One of my peers recently mentioned having a “customer” from more than a year ago continuing to pop back up with harassment and abusive threats of suicide—an obvious manipulation to elicit a response.
All over $100.
I couldn’t help myself. Immediately, I slid into her DMs with unsolicited advice and apologized for doing so. She was thankful and relieved to hear what I had to say. I’ll get to that…
Over the years (nearly 10) I’ve seen so many “advice-givers” come and go… And worse, charging our peers for very toxic and harmful advice. It is my goal to not pull that shit.
Thankfully, I may have been offered the perfect platform and opportunity to thrust my unsolicited advice onto this community. I am not being paid for this. Call this a passion, I suppose. Not altruistic so much as angry, charged. I bring paradigm-shifting force with me and I aim to do right by anyone I can. I will never claim to know everything about anything. I invite my peers to approach me directly with comments, questions, concerns.
I remember a conversation on Twitter about how “new workers” need to do the work themselves or pay for the advice they seek from the rest of us. While I don’t disagree that our time, experience and labor are valuable and deserving of compensation, I had something else to say about it: Too many of us need to do this work to survive.
We often start out desperate, afraid, stressed, bewildered, daunted and in need of support, and we still make our customers happy! I have mostly been in this for survival as well. I have been fortunate in my own experience—although self-taught, self-made—to have been offered plenty of free and unsolicited advice from my peers in both stripping and webcam modeling.
Mind you, this wasn’t all for my sake alone! Maybe they were sweet, loving people but the point is that their advice helped maintain the integrity of their work and helped uphold what has already been built before me.
Furthermore, if we aren’t afforded the occasional privilege and courtesy of free advice from peers, guess who is giving advice to us? The men/customers.
I have experienced this first-hand, many times… Their advice is almost always malicious, self-interested, patriarchal and/or simply wrong. Nothing worth perpetuating in our industries.
The point of this column isn’t some “How To: Your Way To The Top” bullshit. Frankly, it’s not a “how to” anything. How could I possibly qualify to tell any of you how to run your business? Not to mention, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all success. Not in adult entertainment. It seems to me there is a much greater need for something practical, versatile, inclusive.
So to kick things off: Ongoing harassment and manipulative threats of suicide.
First of all, we all know suicide is a very real and very common thing. I don’t personally agree with western culture’s relationship with suicide. At the core of the issue I believe that if a conscious being possesses the capacity to conceive of self-destruction, that being also possesses the inherent right to act on it. It’s a very sensitive, hurtful, heartbreaking subject. A permanent solution for often temporary problems. Ultimately, no one qualifies to make, prevent, criminalize or judge that choice for anyone else. Mental health is important and so is respecting someone else’s. I definitely don’t want to hurt, stigmatize, incriminate or impose on anyone about the subject.
Having said that and more importantly, given that, it is wildly abusive to use threats of suicide to manipulate anyone, let alone a sex worker. Know that you are not alone. Harassment, threats to and abuse of adult entertainers are nothing new. Unfortunately, it is an age-old struggle to maintain any semblance of exaltation or fortification of our work in society. Bottom line, whatever they say or do, it is abuse if you did not consent. It’s not your fault. Fuck victim-blaming but you need to find your fight. Dealing with mentally ill customers can be absolutely dangerous. I knew of a Top 20 MFC model who announced how thankful she was to have building security because some random asshole showed up in San Diego from Wisconsin, claiming they were moving in together.
Entertaining virtually doesn’t keep you safe; VPN only does so much. I’ve encountered plenty of creeps myself, both virtually and in person. The most recent being some idiot threatening to expose my personal information on MFC. Admin handled it for me promptly and I never heard from him again. I remember a trans woman who was kidnapped at a convention and thankfully found alive.
Things to do (including but not limited to:)
•Fucking block. Do not tip toe these guys.
You don’t owe them shit. Don’t let them play on any good heart or guilt. If it feels wrong to you, it is. Trust your guts, babes. Some won’t get that it’s a very strong “no” regardless, but if this is all you need, great.
•Screenshot everything. Email it to yourself. Keep it. Assholes may never let up.
If you need to, forward it to admin of the site where it occurred and/or take the evidence to law enforcement. We all know they may be of little to no help but it’s a (potentially public record) timestamp that you took action to make it stop.
•Invest in fortification on all fronts.
No amount of money is worth your mental health.
This work takes massive tolls as it is. It doesn’t matter what they gave you or when. If they breach your consent boundaries, the interaction has become toxic and needs to be severed. If we are to fortify and exalt ourselves, being selective, discriminative and exclusive is of underrated importance. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s counter-intuitive to do this with the explosion of fem-dom/fin-dom.
I personally ranked Top 350 Miss MFC two months consecutive (Dec ’18, Jan ’19), while actively kicking, banning, blocking, reporting anyone I saw fit—or even berating them out of my chatroom publicly! While I realize this won’t work for everyone, frankly I think our customers do not pay to see us being mistreated by anyone. Sometimes even the best paying ones are—or become—toxic. It sucks, but if it feels like it’s time to ban/block, it is.
Sticking to your standards is never wrong. There are more than 7.4 billion people on this planet. Even just isolating the adult males (more every year), I’d say the odds of always finding more/better customers are ever in our favor.
•Anything is a weapon.
Even someone’s own weight used against them. Grab them as they come for you, sidestep and throw them in the direction they were already going. I grew up with the fundamentals of martial arts. I have a great love for the concepts, efficiency and kinesiology. Self-defense classes could help. Most fights end up on the ground, quickly. Knowing how to grapple could save your life.
If you’re on your back, bring your fists up to guard your face, knee(s) to your chest; stick your feet in their hips and push/kick them back/off. Hard to explain this without visuals but Google is your free friend.
Self-defense key chains are often cheap and easy to come by. Your phone or lighter are usually in your hand. I personally prefer to keep a .40 with hollow-point rounds—one chambered at all times—but understand that’s simply not available/optional/preferred by many.
Google the hyoid bone. Up high, under the chin. We all have one. If you have a free hand, crush that fucker like a soda can. Before this, I was a licensed massage therapist. Don’t diminish that work with trash jokes about happy endings. I was very knowledgeable and very skilled.
Healers (like me) know how to fuck someone up with mere fingers and joint manipulation. Remember the septum is sensitive. It is as potentially deadly to smash that as is crushing the hyoid bone.
These days they make cool door stops that prevent your door from being kicked in. The Ring home-security device is kind of pricey to set up but cheap annually and pretty neat. Pros and cons to any of the above are your discretion. Ultimately, abuse, harassment and violence can be both inevitable and unpreventable—but your peace of mind is worth the effort.
You are all worth better. You are all worth more. I wish safety and security to us all and I am so thankful that my experiences and observations can be transformed into something positive.
Auntie Eden has your back.
Eden Blake has been a webcam model since 2010. Follow her on AVN Stars at @edenblake and catch her next show on MyFreeCams.
