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Adam
What does free sex mean to you?
Do you ever think you’d have more sex, or better sex, if only you could change one thing? What is that thing?
From Aunt Nell, this is... Free Sex... with me, Adam Zmith.
I’m a writer, podcast producer, walker, talker, thinker, wanker. I started having sex at 29, TWENTY-NINE, and I’ve been obsessed ever since. What stopped me? I’m on a mission to find out how, as a society, we hold each other back in sex. What could a world of ‘free sex’ look like?
For me: free sex is a world with more places to fuck AND without sexually transmitted infections. How bout you? What you into?
Every episode I speak to a different human with a unique idea for what free sex could mean.
This podcast is fully pansexual and gender fluid: from mild to wild, everyone is welcome.
Let’s go!
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Who blocks us from finding healthy online content about sex?
My guest this episode is Reed Amber, a sex educator and sex worker activist with a cool 123k followers on Instagram. Reed has a huge audience thanks to the incredible range of work she creates: from her own sexy content, to campaigns about loving your own sexual body, AND to a podcast called F**ks Given, which beats Free Sex as the most risqué podcast name.
While Reed is using the internet to remove our shame about our bodies and mental health, the companies that create our online world are blocking her. You might think the internet can help us create a world of free sex — but the truth is that social media and content channels are obsessed with censoring us.
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Adam
Reed Amber, welcome to Free Sex.
Reed
Hi, hello. Thank you for having me.
Adam
What does free sex mean to you?
Reed
Well, free sex means to me the end of censorship. I need Instagram to sort my profile out and let me be seen. Better education around sex relationships and pornography. And for sex workers to be treated and respected, just like your average builder, right?
Adam
Like a legit job, right?
Reed
Like a legit job. Yeah, the skill set is there, why do we not get the same respect?
Adam
Okay, so these are three things, Internet censorship, sex, education, and sex work. So let's dive into censorship — what has been happening with your Instagram account?
Reed
Oh, I cannot even begin. It is so frustrating. Every day I have come up against a wall, even though the content that I produce is educational. And I do my best to stay within Instagram’s guidelines. But they do not like me because I'm an open sex worker. And I talk about sex educational topics, and use language that isn't found in a biology book. So I've had my Instagram account deleted eight times like deleted, vanished off the face of the earth. Managed to get them back each time, thank goodness. But the fear of that. And that's been the time period has been anywhere between two weeks to three months before. And you get no communication from Instagram, I've been working on my Instagram account, probably solidly for the last seven years. And I think a lot of people don't realize what work goes into creating a profile that gets a lot of engagement and has I currently have 122,000 followers on my account
Adam
It’s 123,000, because I just checked.
Reed
Oh, that's nice. That's so nice. I've been having a little bit of an Instagram break, because the burnout has been so real, where everything I seem to post, I get told off for it, or I get a warning. Or recently, I changed my bio to read sex educator and sex worker activist. And this isn't even with the trigger word sex, this is SX how I've typed it. And Instagram had flagged me with a warning saying your profile can't be seen by anyone that isn't a follower. So it's just another stab in the face about what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to help others achieve, which ultimately, is better sex education, and de-stigmatizing and anti-shaming how we feel about our sex lives. And Instagram just can't handle it. Even if I'm still hidden by young accounts or accounts that they deem too young to see my content.
Adam
Yeah, can you give me an example of a piece of content that you made, like recently, like what was in it, that is educational, and de-stigmatizing. But and then how that fell foul of those community guidelines?
Reed
Yes. One that sticks in my mind is last year, I went on holiday to Thailand, and I took this beautiful photo of my lower half nude, but with a flower covering it. And I spoke about how in Thailand, it was illegal to bring in sex toys. And, and how there was a real mismatch in pleasure and gender out there. And then I also mentioned another couple of other countries that have made sex toys illegal. And that instantly got deleted, like removed, taken down. So I put the same photo up again and rephrase the text. And that got taken down. And then I think I tried it on a third time where I changed the photo, but kept the same text and that also got taken down. Wow.
Adam
What is it that what is the policy that you're contravening?
Reed
Every time I get a warning, I get the same warning which is sexual solicitation, which is basically selling my sexual services or talking about sex in a maybe in an unprofessional way i i have forever for the past like maybe a year now have been maybe even two or three years, changing my language changing the way I type things, changing how I word things, because they get flagged by Instagram. So that makes writing posts — I'm dyslexic so writing captions for me is extremely hard. I love taking photos and creating content making videos, but when it comes to the actual caption itself, that is a real struggle for me. So having to add another element of rethinking how I write certain words like pleasure, like vulva. There are some other words as well that are really unaccepted basically anything that might be sex related, you have to censor that with care.
Characters, special characters, or emojis, insinuate or use like innuendos, which makes the point coming across really hard for people to pick up or to learn from. And even still, in within videos, if I'm writing captions, because I try and caption all my videos so people can read them as they go. And I still have to make sure those, those words are blocked out. And swearing seems to be fine. And it's, it's either a target on my account, because I am constantly seeing other accounts posting much more explicit, or pushing the boundaries of Instagram, that kind of content. And that seems to be up there fine. Like celebrities, I'm literally seeing celebrities in very sexual poses, showing their nipples, talking about really overly sexual things, but not educating people. And they seem to be able to have their photos and videos up fine. But when it comes to a proud open sex worker like myself, it gets banned and blacklisted shadow banned. And it's just really hard to gain any kind of followers. I've actually this year I went backwards in followers, I hit 120,000. And then slowly for the last year, I've been going backwards, I went down to 117,000. And now all of a sudden, I picked up again 223. And it's just like, What is going on here?
Adam
Do you think that it's because you're an out proud sex worker. And even though you change the word, and you put SX or s*, or something like that, if they're I mean, I know that these things are often just like robots and algorithms, like making these judgments. But if there is a human that looks at your account and looks at the other accounts that you have online, you know, it is clear that you are a sex worker, because as you said, you're out and proud about that. And it's your work. And it is your right to have that those platforms that I guess those celebrities that are doing, you know, even more sexier things than you they're not sex workers. They're not identifiable as sex workers. Yes. So you might put something that's quite tame, but it's that in combination with the fact that you are a sex worker is that's the thing, right? So yeah, if you try to or thought about as far as Instagram goes, like, not saying that you're a sex worker, and like, really, really saying, you know, I don't know the old the old thing, “I do massage” or, or whatever it is.
Reed
Yeah, I of course, I think about that daily, especially with my recent warning where they're like, You can't put this. But that's not the point. The point is, is I'm a sex worker, I get to choose what I do with my body. I love my job. I love every aspect of my job, otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it. And there is nothing wrong with being a sex worker. In the UK. It's legalized, which we are trying to aim for decriminalisation because it's very complicated. But I am, I'm very proud in saying that I am a sex work, I used to hide it. I used to hide it. And it used to really play on my mental health and my self acceptance and my self confidence. Because if you're not actually accepting who you are, then there is a part of you that is being eaten away as being a sex worker is my identity. And I want to prove to other people, especially sex workers, because you know, we have a community, we have a space to hold there, that it is okay with what we do, we shouldn't have to hide it because a social media account deems it not appropriate for people to see even though we are giving good quality, interesting informational content that people clearly like because my engagement is so high compared to a lot of accounts, people want to see this content, but I'm still getting a slap on the wrist. Every time I speak openly about it. It's you never really know what you're going to do to upset Instagram or Tiktok.
Adam
What's been your experience on TikTok?
Reed
Well, I've given up posting, because I just, every time I post something, it gets taken down immediately or blacklisted. And of course, the more videos you have that are taken down, the less likely people are going to see it because the algorithm doesn't push you out. It's the same for Instagram. Twitter is a safe space for sex workers, although they did have a blip recently, which which scared the shit out of us. But that was just a glitch in the matrix apparently. But again, I don't really like using Twitter either. It is not my type of platform. I like using photo and video-heavy platforms. That's what I enjoy using.
And a lot of sex workers do prefer using that because, you know, especially if they they're learning and they're producing and creating different ways most sex workers are really good at being their own camera crew. and their own marketing agency and their own sales team. I mean, for me, I'm, I'm also my own therapist, I, you know, giving out my services to people who don't want sexual services, there is so much more to a sex worker, then I think a lot of people think, on top of which being an educator, having a huge YouTube channel and a podcast and being a podcast host and going up on stage and talking openly to 1000s of people. I'm not just I shouldn't let me rephrase that, because I don't want to minimize any anyone who is a sex worker, who just does sex work. But let me just figure out—
Adam
—only do the sex work that you also do these other things. And it's not to say that only doing the sex work is, you know, is a minimal job at all. It's just to say that you are like a multi platform multi,
Reed
multifaceted person
Adam
who loves wants to make lots of different things.
Reed
Yeah, who loves video and photo content? I love it. I adore it. It's what works for me, it's what makes things visually pleasing is how I learned better.
Adam
It's gorgeous, like your the work that you do that I've seen like that? You can, it's clear, you know, it is like an art form. It's like really clearly put together and it's gorgeous, and it's beautiful, and sexy, and all those things. Thank you. At what point, do you think that you would give up on Instagram?
Reed
Oh, I feel like I would give up on Instagram. And it came very close this year. There was in the space of about a week and a half. We recorded over 55 UK accounts just completely being deleted. And that was part of Klub Verboten. And this was also part of the Fetish Archive lots of huge platforms where people feel safe and held and supported in vanish just like that. My account didn't go which I was a bit surprised about. But lots of accounts that I knew did. And we ended up having holding a protest outside of London Meta offices because it seemed so targeted that they were just going after these specific accounts for no reason no warning. I can understand if there's warnings I can understand if there's an explanation why they are going to take us down but they never do the witch we just vanished with nobody to talk to unless you're very lucky. And you have connections within Facebook Meta Instagram, but otherwise, you're doomed. And I do believe that sex workers are still targeted.
I remember years ago when I was working on the baby channels on the TV shaking my phone. “Oh, yeah, baby.” And I found a Twitter account. That was his whole purpose I you know, I'm going to assume gender and I shouldn't assume gender. Their whole purpose was to remove sex workers from Instagram. So they would post a link to a sex worker Instagram account, whether or not this person was posting sexually explicit content or racy content, or whether they were just photo posting their family and their friends. They would post them and say, “Right, report report report.” And back in the day, if you reported an image enough, it would be removed if you reported account enough, it would be removed without a human seeing it would just be bought removed.
And that was like really hard for me to see. Because it all of these people commenting on each of these posts saying like, yes, we finally got her taken down. And it was all women. It was it was all women that were being taken down didn't see any men being taken down. It was it just felt I just felt so isolated, that there were people out there willing to give up their spare time, their free time to just hound and harass and try and remove sex workers from a platform without even knowing them, just because they didn't like the industry and they didn't like what they did. And that was really disheartening. And I still have I'm fairly certain I still have accounts that are reporting every single one of my images. I think last year I had an image from like seven years ago taken down, it's like someone would have had to go all the way through my account to report the shit out of that.
Adam
Yeah, that's really wild that people spend their time doing that. Right. It's sad. It's like, come on your other... So your second point was about sex ed, sex education in school. So I'm wondering about how if we had better sex ed, you know, with our eye on the goal of like having a world of freer sex basically, with our eye on that goal. What exactly would changing sex education do for that? What are you All right, is that.
Reed
So sex education has been rocky, as we know, I think we've all had poor sex education, especially because I think it's unfair how sex ed in the UK works. I think we have better sex ed than a lot of other countries. But we're still so behind. I know that things are changing. Now I'm hearing that they are actually for enforcing certain topics like gender and sexuality, which is so good, which was which we need to hear, rather than schools, or parents or teachers opting out of certain topics. But there's still such a long way to go. I would love to be able for schools to talk openly about pornography. Because I think that's part of the reason why sex and sex work is really deemed as or demonized really deemed as the bad thing, especially now with how our relationships are formed around pornography, and porn addiction.
We don't look at we never look within ourselves, and why we're leading to porn, why we're going to porn to for an escapism, or for dopamine release, we just blame the people on our screens and the sex workers and the tech companies and, and, of course, huge, a huge part of that is true, you know, the sex tech companies do need to sort their, though the ways that they push out and allow people to upload free pornography, because that is killing the industry. And it's also really harming not just people that can access it, but everyone, adults as well. We need to be able to teach pornography, like we do film studies or media studies, where it's like, we know that they're actors, we know that we're going to the cinema, we're watching actors, we're watching, like, really meticulously thought out dramatic scenes. And I mean, even if you flip it, if you think of like Saw, for example, it's the most gruesome form of torture and murder, and we don't bat an eyelid. And yet, as soon as it comes to pornography, we can't even fathom that they might be real people with lives, with children, we don't want to we want to be suspended in the belief. But if we were teaching that in schools at an early age saying that pornography is a fantasy is make the leave, then we might think differently about the way the sex workers are.
Adam
So the way that it's an industry, and it's in it's made by Yes, it's made by people, but the decisions behind it are made in terms of, you know, often it's it's companies making those decisions about what will sell. It's interesting, the media studies or film studies comparison, because I did GCSE Media Studies, yes, in like 1999, and 2000, around that. And then I did A Level media studies. And I remember both in high school where I where I did GCSE, and in my college, I did a level media studies, like, generally these things were seen as like, you know, lesser subjects, sort of a, because they were in the artsy world, but also be because it was like, Oh, you're just watching films and watching TV and talking about it, which we were, but it was, in those classes where I learned — and bearing in mind, those were optional — and it was in those classes where I learned about feminism, and about class, and, and capitalism, and all those things, because it was about like, well, you know, who's made this movie? Why are they making this movie? Why do they want people to see it? How does it continue to convey regular standard representations of gender? You know, why is the woman in distress? Why is strong and Butch, you know, and like, movies are still doing all of that shit today.
And it was like in those where I learned about stuff like that, which has become, like, so much a big part of my life. And it's now you know, it's a big part of my work. And so, so first of all, yes, shout out to media. So that is, that was my point in my education. And if we learn about porn in the same way, where we're learning to where we're taught to kind of like, basically look at it and just think critically about it's not to say don't go to the movies is not to say don't watch porn, it's to say, think about what's going on here.
Reed
Yeah, and why you're seeing what you're seeing why you're seeing Yeah. Oh, I mean, we know that the porn industry is really flawed. There are a lot of things that could change. But I do believe if sex work was treated differently if there was a lack of judgment and fear revolving around the sex industry, which is one of the biggest earning industries in the entire world. And there is so much hypocrisy involved where people will point the finger saying don't watch porn, but they will also sneakily watch porn, and not tell anyone about it. Yeah, it's yeah, it there's there's a lot that had to be said. But that there could be a lot of good change within the porn industry and make it a fairer, more ethical industry. But governments and bigger legal bodies don't want to touch it because they think, oh, no, it's all gross. And it's all wrong and an eye for one, the sex workers that I know, we are not in the same. We're nowhere near what we have grown up seeing in the movies and in media about sex work, you know, you think of that sex worker stereotype which is full of drugs, violence, the really like scabby and unattractive looking, and it has a certain look. And it's really hard.
Because I thought the same thing growing up, I thought that that's what sex workers were until you saw shows like, Diary of a Call Girl. And it was like, wow, okay, sex work can be like this, or you watch documentaries that don't try and bend the narrative about sex work. And that's, that's the experience that I have the network of sex workers that I am in, looks nothing like what we grew up thinking sex work was. It's just It's fascinating how how much that can change people's opinions. Even my boyfriend, when we first met as liberal, as liberal, and as open minded, and the fact that he loved me doing sex work, he's still had very negative and confusing and misinformed views about sex work that we've had to work through. And now he's like, Wow, I can't believe I've completely changed my thought process on this.
Adam
How? What did he say about it before you, like, changed his mind a bit.
Reed
So one example is that we are non monogamous. And when it came to me sleeping with somebody with sleeping with a partner, or sleeping with somebody off of a dating app, for example, that was completely acceptable. But when it came to meeting a client, or service that we had already planned out an exchange of money, there was an issue there, there was an issue around safety, there was an issue around who is this person that's willing to pay for sex, and you think of the stereotype of a pervert, and that's a pervert doesn't even mean what we think it means today, pervert is something that's out of the sexual norm. But pervert we think of like, like the stereotype of someone that's a bit weird, or a bit gross, or like, that maybe is going to harm me, or just someone I don't want to work with, for example, and it's like I have, that's completely the opposite of how I work as a sex worker, I understand that I come from a privilege sex workplace, and I can pick and choose my clients and who I work with. And a lot of sex workers can't do that.
But I love working with I prefer working with my clients to meeting an absolute random on a dating app who might completely disrespect me make me feel unsafe compared to somebody where we have gone into detail about what we're going to do in a session and they know exactly how much to pay. I know exactly how much to put in there is safety and care and and conversations and safe words and aftercare involved in that session. When everyone else seems to have a fine idea about just meeting a random off a dating app and shaming them then - it just It blows my mind.
Adam
I mean, it's a double standard, right? That's yeah, that's what your boyfriend was was doing before you talk to him a bit more about it? Because he he was okay with you being someone off an app, but not okay with you meeting someone? Yeah, where you were working with them as a client. And even though you might have you might have done the exact same thing in terms of sex. In the double standard was the if it's paid for that. It's not okay. Yeah, not okay. And so, yeah, it's a double standard, where I think people think that if it's sex work, then it's automatically sleazier. It's Yes. Yeah. It's also it's unethical for people.
Reed
A lot of people think it is unethical. And of course,
Adam
it can be more ethical.
Reed
Honestly more ethical. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, that's, that might be the business that I've created. I've created a very safe network of how I meet new clients and what I do within those sessions, you know, knowing my boundaries and my limits and their boundaries and limits. And, and that does come with difficulty because a lot of us can't even do that when we go on a date or when we sit with somebody or sleep with our partners. But it took a lot of conversation with My partner to really help him see that side of things and to show him what the sex industry from my side was really like and how misinformed it was. And, and he did, he did come around, and he did realize he was like, I can't believe I felt like this. And that's someone who wanted to learn. I don't blame him for thinking like that. It's not his fault. It is the it is society. It's what he's been built up to believe and seen that sex workers are from news media films, stories, especially the UK NEWS when it comes to sex work. Oh, my goodness, we are the devil.
Adam
And it's also I mean, he. It's not that many people that would have allowed you to change their mind. But yes, yeah, it's pretty special. He's a keeper.
Reed
He's definitely a keeper. We are so madly in love. It's beautiful. And yeah, and he's now dipping his toe into the world of sex work, which is just exciting and wonderful. And I honestly think that you can't really comment until you're in that world until you test it out. Again, sex work is such a broad term. A lot of people think that sex workers is just like having sex for money. But sex work literally could be someone on Instagram says, I'll give you 20 quid for a picture of your feet. That is sex work, right? It's the same it's it's goods and money for sexual services, even if you don't find that service sexual at all.
Adam
Yeah, well, when you said he was dipping his toe, I did wonder whether that's whether he was selling foot pics?
Reed
Oh, yes, he is. It's beautiful and so sexy. So we both have OnlyFans accounts. And we're just making incredible content together. And now and now he sees it. I almost feel like as much as I can fight my corner, fight my side and help him to see the other side. It just helps so much more when he's actually in it himself. And he understands it. It's just a lot of fear, isn't it? It's a lot of fear around safety. I think that was the biggest issue for me where it was like, I don't understand how you think I'm safer meeting somebody off of a dating app than I am meeting somebody who I have a copy of their photo ID I know their social media, we've been talking extensively about what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. I have had way more sexual assault situations from dating apps than I have ever experienced in all of my sex work. It's just... It blows my mind.
Adam
I've got to ask you as a sex worker, while I have you at this question that as I've talked to more and more people about this idea of free sex, you know, where I'm saying why provocatively? Like how do we get to a world of free sex, which doesn't need which doesn't mean unpaid work? Right. It just means freer, you know, more freedom to have the sex that we want. You know, if you're a sex worker, then that means to be able to do that work. And, and if I think about, often, there's this idea that clients have sex workers, part of their enjoyment of it, is the fact that it's kind of like unfree in a way that it's yes, like, under the table, as it were, I mean, it might literally be under the table. But it's it's a sort of, you know, there's their attraction is relying on the danger of it as they see it. The risk and the and the taboos of it there. Yeah. So wondering where that factors into your vision of a world of Freer sex, because if it means that there were it cuts out some of that attraction to those clients, you know, imagine if sex workers had the same respect in society as doctors, or builders?
Reed
Oh my goodness, that would I mean, that would be amazing. But I wouldn't be earning the money that I do, I wouldn't be getting the amount of clients in that I have. Because if, if sex work was seen as going to your dentist, yeah, then I, I feel like part of the reason why I enjoy it is the fact that not many people do this. And it's something that does push the boundaries of what's acceptable. I, of course, would love a world where I was respected the same and there was no judgment with what I choose to do with my body. But the reason why it is so exciting and lucrative is because people disagree with it. Because if they didn't, everyone might do it.
Because there are so many people that love sex, and there is nothing better than loving sex and getting paid for the sex that you love. I have a lot of foot fetish clients. And my main in-person meets our foot worship meets where I give them my foot and they basically massage my feet and pay me for it. And it is the best thing in the entire world. But if that was widely accepted, I would probably have to lower my rates. And I wouldn't get as many clients coming to me because more people would be doing it. It would be almost like a saturation in the industry. Even if I'm still the person that I am and I still have the the social media accounts that I do. I know that that makes me more desirable as a sex worker. because it's even more taboo that I'm this influencer, if you will, but you could still meet up with me.
I don't think I would be I wouldn't have my flat I wouldn't own my flat in London with a tiny little garden. I wouldn't be able to feel so at ease when it came to going on holiday. And there's there's so much to consider. And I also I love taboo. I've always loved breaking breaking rules. It wouldn't be that exciting for me. I'd be like, Okay, what's the next thing? What's What's more, what's more widely dis disapproved on? Okay, well, let's like open a scat dentistry or something like that. I'm really happy for you. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's not yucking anyone's yum. But Wow.
Adam
That's quite special. Yeah. So it's interesting that you said that that would change the nature of your business and your work. And yet you are still doing what you're doing, which is to you know, educate more and more people, destigmatize sex work and sex and pleasure and bodies, and feet and all these things. So, you know, that's, it's really great to have you working on that, even though in a way there's, there's this weird paradox of if we did reach that free sex utopia, yeah, change the nature of your business. And I guess that means that you're not too confident that we're gonna get there anytime soon.
Reed
I would be so surprised. I am seeing a big influx in spaces like with OnlyFans and paying for sexual surfaces online because of celebrities and well known people picking that service up. And that is pretty amazing, because it is making it more mainstream. And the more I talk about having an only fans account, the more positive responses I get from that. It's no longer Oh, are you sure? Like I'm not really sure about that. It's now Oh, my God, that's so cool. I've been thinking about getting an OnlyFans, can you tell me more about it? And I'm like, Yes, this is what I want is this excitement around a company or around selling sexual services? But also, with that you are getting more? What's it called? Is it saturation? Or de-saturation?
Adam
Saturation - like more people doing it in the market, right?
Reed
Yeah, more saturation, where everyone now wants to be an influencer or be on TikTok? Or have an OnlyFans and that pool of potential clients is getting smaller and smaller or more widely distributed. It's yeah, it's a bit of a tricky one. Well, actually, with all the work that we do with ourselves, when we see our numbers go down, it, it actually ends up making us feel uncomfortable or more self conscious and makes us turn inwards on what am I doing wrong. And you have to be so on top of your mental health, with not just sex work, but also any type of work in any industry.
Adam
Right. So that's my final question for you then, because they're free, having listened to all of the things that you've talked about, and it's, I'm so grateful for you sharing all of these things, like the personal stories, the views and everything, it's, it's so important with all of that, there is this need to take care of yourself. Yes. And that, to me, also seems like a crucial part of a free sex world is a world where, yes, we're able to have the sex that we want to have. But with that comes the the knowledge, the self awareness and the care for ourselves and also for each other. So just, you know, wrap me up, you know, in this in Tell me, how do you do that?
Reed
The way I look after myself, has been very rocky, because I've had real difficulty with my mental health in the past, I think 15 years, actually, I would say, since I was starting school, you know, it has always been there. But I see a therapist every single week, I found that, that that really helps me maintain my thoughts, and my feelings.
And also I just love learning about it, what I love learning about myself, and why I do the things that I do and why I am the way that I am. I also think you need to safeguard when you're working in an industry that isn't you're not surrounded by so many people, especially if you work at home alone or if you're freelance, then it's it's so isolating and you can feel like if you're not getting any work in that the problem is you or you're doing something undesirable you're not good enough. And it's really important to surround yourself with like minded people and create a community for yourself.
I have worked so hard at creating a space where people doing what I do are connected together. So I've created a monthly meetup for sexfluencers which has been amazing. We meet up once a month and out about everything from rates or from what what brands are fucking us over or from, like, I don't know what to do about my mental health if you've got any advice, and we have a WhatsApp group, and I've also done the same for sex workers in the UK, and the meetups coming soon, but it's, it's about not hiding. Because when you're when you're working on your own, you can almost feel like everyone else is competition. Rather than seeing it as we are all doing the same thing, we are all working towards the same ending the same goal the same cause why are we not banding together and helping each other out?
It can be so, so difficult working with social media because it's you're at the mercy of everyone else and everyone else's thoughts and comments. And of course, the way that social media is, you can lose your account, you can lose all that hard work, you can lose your portfolio, that's what my Instagram account is, it's a portfolio, it's not just a bit of fun, it is something that I've poured my soul into. And if someone, some shitty person comes along and makes a nasty comment, how am I going to protect my mental health? And who can I speak to? And who can I get advice from and
Adam
you have that band around you that
Reed
yes, building that community, that chosen family has been so helpful, as well as finding people that are willing to lift you up, not just help you out here and there like willing to collaborate with you and like pull you to the surface and and I'm very lucky in that I have several people that are a part of that. And it's about sharing the wealth. I don't want to just steal all my fucking followers, I want to share that and and and build other accounts and help other people see more. It's an of course it when you're doing something like this, being really open and honest with your family and your friends can be so hard, but it is so important for your own mental health. I feel like I hid it from certain people from certain family members. And it was like I just didn't fully accept myself. Especially like my ex, where he didn't really agree with what I did. He said he did. But when it actually came down to it, there was a lot of judgment, a lot of trying to put in boundaries that that meant I couldn't do the type of sex work that I wanted to.
And I've also learned to not people, please. And to not say, Oh no, I won't do this to save their hurt and to save their discomfort then for me to say no, this is something I am going to do. And let's do it together. And I'm going to prove to you that it's okay. And if it's not okay then that's another conversation
Adam
“and I'll I'll go my own way anyway. Thank you”
Reed
Yes, yeah. It's the same with like, you know, my brother, for example, I found it so hard to talk about what I do. And of course, there were things that I can mention to him and things I can't, but now I'm just like I am who I am. And if that's something that you don't want you don't want to be a part of, then that's fine. I'm just gonna pre warn you before I talk to this like shop assistant about the Fetish clubs that I go to like hope that's cool, bro.
Adam
Is your brother a dentist?
Reed
No, he's um, he's a computer hacker. Okay.
Adam
All right. Wow, a whole other conversation. I think we should wrap up there. This has been so great to speak to you and just like really pop in on all these light bulbs in my head. Thank you.
Reed
No, thank you. This has been incredible. Thanks for letting me speak and say my piece it's so important
—
Adam
Thanks for listening to this episode!
Let me know what you think of FREE SEX - the idea or this podcast!
Leave me a review and a star rating if you can!
On social media I’m @adamzmith, yes that’s Smith but with a Z, yeah Zmith, mmm it feels good in the mouth hahah. You can find more Aunt Nell productions on our website auntnell.com and on social we’re @auntnell_.
The theme music is TransLife by Othon
Hosted, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
The Executive Producer for Aunt Nell is Tash Walker
To all you loves and lovers, good night x