March Monthly Blog Contest Winner
Each month Umbrella Lane runs a friendly blog contest for it's community members. Each month a new theme is announced and Sex Workers are encouraged to use this theme as inspiration to write a blog post about it.
The theme for March was "Sex Workers' Rights Day" and this was the winning blog - as voted for by the community. It was written by Donna.
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This is a rant about how Sex workers just don’t have any rights.
They should be allowed to work in pairs along with a maid without fear of arrest. I think brothels should be legalised but not with a madam making the money. The law is an ass. They only allow one lady to work alone where she is more vulnerable to attack. For me, it’s not just about the possibility of being attacked. I have leukaemia and diabetes. It terrifies me that one day l may be found alone and dead due to a relapse and in one of the apartments l work from because l am not allowed to have anybody with me.
When ladies are attacked they often feel like they can’t go to the police. Some police officers are nice but there are others who will be really horrible to sex workers.
We should have the right not to be bullied or degraded on Punting forums. Indeed Harriet Harman tried to get rid of a similar review site some years ago called Punternet but as that was set in America she couldn’t do it. It was all soon forgotten about when Labour lost power but that site wasn’t as bad as ladies could defend themselves and had the right to be on the no reports list. UKPunting is far worse. They call us ladies horrible cruel names and even expose some real addresses. Ladies can not retaliate. There is one report on there that doesn’t really bother me. It’s his opinion and I am not able to reply and say he had a really stinking dick. I don’t get negatives on my Adultwork profile. However, it gets worse when other guys reply and jump on the bandwagon with extremely nasty comments. Then there was another review about me but it was definitely not me. The description was somebody else. I was unable to correct that too.
The other night I had finished work and had prepared a nice meal and movie to watch. I made the mistake of having a look at UKP Punting beforehand. Seeing the nasty things written about me like “fat cunt” etc made me so ill I abandoned the food and lay down and felt so ill. Am still feeling quite low now.
I enjoy my work. I like being able to choose my hours and no boss to tell me what to do. But it is very lonely. I can not tell my family and friends what I really do because there is still such a stigma attached to sex workers. If laws were changed to legalise brothels maybe opinions would change.
We are treated unfairly by advertising platforms because of what we do. Adultwork is one of the sites we depend upon but at the drop of a hat, they will remove your profile and steal your credits. Often there is no reason to justify it or they won’t give you a reason. In some areas, Adultwork is the biggest platform for advertising. So when they remove your profile it’s like having a job at the beginning of the day then not having one at the end. There have been times when they have forced ladies to show their face on their pictures or have no profile. They make foreign ladies stand in front of a post box holding an Adultwork sign. How is it right that anybody could humiliate women? But they get away with it because we can not advertise on mainstream advertising platforms.
Then there is Vivastreet. If you advertise a car on there or if you cut hair it’s very little to advertise there. But they charge sex workers a fortune. Why should sex workers be charged more? Is that not discrimination?
When all of this is over I would love for loads of us ladies to get together and discuss all these points.
Stay safe everybody.