To network or not to network

It can be lonely being a sex worker yet I've met a few ladies who prefer to stay away from any socialising online or in real life and keep to themselves. They don't want any dramas despite the benefits that can be had from meeting and greeting with other working girls or clients. I can understand this - I've witnessed a few not so nice situations - but there are ways to go about it without your life becoming part of a collective train wreck.

Like it or not, if you're a sex worker in an agency or working from a house with other indies, you will come into contact with other working girls.  Read more...

Sex workers and websites: if you build it will they come?

Although many sex workers are getting websites built for them or DIYing it with free sites like WIX or blogs, I have heard many saying they don't know what to do with them ("now what?") or how to get clients ("traffic") to go to them. So I've been picking the brains of one or two IT people and looking closely at how some of the sex worker success stories out there are using theirs.
... Read more on my website.

The pleasures of non-sex work

I often write about how much I love sex work, and one of the reasons I love it as a lifestyle is because it gives me so much time to get involved with various projects as non-Amber.

 Last year I learned a lot about publishing on Amazon kindle by guinea-pigging myself as an author and some little stories I wrote as my product. Sex work not only gave me the time for that but also the material as the stories were about a sex worker named Amber O'Hara (and a little about her quirky non-Amber identity). This year I will be ... Read more on my website

Sex Workers Starting With Why

I've been enjoying the fabulous book Start With Why by Simon Sinek after a recommendation by someone I respect a lot and who has had an amazing career in their (creative) field.

In fact I listened to the audio book and loved it so much that I'm now reading it on kindle and have even gifted it to others to read. I've mentioned it to many people recently as well.

It's not that I aspire to be a leader but I like the basic premise, which is that we should start with why we are doing our "work" (or anything really) before we try and inspire others or sell what or how we do it (for example, via advertising to our staff, clients or just our supportive champions). If anything it confirms my long-held belief that sex workers can create their own niche services. There are many sex workers I know of consciously doing this  ... more on my website

Forced conversations when you’ve been outed

Cyber bullying comes in many forms, from the relatively mild (but still harmful) tweet-bombing, Facebook posting, harassment on online forums etc, to the most dreaded extreme for sex workers - being publicly outed and/or lied about as a sex worker on websites set up to humiliate.  When this happens, and sex workers have to deal with a horrifying situation where they are outed to their loved ones and communities, it is obviously carried out by someone seeking to hurt them. This usually happens anonymously and without warning although occasionally advance threats are made and/or the person outing her, by revealing certain private information, is identifiable. This heartbreaking scenario happened to a friend of mine recently online for the world to see.  She is still processing the repercussions...  Read more on my website.

Love as community - a contemplation

A contemplation on Amber O'Hara's What gets women off? and Love within Sex Work.

Amber O'Hara proposes an interesting question in her two part series What gets women off? One guesses she explores this question with more clarity in her essay Love within Sex Work. While "love" and "getting off sexually" are by no means the same, they are not totally different. We do equate them. Love has specific meanings as in parent/child love, child/parent love, love of life, making love, unconditional love, while "getting off" is about orgasmic responses. Sex while a bonding agent is a component of adult love it is much less important to secure bonds than popularly thought.

O'Hara seems to have a curiosity about connection that transcends these three essays... read more on my website

Welcome to my new website

I now have a new website of my own

If you are wanting to see my website, it is now hosted here.  I will continue blogging but from my own site, amber-ohara.com - I hope you enjoy it.

Lurking and Peering and the Culture of Complaint

The day I visited my friend and fellow sex worker, Clio, at her house*, I was wearing my (non-sex worker-like) day clothes of jeans and a plain, dark woollen top and carrying a large, black art portfolio, as I was visiting to show Clio some sketches from a creative project I started at university. As I walked down her driveway towards her premises, (in a straight line as the driveway has a direct route towards Clio's front door,) which is clearly marked by a large number visible from the street footpath, a lady who was entering a next door property in the same block of townhouses, hesitated before opening her front door to take a lingering look at me, while two other residents of the same townhouse, watched me from different windows on different floors. As I walked past their house, I glimpsed another woman watching me through some foliage from an attached balcony.

Below is a guest post by Clio the Whore.


For a brief but happy time I ran a brothel. I ran a good clean place with co workers I liked, and because I lived there I was able to be hospitable and flexible.

Then I received an email from the property manager, saying that he believed I was engaging in illegal activity ie: running a brothel and thereby using the house for purposes other than residential. He gave me two weeks to shut it down or I would be evicted.

READ MORE.

Love Within Sex Work

A tweet from Australian escort, Gabrielle

I found this tweet the other day and it really resonated with me.  It's because I feel exactly the same about my clients.  I really love those dudes!  A lot of the time I give my heart and soul to my clients, and get it back in spades. 

Which got me thinking.  Is this professional, or normal?

READ MORE.

Not About The Heart Of Darkness; Whoring As A Profession At The End Of Capitalism*

This is a guest post by Christchurch escort Clio the Whore.

'You live in a fantasy', says my client wistfully. He is lying on my bed in a state of post coital triste, having expounded to me his marital problems. He looks around him, at the beautiful room bathed in golden light with its fin de siècle Parisian theme, he strokes the flank of the warm woman in his arms. 'You are so lucky', he tells me, 'You get to have sex all day'.

He is right course, it is a fantasy. Whose fantasy is it?

READ MORE.

Are you old enough?

 Still from the music video of Dragon's Are You Old Enough?

The legal age to be a sex worker in New Zealand is 18 and most sex workers will not accept clients under 18.  According to my (light) investigations, there is actually no age restriction for sex workers' clients other than the age restriction for sexual consent which is 16.   (I stand to be corrected).

READ MORE.