Sex work is work. But it’s work we judge mothers for doing.
Violet* is at home with her daughter and boyfriend when she hears a knock at the door. She opens it to find five police officers and a social worker. “They went through our laundry, our bag of adult toys, all of our cupboards,” she tells me over the phone. “They said that my mom called and told them that I am a prostitute and that I am subjecting my daughter to it.”
Violet does work in the sex industry, but she isn’t a prostitute; she is a cam girl. And, though this work may be highly stigmatized, it is legal. So, she was shocked when the judge granted Violet’s mother full custody of her daughter. She says, “It blows my mind that you can lose a child like this. I haven’t been charged with anything. I’ve never been arrested.”
Violet’s story stands out to me because, as an online sex worker who is also a mother, this is my worst fear. I started doing a mix of phone sex, cam modeling, and clip production when I was going through a divorce. Online sex work offered a flexible schedule that allowed me to take care of my kids. Divorce, as it turns out, is time consuming and expensive. Sex work was a good fit for the circumstances. It was also a good fit in many other ways that I didn’t anticipate: The work, while challenging, can be interesting, rewarding, and meaningful. But beginning a sex work career while in the midst of a divorce made me particularly attuned to, and afraid of, custody issues such as Violet’s.
This fear is not unfounded. Sex workers who are mothers often find themselves in the middle of such battles, even if they’re engaging in perfectly legal behavior. Juniper Fitzgerald, a former erotic dancer, and author of How Mamas Love Their Babies, understands this all too well, having faced her own custody battle related to sex work. “Not a day goes by that I don’t hear of a sex working mother crowdsourcing funds for a custody lawyer. It’s heartbreaking,” she said.
The fact that sex workers who engage in legal work face these challenges points to something important regarding attitudes toward sex work: Our fitness to parent is seen through a lens of the stigma that surrounds sex work. Mothers who engage in sex work are perceived to lack the judgement and boundaries needed to be good parents. This stigma is injected into our legal system. While the law may not forbid stripping or cam work, judges have a lot of discretion, and if doing stigmatized work leads them to believe that we have poor judgment, they can slap us with consequences that, for mothers, can feel worse than being arrested.
Fitzgerald notes that she has it easier than most in her position. “I have a great deal of privilege as a white woman with a PhD,” she said. However, “Even given those privileges, the court wanted detailed explanation of my work and a good faith testament that I was no longer engaged in sex work.” This becomes an even bigger problem for those who do not carry such privilege. suprihmbé, an online sex worker and artist, observes, “As a Black woman who has run into many problems with the law, I avoid the court.” And in the case of prostitution, Bella Robinson, executive director of COYOTE, a sex workers’ rights organization, remarks in a phone conversation, “You are more likely to go to jail for prostitution than you are for drugs.”
Our fitness to parent is seen through a lens of the stigma that surrounds sex work. Click To Tweet
And yet, despite the fact that society portrays motherhood as incongruent with sex work — scrutinizing our judgement and credibility — sex working mothers continue to parent our kids in a way that is not only appropriate, but radical in its power to destabilize these narratives and destigmatize our work for future generations. In other words, sex working mothers are at the front lines of a radical sexual politics, as these front lines begin in our own homes. Because we occupy professions that are highly stigmatized, sex working mothers are pushed to parent with a thoughtfulness and a courage that undermines the perceptions of unfit motherhood that society wants to insist upon.
For myself and the other mothers I spoke with, this begins with figuring out how to talk to our kids in an age appropriate way about both sexuality and sex work. But more than this, we also have to talk to them about the stigma we — and, they, by extension — face. This is never simple. suprihmbé notes that while she is not secretive about what she does, her son is only 5 and she hasn’t yet decided how much she will tell him. Part of her worry is that other parents aren’t having the same conversations with their children about the nuances of sex work. She says, “Probably once he’s a little older we will discuss it more, but I don’t know how in depth I want to be? Because I’m a single mom, and I don’t want him running off at the mouth to other kids’ moms and dealing with their bigotry.”
Fitzgerald describes the way in which she has talked to her 4-year-old daughter about sex work. “I have told her many times that I used to dance naked for a job. My former work is very normalized in our household.” Porn performer Lotus Lain hasn’t yet told her children what she does for work, but is laying the groundwork for these conversations. “My kid is still elementary age, but they have a healthy view of sex, they know what sex is,” she says. “They’re not judgmental at all. I’ve talked to them about different types of sexuality and gender and they’ve completely understood without challenging the concepts.” She hopes this will set them up to be understanding when they’re old enough to learn more.“I know that once they’re high school age they will be able to fully understand the type of sex work I have done and why.”
Yin Q, a dominatrix, writer, and educator, says that she is also preparing her kids to understand sex work as they grow older. “My kids are too young to understand sex work at this point,” she said, “but I raise them to be accepting of different sexual lifestyles and orientations and am already very careful not to slut shame.” Yin Q has also written and produced a series based on her career called Mercy Mistress, and her kids have seen some of the footage of the main character, a femme domme, in fetish gear. “They’ve asked me what she does, and I answered that she helps people face their darkness. ‘So she’s a superhero?’ they said. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘Sex workers are superheroes.’”
This conversation seems to capture what many sex worker mothers are doing in their parenting. Because I have older children, I was able to have very direct conversations with them about my work, and this became more urgent when I started doing sex work writing and local activism. When I explained to my pre-teen what phone sex is and why people call phone sex lines, he responded with, “So you are like an online therapist but you talk to people mostly about sex.” I laughed, because it is closer to the truth of what this kind of sex work looks like than what most people realize. I was proud to have raised a kid who could see past the sensationalism of the sex in sex work (unlike most adults) and see the bigger picture. But for this to happen, a foundation had to be laid: a sex positive foundation which included a respect for personal autonomy and for women, including those who have made choices that fall outside of cultural norms.
Sex working mothers are at the front lines of a radical sexual politics, because these front lines begin in our own homes. Click To Tweet
Indeed, Ramona Flour, an art model and sex worker whose mother also worked in the industry, exemplifies this, tweeting, “I have been advocating for sex workers my whole life because my my mother has been a sex worker my whole life.” On the phone, she expands, “The thing I want people to understand is that there are a lot of single mothers [in sex work], mothers who are struggling to take care of their children.” Of her own mother she says, “I am thankful, above everything else, that she was so selfless and provided for me and took care of me. She used sex work to take care of her kid and that is so commendable.”
While the image that we have of sex work activists is that of the most public and most visible sex workers — those who march on the streets and stand at the forefront of political action — sex working mothers are also engaged in a radical activism at home. They are teaching their children to see sex workers through their own lens, and not through the filter of shame and stigma. This is important political work. “We need more representations of sex workers that are authentic, complex, and generous,” says Yin Q. “Culture change happens before policy change.”
*Name has been changed to protect privacy since this custody case is still open.
