Most people work to survive. If I was rich, I wouldn't work the job I have now. I make a good living and won't say what I make but if it were hourly, I pay more in sex work than I make hourly. Someone doing sex work to survive does not make them less than someone doing sex work to afford extra avocado on their toast.
Survival sex work is different than just working to survive/pay the bills at a regular vanilla job. Survival sex work is when someone is unable to work/make money to survive by more socially acceptable avenues. Whether it's because of chronic illnesses/disabilities, socioeconomic issues, etc. People who do survival sex work are doing so out of extreme need and desperation, and may not have chosen to do sex work if they had other options. It's usually that they have to chose either being homeless/going hungry or doing sex work.
It certainly doesn't make anyone less than people working other more vanilla jobs or people who are doing sex work not out of dire necessity. However, there's a lot of people (even consumers, which you pointed out) that do devalue anyone who does sex work and there's still the stigma that comes with being a sex worker, which can be harder to swallow when you didn't have any other options other than doing sex work.
I'm sure you and a lot of people here already know this, but wanted to clearly say all that to make my next point.
What it comes down to is that some sex workers have contempt for sex work consumers. And that's what I'm getting from reading many of these threads. Sure sex work is not a necessity, that goes without saying but the fact you felt it should be said belies the contempt. 6/min pvts allow me to tip more extra without spending as much. I tip more than 18/min pvt, maybe as much as 30/min in extra tips but I like for that to be a show of appreciation. I enjoy tipping extra to show that appreciation. If i were in a 30/min pvt, I would not be able to show the same appreciation. The contempt and taboo around sex work will never go away when sex workers themselves have an antagonistic and derisive attitude toward a large part of their consumer base.
I'm only speaking for myself and not as if this opinion is shared by all, or perhaps even most, sex workers. I don't have contempt for the majority of members. In fact, I'm very appreciative for all the people who have either bought my content, bought customs, tipped or had privates with me throughout the years. Before getting into the adult industry almost seven years ago, I was a bartender for almost my entire adult life. Comparing customers between the two industries, the majority of customers/members I've had doing adult work have been by far more kind and respectful than most customers I dealt with when I was a bartender. Not only that, but I've had regulars who I just genuinely liked as people and would never have contempt for, and never judged them for consuming sex work. In fact, I think it's great that there's people that actually spend money on the sexual content/porn they consume rather than consuming pirated content. Sex workers deserve to be compensated for their time and work (however much they decide they want to be compensated) and generally speaking, a lot of members know that and respect that, which is awesome. Especially nowadays when there's men who consume the same content for free, yet talk shit about men who actually pay for that same content.
However, just like the general population is comprised of all different types of people, so is sex work consumers. There's some extremely predatory and manipulative people who go to sex workers and knowingly take advantage of them. I'm not saying this is all members, or even the majority, but they do exist. And while there's definitely rich members/whales who are predatory, you see it a bit more with "cheaper" members. These people will go to models who price their time at a much lower rate (like models who may be survival sex workers or models who are from lower socioeconomic regions) and knowingly take advantage of them, thinking they can get away with it because these models need any money they can get to survive and won't be able to turn down any sorts of requests. Those are the members I have contempt for. Just like I would have contempt for anyone, even outside of the sex work sphere, who knowingly manipulates other people to their advantage. I do not like exploitation. At all. It doesn't have anything to do with them having budgets and not being able to spend thousands of tokens every day. Not everyone can spend hundreds or thousands of money on what should be a fun, leisure time activity, and that's totally understandable.
If a model prices her time at 6 tokens a minute and she's happy with that, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that or any contempt for members who do privates at that rate. It's not something I'd ever personally be comfortable with, but as long as no one is being manipulated or exploited, it's not something I'm going to concern myself with. Sadly, like I said before, there's some people who will see that rate, and think they can get away with pushing boundaries, exploiting the model and asking for more and more, because they assume that anyone who has such low prices will do anything they want for insanely low prices. And unfortunately, sometimes they get away with it.
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