The Honest Courtesan

Sex work prohibitionism is entirely based in negative emotions such as envy, resentment, and bigotry, plus the most common and destructive of all sexual perversions: the need to inflict one’s own will on non-consenting individuals.  As I and others have explained, this is why sex workers can’t help “incels”:  it isn’t sex that they want, it’s ownership.  If they just wanted sex they could pay for it like any other man, but that isn’t enough for them; they want to own women like slaves because they believe themselves to be entitled to unlimited sexual access like the successful men they call “alphas” (whom they imagine get sex without paying).  The reason I’m mentioning this is because these are the emotions and twisted cognitive processes behind last week’s “thot audit”, a trollfest in which deeply-pathetic manbabies tried to make themselves feel powerful and frighten ill-informed sex workers by threatening to report them to the IRS for tax evasion.

There’s just so much to unpack here, starting with the highly popular but largely-erroneous notion that sex workers don’t pay taxes (most visible in the ignorant proclamation of wannabe allies that “we should legalize and tax it”); sorry, y’all, but most of us know who Al Capone was and we aren’t stupid.  Failing to placate a gang of thieves who have been granted the power to move without let or hindrance to collect their pound of flesh from anyone currently or formerly alive, and who have absolutely no compunction against ruining any given person’s life on a whim, is just plain stupid.  Yes, a lot of our income is cash, and yes, most of us put something other than “prostitute” on our tax returns (I used to put “escort service owner”, now I put “writer”).  But full-time sex workers do pay taxes, not only because it’s foolish to attempt to cheat the devil of his due, but also because we don’t want to be locked out of the financial system; owning a house, property and credit cards is definitely worth giving the government its blood money.  Do some part-timers and dilettantes only declare the income from their “straight” jobs and keep the sex work cash quiet?  Undoubtedly, but the same goes for anyone with a side gig.  Singling out sex workers has nothing to do with whether we pay some lawhead idea of a “fair share” or not, and everything to do with trying to hurt women out of a frustrated sense of male entitlement; though men control just about everything else, women have a solid lock on the sphere of hetero sexuality…the thing most men care about more than anything else.

But since lots of writers had stuff to say about this, I feel no need to duplicate their efforts.  Let’s start with Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason:

…Where to begin with the grossness and pointlessness of these pursuits?…What kind of bootlicking busybodies spend their spare time worrying about whether individual strangers are paying enough in taxes, much less take the time to report them?  Then there’s the ignorance.  Plenty of solo sex workers, adult entertainers, and models do pay taxes, just like other independent contractors…Sex workers have the same incentives as everyone else to stay on the good side of Uncle Sam…Lastly, there’s the futility of the whole business.  Blogger Roosh V, who was one of the men leading the #thotaudit charge, pointed his followers to a page of the IRS website for reporting tax evaders, even suggesting that the feds might reward them for rounding up hoes.  But…reporting someone requires you to know a lot about the person you’re turning in, including her full name and address—information random dudes online aren’t likely to have for the ladies they’re tattling on…even if they did have all the correct information, there’s little likelihood that the IRS would care.  The page specifically notes that it’s interested in situations involving “a significant Federal tax issue”—i.e., not someone making a few hundred unreported dollars per year selling used underwear and butt selfies.  As…Mistress Matisse put it: “Dudes, they want Donald Trump, they don’t want camgirls”…

Tracy Clark-Flory quotes me in Jezebel:

…How these trolls would know anything about the inner workings of any individual sex worker’s tax dealings is a mystery.  But the boy geniuses behind this ploy are mighty impressed with themselves.  The…dude who started it all recently posted to his Facebook page an image depicting himself as a warrior holding up the heads of three women’s faces overlaid with Snapchat filters…While many #ThotAudit-ers allege that they are, indeed, making formal reports to the IRS, there is no evidence to back up their claims.  The IRS did not respond to Jezebel’s request for comment…Maggie McNeill…told Jezebel, “Several of us were as amused by this as we were disgusted.” Amused, she explained, because of “its impotence,” and disgusted “by its ugliness.”  McNeill continued, “It’s just a new retread of the ‘criminal sluts’ male fantasy of sex work: that we’re all ‘loose women’ who are too lazy to do ‘real work’ and make a killing without paying taxes”…

Vice, in one of its periodic swings toward supporting sex workers, gave far too much credence to these nasty little boys, but had a few good points:

…To report someone through the whistleblower program, you need a lot of their personal information:  Physical address, full legal name, date of birth (or approximate age), and taxpayer identification number…You also have to have to have specific information about the type of fraud being alleged as well as how much money the person being reported has earned; it’s clear from the forms…that this is generally intended for people within companies to whistleblow about tax evasion that they have…document…[to] prove…You also have to physically mail all of this information to the IRS, because it does not accept any of this information by phone or email; one of the whistleblower programs specifically states that anyone submitting information does so under the threat of perjury…Christopher Kirk, attorney and master preparer at Safeword Tax Service…said….“Most sex workers tend not to earn enough to catch the notice of the IRS.  With their limited staff resources, the IRS tends to go after larger operators”…

Anyhow, this whole 50-clown-car pile-up of buffoonery was to me summed up by last Monday’s revelation that David Wu, the dude who started it, has a history of trying to extort nude pictures from underage girls using threats of doxxing; the whole “thot audit” nonsense is exactly that sleazy practice, writ large, albeit less competently.