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(Lux Alptraum) – “No little girl grows up wanting to be a prostitute,” declares the homepage of the No Little Girl campaign, a recently launched attempt to criminalize sex work in two of the seven Nevada counties where it’s currently legal.

Next to the tagline is a photo of an angry little girl blowing a whistle; the campaign’s literature is filled with story after story of the kind of violence and exploitation that this young girl is presumably blowing the whistle on. “Prostitution can’t be made ‘a little better’ any more than domestic violence can be made ‘a little better,’” the campaign’s FAQ argues, couching sex work itself as a fundamentally exploitative industry in which women are preyed on and trapped.

Yet for actual sex workers, the workplace described by No Little Girl bears little to no resemblance to the brothels they earn a living in. Rather than feeling exploited, abused, and assaulted, many workers describe the brothels as paths to economic freedom. “Since starting my career as a legal prostitute in Nevada, I can truthfully say it was one of the best decisions I have made,” writes brothel worker Ruby Rae in an opinion piece in the Nevada Independent, urging readers to oppose any attempts to roll back sex work legalization in Nevada.

No Little Girl is currently collecting signatures to get its anti-sex work initiatives on the November ballots. When I spoke with Jason D. Guinasso, a Reno lawyer working on the campaign, he told me that each petition had attracted a little more than 1,000 signatures. If the campaign collects a few thousand more, the petitions will be sent to their respective county commissions, who will either choose to act on them or turn the issue over to county voters this November — the counties on the ballot house many of the state’s brothels, meaning a successful referendum would eliminate half of Nevada’s legal brothels. The group could take its campaign to the statewide level if successful.

For many people, the world of sex work is a completely foreign one, something you only see in salacious movies or alarmist documentaries. When your only contact with sex workers is as the butt of a joke or subject of a tragic story, it’s easy to buy into narratives like No Little Girl’s.

But as someone who has known many sex workers, both personally and professionally — I am a former editor of the sex industry-focused blog Fleshbot — it’s easy to see the vast gap between the reality of sex workers’ lives and the bleak fiction peddled by the anti-sex work industry. While not all sex workers are as effusive about their work as Ruby Rae, few identify with the exploited women put forth by campaigns like No Little Girl. Doing a little digging into the broad claims put forth by this campaign quickly reveals how baseless they actually are.

The war on sex work continues on multiple fronts. Anti-sex trafficking groups successfully lobbied to pass the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA-SESTA, laws that hurt sex traffickers online by holding platforms responsible for content that promotes sex work. In theory, FOSTA-SESTA helps the government hold websites accountable for providing safe havens for sex traffickers; in practice, the law has led platforms across the internet to crack down on anything even remotely related to sex work (and sometimes even just sex), eradicating message boards and resources that sex workers use to screen clients, share safety tips, and get out of unsafe and nonconsensual sex work situations.

But No Little Girl has now set its sights on eliminating one of the few forms of legal sex work in the United States. All in all, it’s a dark time for sex workers fighting for the legal recognition that would actually reduce exploitation.

The attack on legal sex work in Nevada is based on bad data

The No Little Girl campaign has argued that Nevada’s brothels have a negative effect on the state. In reality, research shows that the lives of Nevada citizens have improved due to the legalization of sex work in the state. Nevada’s system isn’t perfect — but it’s a considerable improvement over the national policy of criminalization.

No Little Girl has three major arguments for shutting down the legal brothel industry: Brothels do not significantly contribute to their counties’ economies while deterring other businesses from setting up shop; they increase violence against women who don’t work in the sex industry; and they’re inherently abusive (because, as the campaign’s tagline reminds visitors, “no little girl grows up wanting to be a prostitute”).

At first glance, these arguments may seem sound. But combing through the data — even the data the organization links to on its site — suggests that many of No Little Girl’s claims are exaggerated at best and misleading at worst.

For starters, No Little Girl neglects to discuss the financial impact of the jobs these brothels create in its reports, as well as the tourism they bring to their respective counties. (Dennis Hof, owner of many prominent brothels in Lyon County, estimates that between taxes, fees, and tourism, the brothels contribute $10 million to the local economy.) County officials have repeatedly gone on record to talk about the business opportunities brothels bring to counties that would likely be economically depressed without them.

Even more misleading are No Little Girl’s charges that legal sex work makes a woman 26 times (or, as another statistic claims, 1,660 percent) more likely to be sexually assaulted than women in neighboring counties. While these stats are based on real FBI crime statistics, they only take into account a few years of data in just two Nevada counties. A broad look across all of Nevada — including counties with legal sex work where assault rates are low — show no correlation between assaults and the presence or absence of legal sex work.

Meanwhile, a number of studies of countries where sex work is legal have routinely found that legalization or decriminalization of sex work is often correlated with lower rates of sexual assault. When Rhode Island accidentally legalized indoor prostitution (a rewrite of its overly broad prostitution laws wound up deleting the language making it illegal) for a number of years, reported rapes declined by 31 percent after; when the Netherlands opened “tippelzones,” or areas where street prostitution is legal, reports of rape and sexual abuse declined by a similar percentage over the first two years.

This decline could be attributed to a number of other factors — including country culture or other laws related to sexual assault — but it’s worth noting.

But it’s No Little Girl’s comments on the safety and working conditions of the brothels themselves that truly twist the facts. The campaign cites statistics about abuse, assault, and PTSD from Melissa Farley, a researcher whose credibility has been called into question. Critics have noted that, among other things, Farley frequently presents misleading anecdotes and statistics — like a claim that street-based sex work increased 400 percent in Auckland after decriminalization — as fact.

Christina Parreira, a University of Nevada Las Vegas PhD candidate who’s researched the experiences of Nevada sex workers and is a brothel worker herself, tells me that No Little Girl’s description of working in the brothels is “not accurate at all.” Contrary to the campaign’s depiction of Nevada sex workers as broken and abused, Parreira says she has “a great life. I don’t come from an abusive family. … It’s so insulting for other women to tell me that [I don’t know what I want].”

Nevada’s laws aren’t perfect, but they are far better than the national policy

None of this is to say that a legalized brothel system is perfect or above reproach. Nevada’s regulations dramatically limit who can participate in the legal sex work system — if a brothel doesn’t hire you, you can’t work legally. Since few brothels are interested in hiring men or trans women, the system is effectively closed off to those groups. Additionally, some of the expenses and registration requirements can feel punitive and off-putting, making it harder for the most vulnerable women to work safely and legally within the system.

It’s these types of restrictions that have led many human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, to argue that sex work decriminalization — or the removal of criminal penalties for sex work, without additional regulation or restrictions on who can sell sex — is preferable to some legal sex work systems, such as those found in Nevada, Germany, Amsterdam, and Tunisia.

Yet in spite of its flaws, the Nevada brothel system is still leaps and bounds ahead of the criminal penalties most of the country imposes on all people who choose to exchange sex for money. Rather than rolling back the progress Nevada has achieved, we should be looking to the state as an inspiration for pursuing even more progressive policies that empower and uplift people who choose sex work as an occupation.

But so long as we allow our arguments about sex work to be led by morality rather than harm reduction, we’ll continue to fall prey to the kind of knee-jerk anti-sex work zealotry displayed by No Little Girl. And our sex work policies — and the safety of sex workers — will continue to suffer as a result.

Truly understanding the lives of sex workers, and the policies that help them, requires putting aside our personal feelings about sexuality and listening to the experiences of sex workers. It requires recognizing that sex work is work, even if it’s work we’re not interested in or willing to do ourselves. It requires understanding that eliminating sex work is no more feasible than eliminating abortion — people will find a way — and that making sex work safer should be our collective goal.

When we can’t do that, we wind up with half-baked arguments about the evils of sex work and policies that, sadly, do more harm than good.

Lux Alptraum is a writer whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Hustler, and more. Her first book, Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex — And The Truths They Reveal, comes out this November. This column was originally published at Vox.com on May 29, 2018

(Barbara G. Brent and Sarah J. Blithe) – Scholars at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno have been conducting ethically approved and methodologically rigorous research in the legal brothels in Lyon and other Nevada counties for more than 20 years. The women studied have repeatedly reported that they feel safer working in brothels, that they provide an important human service, that they work only with clients they choose and that the income from legal sex work is often better than their work in other jobs.

For years we have been presenting research at national and international conferences, and Nevada is held up as a positive model for regulating prostitution. It’s approach — though it certainly can be improved — is seen by scholars from around the globe as a far better alternative for the health, safety and rights of the individuals in it than criminalizing prostitution.

Lyon County citizens are now being asked to return to a system that criminalizes prostitution. The evidence is clear that criminalizing prostitution may deter a few individuals. But our research suggests that when prostitution is criminalized, sex workers are less safe and too scared of being penalized to report crimes to the police. Indeed, the evidence has been so compelling on the abuses in criminalized systems that social justice organizations — including Amnesty International, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and health professionals in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet — have recommended decriminalization, including eliminating those laws that prohibit associated activities such as bans on buying, solicitation and general organization of sex work.

In New Zealand, where prostitution is not a crime and brothels are regulated, bad behavior by brothel owners is subject to disciplinary action, and one brothel worker won a sexual harassment case against her employer.

Laws on sex work should focus on protecting people from exploitation and abuse, rather than trying to ban all sex work. If we care about the women working in legal brothels, we suggest the following: 1) clarify health and safety laws; 2) allow all workers to leave the brothels daily, if desired, after their shifts; 3) remove unfair curfews placed on sex workers in some counties; 4) end any policies that control workers’ presence in town while on contract with the brothels; 5) create mechanisms so that workers can report abuses of independent contractor laws.

Let’s make Nevada brothels better for the women working there. And let’s bring the workers into the debate on how we can proceed.

Barbara G. Brents is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is a co-author of “The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland.” Sarah J. Blithe is an associate professor in communication studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is co-author of “Sex and Stigma: Stories of Everyday Life in Nevada’s Legal Brothels,” coming January.  This column was originally published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on October 7, 2018

(Michelle Rindells | Nevada Independent) – Organizers of an effort to ban brothels in Nye County have conceded the measure won’t make it onto the ballot this cycle.

Jason Guinasso, an attorney who’s helping coordinate similar efforts in both Nye and Lyon counties, told The Nevada Independent on Monday that the campaign wasn’t able to secure enough support from Nye County commissioners to call a special meeting and approve language for the ballot ahead of a mid-July deadline. The campaign could have forced the question on the ballot through a referendum petition, but was several hundred signatures short of the 1,963 needed to do so when volunteers ceased the campaign.

“I don’t consider it a failure,” Guinasso said. “One of the big impetuses of this is to raise awareness — I think we’ve done a good job of raising awareness.”

Guinasso said the group started relatively late in the election cycle and didn’t use paid signature-gatherers, which could have improved the prospects of the measure.

A pro-brothel campaign called Nye County Freedom countered the anti-brothel campaign, arguing that legal prostitution is a relatively unique liberty and taking it away could lead to the curtailment of other freedoms.

Guinasso said the plan is to continue outreach in the county and pursue a ban later, perhaps in  2020.

Lyon County, which had an even higher signature threshold for petitions than Nye County, already decided to take the advisory question route. That will give voters a chance to weigh in on whether they support keeping prostitution legal, and commissioners can decide whether to heed that advice and implement a ban.

(Jackie Valley | Nevada Independent) – The Lyon County Commission has decided to place an advisory question on the November ballot asking voters whether brothels should be made illegal in the jurisdiction.

The move comes after a group of Lyon County residents filed a referendum petition in April seeking to end legal prostitution in the rural county. Commissioners voted unanimously to add an advisory question to the ballot after concerns were raised about the referendum.

“This was brought to the Board to address concerns brought up with a proposed referendum to end brothels in Lyon County,” county manager Jeffrey Page wrote in a statement. “The referendum language is confusing to the voter and could potentially require voter approval to change the brothel ordinance.”

Given the addition of the advisory question, proponents of the referendum will not be filing it, Page said.

The advisory question simply gathers input on the matter but is not legally binding for any governing body or lawmaker. The question that will be placed on the ballot is this:

“Shall the Lyon County Board of Commissioners rescind Title 3, Chapter 5, the Lyon County Brothel Ordinance, in order to end brothels and legalized prostitution in Lyon County, Nevada?”

A fiscal note attached to the advisory question states that eliminating brothels in Lyon County would result in the loss of associated license fees, work card permits and room taxes. Liquor licenses and business licenses for the brothels could also be affected. Brothel license fees brought in $425,116 last fiscal year in Lyon County. The county’s total budget this year is $48 million, meaning the brothel licenses fees make up less than 1 percent of it.

(Michelle Rindells | Nevada Independent) – Nevada’s unique status as the only state in the union with legalized prostitution has once again come into focus as efforts to ban brothels in certain counties crop up and as the state’s most famous brothel operator runs a campaign for an Assembly seat.

“Nevada is probably the last live-and-let-live state in the country, and I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy,” said Dennis Hof, the brothel proprietor who’s seeking a place in the Legislature, in his 2015 biography.

But tourists seeking to take advantage of all the state’s vices should beware: There are strict limits to where sex can be sold, and even people who have worked in the brothels are divided on whether Nevada’s model is a good one.

Here are some things you should know about legal prostitution in Nevada:

How long has prostitution been legal in Nevada?

The state’s earliest brothels date back to Nevada’s early mining days in the 19th century. Elsewhere in the country, the sale of sex was not widely barred before the 20th century, but was subject to vagrancy and “streetwalking” bans that would have limited prostitutes’ activities outside of indoor brothels.

The movement against prostitution after the Civil War was closely linked to the abolition of slavery, and started with efforts to fight the licensing of houses of prostitution in many states, according to a history provided as part of a Ninth Circuit Court decision on brothel advertising. From 1911 and 1915, there was a wave of laws passed against people who profited off putting women and girls into prostitution.

But Nevada was a holdout, and brothels were openly operated and “tolerated,” if not explicitly allowed, for decades. Still, it wasn’t until the Storey County Commission officially sanctioned Joe Conforte’s Mustang Ranch Brothel in 1971 that the state had its first legal brothel, historian Guy Rocha told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Where is it legal?

Nevada law prohibits solicitation and prostitution unless it takes place in a licensed house of prostitution. State law bans licensed brothels in counties with populations of 700,000 or more (currently Clark County, home of Las Vegas).

Only 10 counties in Nevada allow prostitution, and even then, only within licensed brothels. Churchill County allows prostitution, but the last brothel license was surrendered in 2004.

Esmeralda, Lander, Mineral, Nye and Storey County allow brothels throughout. Elko, Humboldt, Lyon, and White Pine County only allow brothels in some incorporated communities.

Prostitution is illegal in Clark, Washoe, Carson City, Pershing, Douglas, Eureka and Lincoln counties. That includes Las Vegas and Reno, as well as the state capital.

How many brothels are there?

A count by the L.A. Times in early May revealed there are 20 operational brothels in Nevada.

Nye County has four, including two owned by Dennis Hof. Lyon County has four, all of which are owned by Hof.

There is also one in Storey County, the Mustang Ranch in Sparks; one in Mineral County, the Wild Cat Brothel in Mina; two in White Pine County, the Stardust Ranch Brothel and Big 4 Ranch in Ely; one in Lander County, Hot Desert Club Girls in Battle Mountain; and seven in Elko County, the Dove Tail Ranch and Sharon’s Brothel and Bar in Carlin, the Desert Rose Gentlemen’s Club, Inez’s D&D, Mona’s Ranch and Sue’s Fantasy Club in Elko and Bella’s Hacienda Ranch and Donna’s Ranch in Wells.

Does Nevada tax prostitution?

Although brothels and prostitutes pay a state business license fee, there is no excise tax on sex acts.

In 2009, Democratic then-state Sen. Bob Coffin introduced a bill to apply a $5-per-day tax for customers buying prostitution services. With an estimated 400,000 customer days in Nevada legal brothels each year, the measure was expected to bring in $2 million.

The bill failed a committee vote and didn’t move forward in the Legislature even though prostitutes and others in the industry voiced their support for a tax. Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons had earlier expressed his disapproval of the bill, telling NPR: “I’m not a supporter of legalizing prostitution in Nevada. So by taxing it, there’s a recognition of the legality of it. And that’s all I want to say.”

Has Nevada tried to end legal prostitution?

In 2011, Democratic then-Sen. Harry Reid called on legislators to ban prostitution in a speech to lawmakers.

“Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment – not as the last place where prostitution is still legal,” he said, adding that he’d met with visiting business leaders who were shocked to learn there were operational brothels in Storey County.

But legislators never took up the cause, and Gov. Brian Sandoval said the matter was up to individual counties.

A new movement to ban prostitution in select counties has cropped up this spring. Efforts are underway to ban prostitution in Lyon and Nye counties through county-wide votes.

Can brothels advertise?

Nevada law prohibits brothels from advertising in jurisdictions where local ordinances or state statutes ban prostitution. In jurisdictions where brothels are allowed, it’s illegal for them to advertise “in any public theater, on the public streets of any city or town, or on any public highway.”

How much do services cost?

It varies. Brothel workers say they negotiate their own rate with customers for “parties,” or sexual appointments, based on what customers choose from a menu of services.

A girl will take a client into her room, negotiate a price and collect a payment before offering up the service. Christina Parreira, who works at one of Hof’s brothels, told The Nevada Independent she generally does not have intercourse with a client for less than $1,000.

Lengthier interactions, such as an overnight stay or the “Girlfriend Experience” that also includes date-like, non-sexual activities, can go for about $1,000 an hour. Hof includes details in his autobiography of men paying for lengthy, lavish “parties” that would last days, weeks or even months, with one topping out at more than $2 million and lasting five months.

T.J. Moore, who worked as a house parent and then as a madam at the Love Ranch South brothel from 2013 to 2015, said the girls usually try to agree to come to an agreement on a minimum price and not go below that. But sometimes, they break the agreement because they want the business.

Moore said that sex often went for $300 to $400, although it can go lower. She said she once booked a “party” for $80.

How much are the prostitutes paid?

Workers for Dennis Hof say they keep half of their earnings, with the house keeping the other half, but they also have to pay rent, food, transportation and other costs associated with brothel operations.

Prostitutes must also pay for weekly STD tests and sex worker registration cards, which vary in price by county. Nye County charges prostitutes $150 each quarter to register, plus another $150 annually; there are 97 prostitutes registered in the county for the current quarter.

Workers are independent contractors and get business licenses from the State of Nevada.

“They operate like any other independently licensed business,” Hof wrote in his book. “They don’t get health benefits, vacation pay, or retirement, and they are responsible for their own taxes.”

Some, like Moore, are critical of calling the arrangement “independent,” citing policies governing when prostitutes can leave the premises and pressure to aggressively market themselves on online message boards.

How much revenue do brothels bring local governments?

It varies by county.

Last fiscal year, Nye County collected $141,779 in revenue from worker registration cards and brothel license fees.

Nye County brothels themselves face different licensing fees depending on size. Brothels of up to five prostitutes pay just over $2,300 per quarter. Brothels with 26 or more prostitutes working at once would pay $46,900 per quarter.

Lyon County brothels pay anywhere from about $20,000 to $26,000 a quarter in licensing fees, depending on how many rooms are in the business. In a year, the county brings in about $384,000 in brothel license, liquor license and business license fees from the four establishments.

“Those taxes support doctors, a police force, EMTs, and even the public schools,” Hof wrote in his book.

How old do you need to be?

It varies by county. For example, Nye County requires prostitutes to be at least 21 years old. In Lyon County, they must be 18.

What is it like?

Parreira, a doctoral candidate at UNLV, conducted research in brothels for her dissertation. The Hof-owned Alien Cathouse said she could conduct her research as long as she was also working in the brothel as a sex worker, and she did just that in 2014.

“I never had sex for money before…and I didn’t think I could do it,” Parreira told The Nevada Independent in a podcast interview.

But Parreira, who had done some exotic dancing and adult webcam acting, said her work at the brothel was just a job, albeit one that provided companionship and sex as a service. Brothel work became “a lot of fun” and Parreira enjoyed Alien Cathouse’s “familial atmosphere.”

A typical day in the brothel started at 11 a.m. The sex workers had to be ‘show ready’ by then meaning they were showered, groomed and dressed in lingerie ready to be selected by a client. The women line up when a client arrives so that person can pick who they want to “party” with.

“It’s a hard job,” Madam Suzette Colette Cole of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch wrote in Hof’s book. “Every day is a party for the client, but it can be hard on the girls, both physically and psychologically. The lineup alone can be really hard on them. Client after client comes in and the new girl doesn’t get picked, and she begins to feel bad.”

Hof said in his book that one of his core principles is ensuring girls can turn down clients if they want to. Parreira and Ruby Rae, a prostitute who works in one of Hof’s brothels, insist the principle is upheld.

“In the brothels, we have the choice, always, to say which clients we will say yes and no to,” Rae wrote in an op-ed to The Nevada Independent.

Much of the work is done online, with prostitutes posting frequently on brothel message boards to draw in prospective clients. Prostitutes at Hof’s brothel are warned not to discuss prices over state lines to avoid running afoul of state and federal laws.

Do prostitutes enjoy the work?

Women who are or have been employed in Nevada’s brothels and spoke to the The Nevada Independent in interviews have offered widely different assessments of the work.

Lexi James of Love Ranch North attended a Lyon County Commission meeting to oppose efforts to shut down brothels there.

“They are trying to say they’re saving our lives but they are really just trying to save our souls. And I’m good. I have a very close relationship with God. I don’t need anyone religious stepping in and telling me what I do for a living is wrong,” she said. “What I do is not sex. I sell love. I provide services to disabled clients, widowers, divorcees, helping couples spice things up.”

Cara Rain, another brothel worker, said voters who are deciding the fate of brothels should learn more about it.

“I think they need to educate themselves on all of this completely,” she said. “I chose this profession without ever being in the sex industry prior and I’m completely happy here.”

But Moore said the real experience was nothing as glamorous as what appeared on the HBO reality show Cathouse. She said many girls came in with substance abuse issues and in dire economic straits and struggle to make decent money.

“I really did think it was a better place for the girls,” she said, but changed her mind “having seen them come and leave in no better position.”

“Contrary to what they say, ‘you don’t have to be with a guy,’ if you’re not doing your parties and you’re not making money, they get on your case,” she said.

Hof acknowledged in his book that many of his working girls have had a dark past.

“I get another question all the time, and it’s this: ‘What kind of girl becomes a prostitute?’ Well, all sorts of girls. But if I’m going to be honest, some of them come from pretty fucked-up families. I’ve had plenty of girls who were abused,” he said.

Diana Grandmaison, a former pornography actress who spent about four months working in Nevada’s legal brothel industry in 2009, said the pay was barely enough to get by and the experience was demeaning. She said she’s evolved over the years and is now completely against prostitution, legal or otherwise.

“The fact of putting a price on a human being or body part is, to me, inhumane,” she said. “Now I’m totally against it, I want the entire thing shut down and I want it illegal across the nation and across the world.”

Soni Brown, Megan Messerly and Daniel Rothberg contributed to this report.

(Jared Lawthom | LAD Bible) – Have you ever wondered what life must be like for a legal sex worker? To sell your body to strangers, to fulfill their fantasies and to deal with the stigma of living as a professional in that industry?

Some will tell you it’s empowering to women, to use men to get what you want on your own terms. While others will say it’s enslaving, turning daughters, sisters and mothers into little more than a tool for sexual gratification. But what’s the truth?

We spoke to a legal sex worker, Ruby Rae, who works at The Love Ranch – which is in Northern Nevada and is part of America’s Only Legal Red Light District, to pick her brains on the job, the lifestyle and all that goes with it.

LADbible found out the secrets of the brothel, feminism, weird clients, STIs and some of the common misconceptions of the industry.

First question, how did you get into it and how long have you been doing it for?

So, I started in 2011. I was 20, an undergrad and working at a full-time job. I just realised that I was working too much to be able to focus on school.

I’ve always known about the legal brothels in Nevada. I just got really curious and I researched them and the idea kind of blossomed from there. I took a really big giant leap of faith and reached out to them.

What exactly are the types of services you offer?

Because I work in a legal brothel, you can pretty much put it out there that, ‘hey, if you come here you are going to get a full-service experience’. But for different girls that means different things.

I would say for me, personally, I specialise in ‘the girlfriend experience’, because I think that just fits my personality as I’m more introverted.

What other types of experiences can you get?

So there’s the ‘porn star experience’ which is a bit more rough and sexual. Then of course you have fetish, role play and also a lot of two-girl bookings.

As you specialise in the girlfriend experience, do the lines ever get blurred between the service and actually developing feelings for the client?

I’ve never really got too attached to a client. I see them as friends and my lover for the time they’re with me. When I started the bigger obstacle was making sure that clients don’t get too attached.

Without boundaries, it’s not healthy for me or the client.

What would be a red flag?

Asking certain questions about my personal life is inappropriate. I would nip that in the bud pretty quickly. I never want them to feel like I’m leading them on.

It’s also really healthy for clients to see a variety of girls, because when you just see one girl for so long, it’s really hard for them not to get attached.

Would you ever consider giving it up for someone you met?

Well this won’t make me sound like a romantic at all but no. Not at all. I mean who knows, if I met someone and it was my soul-mate then maybe, but I don’t really believe in having one soulmate.

How about ambitions for a family?

I always say I don’t think I will. If I’m being totally honest, child-birth really scares me. I just see myself as being that really cool aunt, who spoils all of her friends’ children. I’m not saying it’s completely out of the picture though.

What for you are the biggest misconceptions towards the industry and sex work in general?

That we’re ‘dirty’ or ‘desperate.’ We certainly aren’t dirty. At the legal brothel we are tested for STIs every single week and for HIV once a month.

We’re also not here because we’re desperate. I totally chose to do this. I re-searched it heavily and I knew what I was getting into.

One of the biggest issues sex workers seem to have is being labelled a prostitute. What are the main differences between sex work and prostitution?

People have created a bad stereotype with the word prostitute, especially Hollywood. When they show a prostitute in a movie, usually it’s not in a good light. So, when you have things like that thrown up against the word it creates negative connotations and we don’t want to be associated with that.

We want to be seen as business women. Women who have chosen to be free and empowered.

You were saying you think it empowers women. Why?

I am empowered by sex work because I have a lot of freedom in my life and my schedule. It would be very hard for me to go and work in corporate America after doing this job.

Of course there’s the money. I make a lot more than I would in a corporate job. There’s also something really empowering in being able to command a certain price.

What would you say to those who say the industry is degrading for women?

So you basically mean ‘radical’ feminists who are obviously against prostitution. With feminism, I think that a lot of them think we are contributing to what they call ‘violence against women’.  They think that by selling our bodies we are contributing to gender inequality.

What I would say to that is that we don’t believe that we’re selling our bodies. Selling my body, that’s slavery. I am definitely not a slave.

I sell my time. I sell my energy. Of course, the physical is a part, but it isn’t everything.

The fighting cry of sex workers is that sex work is just that – work. A career option.

A lot of women speaking out about sexual harassment at the moment. Does that exist in the sex industry at all?

A guy wouldn’t be too bright to come into a brothel and sexually assault somebody because we are well protected. The sheriffs really have our back.

What would a client have to do to a sex worker while they’re working for it to be considered sexual harassment rather than part of the job?

It’s hard to imagine because it’s never happened. I guess if I’m with a client it would be them being insistent on performing a service that I have clearly stated I don’t provide. I’d consider any attempt sexual assault. If I feel like they’re violating my boundaries I wouldn’t allow that. I’d end the booking.

We actually have a panic button. So, if a girl starts feeling uncomfortable she can hit it and a really loud, annoying ring goes off. Then the cashier will bust into the room and see what’s going on.

Is this a lifetime profession?

I’ve known a few ladies who definitely made it a career. There’s ‘Airforce Amy’ who works at Bunny Ranch and has been in the business about 20 years or maybe a little longer.

This is definitely a career for me but I say that knowing that people don’t stay in one career their whole lives.

I read one time that said the average person has ‘seven careers in their lifetime’ so this is definitely a big chapter of my life and I don’t have any plans to stop at the moment.

(This article was originally published on January 15, 2018 at www.lidbible.com)