As tech workers resist return-to-office mandates, face layoffs that cut into hard-won diversity and equity progress, and watch as their dreams of founding successful startups dry up, it's safe to say that many might be looking for new professions. Facing sexism and discrimination in the corporate world, and driven by a desire to have a more localized, creative, and empathetic impact, a quiet subset of tech workers left the tech industry to pursue work they'd rather be doing — in the field of sex work.
Whether as erotic filmmakers, professional dominatrixes, or as more traditional escorts, these former tech workers cite a significant increase to their sense of empowerment, job satisfaction, creative license, and overall freedom in their new professions. They share a universal disinterest in returning to tech workplaces — but an underlying confidence that they could, if tech employers one day began to prioritize factors to retain diverse talent. Their stories are inspiring to anyone looking for permission to pursue their true professional aspirations, and also a notice to tech employers, who continue to lose out on the potential of some of their most motivated and capable workers.
Sexism and career stagnation
"I really did experience sexism at every turn in my [corporate] career," shares NYC-based professional dominatrix, Mistress Serafina. "From my first interviews out of college, I was propositioned by my interviewers, then I was propositioned by the principal engineer at my first job. I was repeatedly looked over for opportunities, and told in my performance reviews that my tone was too fiery." Serafina recounts her story readily, in hopes that speaking up will remind others who experience discrimination, that they aren't alone. Her frustration is palpable when she shares the experience of fighting a system where she felt set up to fail.
Serafina's temperament, which led her to director-level positions in the startup world, despite the uphill fight against sexism, is more openly celebrated now in her new profession. "I learn a lot about myself through the work too; I treat myself as an art project." says Serafina. "My natural characteristics are appreciated and I have the opportunity to explore myself." Serafina was a long-time patron of the BDSM world before she began working in it professionally. Her personal experiences and her personality were appreciated in a community of professional dominatrixes, where she apprenticed and refined her skills.
Serafina's experiences are echoed by sex workers across the field. "I get more genuine respect from men as a sex worker than I ever did in the tech industry," says Mistress Fae, another software professional turned full-time dominatrix in NYC. Mistress Fae's tech career ended after several years, after eventually capping out with similar frustration to Serafina's, where her professional potential felt squandered by an environment of sexism and lack of growth opportunity. "I left the industry after I felt like I'd hit a ceiling and had nothing left that I wanted to accomplish. I was burnt out and frustrated with the short-sighted Silicon Valley tech bubble mindset. No amount of money is worth returning to a field where I felt minimized, degraded, and devalued."
"I get more genuine respect from men as a sex worker than I ever did in the tech industry."
A call to do what matters
"I often wonder what it would be like if the big tech companies were run by more individuals who valued creativity," muses Evana, who requested the use of a pseudonym to protect her identity. Evana is a San Francisco-based escort, whose career took them from the most elite of colleges, to the biggest name companies in Silicon Valley, and eventually to a more content and fulfilling career in sex and intimacy work. "Part of me was just not being nourished [in the tech industry]. My mental health was being drained. I ultimately left for diversity reasons — not just demographic diversity, but diversity in the way people around me thought about the world more expansively."
"Intimacy is low in this world," continues Evana. "When I first started sugaring [professionally dating], I was pretty miserable as a software engineer. Intimacy work was immediately more fulfilling — I connected with the fact that people are just so lonely. This is actually important work for our society."
Evana's sentiment is shared by the other workers. "I am actually making an individual impact," says Mistress Serafina. "If I could compare it to what I was doing in tech, it felt like I was working in a completely virtual world — my results were just numbers on a spreadsheet. Now they're to fulfill people's fantasies and make an actual impact in a person's life." All of these workers value seeing their labor making a real-world impact, and are happy to hop off the corporate ladder and payroll, for the chance at a more expressive and directly impactful profession.
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Fulfillment and giving back to the community
"I find sex work and just generally the umbrella of erotic creativity — whether it's filmmaking or writing or sexual spirituality (tantra, philosophies of eroticism), sex education — the whole umbrella has always been intellectually and creatively inspiring to me," says Val, an erotic filmmaker and sex worker community leader. In addition to their creative projects, Val is passionate about building online communities for sex workers, in a time where sex workers are banned and censored all across digital platforms. "Now that I'm building tech with other sex workers, I've learned how powerful it can be to design from the margins — there's a real rawness, realness; a shamelessness that's extremely powerful."
Val and their team are working on challenging norms of the tech industry, that disempower and censor marginalized communities, by using practices shared by sex working communities. Val's platform, Lips, is pioneering ideas around democratic community ownership of technology, community-based moderation, and decentralization. Their platform is open source and builds its platform culture from the bottom up, with users having most of the say about what happens on the platform. "We have to work together if we're going to have any chance at making an ecosystem of alternatives. The moderation system we've implemented for Lips is modeled after the way the sex work community does vetting, transformative justice, working with people who have been harmed, the way we're not afraid to express ourselves. There's so many values I've practiced in the erotic economy world that have shaped and informed my work in other domains."
Val isn't the only one to combine their background in tech with their new career. Mistress Fae offers free consults and teaches classes/workshops focused on digital privacy, operational security, and technological literacy for other sex workers. Across the board, all of the sex workers talked about the support they receive from their community for the work that they do, and the various ways they all give back into that community for the safety and well-being of other sex workers.
Sex workers aren't just leaving the tech industry — they're taking their skills and knowledge to fight back against the oppressive culture promoted by the mainstream tech culture. They're combining their technical skills and business-savvy with the power-building, community empowering, transparent democracy, and educational practices honed by sex working communities — and they're more appreciated for it in their new careers. While their pivot may seem unorthodox to some, their clear assuredness that their lives have improved on nearly every professional metric, speaks for itself.
"You know that Venn diagram illustrating the Japanese concept of ikigai?," asks Fae, referring to the notion of one's meaning or purpose. "This work is my ikigai — the intersection of what I love, what I'm good at, what I can get paid for, and what the world needs."
