Sex Work and Disability: A Quick Guide

Sex work and disability often go hand in hand, and yet I haven’t found many guides for people working in the sex industry while navigating disability. I’ve been trying to figure out where I fit on the disability spectrum. While I am mostly physically able, I do have periods where I am physically unable to perform sex work. PMDD is both a mental and physical disability that is technically covered under ADA provisions, but societally isn’t taken very seriously. There are many people who live with significantly more life altering disabilities than the ones I experience, but it isn’t a contest, we all suffer as we work to survive. People with physical disabilities, and degenerative disabilities (which often overlap and are not entirely separate categories) engage in sex work, but may not be able to participate in the kinds of sex work that are physically demanding. I had a former subscriber ask me once how they might be able to find the right form of sex work for their ability. They are wheelchair bound and cannot physically service clients. Their question got me thinking about the topic of how sex workers build their services around what they are able to do, when they are able to do it. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the ways I’ve navigated my windows of ability and suggest some options for people dealing with other forms of disability.

PMDD is something I talk about constantly here because I deal with it for seven-to-ten days every month. To various degrees, menstrual cycles have caused problems for sex workers forever. While not every person who has periods deals with heavy flows, heavy menstruation creates many issues, particularly for full service sex workers. While not all customers care about period sex, quite a few do. Sex workers have incorporated many inventive solutions from using sea sponges or medical grade vaginal sponges to focusing on oral and anal penetration instead. These solutions can be physically demanding in other ways. When I was using sea sponges, I found that 1. They leaked, and 2. They gave me terrible bacterial infections. Not everyone is equipped to offer anal sex, and many clients do not take care to be more gentle during anal penetration. Oral sex can be tiring, and there’s the gag factor. Plus condoms taste terrible, even the flavored ones that are intended for oral sex. I know plenty of sex workers who do away with the condom entirely for oral sex, which poses the additional risk of contracting oral herpes. There’s no shame in contracting oral herpes, but it can again, limit a sex worker’s window of availability. During any medical flare up or sickness, sex workers are often forced to take unpaid breaks. We, of course, do not get paid sick leave. We do not even get healthcare, unless we pay for it privately. Which means that the cost of being ill compounds: missed work + medical costs = significant financial strain.

I miss one week of work every month because of menstruation. I suffer through one week of work every month dealing with the effects of PMDD. Between aching breasts, my swollen abdomen, insomnia-induced fatigue, and severe mental health dips, it is a wonder I trudge my way through these PMDD shifts. Sadly, it’s impossible for me to justify two weeks off per month. When I’m in these low moments, I have to take on a survival mentality for my shifts. My first tool of survival is rest. I give myself permission to sleep more and take a slower pace with my day. My second tool is lowering my performance expectations. The goal isn’t to make the most, it’s to go home having met my low goal. It’s important to have both high and low goals in sex work. You can’t always perform at peak capacity. Sometimes you have to appreciate that you are able to meet your minimum. Third, I lean on regulars when I’m able to, but also forgive myself when I’m unable to wrangle anybody. Fourth, I’ve taken to adjusting my wardrobe to cover the parts of my body that I feel particularly insecure about. I struggle to love myself when I’m bloated, so to distract from that, I’ve been wearing bodysuits that create optical illusions and camouflage my “problem areas”. It has been surprisingly effective. Because the outfits are so visually compelling, customers get wrapped up in the suggestive cutouts instead of looking at my whole body. I know there is nothing wrong with my body, and I know that I am lucky to look the way that I do, but these facts mean nothing when I’m dealing with emotionally embedded body dysmorphia and an intermittent eating disorder. To those of you who didn’t grow up with anorexia or bulimia, I’d definitely invite you to nourish yourself however you see fit. PMDD makes me feel ravenous, but when I’m stripping, I enforce strict dietary restrictions. Feeling insecure about my body hurts my business more than feeling hungry (disordered as this sentiment may be). I do eat, but I restrict what I eat to fruits, salads, and proteins. I only carb up after work. I’m not recommending this to anyone, just sharing my routine. I love seeing strippers devour burgers and massive plates of pasta. I love seeing my coworkers indulge without feeling shame connected to eating. Stripping is incredibly physically demanding, and we all deserve the comfort of nourishment.

The final bit of my disability experience I’ll touch upon is PTSD. I didn’t realize I was experiencing PTSD until somewhat recently, but now that I know, I’ve been taking notes of my symptoms. Loud noises are particularly triggering for me, especially shouting, but even an enthusiastic conversation can be triggering. Lots of people with mental illness have difficulties in loud, overstimulating situations, and the strip club is an environment where it’s impossible to avoid. While my primary goal in getting specialized earplugs was to limit the amount of hearing damage I’d suffer from long-term, the secondary benefit was tamping down overwhelming stimuli. My earplugs are a bit of a security blanket. They make me feel safe when I put them in. It’s a little Pavlovian at this point, but when I’m wearing earplugs, I feel at ease. When I forget them, I panic a little. It’s useful to keep soothing tools on hand if you have PTSD, autism or any other sensory sensitivity disorder. I know strippers who keep essential oils on hand for aromatherapy, stimming tools to fidget, even having some sort of weighted item for grounding on particularly overwhelming days. Self-soothing at work is so important, especially because our customers are incredibly sensitive to nonverbal cues. I may not even realize that I’m nervous until a customer points it out. I may even disagree with the assertion, but sometimes my body betrays me. Even if it isn’t nervousness exactly, they are likely sensing some level of discomfort and unease. Sometimes that unease is caused by chronic pain. Chronic pain is a rampant problem among strippers. I personally keep a combination of ibuprofen and Midol in my work purse for those moments when pain is getting in the way of my ability to work. Something I’ve only recently come to realize is that I don’t always recognize when I’m in pain. Another one of my *spicy trauma responses* is dissociation: meaning I slip in and out of being present in my body. What I may process as irritation may actually be unrecognized pain. Sometimes it requires taking pain medicine for me to recognize that my irritation or feelings of being overwhelmed were actually in response to an injury. When I’m feeling this way, I try to take a moment to check in with my body. Am I uncomfortable because I’m in pain, or is it a stimuli overload? Depending on which it is, I might take some medicine and hydrate or talk to a friendly coworker who helps me to ground myself back in the present, and it usually helps.

If you’re not physically able to do in-person sex work, there are many options for online sex work. Online work is just as demanding, but primarily in terms of the hourly commitment you’ll need to put in to grow and maintain an audience. For better or worse, certain bodies are fetishized. This is the case not only for people with physical disabilities, it’s also true for racialized bodies and trans bodies. While I kinda hate to say this, it’s probably in your best interest to fetishize your body. Fetishistic hashtags guide customers, who in general are often ignorant of correct terminology, to the kinds of people they’re attracted to. I’m not above it. I’ve called myself “ebony” and used terms like “interracial” to tag my cam room back in the day. It’s gross language, and I hope one day ethical porn sites will change the language we use around non-White, disabled and trans bodies, but right now this broken system is what we have. While performing vanilla sex acts can get you an audience, I’ve found that focusing in on a specific genre of kink tends to work better for people looking to build a dedicated fan base, particularly if you aren’t White/able/cis/conventionally attractive. Fetish communities tend to embrace more variety, although I will say there is plenty of discrimination and wage disparities in the fetish community as in the sex industry at large. If kink isn’t something you’re comfortable with, do whatever feels right for you. Take all my suggestions with a grain of salt. To be successful online, you will need to be your publicist, marketer, accountant, videographer, and attorney. It’s a slog, but if you’re down to blast your shows on Twitter and hit up clients across platforms, you can achieve stable income.

Another great sex work option is phone sex. The beauty of phone sex is that you can be whomever you want to be, so long as you’re creative. While some phone sex operators use their own images, if you have physical disabilities, you might not want to show that to potential clients because discrimination is real and it affects all sex workers. Most phone sex workers that I know use other people’s pictures. To be clear: I am not suggesting you steal other people’s images. I’m suggesting you request to purchase a picture and explain for what purposes. It’s best to ask other sex workers, particularly the ones who care about social justice and intersectionality (like me, I’m down to be your avatar if you ask me first). You could also get creative and photoshop some unrealistic profile pictures together if you’d prefer to DIY. Phone sex can be done in bed, in whatever state you’re in physically. The money can be hit or miss, as is the case across the sex industry generally, but I know some phone sex operators who are very successful. The beauty of phone sex is that both you and your clients can retain your anonymity. They don’t know what you look like and you don’t know what they look like, so y’all can pretend to be anything and do everything. The only limit is your imagination.

If you have a speech impediment and a physical disability, another thing you could try is writing erotica. Erotica is one of my favorite ways to get turned on, but the amount of well written erotica is always in short supply. There’s too much bad shit written by cishet men who have no idea how femme bodies work. There’s also not enough sexy stuff written about people with disabilities enjoying a deliciously filthy time. There are a million and one niches that are underrepresented, and if you have a decent voice, you can be successful. There are also many publications like Lelo, DipSea, Sugarbutch, and Berlinable that want diverse writers. Erotica is a great venue for people who want to do sex work but have multiple limiting disabilities.

Not everyone is able to be a sex worker, and not everyone should be a sex worker. It is demanding work, and not everyone has the ability to be successful in the occupation. Customers are mean. Discrimination is rampant. Wages are inconsistent. But if you need work enough and are willing to push through these challenges, it can be rewarding. Most sex worker I know didn’t choose to be sex workers for fun: they got into the industry because they needed the money. Even though I’ve had an interest in sex work since I was quite young, I didn’t get into stripping for the sake of an adventure. I started stripping because my former boss was abusive and I was struggling to survive on the poverty line. Stripping was the savior I needed at a time when I was desperate, and it has continued to give me the financial security I depend upon. It is never easy, and I hope I never make it appear that way. I hope this guide was helpful. If you related to anything, let me know. Also, if you have disabilities and feel unrepresented, please let me know. If you are a sex worker with disabilities who has found some other incredible opportunity to work, also let me know. If you’d like to hear more about any particular form of sex work, I can go into greater detail in another post.

Question to the baby strippers: what part of dancing is the most difficult for you? What would you like to hear more about?