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.

What gets women off (part two)

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a epidemic of sexual dissatisfaction called Hysteria.  Women all over the place were getting it, the symptoms were vast and doctors were treating it by massaging the clitorises of their patients.  This method of treatment would result in what was then known as a paroxysm, or an orgasm, which would heal the multitude of ills in the hysteria potpourri. 

READ MORE.

A taboo subject: sex workers from the same family

1978 movie Pretty Baby publicity still* 

As Christmas is for family get-togethers, I occasionally ponder at this time of year, the place of sex workers within, or their relationships with, their families.  Lately I have been talking with a few sex workers who have other family members also in the industry. Even though there are many people from the same family working as sex workers all over the world, some people have the impression that this kind of situation is distasteful, comical, exploitative as well as arousing. 

In New Zealand and Australia, I knew and presently know many sex workers who are from the same family and although many sex workers receive support from friends and family members, we agreed that there is still a bit of a taboo however when two family members work as sex workers together or at the same time, 

READ MORE.

What gets women off (part one)

It's been widely concluded that it's harder for women to get aroused than men, and that it takes longer. That some women lose interest in sex. That some women have a lower libido overall than most men.

The thing is with (straight) men, a glimpse of bosom or derrière seems to be able to do it. It can fill them with instant desiring and lust.  Or horniness to be precise.

READ MORE.

Lady on lady sex work adventures

Golden Head by Golden Head, illustration by Dante Rossetti for Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed

- Christina Rossetti in Goblin Market

It's not just men who enjoy sexy times with sex workers.

READ MORE.

Some men (who love their wives) visit escorts

Sometimes couples stay together because they really love each other and want to continue the personal investment they've made in their past and the family unit and home.

The monogamous ideas that have been passed down through the ages means that couple are obliged to only make love with each other until the end of their relationship. Yet the modern consensus agrees; why should a lady keep being intimate with her husband if she doesn't want to? (Playing devil's advocate here as I have my own opinions on the benefits of sex for women, specifically the benefits of orgasms).

Be honest - would you really enjoy having sex with your partner if she was not into it? Even though sometimes in marriage we do what we don't want to, a lot of men don't want to have sex with an unwilling partner so they don't force the issue.

But men still have needs, even an (incomprehensible to women) need for variety. That's why the sex industry exists. If a man has not left his wife, even though he sees escorts or his wife is no longer making love with him as often, it's because he still loves his wife or doesn't wish to disrupt the life they have built together. Good for him is what I say. 

Below is something that was sent to me by a man with the interesting distinction that he does not have sexual intercourse with sex workers.  This explains why and how he sees escorts.

READ MORE.

Ways to do sex work - part three (being a domme)

Dominique Stern, a character created by musician Gene Simmons

What a mysterious world the provision of domination and fetish services is.  It may be an area you'd consider exploring if you have an interest in certain kinks.  Sometimes it's a service that occasionally sex workers branch out into when they are wanting to go beyond full service sex work for one reason or another.  However, being a dominatrix is much, much more than the odd spank with a paddle, encompassing psychological components and sometimes delving deeply into the past of a client and storming into their psyches, occasionally into a dark place.

Art by Sardax

Just about every full service sex worker I know has had the same old guys doing the rounds, calling or texting them offering to be their house slaves.  That would be fine, but they are usually very poor cleaners, and to add insult to injury, they expect to have their fantasies of being dominated and humiliated (that is, crawling around in the nude cleaning our loos) indulged for free or in exchange for "cleaning."

It sounds all very temptingly easy, but there are dangers involved with domming. 

READ MORE.

Actresses on Mattresses

While sex workers can genuinely feel affection for some clients, there is usually an element of acting involved (as opposed to robotic and clinical sex work), whether it involves putting on a brave face when things are less than stellar in their private lives, or acting professionally pleasant when you just don't feel like it as is expected in many occupations, but also occasionally a bit of character acting. 

The phrase "actresses on mattresses" may be referring to sex workers' skills with PSE and GFE, but I like to think that one of the most fun aspects of sex work is participating in a random fantasy of someone else.

READ MORE.

What it's like to be the only one

Stephanie Hunter - Australian Escort (click on images to enlarge)

I've been in touch with a few escorts from Australia as well as one or two kiwi escorts now working over the ditch.  It seems that even though our laws are similar, that is, that penetrative oral sex must also be covered, in recent times, in Australia sex workers have begun to mostly offer unprotected oral sex (known as BBBJ*).  

My colleague Stephanie Hunter is one of the few independent Australian escorts who do not offer BBBJ and she has established herself as a high-end escort.  She is an international travel companion, escort, call girl.  But it wasn't always like this, so I asked her to provide a history of the industry in her view, to tell me her story. 

READ MORE.

Writing

Everyday I write the book by Elvis Costello
I once met a music industry dude who I enjoyed discussing the art of playlists with.  I boldly asked him to compile a mix tape for me off the top of his head based on what he knew of me.  Second on his playlist was one of my favourites, Everyday I Write The Book by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.  Nice choice.

I have always loved words, the sound of them, the meaning.

READ MORE.