Sex Workers In Love
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How do stigma and stereotypes affect dating for sex workers?
How would you react if someone that you were dating, or even a long-term partner, told you that they're a sex worker? Sex workers deserve love and fulfilling relationships just like anyone else, but the stigmas and stereotypes of the industry can sometimes make being honest with a partner about what you do sometimes hard or even dangerous. And we thought, what better way of breaking down misunderstanding about sex workers than hearing from them about their struggles with dating and relationships? There are layers upon layers of very diverse experiences within the sex industry. We'll be talking to people who have made a decision to work in that industry by choice for lots of different reasons. But we do acknowledge that this isn't everyone's experience.
The Hookup with Hannah Riley. Love and f***ing. On Triple J. A
much hyped and kind of contentious area of sex work is sugaring, where sugar daddies or mommies, wealthy men or women, pay for the company of sugar babies. I spoke to Alice, which is not her real name. She is 24. She's a sex worker from a Melbourne brothel. She started out stripping before she was sugaring. What was it like as far as clientele went?
Well, at the time while I was in Sydney, I only saw two gentlemen. I tried to convince myself at first that it wasn't prostitution. A lot of men would say to me, you know, just be careful, this is really thinly veiled prostitution. But I was like, no, no, it's fine. I'm not sleeping with anybody. I'm just going to go out for dinner and you can just buy me stuff. Like little did I know, like so naive. So the client, like clients, the guys that I went out with, one was a doctor. He was really lovely, like a little bit too old. His profile said 50, but I would say going on 70.
Right.
That's quite a leap. Yes, it's a leap.
So tell me about your other client.
I don't really see them as clients, to be honest. Now that I'm working in the industry that I am now, I see that more as work. This was sort of just fun for me. So the other gentleman I went out with for around nine months, he was just really lovely. We had heaps in common in terms of our interests. And he was a very social person. So I really enjoyed doing dinners and drinks and shows and stuff like that with him and after a while I actually stopped accepting money from him because I saw him more of a more of a partner or boyfriend than my sugar daddy so yeah it kind of went from that sort of relationship in my mind to a more sustained or legitimate relationship whether that that was the case for him or not I'm not actually sure.
How did that develop? How do you go from a paid relationship moving into an emotional one?
I think I was reasonably emotional from the beginning. There was no acting differently or whatever once I stopped accepting money from him. And it also wasn't the circumstance where, you know, I'd go over to his house and he'd say, you know, here's $500 and I'll see you in a week. It wasn't like that. You know, we'd go out for dinner and he'd just say, oh, I've just got to get some money from the ATM and take out bunch of money and give it to me. And it just went on quite casually like that. Intimately and emotionally, it wasn't any different without the money. But it did make me, I think, a bit more vulnerable. The L word was thrown around a few times and that sort of thing. But now that I look back on it, I don't think that it was actually legitimate on his part.
What makes you think that?
I found out that he was seeing other girls from the Seeking Arrangement website while, you know, at the time that I'd stopped accepting money from him. So for those reasons, I think that he didn't really take me that seriously, which is fine and understandable and everyone's got their agendas. But yeah, just I think purely for that reason, he wasn't able to be monogamous with me.
Can you tell me about the first time that the L-bomb was dropped?
What is a sugar‑baby arrangement and how did Alice’s story begin?
Actually, it was two weeks into it and I said it, of course. But I think, yeah, I was just so overwhelmed by how lovely he'd been to me and how supportive he'd been of, you know, my outside interests and endeavors and that sort of thing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How do stigma and stereotypes affect dating for sex workers?
0:00–4:16
2
What is a sugar‑baby arrangement and how did Alice’s story begin?
4:16–9:01
3
How can a paid sugar‑baby relationship turn into an emotional partnership?
9:01–12:54
4
What challenges do brothel workers face when talking about personal relationships?
12:54–17:25
5
How did Tilly’s family react when they discovered she was a sex worker?
17:25–21:08
6
What are the unique dating experiences of a stripper like Nicole?
21:08–25:38
7
Why does an internal ‘whore‑phobia’ create hierarchies within the sex‑work community?
25:38–30:09
8
Do clients try to ‘rescue’ sex workers and how does that impact independence?
30:09–33:54