How the cost of living crisis is affecting sex workers’ safety 

When the cost of living crisis struck the UK in full swing, 28-year-old porn performer Dana, decided it was time to get a “traditional job,” as she puts it. 

“I have some marketing training so I decided to apply for a 9-5 for the time being,” said Dana, who has requested to use a fake name to protect her identity. “I thought I could always come back to porn, if I had wanted to, at a better time.” 

Dana was already new to sex work when the crisis had began in late 2021. “I mostly posted [point of view] porn I made with friends and other porn stars on my Twitter to promote my OnlyFans and camgirl services, but I’d only been at it for about two months. Building a sex work career can be a slow burn,” she tells Mashable. 

“Before that, I’d been juggling a few different jobs and sex work seemed like a good opportunity to focus on one thing, something I enjoy doing, and make a lot of money from.” But when Dana’s energy bills, rent, and costs like food and petrol started getting unmanageable, she thought sex work might not be the greatest idea.

“It’s not like there’s anyone I can ask for a pay rise when I’m working for myself and the money isn’t secure. I never know what I’m going to be getting each month, and I can’t really get any help from anyone,” she adds. 

Dana secured a job interview for a marketing agency and already felt a lot better knowing she, at least, had a good shot at financial security. However, the interview brought unexpected confrontation. “When I got there, the interviewers told me they’d done a background check on me and had printed out screenshots of porn I’m in. They were on the table. I was stuck in a room with two men and pictures of my naked body between us.”

“When I got there, the interviewers told me they’d done a background check on me and had printed out screenshots of porn I’m in.”

They told Dana they couldn’t have a porn star working at their company. “I don’t know why they had to bring me in to do that, they could have just rejected me,” she says. “To be honest, I laughed. I couldn’t really be offended because it was so pathetic. But it is scary to think that more employers could do this. Maybe sex work is literally my only option now and I can’t go back.”

Rachel, who requested for her name to be changed to protect her identity as a full-service sex worker (where money is exchanged for sex acts), has had a similar experience. 

“I became a sex worker because it was the only job that suited my life. I have a disabled child and it’s difficult with all the hospital appointments and looking after her,” she says. 

Like Dana, Rachel has tried to get job outside of sex work, but it hasn’t worked out when employers have unearthed her trade. “I’ve been disqualified from jobs purely on the grounds that I’ve been charged with prostitution. Once you’ve got that record, it’s there for life. All they’re doing now, by keeping it criminalised, is keeping women on the streets, taking the choice to leave sex work away from them,” she adds. 

Right now, the UK is facing its worst cost of living crisis in 60 years and it’s continuing to spiral, with many people struggling to afford food, rent, or energy. For sex workers, who are criminalised, excluded from labour rights, and at a high risk of experiencing abuse, exploitation, and financial uncertainty (with women of colour, trans, or migrants being most at risk of this), the cost of living crisis is straight-up scary. 

A coalition of major UK sex worker-led organisations including the English Collective of Prostitutes, the Sex worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM), and United Sex Workers, amongst others, have launched the campaign, Hookers Against Hardship. This campaign is to raise awareness of the specific impact the cost of living crisis has had and will continue to have on sex workers’ lives and working conditions. They demand specific action from the government and support from the public to address the rising precarity and poverty amongst sex workers in the wake of this crisis. 

Hookers Against Hardship spokesperson Amelie — who didn’t want to share her last name as she’s also a sex worker and needs to protect her identity — tells Mashable that most sex workers are self-employed like Dana, meaning many are excluded from the labour protections available to other workers during this financially troubling time. 

“More people, especially women, will be pushed into sex work; and current sex workers will be facing worse financial hardship.”

“More people, especially women, will be pushed into sex work; and current sex workers will be facing worse financial hardship. Rising numbers of people are going into sex work [for the first time] because of poverty, especially women and mothers,” she adds. 

Amelie also notes, “Many people in other industries are organising for pay rises to help combat the rising cost of living, but this isn’t possible for sex workers. Most sex workers are self employed, or employed in a criminalised workplace.” This makes sex workers especially vulnerable with a lack of workers’ rights and government or employer support.

Sex workers are also feeling pressured in the cost of living crisis to accept clients they would normally refuse, which Hookers Against Hardship says leads to greater risk of exploitation and violence from clients who know sex workers are unable to report abuse or seek income elsewhere. 

This is the case for in-person sex worker Lina, whose name has also been changed to protect her identity. Lina was recently assaulted by a client, one whom she normally wouldn’t have taken on, but did in order to cover her climbing bills. 

“I had wanted to take time off after being assaulted but I don’t feel financially able to,” she says. “[Work has] been quieter, and my rising bills are constantly in the back of my mind, so I don’t feel like I can say no to any work that comes my way.” 

24-year-old camgirl Laura says she has also accepted work that she would normally refuse. “I used to be pretty strict about who I spoke to and I’d quickly block any time-wasters or people who seemed dodgy. But now, money is everything and I’ll take [any work] I can get,” she tells Mashable. 

The pressure to pay bills leaves a lot of sex workers overworked and burnt out, for which the ramifications are exacerbated when your job involves sex. Laura has doubled her hours since the cost of living crisis started. “I work from about 8am ’til 2am most days either doing cam work, OnlyFans, or promoting my stuff on social media and taking pictures.”

“I can’t explain how burnt out I am. And there’s nothing worse than logging on and feigning interest in guys I don’t really want to talk to because I’m anxious about money,” Laura continues. “My eyes burn from how tired I am. I genuinely love sex work and I don’t want to quit. I just want to feel like I’m in control again.”

The fear that the cost of living crisis could continue to spiral also has Laura overworking. “I’m scared every day that [the cost of living crisis] is going to get worse, so I don’t just do cam work to pay my [current bills]. I work [for the worst case scenario], to pay the bills I know are coming later down the line.” 

Laura believes sex workers should be receiving more help from the government. “The thing with sex work is, we’re never not in danger, cost of living crisis or not,” she explains. “Sex work being illegal will always put a target on our backs from abusive clients because they know we can’t do much if they hurt us, and we can’t access government support.”

Hookers Against Hardship say sex workers need the full decriminalisation of sex work, which will allow people to access support and safety while earning the money they need in order to survive. But this is not just a necessity during the cost of living crisis, but at all other times too.

The majority of sex workers are mothers working to cover their bills and support their children. These women will be vulnerable, for as long as the cost of living crisis continues, for as long as rent controls are unestablished, for as long as benefits are sanctioned, and for as long as sex workers are arrested. 

Sex work should always be a choice, not something anyone is forced to enter out of desperation, or remain in because of anti-sex work shame.