Tilly Lawless: Sex, Love And Tax

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

Simply put, Tilly Lawless is fucking dynamite.

She’s the book-loving, horse-riding queer sex worker from Sydney who isn’t afraid to challenge some of the bullshit perceptions still held by much of the mainstream media and Aussie public. While she doesn’t claim to be an authority on sex-work, she became a digital champion to thousands last year by inadvertently starting the #facesofprostitution movement in response to an article published by Mia Freedman’s Mamamia.

“How is me renting out my pussy any different to you renting out your arms to stack shelves, a journalist renting out their wit, an athlete renting out their body?” She writes on Instagram.

“I am doing what I want to do. And the only person I’m disappointed in is you, with the prejudice.”

Heaps Gay caught up with Lawless to chat all things sex, relationships, superannuation and the whorearchy.

Okay, so I need your help settling a disagreement that’s been bothering me recently. A close friend of mine is struggling to accept a mutual friend’s work in the sex industry, saying she shouldn’t be able to “pick and choose” when those in third world countries are often forced into it by circumstance. I immediately called bullshit, but would love to hear your (perhaps more eloquent) thoughts on exactly why this is bullshit.

People are forced into various industries around the world by poverty; the idea that because some people are lacking in choice we should limit other’s choices is ridiculous. That is like saying because some women are forced into marriage for economic reasons no women should be able to get married.

The stereotype of women in third world countries (and I say women, because that is who this kind of rhetoric always focuses on) being trafficked into the sex industry is a racialised stereotype that assumes only white, western women have autonomy. Not denying that there are people who are coerced into the industry; however this is often used to undermine the autonomy of those who are less privileged. Empower, a peer run sex worker rights organisation in Thailand, works a lot to try to change the assumption that sex workers who are less privileged cannot still have control over their lives and need to be saved (often by being ‘rescued’ from one exploitative industry and placed into another exploitative industry eg the garment industry, which is what the white saviour org ‘Be a Hero’ does in Cambodia).

Also, regardless of how someone has entered the industry or their reasons for remaining in the industry, this is not a reason to prevent sex worker rights. Amnesty International, whilst acknowledging that that trafficking and rape is a horrendous human rights issue, still supports the right of people to do sex work and not lose their human rights because of that.

I can imagine one of the perks of sex work is that it allows for your spare time to be more proportionately dedicated to other hobbies/interests/passions/loved ones. How have you been spending your “down” time recently? Any exciting projects brewing?

Free time is one of the things I appreciate most about my job. The female and queer friendships in my life are very important to me, so I am able to spend a lot of time with friends. I also swim and horse ride when the weather is good. And I read lot – and write not as much as I would like haha.

Super boring question, but it’s approaching tax time (fml) and I’m genuinely curious. How pragmatic do you manage to be with your cash income? Do you pay any mind to things like superannuation?

I declare all my income. It does sometimes feel like a nuisance paying a cut of my earnings to a government that doesn’t recognise the legitimacy of my job (in SA for example sex work is still illegal), but I do it all the same. I have my own sort of unofficial superannuation account of a savings account I don’t touch.

Do you think the remaining stigma surrounding sex work is more-so rooted (ha) in a perceived moral high-ground around sexuality (ie stop being a slut) or employment (ie stop being paid for it)? 

I think the two work together. I think people find the thought of women doing sex work especially threatening because a) women are not meant to be overtly sexual and b) we are not meant to financially capitalise on emotional and sexual labour, but rather give it freely within the bounds of a relationship. Sex work upsets the status quo, redistributing wealth amongst working class women, queer people, immigrant women, women of colour, trans people. So it comes from a place of it’s bad enough you’re being a slut, but you’re actually profiting from it?! Women aren’t meant to profit from promiscuity. We are meant to die a tragic death or learn our lesson and creep back into the acceptable sphere.

For those who mightn’t have heard of it, can you explain the whorearchy? Where does it originate and why is it so counterproductive?

The whorearchy is the hierarchy that exists within sex work that leads some sex workers to be more stigmatised than others. Examples of this are workers who don’t do full service (eg. strippers) being seen as better than those who do (eg brothel workers), those who don’t use drugs being seen as better than those who do, those who earn more (eg. escorts) being seen better than those who earn less (eg street based sex workers). There are all sorts of other prejudices that tie into where people are perceived to be in the whorearchy, eg an immigrant women of colour would be seen to be more expendable than me, a white western woman. The problem with the whorearchy is that it feeds into the idea that people are deserving of rights are respect because they are respectable/normal/’high class’/don’t use drugs/whatever justification is used and throws all other sex workers under the bus for not being those things. A lot of people are perfectly willing to accept sex workers if they are at the top of the whorearchy (think Belle du Jour), but not so ready to support the human rights of a trans woman of colour who does sex work to fund her hormones, for example. The whorearchy means we are often caught up in discussing respectability politics, rather than recognising that all sex workers deserve rights not based on merit, but because we are human.

I read that you’re in a longterm relationship, which has made it a little harder to motivate yourself to work. How has your work/life ratio changed since falling in love?

I am working as much as ever; it’s just harder to drag myself to work haha. I find that, rather than having sacrificed any work for my relationship, I am having less time for myself and my friends. It can be hard to juggle all the commitments, and as my job requires a lot of emotional labour I find it is easier for me to get burnt out because I already give so much of myself to my partner. I am not complaining though. Being with Dani is the best thing that has happened to me in a long time – just not denying that it has made navigating a healthy ratio harder.

We recently published a piece about Lesbian Bed Death, which suggests that it can be hard for queer woman to maintain a healthy sex drive in committed relationships. How do you manage to keep a spark in your personal sex life without compromising your work?

I think Lesbian Bed Death is a fear that looms big in all queer women’s minds; we were raised on it, even though it has been completely discredited (sexual attraction does not end any quicker in a lesbian relationship than in a straight relationship). Those three words strike doom in my heart, and it is hard not to think if we don’t have sex for ten days that this is Lesbian Bed Death. I think the drive to disprove something that doesn’t even exist, the anxiety around it, probably induces more problems than if we had never heard of it.

I don’t know how I manage to keep a ‘spark’ in my personal sex life; it is just there. I love Dani and am attracted to her and so it is there, it doesn’t require maintenance. For me sex has always been like a drug in that the more I have the more I want it, so I am lucky that having so much sex at work doesn’t make me less inclined to it at home. Besides, sex with Dani is so vastly different to sex at work that one doesn’t compromise the other; it is almost as if they come from different reserves within me, and work sex certainly does not satisfy my need for sex with her.

Just to finish, where would you like to see yourself in seven years?

I want to have a property in Northern NSW by the time I am thirty. That is the only goal I have, and my main drive. So I suppose I see myself there.