I’m in love with an escort who has some very severe mental health issues; is it true that most escorts have such issues?
There’s no good evidence that sex workers (escort or otherwise) are any more likely to have mental health issues (and yes, that includes substance abuse issues or a history of childhood sexual molestation) than women in the general population. That having been said, some women with mental health issues find sex work a good fit for the simple & practical reason that it’s both flexible and lucrative. The high hourly rate means that even a woman going through a bad spell with her mental health can usually keep going for long enough to see a gent, make a few hundred bucks, and then do self-care the rest of the day. No boss breathing down her neck, no arbitrarily-limited number of sick days, no busybodies micromanaging her time, no having to stay in one place for eight hours straight or else, and no production quotas except what’s necessary to get the bills paid. So while prohibitionists want you to believe that sex work is a symptom or product of mental illness, the actual truth is that it can in some cases be a tool for managing it. In other words, it’s a lot more like therapy than it is etiology; we don’t look at therapy as a “symptom” of mental health issues, and sex work isn’t one either.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
