The End of Escorts

27 Apr

The escorts are disappearing. They are flinging open the windows of the demi-monde, dropping ropes, climbing out. Is it true? I haven’t done any statistical analysis. I am faint-aware that numbers around our salty little trade have long been disreputable; ever heard the one about how in Victorian London there were about 80,000 prostitutes? That would mean for every 20-25 women, at least one was a sex worker. Hmmm. There wasn’t any welfare state as such, so, maybe. That being said, historian Hallie Rubenhold uncovered, contrary to popular belief, only 2 of the 5 women killed in the 1888 Whitechapel murders were on the game at all and only 1 routinely and professionally, despite all being poor, vagrant, and addicted at the time of their deaths. The Ripperologists were angry; indeed, the excitement of the weird little hobby was thrown asunder when it was put forward, rather than lighting up the cobbled streets with their weather-worn erotic charms a-flare, at least some of the women may have just been inebriated, and catching some sleep in an alleyway when they were horribly murdered. Murders of homeless people attract less attention than murders of ladies of the night, because there is no salacious, ‘crime of passion’ angle; it’s too obviously pure-grade in its bleakness. Killing sex workers is bleak too, btw. It shouldn’t need saying but seemingly it does.

In any case; that fact alone throws a challenge to the idea that the Big Smoke was swarming with whores, if even very down on their luck women didn’t consider it. There were a lot of early social commentators worried about the consequences of the influx of prostitution due to industrialisation and urbanisation and this may have inflated the sense of it being. ‘everywhere’ particularly among the lower orders; some of their worries were legitimate, however, genuine concerns were perhaps bulked out with a degree of moral flapping.

In any case, the point is, selling sex has always been filtered through degrees of fluidity and secrecy, rendering it difficult to ascertain the ebb and flow of the trade, so it is hard to really get a handle on whether it is true that women are leaving. Are they just exiting established platforms?

But if it were true, what would be the reason(s)? I’ve heard a few suggestions put forth, and I have some speculations of my own:

Online Sex Industry

This used to mean webcam, and now commonly means OnlyFans and other smaller, DIY subscriber platforms. For the uninitiated (which include me) on the site, people pay a monthly subscription in order to gain access to hidden photos, video, and other juicy content (beatnik poetry/ flourless cake recipes/ morse code/ cheats for Rollerpark Tycoon 1999 and declarations of independence for newly formed micronations, I believe are all popular) and some measure of distance interaction. If it were true that it were possible to reach your financial needs via a digital platform which gave you a lot of independence, of course there would be those who may have otherwise offered escort fraternisations, who would favour it, if at least for two reasons; the assumption of lesser stigma involved, and the eradication of the potential physical risks associated with classic sex work.

The sticky wicket here are the fraught questions about the site’s income potential for the user; very small numbers earn buckets, very large numbers of profiles sit there doing diddly (people signing up and giving up quickly, perhaps) and a median user base for whom it is a bit of a cosy side income. So how could it make much of a dent in the escort-trade? Well, there have always been a decent section of the lower-middle end of the sex industry who saw clients once or twice a week, or a couple of times a month, for a few hundred quid here and there; students, single mums, women working in low paid government/ service industries, needing cash around Christmas time or when the kids went back to school. Not lifestyle or professional escorts on the one hand, or survival/down on their luck outdoor sex workers on the other, just ‘ordinary women’, moonlighting. It is not inconceivable that OnlyFans has mopped up a good portion of this section of the trade, especially from students and service industry workers who have less to immediate worries about the exposure it portends. Perhaps some of these women still escort, but selling content lessens their reliance on seeing in-real-life clients and so they can afford to be more particular about who they see and when they work.

Some argue that it will also have taken up those women who would have ‘in another life’ been at the most expensive end of the escort world, and whereas I can see there being some truth in this, that portion of the digital sex industry – ambitious, model-esque young women using sex to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible – I would sooner guess that these millionaire content providers would’ve in another life been residents of the stripping, glamour model and old school porn industry, rather than private escorting, who are more willing to be a more visual presence in the sex trade. There are women who, whether ambitious or not, find the idea of having their sexualities as on view as what sites like OnlyFans require, undesirable. And seeing as 30-40 years ago, glamour modelling and pornography could theoretically make a woman a larger income than solely meeting clients privately, and yet many still chose escorting, it seems unfeasible that an analogous contemporary demographic would jump into commercial DIY production for the same reasons.

In sum? Though I think OnlyFans will have bought a whole new group of young women into the sex trade that would’ve never considered it before, I would be startled if it had not taken at least take a bit of a chunk out of the escort demographic, and the ‘just doing it for a bit of spare cash for a few years’ bunch – who have always been a significant portion of the trade I’d wager - taking the biggest hit.

Cost of Living

In 2022-23 we saw rates of inflation skyrocket (9-11% I believe), and we’ve not had hikes like that in years… a brief period in the late 80s, and through the 70s. This could pull in different directions; those working/lower middle-class clients may be too stretched to be able to afford to pay for sexual entertainment, especially escorts, and that could diminish supply. But on the other hand, collective belt tightening may encourage some women into the sex trade who were not there before, although they’d be competing with the already installed, over a shrinking client base. That would mean more escorts, but who are charging cheaper rates (relative to inflation). However, if the above is true, and media reports on the growing popularity of OnlyFans during the time (and the preceding COVID years) seem to suggest so, it was DIY content that burgeoned during these years of social unease, not escorting. And it would make sense, because content making does not carry the same potential financial outgoings that being an escort might.

Indeed, in the other direction, the rates for hotels, rents, phone contracts, travel and other of the paraphernalia of lay-for-pay, have risen astronomically. These are big outlays and it’s feasible that for some, with a squeezed client base, the profit margins no longer justify the social stigma providing sexual entertainment and intimacy can incur. Escorts may put up their prices to accommodate for this to a degree, but the extent to which this offsets these hikes in living costs seems variable. Furthermore, if there is more competition, some ladies may find themselves taking greater risks with undesirables they would’ve previously screened out, resulting in some negative experiences. Taking more risks for less money puts a dent in the benefits of the industry, makes burnout more predictable, and early retirement more likely.

On the other hand, I think during recessions, some escorts use the time as an opportunity to change their relationship with the industry, especially if they have the ability to lower their outgoings because they were previously pretty far away from the breadline anyway, and/or they were already popular with potential clients, so that even if their income takes a dip, they still can comfortably make a living. Instead, they see the wobble in the economy as an opportunity to think about their long-term financial goals, to start new forms of training or business, or to recalibrate how they approach being an escort, focusing on appealing to the desires of those clients whose lives are less impacted by economic volatility. Those escorts without children, debt, ‘economically dependent boyfriends’, drug addictions… who instead have savings/assets/good support networks and a professional client base less impacted by recession.

So, in sum, does the recession put some poorer escorts into further dangerous terrain, squeeze some moonlighting/median escorts out of the industry into other more reliable or less stigmatised work and encourage a professionalisation of the ones who keep afloat?

Take home? I’m on the fence, but I do think if average rates for escorts don’t get higher in the next few years, along with the popularity of online content, there might be a kind of feudalistic bifurcation of the industry, with the middle squeezing out, and a greater preponderance of survival sex workers at one end (including the cut-price services offered by groups from poorer European countries, often coerced), and more expensive professionalised escorts at the other. Indeed, the yanks have had a larger gap between rich and poor for some time now, which we are catching up with, and, alongside its criminal prohibitions, that seems to have manifested more of a stratified industry, in comparison to our British bell curve. I’m not sure this kind of talk was what Ed Miliband had in mind when he was prognosticating on the ‘squeezed middle’ some years back, but I think it translates.

The Pornography Demographic

I bring this up because I saw some chat on Twitter from sex workers which interested me, about how the escort industry was not attracting new clients from younger generations of men, in order to replace the older section of the boomer generation passing into sexual retirement or the ever-after.

I have some speculations, but they are raw and unfiltered (even for this pile of general conjecture); there does seem to be growing evidence that younger generations are having less ‘in real life sex’ and watching more pornography, consequently developing more of an abstracted sense of sexual identity; meaning, they think about sexual pleasure more as a theory than a practice, a way of thinking than a way of living. Next year I believe, will be the 18th year of the existence of major porn platform Pornhub, and the release of the first iPhone. Soon, we will have adults, who were not alive prior to the existence of a totally personalised, immediate, near-enough unrestricted, atomised, and unfiltered sexual consumption culture.

In real life sexual liaisons are exceedingly different from pornography consumption, and for those who grew up experiencing sexual development before they had unfiltered access to porn, seem better equipped to draw meaningful distinctions between the two and compartmentalise them accordingly. Comparatively, those who were immersed in digital pornography before sexual experience, seem more inclined to view it as instructive, or worse, as incapable of comprehending the scope of its influence on their desire at all, or to envision eroticism without its effects.

Indeed, whereas research on negative social outcomes for pornography during the magazine and VHS years were pretty inconclusive or weak, in recent years the evidence of negative outcomes (erectile dysfunction, depression, poor body image, relationship alienation & loneliness, sexual aggression, unrealistic sexual expectations of themselves and their partners and concomitant interpersonal hostility) have really started to amp. I doubt very much that porn-natives will be as inclined to see escorts, when natural born pleasure is less intuitive to them than mediated digital consumption, and when real life sex becomes too much of a ‘site’ of unease, due to distorted expectations and social confusion around relationships.

On the flipside, many escorts are not over-fond of meeting with clients for whom pornography is their first great passion and who demonstrate a stressed, anxious discomfort or much worse, an angry, volatile, dissatisfaction, being in the room with an actual naked human being. I have long noticed that despite a growing interest for hardcore porn style sex among younger generations, I haven’t seen much willingness among many escorts to cater to it, particularly the more extreme end. One assumes that is at least partially because our clients are still in an age bracket where they were not inculcated on internet porn in the way digital natives have been and still prioritise the experience of enjoying human contact first and foremost?

It also may have something to do with growing numbers of young women becoming more sexually assertive, and less willing to do things simply because it’s what teenage boys on Reddit say they require. Indeed, further to the data on porn use, they seems to be a growing distinction between the sexual politics of young men and young women. The former are developing more regressive, conservative attitudes to women and sex, and believing sex work to augur some offence to medieval idealisms around hypermasculinity. The latter are becoming more independent and liberal and interested in sex work as a form of erotic autonomy and self-actualisation. These young women still have older generations of men to engage with, who are more liberal, easy-going, and warm-spirited about casual sex, but if these young men keep on their path, the risks of in real life encounters with men who think escorts are harbingers of vile amorality, will be too great for an increasingly assertive female populace, both in an out of the sex industry.

What I will say is that, cumulatively, as time progresses, if we marry a squeeze in earning potential, with the comparative accessibility of digital sex content and smaller numbers of clients with growing difficulties in enjoying sex in a joyful and untroubled fashion…then the pull factors for embracing escorting seem ready and set to diminish.

Perhaps however, for every 10-20 people who give up on the expensive perils of meatspace encounters and just strap in to the metaverse, cock/vulva in hand, there will be 1-2 who will shift back to escort companions, just as hipsters once shovelled their iPods to the back of a cupboard and started collecting the vinyl. Or city boys put down their stock sheets and invested in a small holding and a fine brood of Gloucester Old Spots. Perhaps seeing a companion will be like going to the theatre, the ballet, the opera, reading a novel, learning yoga or baking sourdough; something emotionally aspirant people do to help them fend off the melancholy of a digital cynicism.

It all keeps coming back to the same place; will the middle of the industry deplete, unable to compete with the digital sex industry, which will offer increasingly realistic headset versions of sexual encounters of any kind and quality to anyone, anywhere? The human body, even the prettiest female human body, will seem like a rusty old wrench by comparison, especially to those who grew up to not question the normalcy of their fantastical sexual notions. And on the flip side, will there be a growth of smaller bodies of escorts offering artisanal in-person eroticism as some specialist niche for a premium rate, to an alternative-market clientele? And perhaps, some DIY pornstars will patent their image in the metaverse (litigation against copywrite will be a more effective tool for combating revenge porn and deep fakes than sexual abuse legislation, just wait) for digital encounters to take place, but offer in-real life sex for exorbitant prices to very rich men? I see it now; the majority of the sex industry, the middle-road, will be digitally mediated for the masturbatory masses. There will be a small quirky section offering in-real sexual companionship to the male members of the bohemian upper middle-class, who are always pulling gently against totally subsuming into populist social fashions. And then an elite; a new courtesanry, branding themselves on the simulator-highway and offering nights to middle-eastern sheiks and silicon valley wiz kids for a million bucks a ride.

Perhaps escorting-as-standard will be a thing of the past, but will retain its existence on the specialist fringes, for connoisseurs or wealthy collectors, and the new ‘escort’ will be network of robobabes filtered directly into the mind’s eye. Dennis Miller, the liberal-conservative American commentator once lamented; “the day a laid off steelworker can sit in his barcalounger with a Fosters in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and have sex with Claudia Schiffer for $19.99, it’ll make crack look like Sanka.” He was wrong about a lot of stuff, but now and then broke clocks do chime right.