Not all Light and Love

 TW - sexual assault

It’s not exactly the kind of memory I like to hang on to, but it lingers. Sometimes it’s at the forefront of my mind when I’m beginning new networks in the industry and meeting new peers. Sometimes you just don’t know what corners of the community are for you or against you.

If you’ve read my stuff before, then you’ll know that the sex work community is a big part of my love for the industry - there was and always has been a sense of ‘being amongst my people’ that I simply haven’t felt anywhere else. We’re a bunch of odd misfits and we celebrate that. But my relationship with the sex work community is exactly that - a relationship. Sometimes our relationship is healthier than others. I have unbreakable ties to this community but the relationship has varied from synergetic and uplifting, to toxic and damaging. 

I’m thinking about this now as I’m coming off the back of reading a couple of books about online trolling, of note being Troll Hunting by Ginger Gorman, and I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the stuff I’ve endured as a sex worker in an age of intense and increasing public presence. 

The online aspect of sex work has been present for me since day one. My very first day working at the high volume ‘agency’ I started in, a decade ago, was the same day I was reviewed, so I quickly discovered the existence of review boards. It was a very rude awakening - I started sex work under the guise of it being built on a culture of discretion and yet, it appears clients could talk about every aspect of us and what they did with us. Disgust was my first reaction, then fear, and then morbid curiosity. 

The New Zealand forums work a little differently to how they do in Australia - for a start there’s a lot more escort input so ‘hobbyists’ and sex workers mingle and talk together a lot more in discussion. It gets heated, it’s not a particularly nice place a lot of the time but it’s arguably a lot nicer than the cesspits that are the known Aussie boards. So it worked out that I joined up on my very first day to read what was said about me, and curiosity drew me in plus an instinctive ‘keep the enemy close’. 

I was pretty active on the review boards then, it’s where I spun off into blogging (this by the way is not the first, second or third blog I’ve had over the years, I’ve well and truly done the sex work blog gig by now) and I built up a reputation with my words well before Twitter became important. I didn’t get along with everyone, and I suppose that included some workers - being (especially back then, I’ve definitely mellowed with age) the passionate, outspoken and at times angry feminist that I was - heated words happened from time to time. But I also made good friends, even mentors on there and I definitely acquired a lot of clients who appreciated a little spunk in their sexual endeavours. 

I was already unfortunately well aware of the dark side of the Internet, having been stalked and harassed by my abusive ex for years. I learnt quickly that the internet was something that could be exploited by people to cause harm, but up until my time in sex work I just never appreciated the size of the problem or just how venomous people could be, that you didn’t even know.

Fast forward a few years and I’m touring in Wellington. I have an honestly awful tour, an anonymous person made a fake booking and then reported me to my hotel reception for ‘dodgy activity’ and I had my room raided by staff. Believe it or not, this stuff still happens under decriminalisation - hotels are allowed to refuse us working there. But also, I was sexually assaulted by a client. Now at that time I was in a huff with the review boards and wasn’t using them, and I was alone on tour unsure who to talk to or how to deal with myself. I wrote a blog about what happened to me, I guess writing has just always been an outlet, and published it and it was put on the review board. At the time my ex husband didn’t know how to respond, and I wasn’t out yet to my family - I didn’t know who to talk to, I hoped my community would hear me and be the family for me that I needed.

It just didn’t really work out that way. People in the forums questioned why I wrote it, people doubted my story, people thought I was attention seeking and worst of all, people blamed me for what happened. I won’t get into the details of the assault, I don’t want to, it’s not necessary and it’s behind me, but the actions out of my own community shocked me. It is unsurprising that the type of people who hang around on review boards are often misogynists and some of the things that were said were grotty but nonetheless unsurprising. But some of my own peers were doubting me, blaming me, and even started trolling me about it. Now there was support, I’m grateful to a lovely friend who came to my aid and others who were involved and there was love and care there. But in the end it came to feel overshadowed, in particular by one individual - a sex worker - who thought it would be a lot of fun to spend the next year or so trolling me and making fun of my sexual assault. It involved abusive name-calling and harassment, usually timed for when I was touring, when they knew I’d be alone again and sensitive. I think I’ve struggled to deal with the fact that this was permitted by the forums, but also because the establishment they worked from who claimed to be progressive in their sex worker rights and ethics, did nothing about it. For some reason this person, who didn’t know me, thought sexual assault of a peer was a lol-worthy event and with the full support of her own fanboys, seemingly their workplace and the forum itself, proceeded to try and get as many ‘lulz’ as possible out of my trauma.

I’m a much stronger individual now than I was then, I couldn’t really give two hoots what some immature little brat wants to say about me now - but things were raw then. I was younger and without the strong support network I have today. Back then I was the one comforting my own husband about my rape, I couldn’t call my family to talk about it or talk to any of my uni friends. I was alone, and where the forums had at times provided a sense of community and a safe place for discussion, I felt really betrayed by how quickly that turned really toxic for me. 

And people say when online interactions turn sour, well, why don’t you just turn it off? But how can you turn off the only thing that gives you a sense of connection to the only people who are like you? The world is very online now - it’s how we market, stay in touch, it’s how we work and how we live. You can’t just turn it off. And it’s so much more complex when you live a life that you can’t be completely open about in ‘real life’. It takes courage and a degree of risk to talk to people outside the sex work community about our job. I’ve lost so much personally and had to keep secrets to prevent it affecting the lives of my loved ones too. Sex workers take a lot of risks to be here, and so having a community in sex work can be so important for when there’s either no-one else to talk to, or just no-one who really ‘gets it’. It isn’t so simple to turn off the only place where your job isn’t the one thing you’re judged on. 

But since that experience, while the sex work community is in so many ways my family - it is definitely a dysfunctional one and one that I have never been able to fully lean on since. The organisations that rely on community do so much good work, and I’m grateful every time I see a client knowing I can do that legally, and I feel guilty at times that I never involve myself as much as I should. But every time I dip my toes in I feel just how deep that goes and everything I risk by jumping in. I want to bring positive attention to the community for all the good it has done and all the good it will do for others, but I feel at times that I gloss over some harsher realities by trying to be all ‘light and love’ for the benefit of social media ‘mood’ and the endless war against stigma. But the truth is that I had my heart broken by my community those years ago, while people watched on or even laughed, and that’s a wound that’s scarred viciously.

I’m a harder person because of trolling, because of deeply entrenched misogyny in the sex industry, and I know more than most that it’s not limited only to men or to clients, but that it’s alive and well within the community too. I’m happy and fine today because through circumstance and determination, I’ve been able to build a support network away from the industry, so I can ugly-cry into someone’s sleeve and not worry about how that might impact my survival network. I love you, my community, I do - but like my relationship with my Mother - I love you more from a safe distance.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

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Web: petrafox.com.au