Day to day, I spend a lot of my time going through my advertising,
my phone is permanently by my side, my emails take priority,
a lot of calls, and also booking ferries, flights and hotels.
I see myself as a business person, I also see myself as an entrepreneur.
I think I’m just another self-employed person, the only slight difference is, I have sex and flirt for money
I’m Laura, I’ve been in the sex industry
now for 24 years. I am a sex worker, dominatrix, and fierce campaigner for sex workers’ rights.
My name is Lexie Starr, and I am a former established trans escort, dominatrix and web cam model
When I worked in the sex industry as a sex
worker and an escort, for me personally, the reason why I enjoyed it so much is because
when you close the door between client and escort, sex worker, hooker, whatever you want
to call them, it’s a very private, intimate moment, and I felt so honoured and humbled
for that client to trust me. So I came over in the UK because one of my
friends was working in the UK and she told me she earned good money. I’m not proud
of what I’m doing, from a psychological point of view there are a lot of disadvantages.
The work that I do is fantastic. I absolutely adore – I adore any human being to be fair,
but I think that anybody is entitled to that love and intimacy in their lives, and if I
can do that, even to somebody with disabilities, then that’s me happy.
I used to be a mental health professional, so I believe that my training as a therapist
also complimented my job in that I could sometimes just be there for somebody to talk to, so
it wasn’t necessarily a sexual transaction. So it’s a lot of emotional labour, a lot
of listening actually. I think when people have a perception of sex work, they think
we have sex incessantly and that’s just not true at all I’m afraid.
Some people don’t realise that prostitution is legal in the United Kingdom, people think
it’s illegal, and it’s not, it’s perfectly legal for one person to sell sex from a premises.
I think when I was a sex worker, the reason why I was so good at it, I say modestly, is
because I genuinely care about people, and also believe that I was born to be a sex worker.
When I came back to sex work in 2006 after a protracted break and found that it had all
moved online, I was horrified because I didn’t understand the difference between upload and
download. Now that we’ve moved forward from that, I think it’s very, very advantageous
with the use of apps to keep us safe for example. The internet and digital technology is really,
really important to sex workers. As we progress in a digital age, it’s an opportunity for
sex workers to use various platforms to be able to grow their brand to their target audience.
I have to change my picture every week because otherwise I can’t get new clients, or even
the old ones, they don’t call again because they want something new all the time.
The main change I’ve seen with regards to digital technology is more competition. On
the one hand that’s great because it helps you to up your game, on the other hand it’s
not so great because sometimes you have to lower your prices. I think it’s harder work
advertising online because you have to keep abreast of changes, perhaps faster because
digital technology works faster, than when we did print press for example.
The main changes I would say is that a lot more people are advertising their services
with it being online. Since it’s kind of come off the street, a lot more people from
different walks of life are doing it, so you have like anything from the student nurse
wanting to fund their university degree, to trafficked women, which is the tragic side
of the other end of the spectrum.
Digital technology is imperative in my work because I use digital technology to update profile pictures, to send email, to answer
booking forms from the site, and also, when I used to cam, it was a two-way web cam interacting
with clients. I’ve started supplementing my income with
camming now. It’s a really good build-on to an escorting business. It’s great fun
– you have a great laugh, talk to a lot of people, and it’s a great way to get yourself
out there, but it does come with its risks of being recorded or shared with other people.
Camming is talking in livestream real time to clients, so that could be through a typed
message, or it could be with your microphone switched on, and it would be on a pay-per-minute
view, which you set your price at, and it would basically be commands from them telling
you what to do. It’s ultimately stripping on a cam and obeying commands that you’re
comfortable with obeying. It is very important for me to protect my
identity because I don’t want my family and my friends to find out what I am working.
I was married many years in Romania, my life was far from being a nice one, and a very
abusive marriage I had. So I came to the UK, I started doing this work, but I have in mind
that I will stop at some point and I’m not going to do it for a long time.
I think one of the biggest issues with online sex work to be honest, is probably how easy
it is for it to be linked with your other online presences, and how easy that information
is to be shared once it’s out there – pictures online, phone numbers online, details get
shared on forums – so I try my hardest to keep them as far apart as possible, different
phones, different laptops, everything, just to stop them linking up.
Protecting my privacy when I’m camming is a little bit more complicated. On some websites
we can use certain types of software that protects us from being recorded. They can
sometimes end up on web camera shows, or we can use services that will look for our videos
online and then help us to get them removed, but it’s a big risk to privacy – camming,
because once it’s out there, you can’t get it back.
To keep myself safe at work, I use a lot of apps to try and screen my clients as much
as I can beforehand, so I check out their previous feedback, run their number through
the number checker, and speak to them by phone as well, to try and get a feel for the kind
of person that they are. So I would give them the equivalent of a five
minute police interview: where did you see the advert darling? If they mentioned a site
that I wasn’t on, I wouldn’t take the call any further.
At the moment, it’s perfectly legal for me to be able to work and operate on my own.
If I want to be safe at work with another person, then I’m breaking the law as it’s
deemed as a brothel, and violent attackers are aware of that and
they know that we are sitting ducks, that we’re targets with cash, with mobile phones,
very often we’re in vulnerable positions. No matter where are you working – in your
own home, or on the street, or in a sauna – and I think decriminalisation would be
something to look at because you never know who you open the door to, or who’s coming
in your house. When I was a sex worker, I was stalked once
by a client for probably about three months where he literally followed me in his car,
which was very unnerving. Also I had to physically remove a client from my premises once when
he became aggressive. Now that is over a career that lasted 24 years, and yeah sure, that
could be seen as harassment and a crime. Equally, when I was a nurse many years ago, I was attacked
many times, including once with a knife. So, crime in sex work is there, but crime in any
occupation is also there, and we need to protect ourselves within that.
The reason why I became out as a sex worker was because I was threatened and blackmailed
when I was back in my home town many, many years ago. I had a nightclub which I did a
lot of marketing for. A gentleman saw that and threatened and blackmailed me, saying
that if I didn’t give them free sex and money, they would out me to the paper. A female
contacted me about a documentary and I thought, do you know what? Sod it. If somebody is going
to blackmail me, I’m gonna be out as a sex worker for my own accord. I did the documentary,
and unfortunately my next door neighbour saw it and didn’t agree to what I did for a
living and didn’t want to be living next door to a sex worker. So, she told the landlord
and I was eventually evicted from my home. Using the internet to communicate with other
sex workers and find out what’s going on in the sex work community has been essential
for me. It really is quite an isolating job, so having the support forums that we’ve
got, I’ve met other people. We now have WhatsApp and Facebook groups that are really
helpful, not only for isolation, but also for safety to pass on numbers.
The support networks I’ve used in the past would be National Ugly Mugs, which is a national
organisation for the safety of sex workers, escorts, dominatrices – anyone coming into
contact with paying clients.
When I was escorting, I pretty much always did other jobs alongside it, and I actually paid for my therapy training through sex work.
I fit my sex work around the rest of my life quite effectively. I also have a daughter,
a partner, and I’m studying at university. I would sum up my work as a normal occupation.
You know, I love meeting people, I love hearing about people, I love hearing about different
cultures. It’s given me an invaluable set of tools how to interact with people of all
walks of life really.
I believe in my nice future. I already planned on exiting, I have a strategy for this, and I am sure I can succeed and I can be independent
and have a lot of self-confidence. I think the stigma around online sex work
as any sex work is still massive. A lot of people assume that we are trafficked, on drugs,
abused, or anything like that. They don’t take the time to learn who we are, what we
are, and that we’re not a danger to the community at all, or anyone else, we’re
just doing our jobs. At the moment, we’re very divided, and I
think that the minute we unify our strengths, we could really tell the world why we deserve
the same rights as any human being out there. I’ve been running a radio show now for about
three years, and for me it’s a perfect opportunity to be able to get voices within the industry
heard. I think stigma around sex work can be challenged
by more sex workers coming forward and speaking about their experiences, not necessarily face-to-face,
but I think sex workers blogging for example has been very beneficial and given people
an insight into the realities of our job, which sometimes is the same as anybody else’s
– some good days, some bad days, some days when you’re absolutely bored out of your
head – and it’s important that the people see the reality of, and the humanity of the
job that we do.