I listed 'sex work' on LinkedIn and caused a viral uproar. This is the last time I'll defend that choice.
Most of my other roles have been director-level titles for in-house brands or small marketing agencies. I resigned from my former position this summer, leaving a great paycheck and even better benefits behind because I felt disrespected and taken advantage of.
The reason I could leave that job at all was because of the online sex work I've been doing on the side for the past two years.
I outlined my reasons for leaving in a LinkedIn post with a screenshot of my updated professional experience attached:
The post blew up on social media and made headlines across the globe, putting me in the crossfire of a movement I didn't mean to start.
While many have accused me of using algorithms for a marketing gimmick (no) or an attempt to disguise solicitation (definitely not), plenty of others have offered their support, love, and respect. Sex work is far less stigmatized than it used to be, and references to content platforms like OnlyFans pepper pop lyrics and TV shows — even if it's still the punch line of the joke.
The world is also at a tipping point: Authenticity is branded but rarely felt, and mental illness and work burnout are endemic. There's a movement to stop pretending and just be you.
Yet when I was most myself, a slew of LinkedIn users — bosses, employers, and managers — commented with misogyny, respectability politics, and whorephobia all over my post. The words used to describe me and the threats lobbed against me don't merit repeating, but they did scare me. There have been attempted hacks of my social and bank accounts, and I've had to devise a safety plan with my therapist for when I'm in public.
But the biggest alarm I've felt comes from realizing the people posting those comments likely won't face consequences at work. Never mind that most of them wouldn't employ an out sex worker to begin with; this hatred came from users with their full names and employers attached.
They're able to do that because their perspective is the one that power protects, and it's made possible by those who invented the concept of "professionalism" in the first place.
This country's 'work ethic' forces marginalized people to repress our identities
A study published by the Center for Talent Innovation found that 76% of Latinos report repressing parts of their personas at work. This includes everything from modifying the way they dress to changing their body language and communication style. For most of my career, I've been one of them.
I have many identities; femme, queer, Latina, and neurodivergent are just some of them. While my body — and anyone else who has a body with a uterus — is constantly being controlled by the state, the traditional workplace does the same to my ideas, emotional labor, and attention.
These are workplaces that still pay me less than men; workplaces that, in a majority of states, can still legally discriminate against Black hairstyles; workplaces that allow 85% of autistic college graduates to go unemployed; and workplaces where almost half of LGBTQ+ workers experience discrimination.
As companies return to the office during the pandemic, it seems easy for people to forget that many Black, brown, and queer folks dread going back. It's been documented that their mental health got better and they were happier working remotely, showing that the assimilation, code-switching, and repression of identity that offices require for many people just isn't worth it.
In the post-George Floyd era of "diversity, equity, and inclusion," it's clear that most companies have no problem putting some faces on a website and talking about inclusion when there's a camera rolling. But in truth, the work has been almost entirely superficial and has done very little to recruit or retain diverse talent.
The higher the position, the more I felt like an imposter
The way people talk about sex work — disempowerment, objectification, trauma — better describes my experience in "professional" environments.
There, I've experienced a lot of toxic leadership. I've been consistently projected on for being the only queer person in the room or the only one who wasn't white. I've worked for CEOs who were homophobic and sexist. I've had founders without experience ask me to emotionally support them through their management growth (without being paid for all that extra emotional labor), and then ignore me when I ask for what I need from them to do my job well.
As a child of immigrants, I've consistently felt like an imposter as I've ascended my career. The higher I go, the fewer people like me there are.
It's suffocating to feel like you're not only failing your ancestors, but also everyone who might come after you, if you don't show up perfect — someone more like the people you're around and less like yourself. Working for other companies, I've often been given the illusion of power: fancy titles on paper that, in reality, never gave me the leverage I needed to change internal cultures, protect colleagues, or stop the perpetual harm.
That just made me want to leave. So I did.
I've felt more respected by sex-work clients than bosses
The point I made in my original LinkedIn post wasn't about sex work, although that's what the world attached to. It was about the harm of workplace culture, the "diversity" Band-Aids that get plastered all over gaping wounds, and the millions of us who are patted on the back for our #hustle but given nothing to actually succeed.
My experience in the sex industry, on the other hand, has been the opposite.
In sex work, the transaction is clear. There aren't any "mission-driven" illusions to choke on, and I'm able to both protect myself and set a value for my services that includes all the work I do. In many industries, skills like active listening, emotional intelligence, and empathy are consistently taken advantage of and not compensated for, especially when it's Black and brown women and queer folks having to do that invisible labor. With sex work, I place a numerical value on those things.
There's also more space for diversity in sex work. That doesn't mean colorism and racism don't exist; like everywhere, they do. But at least in sex work, there's an audience and a desire for every type of body, gender, and play.
Every client needs something different, and sex workers can offer the services or content that best suits them. In sex work, I'm showered in gratitude, desire, and money, and it's one of the first spaces where I feel like all of me can fit. Of course, sometimes it means turning myself into a projection — but in this context, it's consensual. I'm choosing to do it, rather than it being forced on me like it's been in other work settings.
Sex work may have the word "sex" in it, but most of the job — digital, in person, or otherwise — has little to do with sex. I've found that what clients are paying the most for is to be seen, heard, and witnessed. They're paying to be held — figuratively, and often literally.
Sex work allows people to explore their fantasies, desires, and deepest shame — the parts of them that so often, no one else gets to see. That space becomes a container for their healing.
This doesn't mean the work is glamorous; it's not. A lot of people seem to ignore the "work" part of sex work. Lots of folks think it's as easy as taking off your clothes.
Marketing skills are vital for many sex workers
To be successful as an independent sex worker, you have to know how to growth hack, how to build a brand, and how to position and creatively direct your ads. You also need an extraordinary amount of business savvy, tech knowledge, and an ability to relate to others.
It's work that has the ups and downs of any other job, except that because of its highly stigmatized nature — which leads to extremely high vulnerability — safety is never guaranteed. Neither is credit. Sex workers have had a hand in pioneering everything from the internet to modern fashion, all while being looked down upon and even forcibly removed. Meanwhile, many pockets have been lined with our labor, only for those profiting from us to turn their backs when we're no longer convenient.
Unlike most industries, we know how to take care of our workers, organizing and creating infrastructure to support our industry and protect each other even when the government doesn't seem to want us to.
While sex work is one of our species' oldest professions, the sex-worker trope is either one of victimhood — destitution, drugs, helplessness — or one of villainhood: the perverted, the sinful, the vain. This, of course, doesn't help lower the staggeringly high statistics of violence against sex workers, particularly for trans women of color, experiencing it in real life. If we're seen as disposable, we'll be treated as such.
It's extremely important to note the privilege I have to share all of this so openly — privilege that exists for a variety of intersecting reasons, only two of them being race and class. I still write and work with brand and agency clients for a living, and I'm able to choose for sex work not to be the career path I'm pursuing, but rather work I do that sits adjacent.
Coming out with sex work puts me in a position with a lot to lose, including the potential to be the target of revenge porn or rejected from the opportunities I've spent many years working for in other industries. But I'm at a point where I welcome the departure of work that doesn't align with my values or standards of treatment.
Sex work has taught me how to set clear boundaries, accept rejection, and expect respect
It's taught me to value — clearly, and with a number — myself and all the pieces of me that society has consistently expected me to dole out for free. It's taught me that the world is full of people who want what I have, and only I get to decide who I offer it to and for what price.
Sex work has also been a vehicle for my own financial wellness: a way to set up multiple income streams and create a safety net for myself in these wildly uncertain times. It's because of the padding this work gave me that I was able to leave a very toxic work environment, go back into consulting, and be extremely selective about the brand clients I now partner with.
It's sharpened my ability to quickly and instinctually differentiate lead potential — who's going to buy versus who's wasting my time — and because of internet censorship, I've had to be increasingly creative with how I get in front of potential audiences. I've built partnerships and communities around support and resources, with other sex workers, brands, media outlets, and organizations. This knowledge is not only transferable, but essential to my career working with agencies and startups.
After resigning from my full-time role, I still didn't want to pursue sex work full time
Instead, I made the decision to set a new standard for the brand consulting clients I take on based on the relationships I've had in sex work. I now only offer my creative and business services where all of me is celebrated and wanted.
I'm not interested in spaces that want me to play a "part" or put me in a box — I'm capable of being both a strategic business advisor and someone who gets naked online for money. I no longer tolerate opinions about "unprofessionalism" from those who have no idea that they're actively profiting off of sex worker's backs and the contributions they've made to technology, civil rights, and culture.
I might be the first "white collar" professional to add sex work as a work experience on LinkedIn, but I'm certainly not the first one to engage in it. Although my face is the one all over the news, people have been out here since the beginning of humanity hustling and healing, and it's their shoulders I stand on as I write this.
I'm proud of the skills that this work has taught me, and I'm tired of the shame, isolation, and loneliness that so many sex workers experience because of what we do. I put it on my LinkedIn because it deserves to be there. Sex work of all kinds is work, and that's the last time I'll defend that statement.
If anyone else wants to argue with me, they can pay me for the privilege — and show me their browser history.