UNITED KINGDOM – A Netherlands-based website targeted at a UK audience is attracting attention for its unique approach to creating an online marketplace for sex workers. The website, www.adultwork.co.uk, allows sex workers to offer everything from prostitution to internet cam shows to phone sex without working directly for an agent. It also provides a place for people to hawk related services, such as bouncing/security and website design.Nearly two years after its launch, AdultWork is finally starting to pick up steam. Proponents of AdultWork are claiming that the site liberates sex workers from shady underground sex networks, and blurs the line between professional sex workers and amateurs.
“I am completely independent in my work, doing it for myself by myself — I don’t pay cuts to any agent,” says Melissa, a part time sex worker who uses AdultWork to find clients. “I do know girls that work for agencies, which are really just terrorist-run brothels. The girls hand over around half of their money.”
AdultWork earns its money by taking a small cut from all completed online transactions, similar to how popular internet auction sites operate. Customers who have completed transactions using AdultWork can rate their satisfaction with the transaction as positive, negative or neutral, and can leave comments about their experiences with the sellers.
“The internet provides a means for those engaging in adult work to take control of their own destiny,” said Samantha, a representative of AdultWork. “No longer do individuals have to work for a third party such as an escort agency. They are now at liberty to market their own services.”
Some of the people offering sex services on AdultWork are swingers or even cheating spouses who have decided to get paid for what they enjoy.
“I have a husband, and sex outside of my marriage is fun,” said Katie, an AdultWork seller. “He doesn’t know what I do, but I’m very careful STD-wise and really only do it once or twice a month. It’s not much different from having an affair.”
Kate admitted that her clients aren’t always stimulating individuals.
“OK, if a repellant guy is my client, it’s not ideal, but it’s not always like that,” she said. “The internet is what makes it possible for me. I would never have joined an escort agency or worked in a brothel. So far as this is a business, which it’s not really, I’m my own boss.”
Although prostitution is not illegal in the United Kingdom, pimping and solicitation are against the law. A spokeswoman for the British Home Office said AdultWork would be illegal if the business were based in the U.K.
“Action would be a matter for the police,” she said. “But if such a site was indeed U.K.-based, it could be shut down.”
A spokeswoman for Feminists Against Censorship, Avedon Carol, said closing the site would only hurt women.
“Stigmatizing sex, preventing women from being able to work together and so on, those things just make them more vulnerable,” she said. “Taking your clothes off doesn’t necessarily make something a bad job.”
According to sex worker Melissa, selling sex through AdultWork is a different than traditional prostitution.
“Prostitution suggests standing on a street corner to feed a drug habit,” she said. “I think of myself as a Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s kind of call girl… It’s been a bit of a fantasy for me to have this secret life that only I know about.”
She added, “I think what I do is very different to prostitution, well in my head, anyway,” she said. “I guess it depends how you codify things — everyone is a prostitute at some level. We’re all willing to whore some aspect of our body or soul for financial or material gains.”
