– They want to see a pretty face with a dick

Everyone always dreams of getting paid for their hobbies, earning money for doing what they already do in their free time. Some people become content creators, others gamers, some take their passion for food and end up working as chefs. And some do sex.

– Money.

This is what Astaroth, a dominatrix sex worker, answers when asked what made them go into their line of work. 

– I enjoyed doing dominatrix work as my personal lifestyle, and then also being able to get paid for that was… I mean, ideal! As they say, get paid for what you love, Astaroth exclaims and adds:

– But it was very much money-driven.

Validation through sex work

For Meja, another sex worker, the money was not the goal:

– It was more for the validation. It was so that I could feel good about myself, so that I could gain some self-confidence. So that I could show off my body, which I realised I was very proud of.

Meja is a trans OnlyFans model who has worked online throughout parts of her transition. For her, sex work served as a way to share her body proudly. 

However, parts of her audience only wanted to see a very specific stage of her transition. 

– I still had a dick. And that was the magic ingredient for many people. That's the thing that they want to see. They want to see a pretty face with a dick.

As she says, this also led to a big change after her surgery.

– I went to Thailand and had my genital reconstruction surgery, and people lost a lot of interest just because I was now a little less exotic.

But it didn't stop her from developing self-confidence through sex work.

– I let go of all my shame regarding my body and my breast. I didn't know I'd be able to do it, but I just did it. Now I can walk into very sex positive spaces or fetish places or whatever, I can not give a single shit about having one breast, and no one else does either, because they see the confidence, and they don't care, Meja says.

This sex positivity that Meja paints in her experience as a worker, for Astaroth, appears in the service itself.

– We are selling a service, and we are selling a service that is very much needed. The escape from the mundane, the escape from a society that's very restricted regarding sex, Astharot explains.

Diversity in sex

In this profession diversity is key.

– We talk about strippers, porn makers from OnlyFans to porn Studios. We talk about sex sellers, both online and in the streets. We talk about domination, we talk about sugar dating, it's a very, very broad field. And a sex worker in one place may have one or more or even all of the professions listed, says Lilith Staalesen 

Lilith Staalesen belongs to PION (Prostituertes interesseorganisasjon i Norge), which is an association that works to support sex workers.

For Astaroth, this diversity in sex work makes the profession reach almost every corner in society, and states:

 – The target audience is everyone. 

Finding people who sell sex is becoming increasingly easy. Between social media and platforms dedicated specifically to sex, such as OnlyFans, the reach of sex work has expanded. 

But in Norway, sex workers have to constantly battle the state to make a living out of their profession.

The police as clients

– On paper, it is criminalized to purchase sex, but not to sell sex. That's just on paper, explains Staalesen and adds:

– In practice, sex workers are often seen as the source of the crime. So, the sex workers are the ones who are hunted, thrown out of the country, and deported for non-existent reasons. Paragraph 315 of the Norwegian penal code, also known as the pimp (hallik) paragraph, states that it's illegal to promote sex work as well as provide any services that would be used for sex work itself. 

As Lilith Staalesen says:

– Doing anything that enables a sex worker to sell sex is considered pimping by the law. What may have been born as an attempt to protect sex workers from pimps and abusive clients has turned into a state tool to target sex workers and stop them from building safe practices, secure communities, and living in stable houses, according to Staalesen.

– Police will pretend to be a client, or use other methods to learn where a sex worker is living, and often working from. They will find out who the landlord is, and they will contact them. And force the landlord to throw that person under threat of being accused of pimping, Lilith Staalesen says.

This tactic was best seen between 2007 and 2014 in what is known as Operation Homeless, when the police closed around 400 apartments that were suspected to be used for sex work, according to Amnesty International’s report on sex work in Norway.

Astaroth adds:

– Politicians were celebrating this operation as combating human trafficking. But these were mostly independent sex workers working for themselves.

As Astaroth says, these interventions lead to fear and paranoia amongst sex workers..

– That story is constantly in the back of everyone's mind, wondering, is the client I've talked to now actually a police officer? Will that be used against me? 

Thus, this situation makes sex workers vulnerable to authorities and clients, who were the presumed target of the law in the first place.

– We want to verify the client's ID and share the information with other sex workers to make sure that everything is safe, but none of that is possible as clients are not really willing to give out ID or personal information because, for them, it's illegal, says Astaroth

In addition, sex workers themselves are being accused of pimping if they collaborate. 

– Everyone who organizes is a pimp, even if the sex workers are organizing themselves. If two people work together, they could technically be each other's pimps, Lillith Staalesen describes.

Even buyers themselves can be affected by this, as Mali Storbækken, senior advisor at Reform a resource centre for men, said 

–Buyers can be indirectly affected when sex workers are prevented from organizing in safer ways, which increases the risk that buyers end up in situations where the seller is more vulnerable

 Here is your receipt for the blowjob

The police aren't the only ones chasing sex workers, as even with the penal code looming in every corner, sex work is still a practice profession all over Norway, and as such, a source of taxable income. But how to register something illegal to buy but legal to sell? asks Lilith Staalesen.

– It becomes kind of a problem when the client is criminalized. It's like, hey, you just broke the law. Would you like a receipt? 

This turns even more complex when the Norwegian penal code turns virtually any service for sex workers into a form of pimping 

– The pimp paragraph basically states that if you're providing a service to a sex worker, and they use it to sell sex, then that's illegal. 

Lilith Staalesen explains the issues created by the pimp paragraph and ads:

– If I want to use a service to make a sale and I want to record that sale, I can't. The people giving me the digital cash register service are not allowed to give me that service. So how do I register the sale? Old-fashioned way: Paper receipt.

The tax system becomes another fear for sex workers who, unable to print receipts or state their job (even if it's legal), turn to skill and originality, becoming writers of the smallest print. 

– We all have our own way of doing it. Some people say that this is just gifts, others sell other services, finding another name that is plausible considering your work experience and skill set that they can put it under, says Astaroth

A feminist issue 

The obstacles of the Norwegian government pile up, and the very legal profession of sex work becomes subject to: prosecutions, evictions, and accusations of tax evasion. For Astaroth, the issue is clear:

– If it felt safe to just say, I got this amount of money for doing sex work, end of it, then we would do it. But that doesn't feel safe because if a landlord, if the bank, if anyone takes a look at that, the consequences might be dire. 

The Norwegian system seems to see sex workers as victims to be protected from pimps and clients instead of people who have chosen a profession. For Lilith Staalesen, this is rooted in an old political tradition.

– Traditionally, sex work has been considered work, and so a workers' rights issue. However, the left side of politics in Norway has always seen it as a feminist issue. And feminism in Norway has adopted an extremist view in which sex work is violence against women and exploitation of women.

– And sex workers who say «that is not who I am» are pushed down and treated as minority cases, Staalesen says.

– The goal is to stop human trafficking

May-Len Skilbrei, professor at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, underlines that the Norwegian sex purchase law was introduced with a clear preventive aim. 

– The goal has never been to punish sex workers, but to make it harder to organize prostitution so that fewer people enter it, she explains

– The law is used more as a tool for deterrence than as a frequently applied sanction, with police often relying on it to create uncertainty in the market rather than to prosecute individual cases.

Skilbrei notes, however, that this comes with side effects: safety measures and cooperation between sex workers can be criminalized under the so-called pimping paragraph. At the same time, the state expects sex workers to pay taxes, even though the services they provide are criminalized for their clients. 

Skilbrei explains that the intention of keeping the law is to prevent exploitation and human trafficking, even if its practical consequences can feel contradictory.

Misconceptions about consent

The positivity that both Meja and Astaroth talked about comes with specific conditions; it demands a change in the conception of sex work.

– That's very much a narrative around sex work, that we are selling our bodies, which creates a lot of misconceptions about consent and boundaries. Because if you're selling your body, then whoever is buying that can do whatever they want. That's not the case, Astaroth says.

For Meja, this change starts by seeing sex workers simply as people who have chosen a profession, not as victims to be policed.

– When the word sex work is mentioned, people immediately start imagining dark back alley streets or girls in too much makeup, runaways from home, victims, girls who have been abused, girls who are on drugs. Sure, that can exist, Meja says, and adds:

– But that's when it goes wrong. That's when you're doing it for the wrong reasons. That's when society has failed you, not when sex work has failed you.