the money is never enough for the work

While I’ve a massive backlog of things I’d like to post on, I will just go ahead and continue posting smaller nota benes. Like this one.

I see the title come up periodically, when girls are like ‘For the BS I gotta deal with, the money is BARELY enough’. Or when girls who will not do the work are like ‘Oh you couldn’t pay me enough to do that stuff!’

I’m not going to get into nonworker views of the value of the money, but rather focus on some of the lines sexworkers draw regarding the money.

When I worked, there were lines no money could make me cross, and my reasons often seemed goofy or absurd to customers and sometimes other girls. And in turn I was baffled by the lines other girls drew if they chose differently than me. At least for me, the money was never, ever enough. A thousand dollars for an hour– coulda been 2k. Five hundred a shift– shoulda been seven hundred. There was no dollar amount I could have brought home that would have been ‘good enough’.

One of the reasons the money was never enough is that the calculus of desire is too fluid in sexwork. Four hundred an hour is worth it in one context, for some acts, but not worth it in other contexts, for other acts. Sometimes you make a relatively small amount and it’s ‘ well, at least it was easy money’, while other times you make a lot of money and ‘it was pulling teeth to make my ends’.

The definitions of what is ‘easy money’ vary wildly from sexwork-category to sexwork-category. And from girl to girl. No matter what line of sexwork you’re in, there is always chatter about how other girls in other lines (or your own) are doing ‘too much’ or ‘barely anything, damn her’, for the money. Sometimes you’re the one being chattered about and sometimes you are the one chattering.

Sometimes you resent other girls for being able to do so little and still make money, and sometimes you’re the one resented for ‘not doing shit, I can’t figure out how she makes all that money’.

Another reasons the money’s never enough is because once social boundaries have been crossed, you’re left with what you can draw for yourself and get money for. By definition, all the boundaries will vary, but this is so hard to explain to people who do not or will not understand the work itself. All they see is that social boundaries are crossed, so you must have a price for anything, everything. Somehow your personally drawn boundaries aren’t good enough explanation.

And so the money is good, but never really enough.