SPEAKER_01 0:57

Hello and welcome back to the Hand of the Podcast from Infos and Victoria. Today we are going to be talking about sex work and pregnancy. Working while pregnant. So one of the things that fascinated me most when I became pregnant wasn't actually the physical changes. It wasn't morning sickness, it wasn't the appointments, it wasn't even the reality that there was a tiny human growing inside my body. What fascinated me was how quickly other people's perceptions of me changed. It was it wasn't an overnight thing. It was gradual. Looking back now and even years later, I still remember how it felt. It was as though my body slowly stopped being viewed as mine. Before pregnancy, I was already used to people having opinions about my body. That's not unusual for women. And it's certainly not unusual for sex workers. People feel entitled to comment on our appearance, our choices, our relationships, our sexuality, and our work. But pregnancy introduced a completely different level of scrutiny. We're gonna be diving in to the whole Bonnie Blue fiasco drama that's been going on recently. Where Bonnie Blue said that she was going to have a golden baby shower and gangbang baby shower. And this honestly just made me really want to try and paint you guys a picture of what it was like being a sex worker and being pregnant because I did do pregnancy porn. I've been there, done that, and I want to share my experience about how I felt about it, how it impacted me, how other people felt about it, and what criticism I got. And yeah, it's just very, very different. And I don't want to say too much in the intro because we are gonna go through it bit by bit, and I've tried very hard to write something out which just isn't me rambling on, because if if anybody has listened to previous episodes, I do tend to ramble on things, but there's a lot of topics which intertwine with each other, and you know, I I try and not get lost in that, but different topics intertwining are still very important because it's what makes up some problems. So suddenly strangers felt entitled to offer advice when I was pregnant, not only on how I eat, what I wear and look, but people I barely knew felt comfortable asking invasive questions. Questions they had never asked before and probably wouldn't have asked anybody else. Now this was people whenever I went to doctor's appointments, um, clients, especially on webcam, and just people out and about. It was really it's really weird being pregnant in the ways of how society sees you, and that they somehow feel entitled to touching your belly or talking to you and making comments about how oh you they think this is gonna be best for the child, or you should eat this, or you should do this, and yeah, it gets really, really messy, and I understand this is my experience, and other people might have different experiences, and that's absolutely fine and valid, but I'm just going off of what I went through. Um, people wanted to know like who the father was, they wanted to know if I was keeping the baby, whether I was going to continue working, how much money I made, which is still a very common one, which I get, whether I was still having sex, and whether clients were still interested in me. I mean, granted, the clients being interested in me, that I wouldn't even say really that was that much of a worry.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

I was a kid, I was 19 when I got pregnant.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

I didn't take sex work properly, like I saw it as a way of just fast cash, honestly. When I look back on it, I feel like I was very silly with it because I would go to restaurants, I would spend the money. I mean, it wasn't on it very extravagant things, but I only did it when I needed to. And in the circumstances which I was in, I don't believe I was paying rent at the moment. Um, and then I got pregnant because um I I moved in with um at the time my ex's sister. It was a very bad relationship, and so she offered for me to come live with her, which I was gracious of. Um and I was such a kid, and I didn't know what I was doing in my life. I tried to get like a nine to five job, but I found it to be quite sexist. Um, I I have a professional cookery degree, so I know a little bit how to cook, but when I went for a chef job, the interviewer literally said that I was pretty and I should be in the front of house staff instead, doing cocktails and waitressing and that that's not me. I wanted to be in the kitchen, and I absolutely love still to this day being in the kitchen. And I think for me that was a major setback where I had actually said, you know what, I'm not gonna do sex work. I'm gonna try and pursue a career in what I love. And to be just hit with basically you're a woman, so we'd prefer you to be front of house. That hurt a lot. And it kind of made me as well as a few other times, it it made me look at the world and go, I'm a woman, like I I can't be a chef, I can't do this, like I've just tried to quit sex work to actually do a quote unquote like normal nine to five job, and they don't want me for the position I applied for because of my gender. That hurt a lot. So there was a lot of things going on in general when I was pregnant. Um well that was actually just a wee while just before um I wasn't pregnant, but around that time I was still trying to figure out my life. And I know that certainly one of the things that I didn't want to be was pregnant, in all honesty.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

And we're gonna dive more into that in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

So some people asked if I was worried my child would find out what I do one day, sex work. Others asked whether I thought it was appropriate to continue working while pregnant. I still get asked to this day if I'm worried that my child will find out that I do sex work. Um my child is aware to an extent of what I do, but I will be absolutely open to telling them once they are of age. Um, the average age kids learn well, find pornography is about the ages between 9 and 12 now, so yeah, I I very much want to make sure that they navigate online safely and are educated on sex and such matters, and you know, we don't want any children getting pregnant at the age of 12 or anything like that. Um, I think education is a massive one over it, rather than just saying this is what mummy does and that. There needs to be education with that as if they question. Um, yeah, if they're seeing stuff online, because that's where the most majority of things are these days, or if they see a movie on late at night and it's got some sex scenes in it, we need to be able to tackle this as parents to be able to tell children this is what is happening and everything, as well as if if we see rape in movies or sexual assault, I think it's very important to let the child be knowledgeable about what's right and what's wrong. Um, I certainly won't shy away from that. But I'm not worried that my child will find out because I've got nothing to hide, and I'm not ashamed of my own bodily autonomy and my own consent. And then um there were questions that weren't really questions at all. The ones disguised as concern. Don't you think it's time to stop what you're doing now? Isn't it different now you're going to be a mother? What will you tell your child? Do you really think that's a good example to set? What struck me wasn't just the questions themselves, it was the assumption underneath them. The assumption that becoming pregnant had somehow made my life public property, where people could just attack me in a way and assume and try and control it. That people were now entitled to information they would never have expected from me six months earlier. Nobody was asking whether I was happy, nobody was asking whether I felt supported, nobody was asking whether I was scared, instead, they were asking whether my choices met their approval. And that's a very different conversation. Others assumed they knew what was best for me. Some thought I should start working immediately. Um I I know that the people who I was living with and the baby daddy, we definitely did not know what to do because I obviously needed to earn money to pay for this baby. And yeah, there is so much to get into. And not because they knew my finances, not because they knew my circumstances, not because they were offering to pay my bills, haha, that's actually quite funny. Simply because pregnancy had suddenly made them feel entitled to an opinion. Some people told me I should stay home and focus on being a mother. Others suggested I should completely reinvent my life before the baby arrived. So nobody wants to hire a pregnant woman. Doesn't matter how many weeks you are, nobody wants to hire a pregnant woman who is then gonna go and pretend to leave. Um, the people who I was living with umce um they found out I was pregnant and the baby daddy moved in with me. So there was two adults, a child already, um, in the home that I was in. I was the nanny to that child. I adore kids, I do, and so I was more than happy to be a nanny. Um I don't believe I was getting paid or anything like that to be the nanny. I just did it because um being nice, um, and I was also just having uh lodgings being there. Um it was one of my very core moments is helping him take his first few steps, and that was beautiful, but it was also the realization of there was two parents who worked full-time, so they had to hire a nanny, and so they missed out on a I'm trying not to cry, because they missed out on a lot of key steps in his life. Um and that was sad to see, and I I didn't want to lead a life like that. I didn't want to lead a life where I would be on a ball and chain to this nine to five job, and I would only have so many hours a day to my kid. And I I I didn't want somebody else raising them full time, literally five days a week. Uh it was it wasn't nice. Um I enjoyed being a nanny, yeah, but the realization of if I was to become a mother, I don't know how I would deal with having a nanny, or if I could afford a nanny, or if I could I could work a full-time job with having a kid, childcare was a major issue. Um but yeah, there was two adults and a child in the first place, and then there was me and then my partner um moved in. So there was altogether four adults and a child, and then there was another child at one point, um, and then my own as well. But while I was pregnant, um they did end up asking for rent, um, which really sucked because we were saving up doing porn, and he had his regular job as well, nine to five job. Um yeah, we were trying to save up as much as possible, and then they kept like increasing the rent, and we had to also pay for groceries as well. Um, so it was it was a kind of a struggle, and this was um in Reading. So, yeah, not really that cheap, but we tried, and we realized that for us to actually get out of Reading, because we couldn't afford to stay there, it was far too expensive for like a one bed, it was like 1500 uh per month, and that doesn't include all the extra bills. It it just wasn't doable, and I did want to stay near um friends, but we overall decided to this sounds very drastic. Um, but we decided to move to Scotland because his family was here. Um, so yeah, we tried to save as much as possible because it was just much cheaper here in Scotland, weirdly. Um so yeah, that's what we did. Um, some assumed some assumed I should stop making adult content, some assumed I should stop dating, traveling, stop attending events. One thing I noticed was that everyone seemed to have a version of the correct pregnant woman in their head. And if your life didn't fit that image, they felt obligated to tell you. Not only when you're pregnant, Eva, after the baby arrives, those expectations don't magically disappear. But that's probably an entirely different podcast episode. The amount of times I would get a heckled breastfeeding, that was great. Um what those people didn't know was that my own situation was far more complicated. My pregnancy wasn't planned. I was 19 years old and coming out of a really toxic relationship. The baby daddy was a rebound, and he's well aware of that. We were both young.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Well, he was five years older than me. Yeah, I think five. Yeah, five.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Um, so he knew quite a bit better. I was still young and I had a lot to figure out. I just came out of a really toxic relationship, which was emotionally and mentally abusive and draining, and it was horrible just for the both of us. And when I became pregnant, it was a shock. I mean, although let's be honest, if you're not using protection, there's always a possibility of pregnancy. But knowing that intellectually and living through it are two very different things. At the time I was living with a Christian woman who had struggled to get pregnant herself, and when I told her that I was pregnant, she immediately saw it as a gift. Now, I do believe she announced that she was actually pregnant with a little miracle baby, I think two weeks before, or like a month before. Um I still remember it like it was yesterday in the toilet waiting for the stick um to tell me I was pregnant. I remember going to my partner's because we were we were only dating for like two weeks, four weeks. Um, we weren't even dating, we were just sleeping around. Um yeah, I I was I remember being like, I haven't been on my period in a while and I'm gonna go pee on a stick. I think I got my friend to go buy it and we went to his and I peed on it, and I just waited, and I was like, I was so adamant that I wanted an abortion. I I really did because I I didn't want a child, I was nineteen. I was in Reading and I had a quite a high-end amount of clients where like some were millionaires and I was having a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Um and I just I wasn't ready. I had like no savings.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

I just I didn't know what to do. And like it wasn't I didn't want an abortion because I hated children or because I didn't care, but because I was terrified. I genuin I'm 27 now and it was at this age that I wanted children.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Which is crazy to think.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I didn't actually have the guts to go through with the procedure alone uh with the abortion. Nobody would go with me, um, and I didn't have the guts to do it alone.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

So I just kept the pregnancy and it I have no regrets or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

I don't, but I understand autistically, I understand that my life could have been very different without a child, absolutely I'm happy I do have my wave on. I don't regret them, but I also understand how different my life might have been if I hadn't become pregnant. If I hadn't become a mother. Both things can be true. I can love my child and still recognize that becoming a mother at 19 changed the entire direction of my life. The truth is that I don't the truth is that I didn't feel prepared. I didn't have the greatest childhood myself. And I certainly didn't know how to raise a child. Not in a safe, non-toxic environment. I had no experience with gentle parenting. I was still trying to figure out who I was as a person, but never mind how to become responsible for another human being. Oh it always gets me really teary whenever I think about just how my childhood was because uh I was spanged and humiliated uh as a child, mentally, emotionally, physically god in all the ways. Um and like my father especially abused substances and alcohols, and my mother uh just kind of sat back and just didn't really make an attempt in being a mother. Um So when I say I literally have no experience of gentle parenting, I'm on about my father and mother being hot headed and me then getting hotheaded myself and having to figure out how to calm myself down. And having undiagnosed ADHD and autism and wondering why my parents would never listen to me and why. I was always the naughty child. And now I have a wee little neurodivergent child who I am gentle parenting and even strangers applaud me. Not applaud, but you know, praise me for how I've um how my child has grown up and it's it's beautiful and I could never imagine that I would be the person who I am from all the experiences which I've had in my life. And like I'm not you know, the best mum or anything like that, but I am a good mum. Fucking great mum. And with my job I can give my child technically whatever they fucking want. And I have the flexibility and the working hours to be able to actually earn a living. And that to me that my child is worth living for And it's why every night when I get into bed, they're usually in bed with me. Because we just have that close bond and I I cherish the moments I have with them. The hugs and the kisses. Like they can be so sassy one day and crouchy and like I'll still could look to them and I'll still love them. I also remember people assuming that becoming pregnant would automatically change my values. As though the positive pregnancy test was supposed to erase who I was. As though I would wake up one morning and stop being a sex worker, stop being kinky, stop being sexual, stop being ambitious, stop being myself. When really all it did was add just confusion and panic to the mix, honestly. So the Bonnie Blue controversy. Why the story why this story blew up. It's also important to acknowledge what made this story go viral in the first place. The reaction wasn't simply because Bonnie Blue was pregnant. Pregnancy alone doesn't generate this level of attention. I also don't think she's actually like pregnant right now. I think this is just something that she has said um in interviews. What pushed the story into mainstream conversation was the fact that she publicly disclosed the idea of holding a gangbang as part of her baby shower celebrations. Whether people found that funny, shocking, offensive, empowering, irresponsible, or simply a publicity stunt, it immediately created the perfect conditions for internet outrage. It combined three things that social media reacts strongly to sex, pregnancy, and perceived violations of social norms. And that's where I think the conversation becomes interesting. Because if we're honest, much of the reaction wasn't about medical concerns. And no, when having sex, you can't hurt the baby. Or even the pregnancy itself. It was about symbolism. For many, a baby shower represents family, motherhood, innocence, and the beginning of a new chapter in life. When Bonnie Blue combined that imagery with a highly sexual event, she brought together two ideas that society usually keeps separate. That's why the reaction was so intense. People weren't simply responding to a planned event. They were responding to what they believed the event represented. For some it represented freedom and bodily autonomy. For others, it represented exploitation or poor judgment. For others, it was simply another example of outrageous marketing in an economy where attention has become a valuable commodity. The interesting thing in those reactions tell us as much about the audience as they do about Bonnie herself. Because underneath the arguments about one creator sits a much larger cultural question. Why are people so uncomfortable when motherhood and sexuality occupy the same space? I genuinely believe that Bonnie Blue is the sex work version of Trisha Paytas, where they use clickbait after clickbait after clickbait after clickbait. And you know what? It's working. However, there comes a price with that, and I think there's also a reflection of what is wrong with society today. Now I don't actually have any beef with Bonnie Blue, but I think overall what she is doing, it's not okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Not all of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

But I don't believe it's doing massive amounts of harm. Instead, I believe that it is bringing awareness of women's autonomy and how society has viewed women's bodies and how women using their bodies consensually, how they like as a bad thing, and they should be ashamed of themselves. However, I don't like it when she said she wouldn't see illegal migrants. But again, clickbait, no human is illegal. Because whether you've seen the headlines, the TikToks, the reaction videos, or the endless arguments online, chances are you've encountered some version of the Bonnie Blue. A creator does something controversial, social media explodes, people rush to condemn it, other people rush to defend it. News outlets pick it up. Commentators create content about it, reaction videos appear, and before long everyone has an opinion. Now I do wish that Bonnie Blue did have like a better message, but I do see that she does say that is consensual and that it should only be 18. There is some sanity to what she says, but we only really see the insanity part where it is just clickbait after clickbait, rage bait, rage bait, all that stuff. What fascinated me about this particular story was how quickly the conversation moved away from what actually happened and towards what people imagined it represented. Because that's what moral panics do often do. They transform individual actions into symbols of something much larger. Suddenly, one creator isn't just one creator, she allegedly represents an entire industry. That yeah. I definitely see that sex work industry just painted with one big brush, which is why there was a lot of outrage, especially in the sex work community, with Bonnie Blue. Because we're not all like Bonnie Blue. An entire generation, an entire culture, an entire moral decline. We've seen this happen repeatedly throughout history, not just with sex work, but with more everyday rock music, when pornography became more accessible, when social media exploded, when only fans became mainstream, when women entered professions previously dominated by men. Every generation creates its own symbols of cultural anxiety, and right now adult creators are often being used as those symbols, particularly women. Particularly successful women. And especially women who appear completely unashamed of their choices. We've seen it with Bonnie Bloom, we've seen it with Rebecca Goodwin, and we've seen it with many, many other sex work content creators. Because confidence often provokes stronger reactions than the behavior itself. Think about that for a moment. People are often more disturbed by a woman refusing to apologize than by what she's actually doing. When somebody says, I know exactly what you're doing, I choose this. When somebody says, I know exactly what I'm doing, I choose this, I'm comfortable with my decision, that confidence can deep that confidence can be deeply unsettling to people who believe certain choices should come with shame. And that's where sex workers occupy a fascinating position in society. For centuries, the dominant cultural narrative around sex work has been built around a particular image. The tragic woman, the victim, the exploited, woman who needs rescuing. Now let's be clear, exploitation exists, coercion exists, trafficking exists. Those are serious realities that deserve serious discussion. But what happens when a sex worker doesn't fit that narrative? Me and many other sex workers who have actually been harmed doing sex work, now this is just an example. It's not necessarily connected too much to clickbait and things. But one thing which I learned recently was that when trying to fight the Nordic model, if you do not fit the opposition's narrative of being a victim to the point you want to quit sex work, they don't care about you. They will try and dismiss you, they will try and bully you, they will try and make out you're too privileged, even though you've said you've been sexually assaulted, you've been raped, um, or even you've been trafficked, or if you've been coerced, you do not fit that opposite person's narrative. I've seen it.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

You might get ignored, you might get bullied.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

I've tried to speak to the opposition, to the opposite side, who has different thoughts and views. They don't want to listen. What happens when she's successful? What happens when she's making money, working consensually, and appears content with choices other people wouldn't make for themselves? Suddenly the conversation becomes much more complicated because she no longer fits neatly into the role people have assigned her. And I think that's part of what we're seeing with Bonnie Blue. Yes, she is absolutely provocative. Yes, she understands how attention works. And yes, talking about having a gang bang at a baby shower is always going to generate headlines. But reducing the entire conversation to shock value misses something important. The more interesting question isn't simply why she says those things, it's why people react so strongly to them. Part of the reaction comes from the fact that several different conversations are happening at the same time. Some people are generally concerned about pregnancy, some are uncomfortable with sex work, some dislike influencer culture, and the way controversy is increasingly used as a marketing tool. I mean, she is very, very good at marketing, she really is. Others simply enjoy participating in outrage. All of those reactions become mixed together until it becomes almost impossible to separate one concern from another. When we talk about sex work, we rarely talk honestly about poverty, financial insecurity, housing, childcare costs, or the pressure that push people towards particular forms of work. We talk about morality because it's easier. We talk about individual choices because it's simpler than talking about the systems shaping those choices. The news outlets want flashy headlines, they want to be front page. So the words I'm a dominatrix mum rather than sex work is labor. But if we generally cared about people, then we have to be willing to talk about those systems too. And we also need to acknowledge something else: pregnancy porn. Like every other category of adult content exists because there is a demand for it. People often spend a great deal of time analysing the women creating the content and very little time examining the audience consuming it. Yet human history is full of examples of pregnancy, fertility, and femininity being sexualized, celebrated, and fetishized in different ways. The difference today isn't that pregnancy has suddenly become erotic. The difference is that some women are openly participating in that economy and benefiting from it themselves. At its core, I don't think this is really a story about Bonnie Blue. It's a story about how society responds when women refuse to fit neatly into the categories we've created for them. It's about the discomfort that emerges when motherhood and sexuality occupy the same space. It's about why pregnant women become public property the moment their pregnancy becomes visible. And it's about why so many people still struggle with the idea that a woman can be a mother, a worker, a sexual being, and an autonomous person all at the same time. And no vital headline is ever going to capture the reality. Which is why I think we do need to move beyond outrage and start talking about what pregnancy, motherhood, and sex work actually look like in the real world. Because that's where the most important conversations begin. The men we don't talk about. Now, whenever pregnancy porn becomes a public conversation, I noticed something very interesting. People spend a lot of time talking about the women creating the content, very little time talking about the people consuming it. And I think that's important because pregnancy porn doesn't exist because pregnant women woke up one morning and collectively decided to start filming content. It exists because there is an audience for it. There are viewers, there are buyers, there are consumers, there are people actively seeking it out, and historically the majority of consumers of heterosexual pornography have been men. Now that's not a criticism, it's simply the reality worth acknowledging. Because whenever society becomes uncomfortable with a particular type of sexual content, we often focus on the woman appearing in it rather than the people creating the demand for it. And looking at why there is an actual want in making the pornography? Think about that for a moment. When a referring when a pregnant woman creates content, she becomes a controversy, she becomes the headline, she becomes the debate. But where is the conversation about the millions of people consuming sexualized images of women every day? Where is the conversation about the culture that constantly eroticizes women's bodies? Because the reality is that women are sexualized throughout almost every stage of life. Babies are sexualized, teenage girls are sexualized, adult women are sexualized, mothers are sexualized, MILFs have become one of the most popular categories in mainstream pornography. And you know what? Whenever I say I'm a mother, they look at me and they go, Wow, you really? Because there is this pre-perceived idea, image of what a mother should look like. And I try not to take it as a backhanded compliment, but it's a fucking insult, and it drives me up the goddamn wall. Pregnant women are sexualized, and yet when people discover that pregnancy has also become eroticized, they often react as though this is uniquely shocking. But is it really? Or is it simply another example of a culture that already spends enormous amounts of time viewing women through a sexual lens? And if that's the case, why are we surprised? One thing I find fascinating is that society is often comfortable with sexualizing women when that sexualization is happening on someone else's terms. Advertising does it, Hollywood does it, fashion does it, music videos do it, social media does it, entire industries make billions of pounds from presenting women as desirable. Yet when women themselves recognize the desirability, take ownership of it, and profit from it directly, the conversation suddenly changes. Now people become concerned. Now people become uncomfortable. Now people start asking moral questions. And I think that's worth reflecting on. Because sometimes what we're reacting to isn't the fetish itself. Sometimes we're reacting to who controls it, who benefits from it, who gets paid. And that becomes particularly complicated when pregnancy enters the picture. Because now we have a woman who is not only sexual, not only desirable, not only visible, but also a future mother. And for some people, that combination creates enormous discomfort. Not because the attraction itself is new, but because it's forcing us to confront something we'd rather not think about. The fact that motherhood and sexuality have never actually been separate. We've just spent a very long time pretending they are. And perhaps that's why taboo plays such a powerful role in pregnancy porn. I can only speak for myself, but when I created pregnancy content, it wasn't because I had some great passion for making pregnancy porn. It was because I was 19 years old, unexpectedly pregnant, and trying to figure out how to survive. I didn't actually really create any sort of content before then. Yeah, maybe a video of me playing with myself, but that was around about it. I didn't think I'd actually make a whole hundred videos collection of me being pregnant or just doing online content in general. I it didn't really occur to me as a career choice that I could do that. I needed to pay my bills. I needed to save money. I needed to move into a home where my family could actually live and grow. Like many people facing unexpected pregnancy, I wasn't sitting around debating philosophical questions about motherhood. I was trying to work out how I was going to provide for my child. One of the things people often forget is that pregnancy can make you economically vulnerable. Employers aren't exactly lining up to hire heavily pregnant women. Maternity payers are often nowhere near enough to live on. And the support systems, they cannot be so much help. I remember going to the job center looking for help and being turned away because my partner earned just over the threshold, which was 12.5 grand yearly. On paper, that meant we didn't qualify for support. In reality, it meant I was a very scared 19-year-old who had no idea how she was going to make things work and very few places to turn to. In fact, I didn't really get any government help. The only government help that I got was that because I was previously employed with a regular nine to five job. Yeah, I know, right? I wasn't always a sex worker full time. Um, and I got pregnant just a few months after. I was able to actually get some maternity pay based off of my old job, even though that I had quit, I was still able to get that. Which is amazing, crazy. I believe at the time it was £500 monthly, which is not a lot. And so I thought I would actually look up um in this day and age what maternity leave would get you. So what you could get is if you're self-employed, you could get between £27 a week to £194.32 a week for up to 39 weeks if you're self-employed. How much depends on how many class 2 national insurance contributions you've made in the 66 weeks before your baby is due? To get the maximum amount of maternity allowance that you're entitled to, you must have been registered with HMRC for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before your baby is due, paid class 2 national insurance contributions for at least 13 of the 66 weeks before the baby is due. You may get 27 pounds for a few weeks while your contributions are linked to your maternity allowance application if you can get an maternity allowance application. Your payments will be increased and backdated if necessary. This can take several weeks. And if you're employed or have recently stopped working, you'll get £194.32 a week or 90% of your average weekly earnings brackets, whichever is less. Now that's harsh, isn't it? I hate that. For up to 39 weeks if you're employed or have recently stopped working. You can get maternity allowance for up to 39 weeks. This means if you take the full 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave, your final 13 weeks will be unpaid.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

So for example.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Oh, also, and if you are on any benefits, which I wasn't entitled to because I had a partner and he was in more than 12 and a half grand, this is what I mean, where I was literally just goodbye. I they didn't even give me leaflets to help me. It was not okay. When you claim maternity allowance, some of some of your other benefit payments may change, but your total benefit payments will usually either go up or stay the same. So oh yeah, paternity leave? The mother's partner can take up to two weeks paternity leave. I genuinely think this that should change. I don't think it's fair at all. To try and not get sidetracked, I don't think that's fair at all. To only get two weeks. And the extra help, a £500 sure start maternity grant. It's so odd because they ask you so many so many questions about your partner as well. I wanted to see. So on average, if somebody earns uh £3,250 a month, So that's around £39,000 a year, the financial drop can be absolutely enormous. They could suddenly find themselves relying on maternity allowance, which would be £842 a month. So going from £3,250, that's a reduction of around 74% of their income. And that's before you've bought nappies, a pram, baby clothes, furniture, or paid for any additional costs that come with preparing for a child. So when people ask why don't pregnant women just stop working, they're often imagining a maternity system that replaces someone's income. For many people, it simply doesn't. It is absolutely ridiculous to think that that is okay. The government wants us to have children, and it's just not doable. Now imagine that pressure if you're self-employed, if your income disappears the moment you stop working, or if you're already living month after month, suddenly the conversation looks very different. The issue isn't always whether someone wants to stop working. Sometimes it's whether they can realistically afford to. Not only maternity, your partner only gets two weeks' leave to help you. That's insanely small. It's just horrible to think that the other partner only gets two weeks with their child, then boom, back to work. That's not enough time, that's not enough money. What about nursery costs when both parents need to go back to work to be able to pay the bills, as maternity pay clearly doesn't cut it. So when people ask why pregnant women create adult content, I think they're often asking the wrong question. The better question is what options were realistically available to them in the first place? Creating pregnancy content taught me a lot about human sexuality. It also taught me that people can fetishise almost anything. Some of the requests I received made perfect sense within the context of pregnancy content. Others made me deeply uncomfortable. I had men asking if my partner could ejaculate on my stomach, or if I could spend more time rubbing and displaying my bump because that was what they found attractive. One client even asked whether he could purchase the recording of my child's birth. That was an immediate no. With a handful of the videos, I felt really uncomfortable. It wasn't those experiences didn't make those experiences didn't make me hate my body. But they did change the way I felt about the content I was creating. There were moments when I felt less like a person and more like a fantasy someone else had constructed. And yeah, sex work, you do become a different person and a persona.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

But for me with pregnancy, it was so much more.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

And I think because the fantasy wasn't fun a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

Like how I'm having fun with work right now and have done for many years. I don't know if I want to go back to that.

SPEAKER_01 58:47

Looking back now, that's probably why I've considered deleting a lot of that content over the years. I still earn money from it, but when I look at it today, my feelings are complicated. Do I regret it? No. Do I understand why I did it? Absolutely. At the time I was making the best decision I could with the options available to me. Nobody wanted to hire me. I couldn't turn to anybody else. I didn't feel no, I didn't feel like I wanted to turn to the church either. I was already being judged. I didn't need a whole load of new people already judging me as well. And if anybody has seen the viral videos of people ringing up churches asking for baby powder, and the churches in the UK turning around and saying, sorry, you're not a part of our congregation, we're not going to provide for you, that's another great reason of why people don't go to church and seek out help from the church. If I found myself in the same financial position again, facing the reality of rising bills, limited support, and maternity payments that wouldn't even cover the basic living costs, I think that I would potentially go back to creating pregnancy content. And that's the part of this conversation that often gets overlooked. People are quick to judge the decision, but rarely stop to consider the circumstances that created it. Poverty played a far bigger role in my decision making than desire ever did. The thing that scares me most about the idea of becoming pregnant again isn't the morning sickness. Isn't the labour, even though that was god awful, or the physical pain. It's the financial reality. I'm wondering whether I can afford to stop working. I'm wondering how I will pay my bills.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

That's the fear that stays with me. Working while pregnant.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

One thing I've noticed whether conversations about pregnant sex workers go viral One thing I've noticed whenever conversations about pregnant sex workers go viral is how quickly the discussion becomes moral and how rarely it becomes practical. People debate whether someone should be working, whether create concern, whether certain choices are appropriate, or whether a pregnant woman is setting the right example. What gets lost in all that is a much simpler question. How is she supposed to pay her bills? For sex workers, those uncertainties about paying our bills when pregnant can feel more immediate because our income is often directly tied to our ability to work. Unlike many traditional jobs, there is rarely an employer providing maternity leave, sick pay, or a guaranteed position to return to. For independent workers, income can stop the moment work stops. So even if somebody has, you know, a quote unquote normal job or a 9 to 5, they might go into sex work based on the fact that maternity pay just isn't enough. That reality forces many people to think strategically about pregnancy long before the baby arrives. You're not just preparing emotionally for parenthood, you're trying to build a financial cushion, calculate future expenses, and work out how you're going to support yourself during a period when earning money may become far more difficult. I know this from experience. When I was pregnant, I wasn't spending my days thinking about public debates surrounding sex work and motherhood. I was thinking about survival. I was trying to work out how I was going to provide for my child and create a stable home for us. The reality was that maternity pay wasn't enough. Support was limited and the financial pressure and the financial pressure felt relentless. That pressure shaped my decisions far more than ideology ever did. That's one of the reasons I find public conversations about pregnant sex workers so frustrating. People often talk as though continuing to work during pregnancy is atomically reckless, yet they rarely apply the same logic to other professions. If an office worker continues working while pregnant, most people see that as responsible. She's preparing for her child, earning money and planning for the future. If a sex worker continues working while pregnant, the conversation suddenly changes. The work becomes the focus rather than the reason she's doing it. And that's where the stigma enters the picture. The truth is that there is no single way to navigate pregnancy. Some people stop working early, others continue much longer. Some reduce their hours, change the services they offer, or more into content creation. And that is something which I did. I moved from in-person to more content creation. Some leave the industry entirely. Every pregnancy is different and every person's circumstances are different. Yet online conversations often flatten those realities into a single question of morality, as though there is one correct way to be pregnant. And once a pregnant woman is doing sex work, then she should be banished to hell. And she shouldn't be doing that, and she should be thinking about the child when actually she act she is. You're not going to help. It's easy to judge someone's choices when you aren't the one trying to balance rent, food, housing, childcare, and an uncertain future. It's much harder to look honestly at the economic pressures shaping those decisions. Something else that makes people uncomfortable is the fact that pregnancy can sometimes create financial opportunities. Pregnancy content exists. Maternity influences exist. Pregnancy, photography, sponsorships, advertising, and entire industries built around pregnancy exist. But you guys have a problem when an acid pregnant woman is using her body the way she wants to do it consensually. Society generally accepts people making money from pregnancy until that person happens to be a sex worker. Then the conversations become more moral rather than economic. The inconsistency is worth examining because it forces us to ask what people are actually objecting to. Is it the fact that someone is making money while pregnant? Or is it the fact that the person making money is a sex worker? I don't think enough people appreciate how much planning goes into parenthood. Pregnancy is often portrayed as an emotional, wonderful, empowering journey. But it's also a financial one. Every major life decision has economic consequences, and having children is no exception. Long before the baby arrives, many parents are already calculating budgets, estimating costs, and trying to build some sense of security for the future. Ultimately, that's what most parents are trying to do. They're trying to create stability, protect the people they love, and build a life they can sustain. When we reduce those decisions to simple moral judgments, we lose sight of the realities driving them. If we're going to have an honest conversation about sex work and pregnancy, then we need to start with reality rather than fantasy. We need to talk about money, survival, and the economic pressures that shape people's lives. Because for many pregnant women, including many sex workers, the question was never should I work? The question is how do I afford not to? So I think that is where we're gonna end this episode because I feel like I've babbled for quite a long time. At least my recording is like up to an hour right now. But I think I might do a part two where I talk about can sex workers be good mothers? Um yeah, and then healthcare, pregnancy, and stigma, because I did have quite a bit more. Um but yeah, I think the next bit is gonna be quite short. But thank you for everybody listening. I really enjoyed this episode, and I really hope you carry on listening. If you would be ever so kind to listen to the other podcasts, uh episodes which I make, that would be really cool. And yeah, I hope everybody is having a great Monday. And subscribe, like, share, listen on Spotify and Apple and wherever. Um yeah.

unknown 1:09:03

Bye.