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Sex Work & Having Multiple Identities
One of the most debated topics among sex workers is “Can you be a sex worker and have multiple identities? Is it ethical and right?”
My answer isn’t yes or no; I believe that having multiple identities is a sex worker’s personal choice. What’s right for one woman, is wrong for another. The better question to ask is “Why would a sex worker have/want multiple identities?” And furthermore, I think it’s important to ask, “How does a sex worker prevent them from conflicting with one another?”
As any well designed escort website, having multiple identities has to be a thought out and there has to be a reason to having more than one persona.
What are the Reasons Why Women Have Multiple Personas?
Usually, a woman who offers more than one service find that her services offered don’t mix well together went put on one website. If a she is a sensual massage provider, and she wants to offer escort services, she may have decided to create a new person with an entirely different website was the best way to differentiate massage and companion services. Why would this even be necessary? Most likely, she doesn’t want her massage clientèle to think that they could see her for companionship at her sensual services rates.
Another reason could be that she has personal issues with escorting and feels that in order to make the work worthwhile, she wants to command a much higher rate with multiple hour minimums. Thus, her regular incall sensual services aren’t compatible with her companion services, and multiple identities helps maintain the distinction between her businesses.
So then, if a provider has two different personas and websites, does she ever cross the personas?
The majority of women don’t mix their services. There are a few that choose to reveal their other identity with established, long-term clients. But once a woman begins to blur the lines between her personas with her clients, she will encounter boundary issues.
Scenarios When Multiple Personas Are Okay
- Multiple Hour Escort & Dominatrix
- Multiple Hour Escort & Sensual Services Provider
- Adult Entertainer (Pornstar/Actress) & Escort Persona
Scenarios Where Multiple Personas Aren’t Okay
- Several Escort personalities with various price ranges ($250, $400, $1000)
- Several Sensual personas
- Several Domme persona
- Any combination of personas that cause drama and fight with one another on forums
- When a woman is well-known her area and is easily identifiable.
How Does A Sex Worker Keep Personas Separate?
Well, that it’s in the marketing. If a woman offers sensual services in her home area, then she may want to focus her escort persona on seeing out of town and non-hobbyist men. The escort person will not and should not post/ advertise on message boards. She has to pay for premium advertising on a websites such as EROS or Cityvibe. Every website she has should have a completely different design, photos and marketing strategy. Another option is that her escort persona travels and she isn’t available as an escort in her local area.
If a woman offers BDSM/Fetish services and also has an escort persona, those two are also easy to distinguish because the advertising and marketing outlets are completely different.
How Does A Sex Worker Maintain Anonymity?
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the website of any persona should follow the model of any well-marketed, professionally designed escort website. It should have clean design, easy navigation, simple copy and have the proper search engine optimization. Why? Because it’s the first step in maintaining anonymity between personas!
- The design of website and tone of the writing should not match a woman’s main persona, it’s the first thing people look for when identifying/outing someone.
- A woman will also need different photos, even having them taken with different photographers is not out of the norm. Locations and lighting go a long way. Different photographs are another way to distinguish two personalities; each persona has their own lingerie and outfits. If a woman can pull off fake hair and wigs, that works amazingly well. If proper compartmentalization, discovery is minimal. It’s all in the marketing and presentation.
- A woman should have separate email addresses and contact information for each persona. It’s a pain in the butt cheese, but if a woman is going to go to all the work to have multiple sites, it’s one more step she has to incorporate into her business. It would be an insult to be outed by someone who was just able to Google a phone number.
How Are Women with Multiple Identities Outed?
The chances of this happening is very low if a woman keeps the identities compartmentalized well. But it’s not impossible. When a woman is outed, she usually is responsible for it. A woman fighting with her other persona in order to generate business on a board will find this strategy will only blow up in her face. Board owners & members pay attention to drama and guess what, they also log IP address and access points. The second most common way for a woman to be outed is by a hardcore hobbyists, these are not regular men who seek the services of sex workers, they live in the “hobby world” and have more reviews than most women on the board. In their free time, they crawl boards and look for Eros ad numbers/names. They then post the information.
What Does A Sex Worker Do When Multiple Identities Are Discovered?
When this happens and if it’s true, I believe a woman should OWN IT. She can say, “Yes, it is me, but you know what you see WHY I have two separate identities, there is no service overlap”. And therefore, no breach of “ethics”. If the proof isn’t conclusive, then a woman may choose to deny it. It only becomes a big deal if the provider makes it a big deal.
Is there anything else to consider in having multiple identities?
Yes, please keep in mind, that the more personas a woman has, the more time, effort and money she will have to invest in each. So plan accordingly. If it takes 16 hours ever three months to update ads, refresh website copy and add new photos, that time will double with each personality. At this point, some women have their webmasters help them maintain their sites by managing banner exchanges, reciprocal links, photo changes and even ghost writing blog entries. In an industry where time is money, it’s not a bad idea.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
[...] have launched the first post, “Sex Work & Multiple Identities” today. Enjoy! « Carl La Fong & The La Fong [...]
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 am
In my case, I have briefly overlapped identities when I was transitioning from straight escorting to BDSM. I had two ads up at the same time, under different names, offering different services in different categories. I had the same phone number, but it didn’t matter because I only kept up this juggling act for a few months. Of course, there’s my blogger identity as well