Velvet Venus reflects on how online and digital technology has shaped sex working, particularly safety, during the years she has been escorting.

 I first started sex work in the late nineties when I became an escort; I was 49, a real late starter. During the time I worked as an escort the advent and improvements in technology especially in communications have improved security and safety greatly – well almost.

Offices used computers and had the Internet but very few people had a computer at home, so not many used the internet or email and there was no Wi-Fi.  Mobile phones were going strong but very basic and calls from landlines to mobiles were expensive.  

Starting to ‘work’ I found an agency in the Yellow Pages and joined, sent my photos in and waited for the phone to ring.  The agency would screen the clients calling in and would pass their details onto me but years later I realised this did not always happen, much to my peril, so I became an independent escort, then I had more control, the screening was up to me.

Working as an independent escort I would never take a booking from a mobile number, there was no way to check out who  clients were, or to verify  an address against their mobile numbers, especially as I often did outcalls. I advertised in a local free paper, along with many others.   Even putting my home landline down but soon I got a second mobile, just for work which was untraceable,  that still works well today.

Having a landline for clients to call was popular so I had a second landline put in my house, this was classed as a Business line and I was then able to go into Yellow Pages.  I had to make my advertisement read as an escort agency and when a client rang me, I would say, ‘the others are all out at the moment but I’m available if you like’.  The clients seem to like that, the girl who answers the phone, finally gets the chance to do a booking!  How naughty was that?  That really did work very well as all the city hotels had Yellow Pages in every room.

Then a friend took some sexy photos of me and built my own website, he said ‘the Internet was made for porn’.  He was right. I had my own website and could now promote myself online.  I did not know anything about search engines or how to make your website appear on the first page of Google till much later and when I got a stat counter on my site I was thrilled to see my site was being viewed all around the world – not that it brought me much business initially but clients do travel. I had business cards printed with my web address and proudly gave them to new clients. Nowadays, my website is very important to my work, I now don’t have too give much information over the phone, my website says it all.

Now as mobile phones are used for virtually all bookings, this is the only thing I did find was a bigger problem than before.  A clients address and landline can be checked on BT Phone Book website and a mobile will also show but some clients do not have a landline.  Pay as You Go mobiles are untraceable, so the screening of a client is almost impossible but not if you get the credit/debit card involved.  I did use a very well-known payment website to take payments from my clients but in their Terms and Conditions they do not accept sex workers payments.  I’d naively put their link on my website, my account was closed but  thankfully I did not lose any money.  So I always check the ‘small print’, there are card processors now, not in the UK, who will accept sex workers payments, the commission is high but I find it’s worth doing. A client recently saw my website, noticed I took credit cards and said this gave him confidence to book me. I would say the best advance in technology is being able to accept credit cards on my own website.

Just recently I’ve found a gift list website which is easy to register your list, my clients’ gift is sent to me without the client knowing my address.  The company will also process money gifts too, so I’m now using this for some of my fee transactions, they do take quite a high commission but it’s well worth it.  They are aware of your business so there is less  risk of your account being closed.  The site takes a client’s correct name and address as I request a small deposit from a new client, or for an advance booking.  This confirms my clients’ address so now have the security for my outcall and it feels highly confidential for both parties.  It’s not one hundred percent fool proof though, for example the card details given can belong to someone else,  a  young man stole his father’s credit card and used it to pay for his hotel room and to book me.  I did not realise until the police called me!  I was honest with them and they treated me well.

More modern technology – the webcam, great invention- it means a sex worker  can make big money from the safety of their own home.  Although when I saw a neighbor pop up, it did put me off webcamming.  Also portable cameras can be tiny now and can be used to covertly film a session with a sex worker.  That’s a really difficult problem; I feel my intuition is the best here, I always move items on a unit in line with the bed and if our ‘position’ is bothering my client too much, then I’m wary.

Other technologies like Sat Navs are practical and reassuring.  No more getting lost or finding a sudden diversion and then not having a clue where I was going, especially at night.  A must for any sex worker who does outcalls.

Overall, I’d say technology has made huge improvements for sex workers  but I do spend a lot of time processing and researching information.  In the ‘good old days’ it was simpler but I was more vulnerable to the risks.  Today the risks are still there but I’m much more aware and better prepared with the help of modern day technology.

© Velvet Venus 2017

Please note all our blogs are the views of the author/s and do not necessarily represent the views of the Beyond the Gaze Team.

To mark International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2016 Beyond the Gaze team members Dr Rosie Campbell and Professor Teela Sanders, from Department of Criminology, University of Leicester, reflect on change and continuity in patterns of violent and other crimes against sex workers.

As International Day to end Violence against sex workers is marked across the globe on 17^th December  http://www.december17.org/  we wanted to reflect on the continued high levels of targeted violence and hate crime committed against sex workers and also some of the changing trends in crimes experienced by sex workers as sex work itself changes, as do wider crime patterns.   As Beyond the Gaze is focusing on the working conditions, safety and regulation of internet based sex work in the UK the safety and crime issues faced by people working in the online sector are very much on our minds.

Whilst it is important to stress that most commercial sex interactions go without harassment and violence research indicates that sex workers are more at risk from targeted harassment and violence than the general public and many other occupational groups – these risks varying according to sex working sectors, with many studies showing  higher levels of violence against street sex workers. A systematic review of research on the correlates of violence against sex workers globally was carried out by Dr Kathleen Deering  (University of British Columbia) and a team of researchers. This was  published in the American Journal of Public Health  in 2014 and  they  reported that workplace violence over a lifetime was recorded by 45 to 75% of sex workers, with 32% to 55% experienced violence in the last year. http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301909?journalCode=ajph

We have researched violence against sex workers for some years and argued in an editorial for a special edition of Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2015 that within this global context it is important to unpack the nuances about which groups of sex workers experience violence, at what level and in what forms in order to appropriately develop laws  and policies to prevent violence against sex workers .  http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87961/3/EditorialSpecialIssueGoverningSexWorkFINAL23June.pdf

In our research we have found that the relationship between sex work and violence is shaped by three key elements which allow for differences in the research evidence on the levels of violence between sectors and across different jurisdictions. Firstly, the environment /spaces in which sex work takes place, this acknowledges the different locational and organisational factors which shape safety across sectors.  Secondly, the relationship to the state, that is  where a particular form of sex work sits in the regulatory systems, it’s legal status, how and the extent to which it is criminalised and how those laws are enforced.  For example, in legal frameworks that criminalise sex work or have quasi criminalisation with some activities associated with sex work  criminalised, a  difficult context is created where it is hard to gain sex worker confidence and trust in the police. When the police are involved in arresting sex workers, their clients or others who work with sex workers and are also the organisation sex workers must look to for protection and to report crime it is challenging for trust in the police to be achieved. This leads to a number of things including the under-reporting of crimes against sex workers, leaving offenders  free to commit further crime and fueling a belief held by some offenders who commit crimes against sex workers that they will get away with their crimes, one of the reasons they target sex workers.

Thirdly, stigma, social status, and the ‘othering’ of sex workers increases hostility and violence.  There is a considerable consensus in the global sex work literature that sex workers are  stigmatised and this is a central part of the ‘othering’ and objectification of sex workers which researchers have  argued contributes to social exclusion, generates hostility and contributes to the denial of full rights and a lack of protection from victimisation. Findings from research  show that adopting policing approaches which recognise  crimes against sex workers as hate crime contributes to improving criminal justice responses to crimes against sex workers, hence we support such an approach. We support an intersectional approach to hate crime which recognises the varied experiences of hate crime that  sex workers have, not only based on experiences of hostility and targeting by offenders  because of their sex working but also other aspects of social identity such as race, nationality, gender and sexual identity.  For example migrant sex workers may experience targeted crime related to their race or national identity intersected with their sex work status.

One of the reasons for 17^th December is to remember those people in sex work who have been murdered.  In the UK  public imagination when sex worker murder is discussed, people tend to recall the serial murders of  street sex workers such as the five women  tragically murdered in Ipswich ten years ago, Gemma Adams, Tania Nichol, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell.   Since those murders in Ipswich 42 sex workers in the UK have been murdered who  are recorded on the database maintained by National Ugly Mugs (NUM).  A  concerning trend  in the murder statistics is the increase in the proportion of sex workers murdered who are migrants. If we take  the period from October 2013 to the last know sex worker murder in  February 2016, 56% of the eighteen people murdered  were migrants,  compared to 0% of the twenty one people murdered  between January  2007 and  December 2012. This we argue is not just reflecting an increased proportion of  migrant people working in the UK sex industry but also reflects the intersection of  targeted anti migrant and  sex work hate crime, with such crimes fueled by hostility towards sex workers and migrants and offenders targeting the ‘perceived vulnerability’ of migrant sex workers.

Another distinct  trend  for the same period October 2013 to February 2016  is that of the eighteen  people who were  murdered,  56%  worked indoor/online,  28%  worked on the  street.  (Please note for 16% how they worked was recorded as not known in the NUM  data base). Now compare this to UK sex workers murdered during 2007-2012 21 people were murdered,  71% worked on  street,  24% worked indoor/online and  5%  street and indoor, indicating an increase in the proportion of  indoor/online sex workers who were murdered.    Since 17^th December 2016 the NUM database records three murders of sex workers in the UK,  Daria Pionko in Leeds, Georgina Symonds  in Newport and Jessica McGraa in Aberdeen.  Jessica and Georgina worked in escorting and Daria on the streets. So the issue of violence against sex workers and other crimes are very relevant for the online sector.  Indeed as the online sector is the largest sector of the sex industry in UK it is no surprise that those who target sex workers also target people working in this sector.

This has also been highlighted by findings from a survey of  240 internet based sex workers funded by the Wellcome Trust carried out by  our own Prof Teela Sanders  in partnership with National Ugly Mugs in 2015.  This found that some online sex workers reported crimes  similar to sex workers  in other sectors,  but it also flagged up a number of crimes linked to online and digital technology which had been experienced by internet based sex workers. Some headline findings and recommendations from that research are;

• Levels of concern about crime varied: but 49% were either ‘fairly worried’ or ‘very worried’ about experiencing crime related to their sex work.
• 47% had experienced crime in their sex work – the types of which are shown in the chart below.
• For those working in the online sector new forms of targeted crime were evident. The most common crimes experienced by those people who responded to the survey (86 out of 240) were digitally facilitated which included threatening & harassing texts/calls/emails plus verbal abuse.

• Sex workers also reported incidents of robbery, rape, physical assault and attempted abduction. Removal of condoms without sex worker consent was the most commonly report non digital crime reported
• Half of respondents (49%) were either ‘unconfident’ or ‘very unconfident’ that the police will take crimes against them seriously
• Safety could be improved through decriminalisation, which would allow sex workers to work together, break down stigma , allow for development of improved trust in police and improved public protection policing for sex workers. The action that could improve safety most identified by sex workers taking part was decriminalisation.

If you want to read more about the research go to a summary https://beyond-the-gaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/InternetNUMBriefingFINAL2015.pdf  or read ‘On our own terms’  published recently in Sociological Research Online  http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/4/15.html

Good news  for 2017 the Wellcome Trust are also  funding a  research project which will compare the experiences of violence and mental health amongst sex workers with other ‘risky’ occupational groups. This will be carried out by Professor Teela Sanders  with  Dr Lucy Platt and Pippa Greenfell at the London School of Tropical Medicine, working in partnership with NUM.

It was the lack of research data not only on issues of safety for internet based sex workers  but about the sector generally, despite it being the largest sector in the UK, that lead Teela with our colleague Prof Jane Scoular at Strathclyde University to apply for the grant from the Economic and Social Research Council which is now supporting Beyond the Gaze.

One element of the larger BTG  project is looking at safety and crime issues for internet based sex workers. Sex workers have been sharing their experiences and views about these in research interviews carried out during 2016. These interviews are still being interviewed but the key crimes people are describing include; online email and phone/SMS harassment & abuse, stalking (in person and online) threats to out, outing,  doxing (i.e.  unauthorised use of information which may be images, profile hacking and private information), computer hacking,  none payment by customers, fraud, physical assault, rape and sexual assault.

These findings  are set against a back drop were national crime reporting is paying more attention to cyber crime.  The Crime Survey for England and Wales, published by the Office for National Statistics for the end of year March 2016 included questions on fraud and computer misuse crime. It estimated that  there had been 3.8 million fraud and 2.0 million computer misuse offences experienced in the 12 months prior to interview. A Senior statistician from ONS commented “This is the first time we have published official estimates of fraud and computer misuse from our victimisation survey… Together, these offences are similar in magnitude to the existing headline figures covering all other Crime Survey offences. However, it would be wrong to conclude that actual crime levels have doubled, since the survey previously did not cover these offences. These improvements to the Crime Survey will help to measure the scale of the threat from these crimes, and help shape the response.” John Flatley, Crime Statistics and Analysis, Office for National Statistics.  https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmar2016

Our online sex worker survey has a section on issues of safety and crime, this  survey is  building  on the Wellcome Trust survey carried out by Teela.   Our BTG  survey is live until 31^st January 2017 and it’s really important that we get a large number of   sex workers, working in all aspects of internet based sex work, to take  part so we have a solid body of data about the online sector,  including  about experiences of crime and safety, to inform policy and practice.  We have the help of many online advertising platforms, sex workers, other individuals and organisations helping us promote the survey – thank you we couldn’t do it without you! So please take 10 mins to complete the survey  if  you work in the sex industry,  whether you’re a web cam model, escort, pro-dom, BDSM specialist, sensual masseur , provider of phone sex we need your help!  This link will take you directly to the survey  https://leicester.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/btg-sex-worker-survey  If  you don’t work in the sector but know people who do, please promote the survey.

Next year we’ll be writing up and sharing findings on internet based sex work and safety. We’ll also be working with sex workers, NUM and sex work projects to produce online safety info based on research findings. So we hope Beyond the Gaze will be able to make a significant contribution to improving knowledge about internet based sex work in the UK including matters of safety and crime for people working in the sector. We hope this can help inform the development of effective law and policy for reducing crimes against sex workers and improving safety and working conditions.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are the those of the authors, they do necessarily reflect the views of  the University of Leicester or the University of Strathclyde. 

My introduction to the use of webcam as a form of sexual commerce was a touch unusual. My friend Sally* was doing an MA in textiles, using patchwork in order to explore BDSM. She had made contact with a locally based dominatrix and had arranged to interview her, a touch apprehensive she asked me to accompany her to the interview.

The Dominatrix, Vicky*, was working out of a large Victorian terraced house close to where Sally and I live. It is a house I walk past everyday on my way to the train station and its neat appearance and total conformity with the other houses in the road meant that I had never paid it any attention at all. When we arrived we were greeted at the door by Vicky’s mum, who whispered for us to be quiet as Vicky was working. We waited in the hallway until she had finished and were ushered into the room that Vicky was working in. Vicky was not alone, there was an almost naked man in a cage and besides her on the sofa sat a transsexual woman named Janet*. It transpired that we had arrived while the trio were live streaming a domination session via a webcam. At the same time the session was being video recorded using a separate camera.  It was a scheduled show that had lasted an hour and she had earned just over £130 for that hour by transmitting live via the Adultwork.com website. She had also earned a fee from the submissive who had agreed to be humiliated and beaten by Vicky and Janet. The video recording was so that Vicky could upload the session to the clips4sale website and so make yet more revenue from this one encounter. This was in 2011 and since then Vicky and I have remained friends and as I got to know her I realised just how resourceful and smart Vicky was.

Vicky was introduced to webcamming by her sister and had really run with it, she had experimented with different themes and specialities and had quickly realised that she had a talent for both submission and domination. She acquired a substantial amount of equipment and eventually started to meet in real time with some of her regulars. The transwoman Janet was also a submissive and she too webcammed. Even Vicky’s mum, Dawn*, in her 50’s  subsidised her benefits with webcamming. Vicky carried on camming for several years after we first met and in that time she worked hard to escape the poverty that had made camming an attractive employment option for her. She was able to buy a car, take her kids on holidays and rent a second property so she no longer needed to work from home. She was doing very well for some time but things turned sour when Vicky met a new partner decided to move herself and her kids in with him. The relationship deteriorated rather rapidly and she was forced to take refuge in a hostel for women experiencing domestic violence and the kids moved in with her mum. Having lost her confidence as well as all her equipment when she left her abusive partner, she did not feel comfortable enough to resume webcamming but she did use instant messaging (IM) via the Adultwork.com website. IM is the exchange of text using webcam technology but without the visual, think Skype without video. Although this does not pay as well as webcamming she was eventually able to save the deposit for a flat and was able to slowly rebuild her life.

Vicky no longer webcams, she has studied, trained and is now working in a totally unrelated industry. Despite the very few resources available to Vicky as a single parent in an area of deprivation it would be very hard to create a victim out of someone as entrepreneurial and savvy as Vicky. She was able to work her way out of poverty and improve the quality of life for both herself and her children using webcamming, later she was able to use this form of sexual labour to rebuild her life after her involvement with a violent partner. The lack of feminist led moral panic around the use of webcam as a form of sexual labour has allowed a form of sex work to evolve which isn’t infused with the presumption of victimhood and abuse. Vicky’s experience of sex work using webcam is nuanced and has provided me with an opportunity to study a form of post-industrial sex work that has yet to be taken up by radical feminism.

Rachel Stuart, PhD researcher at the University of Kent

*All names have been changed.

Please note all our blogs are the views of the author  and do not necessarily represent the views of the Beyond the Gaze Team.

One thing that has struck me about trying to gain an academic understanding of the role photography plays in the online transaction of sex is how dismissive prohibitionists are of photography, and the role photography plays in encouraging the sense that the only way of interpreting their lives is to see them as ripe for ‘rescue.’    Prohibitionist photography acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The anti sex work lobby creates the visual rescue narrative that gives legitimacy to saving sex workers from themselves.

Whoretography (www.whoretography.com) sits nicely at the intersection of imagery, technologies, society & the sex worker rights movement, and no discussion of sex worker visual representation is complete without understanding the way prohibitionists wield photography as a weapon in the prohibitionist war on sex work.

You see, to believe the prohibitionist lobby is to believe in the irrelevance of photography to the sex work debate. The only photographic truth is the prohibitionist photographic truth, and it’s been my experience that prohibitionists are quick to tow the visual party line.   They are dismissive of  Whoretography and the relevance of photography to the sex work debate.  A much tried and tested prohibitionist tactic is to label anyone critiquing prohibition photography as nothing more than laziness and nitpicking.  If you want evidence of such,  just see the vitriolic language directed at sex workers for calling out prohibitionist imagery.

Gonzalo Arévalo’s work has all the hallmarks of anti-sex-work visual rhetoric.  It accompanied an article on marital infidelity; It is a brilliant example of visual propaganda from a powerful anti-sex work lobby who dismiss the importance of sex work visual depictions.   Are we to believe that illustrations do not matter?  That their carefully crafted image choice is not part of a visual war raging against sex workers?  To quote the prohibitionists, I am not buying it.

Copyright Gonzalo Arévalo

The French anti prostitution organisation Mouvement du Nid, created a fake escort website (http://girlsofparadise.sex) with the aim of deterring men from paying for sex. The site a perfect example of why the dead whore is such a powerful visual marketing tool.   Mouvement du Nid argue they are fighting violence against sex workers by using violent images, completely oblivious and ignorant to the way photography gives justification to the violence Mouvement du Nid claim to want to stop.   So ignorant,  they celebrated upon being awarded a prestigious advertising award for doing nothing more than promoting a stereotype.  For an organisation that purports to save sex workers, an image of a dead prostitute is essential for bringing in cash donations.

Copyright Mouvement du Nid

The Salvation Army also understands the financial benefits of maintaining the visual status quo. They were forced to make a public apology after sex workers complained over the representation that vilified them as bad mothers.  Although the Salvation Army issued an apology over the offensive material, other campaigns that visually depict sex worker as hapless deviants continue to form   part of their fund raising strategy.

Copyright The Salvation Army

These  photographs above encapsulate the formulaic prohibitionist approach to the visual representation of sex work.  Dark alley, street walker leaning into the car, robotic fallen woman robbed of agency, distressed child, always unseen predatory male, bad mother, battered corpse.  A sense of desperation and the wafting smell of cocaine, heroin, lube and baby oil hangs heavy in the cinematic tones. The prohibitionist lobby argues that to discuss sex work photography is just laziness, that photographs do not matter and if this is the case, then it is a remarkable coincidence that the above photographs taken from prohibitionist websites epitomise stigmatising rhetoric.

The majority of articles written about sex work are accompanied by a picture of outdoor sex work, regardless if the written words discuss indoor sex work.   The media portrayal of sex work is just as lazy as the prohibitionists.  Going to a stock photo agency website and typing prostitution hardly makes one a photo editor.  On the other hand, if you believe photography matters to the war on sex then one may argue the anti lobby image selection is inspired and to be admired.  After all, if I were a former sex worker (as some high profile prohibitionists are) seeking to align myself with the other side of the virgin/whore dichotomy, I would have chosen these picture as well.

This prohibitionist attitude towards photography is not uncommon, nor is their denial that the camera is an agent of violence wielded against sex workers.  To talk about sex worker imagery is just nit-picking. A standard reaction from those who do not understand the photographic theory,  visual identity and that photography is inextricably interwoven into sex work identities, narratives, and society.

At times, I believe prohibitionists are not aware they are perpetuating visual rhetoric; they suffer from a false photography consciousness.  So in awe of their visual rhetoric, they believe it to be the truth.  Denial is handy if you seek to indoctrinate people with exclusionary feminist visual violence.   A well-lit and well-edited photograph makes the rescue narrative hard to sell.  Prohibitionists are not immune to the use of Adobe software. Gonzalo Arévalo’s illustration is an example of this. Prohibitionists often argue that airbrushing and photoshop have gentrified sex work.  However, if Photoshop has edited out the lower class reality of sex work, then they need only to present unedited photographs to show the class narrative that sex workers apparently remove via a Photoshop gentrification tool. If to talk about sex work photos is irrelevant, then why do prohibitionist use editing software?  Why do they use photography at all?

If prohibitionists were honest, photographically speaking, they would acknowledge that what offends them the most is that the digital democratising of photography has robbed the middle-class masses of their control over photography and image dissemination.   A photographic revolution has taken place, and sex workers are discouraged from participating in it. The Photo-shopped gentrification of sex work is an argument designed to keep sex workers away from the digital revolution.  Through photography’s new found accessibility, sex workers now have access to an unfettered form of communication; they can now challenge social constructs about their lives.  Sex workers are now image makers and it’s difficult for prohibitionists to control the visuals of sex work if sex workers themselves now have a photographic voice of their own. If war imagery has taught us anything, it’s that those who control the image also control the message and middle-class ladies who lunch cannot keep other women in line if they can’t control how wayward women are visually constructed.

It’s time prohibitionists were challenged on the social effects of the visual propaganda they circulate. Their lack of understanding of visual culture is matched only by their insistence that illustrations do not matter. They wilfully label photography as irrelevant to the sex workers rights debate and maliciously, perhaps dangerously, they seek to use photography to silence the voices, intentions, actions, feelings and the rights of sex workers.

Biography –

Camille Melissa is a Documentary Photographer, Masters Student, Sex Worker and Visual Activist interested in using photography to challenge the victim centred nature of sex worker imagery and how photography is instrumental in the war against sex workers.   Through Whoretography, she is challenging the prevailing ideology of sex-work and wants to present to the viewer an alternative perception of the industry and participants –  frequently obscured by one particular, narrow version of feminism, by anti-sex-work rhetoric and by modern Western cultural attitudes towards bodies and sex.   Her photographic and cyber ethnographic work is about stopping the over-simplification of the lives of sex workers, and to challenge current imagery that encourages the sense that the only way of interpreting their lives is to see them as ripe for ‘rescue.’  Through Whoretography, Camille is working on a new interpretation of sex work imagery that will help to change the visual landscape that informs political views that rob so many sex workers of autonomy.  She is currently publishing a series of books and e-magazines and is working towards secure funding to establish the first and only publishing house dedicated to using the visual medium of photo books to advance the rights of sex workers. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in biological sciences, postgraduate in criminology and is undertaking a Masters’s Degree in digital photography.

Please note all our blogs are the views of the author  and do not necessarily represent the views of the Beyond the Gaze Team.