We’re coming out of the shadows.
A group of sex workers in Berlin, Germany is founding the first worker-owned escort agency in Germany, if not the world. It will also be the first all-gender escort agency any of us have seen.
While sex work is legal in Germany, we continue to be exploited by bad bosses, who take advantage of shame and stigma; and regulations whose discriminatory theoretical foundation hasn’t yet caught up with legalization.
We have big dreams of building a safe and lucrative working space for the sex workers in our community—and maybe someday across Germany, or perhaps even further—to collectivize and make our own working conditions, our own democratic business practices, and an organization governed by our own beliefs that what we do is not shameful—indeed, it’s nothing short of healing, transformation, and sheer sexual magic that we offer our clients.
But we can’t do it alone. Founding a business (a registered genossenschaft) requires a lot of work—in visioning, crafting statutes, making a business plan, marketing, and, most of all, filling out a tower of paperwork in bureaucratic German. As marginalized people hustling to survive after an economically ruinous pandemic, we are already living on the margins.
By donating to this campaign, you are funding us to take a month away from the hustle and grind so that we can build this thing and build it right: a strong institution that will provide for and shelter sex workers for generations to come. All we ask is to keep the wolves from the door and the bill collectors away long enough to found—finally—the first sex-worker-owned collective escort agency that any of us have seen.
Once we are registered as a business, we expect to be able to find startup funding. However, between now and then, we need support to be able to really accomplish this.
In addition, there is a steep fee to join most escort agencies, as workers must often pay the cost of the initial photo shoot and other expenses. We don’t want to create a financial barrier to entry or a predatory contract with our workers. From your generous donations, we will also create a fund for workers who want to join us but need the costs of adding them to the website covered. This is important because many of us are emerging from Covid-19 times with absolutely nothing but an urgent need to work; and a desire to work in an equitable, safer setting.
About our special magic
In our work, the archetype of the sacred prostitute speaks through us.
In ancient times, prostitutes didn’t work in brothels; they served in temples and were regarded as sacred by society. In those temples, sexuality was celebrated as divine, not something shameful. The prostitute’s body was a doorway to the goddess, pleasure was her prayer, her love, kindness and sensuality restored, redeemed and re-birthed.
Although the archetype has been suppressed for millennia, it never completely disappeared. She is still within us, longing to rise again through so many sex workers hearing the call to share erotic energy to bring transcendence and expansiveness.
About trans*, male, and nonbinary sex workers
Male sex workers traditionally make much less than females. We could give you many theories about why this is, but fundamentally, it’s not ok. And because the client population is not very educated on the subject of nontraditional gender, many trans* and/or nonbinary sex workers must work as their pre-transition gender or as a binary gender with which they don’t identify—in short, if they want to make money, they have to work in drag. And, of course, traditional agencies only represent very femme workers of a very specific body type and look.
We believe that it’s time to move past that. Our community is brilliantly diverse, and we hold the conviction that sexuality is as diverse as we are. We know we can be successful AND represent workers showing up and being marketed in accordance with their true identities. It’s only a leap of faith and imagination. Once clients are shown the true range that they will now have access to, economic prosperity it certain to follow.
About sex workers of color
In a similar way, traditional agencies and bordellos tend not to represent nonwhite workers; and if they do, they are marketed as “exotic” and from far-away climes. This has a tendency to pander to clients who then treat these sex workers of color as “other,” as curiosities to be examined, which then leads to unpleasant or unsafe dates. Enough with that. Our project is about equity. By allowing each escort to have control over how she is marketed and described (and by not refusing them in the first place), we hope to change this disbalance.
By representing all workers equally, and having escorts of all identities and marginalizations on the same page, we can give clients a rainbow of choices and start to re-educate the client base about what is possible, what’s available, and ultimately, what is sexy. We have all seen clients who have been transformed by being offered something other than cis white femme vanilla sex and finding it revelatory. (Not that we won’t also duly provide for traditional tastes.)
It’s the 21st century! It’s time the industry started acting like it.
About sex work and the foreigner's office
It's not commonly understood how the system works for foreigners who immigrate to Germany hoping to either start or continue a career in sex work. It's quite complicated. Although it's legal, the government is very hesitant to issue visas for sex work. The main requirement is offer letters from sex work businesses that demonstrate to the Landesamt für Einwanderung that the worker would have a viable career here and sufficient income to not become a burden on the state. For the foreigners working on this project, who bear the scars from the fight for our sex working visas, the ability to provide offer letters to future workers who want to work safely and legally in Germany is very emotionally significant.
About labor justice
Some of the founding members are also founding members of the recently created Sex Worker Section of the Frei Arbeiter*innen Union Berlin. This has brought an awareness of labor rights to the project—and a profound understanding of the ways in which bosses trash the few worker protections sex workers currently have—and how even these protections are often not enforced. In order to stay union members, this project must remain truly democratic and decentralized. We are very mindful of hierarchies, as well as our obligations to workers. We have no interest in replicating the problematic and exploitative working conditions that exist in almost all escort agencies. Therefore, our statutes will be very thoughtfully drafted. However, this takes time and mental space that most of us don’t have capacity for without community support.
About financial discrimination
Somehow, sex workers are still turned down by some German banks for accounts (including the Berliner Sparkasse) because their profession is on a list of "socially undesirable businesses" such as gambling and heavy polluters. Worse, our accounts are often shut down if they find out what we do for a living. Even when the bank doesn't ban us outright, they often request a paper trail for cash deposits that individual escorts simply cannot provide. There are almost no third-party payment platforms that we can use in Germany, and none that allow for legal sex-work-related transactions. Paypal is one of the only ones, and many of us have been banned from that platform for life. So there is virtually no way for sex workers to accept digital payments. Visa and Mastercard are the most recent platforms to announce increasing intolerance for our community. In addition, all of these platforms often require a worker to reveal their real, legal name to a client--something which we all hate to do.
One of the huge advantages of this project is that a business can use its bank account to process transactions from clients, including taking deposits so that our workers are only booked by clients who do not intend to cancel and respect our time. We can also issue invoices for bookings so that banks can no longer question and dispute our income. As we all know, proof of economic viability is essential to live safely, successfully, and comfortably as adult humans in the world. This is something this business would be able to provide for its workers.
On a shifting clientele in times of uncertainty
The Covid-19 pandemic has obviously had a huge effect on the sex work industry. We have seen a huge shift in our client base. Independent escorts have struggled to find any clients at all during this time, and, for those they do find, cancellation rates often exceed 90%. The time wasters have become the most frequent entrants in our inboxes. Clients with a high tolerance for risk (of, in this case, Covid infection) often make the worst clients. This means that those who have been willing to continue seeing escorts, despite the risk of contracting Covid, tend to be the guys who are rude, late, so-called "no call no show"s, and--at worst--the most dangerous. They also tend to have fewer financial resources and love to whine about our prices. Risk-averse clients--who tend to be older, wealthier, more stable, more respectful, and more concerned about Covid--have increasingly turned to agencies during this time, because they see them as a better bet for a safe, confidential encounter. This means that agencies have been able to retain the trust of the best clients, while independent workers have had to deal with lower and lower scrapings of the bottom of the barrel.
This business will be able to market itself as just such an institution of trust that can gather and retain the kind of clients that lead to the happiest, most successful workers.
This sounds fantastic. Why doesn’t it exist yet?
Yes, you would think that someone would have already done this. However, in our initial legal consultations, we discovered why no one has:
1. It’s a fuckton of work. The pile of paperwork and other tasks are very daunting. It requires an extremely principled and motivated group to handle it.
2. At least one person needs to put their legal name on the business. Because of stigma, sex workers are very hesitant to tell anyone their legal names, let alone publish them in a government registry of businesses and the impressum of a website. Our group believes so strongly—and believes so solidly that stigma is bullshit and needs to change--that this needs to happen that we are willing to take this very real risk. We are ready to be at the cutting edge and light the path for others to follow.
3. Our community is chronically under-resourced and forced to focus on survival. This is where you come in!
What We Need & What You Get
20,000 euros is a very small amount of money to launch a business, but, in our case, it's what we need. It covers our labor as well as registration costs for the business, as well as our first advertising fees. This is not a startup that will require 5 years to earn a profit, because our "product" (our amazing selves) is already *perfect* and raring to go. We know our clients and how to reach them. This campaign is the launchpad. Beyond that, we expect to become self-sustaining in a matter of months.
We have two unique perks for you: for smaller amounts, we will reward you with a credit on the "supporters" page on our website (which we will build using this funding).
For larger amounts, you will receive an invitation to our launch party here in Berlin, which will be a glamorous soiree evening with performances and cocktails.
This budget includes enough money to keep roofs over our heads so that we can take a month off from sex work to build the business. However, if we don't meet our funding goal, we will keep working and burn the midnight oil to build the business, using the lower funding amount to cover basic costs. It's still possible, but way more exhausting.
Other Ways You Can Help
1. SHARE us on social media
2. Spread the buzz in your networks and communities
3. If you know any sex workers who you think might be interested in participating, please tell them!
4. Tell a friend about this cool project you heard about. Talk to your mom about self-empowered sex workers. The best way to combat stigma is to bring us into the light. It helps us to live more safely and happily more than you'll ever know!
Thank you so much for reading, and stay sexy, y'all!
(Please note: No sexual services are offered in exchange for support of this campaign.)