“At Least Hookers Get Wages”

The risky business of sex work in the gig economy

- Bee Khaleeli

Mariam turns on location tracking when she’s en route to a date. Coordinating with her roommate, she sets a time by which she will send them a check-in text. Her purse contains one bottle of water-based lubricant, a strip of latex condoms, her wallet and keys, and a small pocket knife. She’s alone.

Standing outside a Nuns’ Island condo complex, she refreshes her SeekingArrangement messages. Her client is 10 minutes late. She sits on the edge of a concrete planter, examining his profile. It ends with a familiar note: “no escorts, please.”

American legislation such as the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA/ SESTA) has led to the demise of classified advertising sites popular among American and Canadian sex workers, like Backpage and Craigslist Personals. Shuttering these sites has made sex workers even more vulnerable to violence – they are unable to screen clients and are often forced into working on the street. But SeekingArrangement is alive and well.

Seeking – as it’s known to its users – is a website that facilitates sugaring, a type of sex work where “sugar babies” participate in typically long-term romantic and sexual relationships with “sugar daddies” (or occasionally “sugar mommies”) in exchange for money and gifts.

As Mariam’s client made clear, many sugar daddies balk at the notion that sugaring is sex work. The same is true of many sugar babies (a term I use with some hesitation, as many who fall into this category aren’t fond of its infantilizing overtones). Seeking is marketed as a dating site, prohibiting “any commercial endeavors” and mandating that members “will only use the Service in a manner consistent with […] local, state, national and international laws.”