Sex Work, Money and Morality. Phoebe

Phoebe, it’s so great to have you on the show. So great to see you, Bob. All the way from Amsterdam. So, Phoebe, I have to ask, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the adult entertainment industry? And I don’t know if that’s even the right word.

Yeah, so

[00:00:36] Phoebe: the the term adult entertainment is fine. Um, it comes under the umbrella of sex work, which is the politically correct term and the preferred term of what people understand as working in the porn industry, working in prostitution. We tend to use the term sex work to encompass any, um, erotic entertainment or erotic service that’s being provided.

Um, in exchange for money or for exchange for rent or whatever it may be. So I first got into it, um, during COVID. Um, I was actually studying out in Thailand as part of my undergrad degree. And I got into a situation where I didn’t want to come back to the UK during COVID. Um, because I didn’t want to go back into working in what I was doing before, which was working in the care industry.

Um, as you can imagine, during COVID, it was a really, um, difficult workplace to go back into with everything that was happening. So, I decided that I was going to stay out in Thailand, but because of my visa restrictions, I couldn’t work in any normal workplace. So, engaging in webcam services, um, was, you know, a viable option for me.

And it made sense to me because in my mind it was a form of sex work, which was kind of like a, a nice entrance into sex work in a way. Um, and yeah, so I just started doing it. And when I realized the amount of money that was able to bring in and how that worked out with living in a country where the exchange rate worked out perfectly, um, it made sense to me.

Um, and I was able to afford my rent and living quite a luxurious, luxurious lifestyle out there. So when I came back to the UK and it was almost like we had our second pandemic when we returned to the UK, cause I’d been out in Asia and then it had traveled over. I really wanted to do my master’s degree, but the only way I was going to be able to afford it is if

I was able to have a stable income that bought in a lot and that I could work around studying.

So therefore working in webcamming. works perfectly around studying. And so I continued doing it and always had in my mind that this is just something I’m going to do, uh, while I need to and while it’s necessary. And when I finished my master’s degree and started working at the prostitution information center in

Amsterdam, after doing my research there, I thought, well, why, if I’m still getting clientele visit me, why would I stop?

You know, why not keep riding this train? Um, and. Financially support myself as long as possible. So, that’s how I got into it.

[00:03:33] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, silver lining from COVID. Yes.

[00:03:40] Phoebe: One of the few. One of the few.

[00:03:43] Bob Wheeler: Can you talk a little bit about the stigma around sex work and what you’ve observed?

Yeah, so I

[00:03:51] Phoebe: think especially towards people who engage in window work, which is where you work in the windows in Amsterdam, or people who do escorting or street work, there is a very high level. of stigma. You know, there is an association that you must be emotionally damaged, or you must have some sort of mental health issue to engage in sex work, or you must have been abused as a child, um, which most certainly isn’t the case for a lot of us.

Um, The rates of child abuse or sexual abuse amongst sex workers is about the same as the general population. Um, and it’s certainly not my, um, experience. Um, but even within sex work, people who work on OnlyFans or people who do can by minute work like I do, there is a stigma as well. Uh, you must be attention seeking or you’re not doing a quote unquote real job.

Um, and that you have no skills or… You know, can’t apply yourself to something, um, you know, more deliberate. One of the things I constantly come into conflict with is people saying, Well Phoebe, you’re so well educated, why would you do this? Um, and I have to say to them, because I’m well educated and I understand money.

So, you know, um, Um, you know, it, it, it seems silly not to do it if you’re able to do it and to make money out of it. Um, and yeah, just a stigma that you are not able to uphold relationships, um, which is not true. I’ve been in a long time relationship now for quite a while. Um, and yeah, that you. are damaging your body in some way by providing sexual services, which is funny

because we never make that comment of men who sleep around or, um, you know, we, I like to think that we live in a society now where we allow women to have free sexuality, but as soon as you put a muddy element on it, then suddenly it becomes damaging.

So those are some of the stigmas we come up and then they reproduce themselves in. How institutions like, um, the justice system or how, um, governments treat us or create laws around sex work. And, and then those stigmas are reproduced by family members or friends and also by sex workers themselves. So the danger is not with engaging in sex work itself, but the danger is when a sex worker doesn’t feel like she can tell someone where she is, where she’s going.

Because she’s scared of the stigma, and then her client is aware of that, and that’s when you get into these dangerous situations. So, yeah, sex workers work, but it’s the stigma and discrimination that the Prostitution Information Center

[00:06:44] Bob Wheeler: It’s so interesting to me because, right, we’re sexual beings, we’re all here because of sex and, and we, we have all, I, you know, I don’t know if it’s our own shame, right? Because men that even pay for sex are still, sometimes we’ll look down on the person that they just had sex with, even though it was consensual.

And, you know, there are lots of people that have very nice houses that you could say, um, there was an exchange made for sex. Um, and, and yet that’s okay, right? And so it’s, it’s this, uh, it’s almost a morality issue, um, or a struggle around shame or acceptance of our sexuality, uh, because it’s, we’re sexual beings.

[00:07:32] Phoebe: Absolutely. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I think. And I guess that’s one of the reasons why the Prostitution Information Centre is there. We don’t only welcome questions about sex work, but about sexuality in general. Because we understand that often the shame that people have around sex and sex work is something internal, it’s something they…

held on to or something they themselves feel uncomfortable with, um, or uncomfortable exploring or have been made to feel shameful about. Um, and this is really relevant in some of the areas of the Netherlands where We have a bible belt, um, and have some of the strictest policy against sex work. They’re often the places that sex workers tell me they have their most frequent clients.

So, you know, the more religious repression you have, the higher sexual repression you have, and often that tends to Um, whatever you try to bend will break. Um, and I think that’s what happens a lot in these situations. And I think even when I first got started, um, working online, I kind of rationalized it as, Oh, I’m not doing sex work.

I’m just, you know, I’m making a few videos online or I’m, I’m talking to a few people online. Because I had an internalized idea of what sex work and prostitution looked like. Um, so even amongst us who are engaged in the industry, there is also stigmatization and um, you know, self induced shame in a way.

But yeah, I think it’s got a lot to do with stigma. It’s got a lot to do with… Our ideas of what feminism is, um, particularly in the Western world, um, there is one strain of feminism that says that, you know, female exploitation, the cornerstone of female exploitation is prostitution. So therefore any exchange of sex for money must be exploitation, which is simply not the case, as you perfectly pointed out there are lots of marriages that are built upon that exchange.

So, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s a thing of both. Women’s sexuality, but then women capitalizing off of their sexuality as well.

[00:09:47] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, which feels fair.

[00:09:49] Phoebe: Yes. If we’re going to be exploited, at least let us get paid for it. Uh, no, but you know what I mean. It’s a case of, you know, this, this idea that we’re objectifying our bodies.

Um, as sex workers, that’s already happening in society. So if I can make some money off of it and make it a fair deal or, you know, challenge the power dynamic, then I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. And you’re not a feminist if you tell me what to do with my body. Right.

[00:10:20] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. Let me ask you this.

Um, has sex work impacted your relationship with money overall? Like, do you view money differently, um, now that you’ve, you know, engaged as a sex worker?

[00:10:34] Phoebe: Most definitely. I think before I started doing sex work, I, as I said, I’d worked in, uh, caring roles. I’d worked in psychiatric unit. Um, I’d worked in palliative care and providing healthcare to a Um, some of the most vulnerable in society, and that is extremely badly paid work, I think, in the US as well as the UK.

And would often be working 40 hours a week, and getting paid anywhere between, you know, 9 to 12 dollars an hour. Um, when I did sex work, and… The first time I did it, I only worked for two hours and I made more in those two hours than I would make in two days of work. It completely changed my idea of what my work is worth and how much value I should put on my work and how much, um, I’m worth as an individual in a capitalist society.

So it completely changed my idea of what is a Fair, um, pay and work time dynamic and made me really question the whole nine to five, five days a week work week and made me realize that actually that’s not, you know, shouldn’t be the norm in, in my mind because often we’re working ourselves to death for very little money and actually now I’ve gone back into, um, doing.

Um, not for profit work and, um, you know, organizational work. I’m struggling to get back into it now because it’s like, I’m having to do so much work for such little pay. It’s like, that seems way more unfair than the sex work. Um, so yeah, it completely changed my idea of money. It changed my idea of how much I, as someone who’d grown up, um, in a working class family could expect to earn.

Um, and. Especially now I’ve moved more into consultancy as well. How much I should charge people and feel proud about charging that or, you know, unapologetically, unapologetically charge that.

[00:12:51] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, no, it’s so interesting, you know, as you’re talking about, um. Caregiving not paying and I was thinking about education, right?

We play such a value on education, but we don’t want to pay our educators. We put such a high value on caring for our elderly and all that stuff, but we don’t want to pay anybody to actually do it. Right? And then we all mostly enjoy sexuality, but it’s shameful and it’s got to be hidden. Right? So it’s very subjective.

I mean, it’s, it’s, okay. It’s, it’s just this, you know, I mean, humans are complex people, um, right. Complex beings, but it’s just, it’s interesting where we place, what we say are our values, um, and then we act differently.

[00:13:34] Phoebe: Absolutely. And when you look at the things we’re talking about, caring, cooking, cleaning, housework, sex work, they’re all very feminized forms of work.

And I think we have. We see them as valuable work and work that has to be done to keep society moving. But yet we’re very, um, we’re very against paying people for it. Um, and if you do, you know, it’s almost people go mad when people demand money for housework. But houses wouldn’t function if this housework wasn’t being done.

And, you know, we praise people who do volunteer work and care work. Yet, when those people demand compensation for that. They’re terrible people, um, and I find it very interesting because if we were looking at more masculine forms of work that take place, we wouldn’t deny payment for that. So it’s really interesting.

I think when, and obviously not all sex workers are women, uh, you know, that’s really important to highlight, but when women come forward and say, actually, I want to be paid for these things, you’ve assumed that I’ll do for free. It’s, you know, it’s interesting to see how societies react to that.

[00:14:47] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, very interesting.

Very interesting. Let me ask you this. Um, as a sex worker, how do you get paid? And even though it’s legal, right? Sex work is legal depending. Um, but how do you get loans? Um, how does all that stuff work in the real world? Can you get credit cards? Can you just function as anybody else would that’s working as a caregiver in the Netherlands?

[00:15:13] Phoebe: It’s really difficult because we are under a system of legalization. But what that actually means is strict regulation and sex work is the only industry that is, um, governed over by the ministry of justice and not the ministry of work and employment. So even though it’s a legal profession, it’s treated as a criminal enterprise.

So from an institutional level, we’re stigmatization and discrimination. Now, for me, my payments come through online. And I’m very lucky because then there is a traceable form of income, which means it’s very easy for me to be able to prove that my, uh, payments that I’m receiving are not connected to criminal enterprise in any way.

Right. However, one of the issues I do have is that a lot of, um, credit card companies, places like Master and Visa are very scared that their money, that money being transferred through their. systems is related to sex work in any way. So this is with OnlyFans wanting to ban adult content creation on their websites and they very quickly reversed that decision because they realized how much money they’d be losing.

But it’s because a lot of credit card companies and financial institutions are terrified of money that is associated with trafficking. Which is understandable, but the majority of people who are working online and creating their own content are not being trafficked or exploited. It’s happening in more underground industries.

Now when we talk about sex workers who are escorts or working in the windows, um, or engaging in street work, that is a cash based income. And that is for many reasons. One is because it’s very difficult as a sex worker in the Netherlands to get a business bank account. Which means you can’t get a pin reader.

So therefore, you are unable to ask for pin payments. And also the fact that most clients do not want to make card payments to sex workers. Because it’s much easier to pay someone 100 euros, than it is to explain to your wife why you paid 200 euros for an erotic massage in Amsterdam, which come up in your bank statement.

But what it means is because in the Netherlands, If you have cash, you are responsible for proving that that money is not associated with criminal enterprise. So you are guilty until proven innocent, and you have to do, um, approving, in a way. Which means that it’s very difficult for you to get a business bank account, it’s very difficult for you to apply for a loan, and it’s very difficult for you to apply for a mortgage if you don’t have any other income apart from sex work.

And it even means that people who try to move on from the sex industry. So, for example, the founder of the PIC, Mariska Majur, now has a cookie business. But she can’t get a business bank account because she was a well known sex worker who did lots of interviews. And, therefore, they’re scared that her money might in some way be associated with traffickers or human exploitation.

So, while the consensus in government is that they want people to move on from the sex industry and help people to do that, They’re not providing the means or the ability for sex workers to take agency and move themselves on from sex work.

[00:18:52] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. That’s so interesting. You know, it’s legal. We’re still thinking you might be a criminal element and we want you to move on, but we’re not going to help you.

And we’re going to put up roadblocks. They don’t, they don’t make it easy. They don’t make it easy. Well, Phoebe, we are gonna, um, we are going to, uh, take a moment to test your nerve. Um, test your nerve is brought to you by themoneynerve. com. Our financial fears, keeping you up at night, face your money monsters at test, your nerve.

com and take our free quiz. Don’t let the boogeyman win. Is it today? All right, here we go. We’re going to have some fun. Well, maybe not fun. They’re just going to be questions. Okay. I’ve totally screwed that I’m going to start this part over because I totally feel like I screwed up my questions over and I got lost.

Um, all right, here we go. Phoebe, we’re going to take just a moment to test your nerve. Test your nerve is brought to you by themoneynerve. com. Our financial fears, keeping you awake at night, face your money monsters at testyournerve. com and take our free quiz. Don’t let the boogeyman win. Visit us today.

All right, here we go. Name one way you’ve established boundaries between you and clients. I think being

[00:20:05] Phoebe: very, creating another name for myself, providing information about myself that isn’t directly traceable. So not telling clients where I live, not telling clients what I do in my other jobs, not providing private personal information.

And being very clear about why I am happy to do and what I’m not happy to do.

[00:20:33] Bob Wheeler: That’s great. That’s great. Have you ever had a client try to rescue you financially?

[00:20:39] Phoebe: Yes, definitely. Uh, I’ve had clients who are convinced that I’ve been trafficked or exploited. Um, Who tried to convince me to leave the industry, which they can do that all they want.

The, the meat is still running, you know, I’m still getting paid. So if they want to have a debate with me online instead of, um, receiving sexual services, I’m fine with that too. Um, yeah. And I’ve definitely, yeah, not even just clients. I’ve had friends who’ve tried to rescue me as well. So, and that’s harder to deal with.

[00:21:13] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, well, my next question is, have you ever had an uncomfortable money related conversation with family or friends since becoming a sex worker?

[00:21:22] Phoebe: Definitely. I think my, my feminist friends at university are divided into two. Those who are very about free sex, free body, do what you want. And my feminist friends who see sex work as human exploitation and nothing else.

And it was very difficult to get them to understand. Um, That I’m not encouraging men’s objectification of women. Um, or letting men think that they can do what they want with me. Absolutely not. That is not what happens. Um, you can pay me and I’ll decide whether we do what you want to do. And you can have an argument with me.

About it. Like I said, the money keeps on coming in. So I walked off during arguments, made a cup of tea and come back and still found someone arguing and I’ve made 50 euros. So

[00:22:15] Bob Wheeler: that’s awesome. Um, and, uh, what’s the most insulting tip that a client has left you? I mean, do you normally get tipped? I don’t know if that’s a thing.

Like in the U. S. People

[00:22:26] Phoebe: can, can tip me and I’ve, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve never, I’ve never received an insulting comment or insulting tip. Um, yeah, so for me, it’s, it’s, it’s not as common to receive tips. It’s kind of a little extra if you do. So yeah, it’s not a case of someone’s left me like, that wasn’t very good.

Um, because I set my rates quite high. So if people want to leave me a tip, then that’s a nice little extra.

[00:22:55] Bob Wheeler: Right. That makes sense. What, what self care rituals, if any, um, do you do to keep you grounded in this, like, emotionally complex work?

[00:23:07] Phoebe: I think trying to have definite time, which I see as working time and as my own time, but I find actually, this is difficult because I’m doing so many different jobs, also doing work within NGO work, which, um, also tests my boundaries.

Mm hmm. It’s a lot easier to do that with sex work because once the computer’s closed, that’s it. Um, so yeah, I think, make sure you get time outside as well. Um, in this world where everything has moved online. We can get stuck in front of our computers for what feels like days. And, yeah, spending quality time with myself and treating myself to little things when I want to.

And yeah, having conversations about what’s going on at work with other sex workers I think is really important too because it can be really difficult to talk to sometimes those around you that you love about sex work because they don’t understand it. Um, whereas sitting down with other sex workers and talking about funny clients, it’s the best.

It’s you know You’ll be on your back laughing At some point so I think it’s important to keep in touch with community as well when you’re doing this work

[00:24:21] Bob Wheeler: Well that that I mean that really makes sense because it’s not like you’re working as a team um in your job, right, it’s very individual and very isolating in a way because it’s very singular and So at least being able to hear other people’s stories or hearing Getting support.

Um, I want to jump back to something that you said, and I just really want to highlight this for a moment. You know, you were talking about how people were saying you’re, you know, you’re maybe reaffirming exploitation. Right? And it seems to me. The world is going to exploit or the world is going to do whatever it does.

Right. And we individually may not be able to say, okay, we’re going to fix the whole world. Um, or I’m going to be up, you know, I sometimes say, you know, when people say, well, that’s immoral and that we should make a law, you can’t legislate morality. And so there’s nothing wrong with taxing it, or there’s nothing wrong for charging for it.

And so it’s going to happen anyway, whether you do or don’t. Okay. So it’s not like it’s, it’s just like the exploitation or people’s perception of it. Um, it’s going to happen whether you engage or not, if women engage or not. Does that make sense?

[00:25:35] Phoebe: Yes, it does. And I think this is something which people really struggle to grip with.

And it’s something which I try and. encourage people to understand through the academic work that I’ve done on this subject. So my master’s is in gender violence and conflict. So I don’t only understand this from a personal and professional perspective, but also an academic one. And people really struggle to understand that.

Criminalizing something or, you know, victimizing sex workers does not stop them from engaging in sex work. Even in the areas of the world where they, you know, some of the areas of the world behead people for engaging in sex work. People still do it. What we find though, is that if you legalise it, or even better, decriminalise sex work, um, and provide safe situations for sex work to take place in, you actually protect sex workers better.

You create environments where sex workers can take a lot more agency to say who they work with, how they work, and how much they earn. And, like you said, it’s going to happen anyway, so why not make it as safe as possible?

[00:26:44] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask you this. Um, I mean, we’ve talked about money and, and different things, um, more morality, all that.

How, how did you get involved with PICC, Prostitution Information Center? Like, what led you there, uh, to, to get involved?

[00:27:05] Phoebe: So, after I came back from Thailand and I started doing my master’s, um, Which, as I said, was in gender violence and conflict. I had lots of amazing students around me who were focusing on domestic violence, human trafficking, very worthy causes.

But I realized that no one was focusing on sex work from a sex worker’s perspective. And while there have been many academics before me, that have focused on stigma and discrimination. I became very interested in sex worker working spaces, so red light districts, um, as they’re commonly known, and how they can provide benefits to sex workers, how they can provide negatives to sex workers, and how…

Does the public perception of what safety is differ from sex workers perspective of what safety is? So, I became very interested in Holbeck, which was the UK’s first ever experimental red light district, which unfortunately got closed during COVID and never opened again. Um, and received very negative attention, but actually when I did research on this we found that it actually reduced violence towards sex workers because it provided a public space for sex work to take place in.

It wasn’t perfect, it could have been better, but it was better than the situation we have now. And I became very interested in the Mayor of Amsterdam’s current proposal. in Amsterdam to close the windows and move the red light district into an erotic hotel. So, the way I try and explain it to people is if you imagine a Hot Wheels car park, that’s kind of the building design that you’ve got.

And I wanted to do research in how does the current environment of De Wallen provide agency, community, and safety to sex workers? And how would that differ in the new proposed area? So, as you can imagine, as someone who’s openly a sex worker, it was very difficult for me to find internship placements.

And I found the Prostitution Information Centre online and, you know, saw that they were a very sex positive space and, um, a sex worker led team as well. So I just emailed them and said, Look, I’m a sex worker, I’m trying to do research. Please let me, um, come and work for you. I’ll do whatever. I’ll, you know, clean floors, but I just want to, um, get an opportunity to interview a few people and see the space.

So they got back to me and they actually needed help archiving over 30 years of historical material, which I’m also a bit of a nerd, which I think a lot of online sex workers are. And I thought, okay, well that’s a fair exchange. You know, I’ll do the archive and then you guys can provide me, um, interviews.

So I did that for six months and then the opportunity came up to be the coordinator of the Prostitution Information Center. And I honestly applied for it thinking this will just be good job experience. I didn’t actually think I’d get the job and I did. And this also aligned perfectly with me falling in love with a Dutch man.

And so it just seemed like, well, let’s do this, you know, when else are you going to get an opportunity to do this? And, uh, because I just got my master’s that I’d also opened up. These are opportunities for me. So yeah. And I’ve been there for over a year now and I absolutely love it.

[00:30:40] Bob Wheeler: That’s so awesome.

That’s so awesome. I’m going to, I’m going to take it back to childhood for a second. Cause you talked about, um. You know, there’s a, there’s a belief that, you know, most workers have been traumatized, abused, um, didn’t not educated maybe. Uh, what was your relationship with money growing up? What was your environment like, um, as a kid?

[00:31:06] Phoebe: So I had a very loving, but very working class upbringing and growing up. I didn’t feel like I was growing up in a low income family. Because we always had food on the table and my parents would suffer so that we could thrive. Um, now I look back retrospectively, I can see that actually we didn’t have as much money as maybe I thought I did.

And I think my, especially my dad, who grew up in poverty, gave us the tools and the discipline we needed to be able to work hard. Um, and to treat our money carefully. So it meant that we were all, um, me and all my brothers and sisters were socialized in a way that you can achieve anything, but you’re going to have to work really hard to get there.

Um, and therefore I think that’s where going into care work after school, because I, I didn’t do very well at school the first time round. I was undiagnosed with, um, ADHD. And Asperger’s syndrome, so therefore, especially going to school during the 90s and the early 20s, they weren’t very understanding of that.

Um, my parents were very much like, well, if you’re not going to go to school, you have to work. Um, and working in care homes as, you know, sometimes arguably exploitative, as I would say it is, it really taught me the discipline I needed. Um, of that you get exactly what you put in back. So. That’s kind of how I grew up and yeah, I think it means that now I’m often overprotective about money in a way.

Um, I understand that money can suddenly disappear and that you have to protect yourself in this way. And anytime I have, you know, spent a little bit too much on something or treated myself as something, there’s always that kind of post, post buy guilt, you know, that, uh, post spending clarity. In a way,

[00:33:14] Bob Wheeler: yeah, it’s, uh, money does come and go and, and I don’t know, as, at least as I get older, I’m just not as willing to just watch it fly away.

If I can help it, I like to keep it nearby. Um, well, we are at the M and M moment, the money and motivation. So this is a perfect time. Um, I just wanted to ask if you have a practical financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom, um, that you could share with the listeners, because as you’re saying money comes and goes and what do you do?

Thank you.

[00:33:46] Phoebe: I think especially, um, as a lesson from COVID is to have various sources of income, you know, so sex work is just one of my many incomes. Um, what I would say is good advice is have one set of money that’s your stability. Have another set of money that is, or another set of income that is kind of your, your pocket money or your treat money.

Yeah. And then have a form of money that is your love, your joy, so, you know, sex work and, um, working at the pi. So sex work is kind of like my pocket money, right? It’s my, uh, my treat money, right? Working at the p i c is my, my joy money. Mm-hmm. It’s the, the thing I love to do is to talk to people about sex work.

And then my stability money is my consultancy money and, um, yeah, consultancy for organizations I do. So that if something happens like the global pandemic again, and suddenly you lose work, you have other forms of income that you can fall back on. And I think in this day and age, there is no such thing as a stable career anymore.

You can lose your career at the drop of a hat, even if you have a contract. So make sure you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. Um, and one more tip, if I have time, is to always have, excuse my language, get the fuck out of it money, especially if, I think it’s so that if you decide you want to do something exciting or something that’s a bit outrageous or risky, you always have the money to get yourself out of that situation if you need to.

I think that’s also really important to have.

[00:35:33] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. And even if you’re in a job that you hate or you’re in a relationship that you realize is bad or dangerous, having that money to be able to save. I’m out.

[00:35:44] Phoebe: Yep. Exactly. Tapping out and being able to fly away is really, really

[00:35:48] Bob Wheeler: important. Yeah. No, I years ago left a job I hated and I had no plan and I had no money and it took me about five or six years to get back on my feet and I don’t regret it.

It would have been nice if I had had get the fuck out money, um, at that time, I can appreciate that. Well, you know. Phoebe, I mean, for me, the theme here is really how do we start to destigmatize, normalize conversations and how we view sex work. And really starting to realize that it’s something that most of us…

Are connected to if we’re connected to our sexuality at all and being able to start to see that it’s it doesn’t really have to be this shameful thing. Our sexuality doesn’t have to be this shameful thing so that we actually put it on everybody else to make them bad. So we get to feel good and and just this openness and willingness and this desire to actually have an impact to help people that haven’t gotten to have a voice for the most part Um, for various reasons.

And so I just appreciate that you’re out there giving voice, shining a light and really bringing this topic up because there, there’s so much out there and, um, this is going on, but there’s just not a lot of conversation.

[00:37:13] Phoebe: Thank you, Bob. I think it’s, um, it’s really lovely for you to say that. And that’s often why the prostitution information center does these talks and why we’re a sex worker led team.

Because often we’re spoken over rather than spoken to, and there is an assumption that we are all vulnerable, um, passive, um, victims of violence, or drug addicts, or Um, you know, add stigmatizing title and I think by actually sitting down and being able to speak face to face to a sex worker and realize actually we come in all shapes and forms, we have all different backgrounds.

Some of us are educated, some of us are not, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less willing Um.

And getting the opportunity to see things from our perspective and, you know, shows like yours allowing us an opportunity to speak about something that isn’t directly about our work, but actually another area that is also really important and how people can actually learn things from sex workers rather than just listen to traumatizing stories about them is one of the ways that we do see stigmatized sex work and get people to realize, oh, this is Just like someone else I know, or, you know, this is, uh, you know, she may be a sex worker, but actually she’s just like any other person.

And I think that’s something that people, if they take away anything away from your podcast, is that you probably know a sex worker. It’s just, they haven’t had the courage to tell you. And once you realize that, and you also realize that, Sex is an exchange like any other service, um, whether you’re enjoying it or not, it’s still an exchange.

Um, people will start to self analyze and realize that actually it’s not sex work that is bad, but it’s the morality, the stigma, and the discrimination that we pile on top of it.

[00:39:14] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. Absolutely. Where can people find out more about PIC online social media? So people

[00:39:22] Phoebe: can go straight to our website, which is pic amsterdam.

com to see what we’re about, what our mission and vision are. And to also, if they want to donate to us or you know, have a look at our book collection that we have for sale. We’re also on Twitter or X now, um, at, at PPIC Amsterdam. And I would say we are also on Instagram, but we keep getting blocked on there,

So, um, yeah, the best way to get, see what we’re up to and to get the most up-to-date information about us is through x.

[00:40:00] Bob Wheeler: That’s awesome. We will post all that. Phoebe, thanks so much for taking the time and coming in and having this conversation. I, I really appreciate it. Thank you, Bob. Anytime. Thank you.