possibly a dozen or so female sex workers offering their service at the same, similar and often less than my published rates. This argument suddenly falls apart. Are these women, advertising lower rates, somehow less worthy than me because I charge more than them, the answer is no and it's something I've never even thought about until I read it on Twitter and discovered the sheer arrogance of some people both male and female.
Anyway on that note I will go back to sleep. My cat is wanting attention and I apologise for any typos. A phone is not the best tool for making a 3am blog post.
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