Working as a woman in a generally male industry is hard enough. Unnecessary unsolicited attention from unstable fans is a problem females working in porn neither deserve or covet. Whether they're cam girls, secretaries or site owners women in this field are discovering not only do they daily deal with the double standard opinion of their profession, they also have to deal with the dark side of notoriety. Some of the women who do smut are now struggling to confront the reality of cyberfame: cyberstalkers.
Ladies, let's talk. I may be an old hag, but I used to be a hottie. I know the intoxicating feeling a gal can get when she's able to turn bright shiny men into slobbering fools with a wink and a wave of her hips. It's fun to doll up and go clubbing and get the boys all hot and bothered.
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"We have to be accessible and Internet-based forms of communication are easy and seemingly harmless ways to avail ourselves to our patrons." |
The high is even more intense on the Internet when there's the possibility one can garner thousands of fans. Unfortunately, with eminence comes malevolence. The more people know who you are, the higher the plausibility you'll encounter ones who might want to hurt you. Making men swoon is all well and good but none of us wants to end up on the front page of the papers with the headline: Sex Worker Slain by Cyberstalker.
Because you and I know whether we're the chick who answers the phones for a paysite, the bitch that kicks the server when it's down or the model who spreads her asscheeks if we work in adult, we're considered sex workers. However fun it might be to tease the manly masses into shelling out the dollars that buy our dinners, we have to be more careful than the average working gals and I don't mean hookers.
For reasons unfathomable to me, a female who labors for the adult entertainment industry is less respected, less worthy than other women are by conventional society. For the reason that the net exposes us to more strangers than the average office job, we have to be even more careful about our privacy. If you're a dame and you work on the adult net, here are some suggestions that can protect you from the creeps and the freaks lurking behind monitors and aliases:
When I got my first job waiting tables, the lady who owned the restaurant had a long talk with me about being in such a profession. I was fourteen at the time. She told me that I was to be careful because by the nature of my job, I was making myself more available to men than most girls.
She explained to me that my job was to be nice and helpful and some folks (especially men) would take advantage of such a situation. She said they would try to touch me inappropriately or ask me out. She said if they got fresh, I was to tell a manager. She said if they asked my name, I was to tell them it was Mary or Lucy or anything but my real name. Her advice served me well during the fourteen years I waited on drunks and horn dogs for tips.
Never tell your real name to strangers if you don't have to. On the Internet, use a nickname. Your real name is the first basic clue to who you are, what city you're in and where you live. If you can't get away with faking a nick at least do not ever reveal your last name on the net.
If you're the hostess of a hot model site or the moderator of a webmaster board, communicating with your audience is a necessity. Personalization is one of the strongest marketing tools there is. Just the same, there's a difference between being accessible to your audience than there is in exposing yourself to danger.
Before you start sending out the weekly newsletter to your paysite members or you post your email addy in a new chat profile, think about getting an email address that doesn't come directly from your personal machine, especially if you work from home. There's so much a determined person can learn from a simple email address.
For instance, if your ISP doesn't conceal your personal profile info behind a firewall, almost anybody can find your real name and possibly your home location from the user name that is in your email addy. Your personal email account is a doorway to you. If you have to give out your email address for work purposes, make sure you know how to use the filtering features that block unwanted senders. Don't include any personal information in the profile settings for your mail program. Use a web-based email program if you can or at least try logging into your mail through your host's web mail service.
Instant Messaging and Chat Rooms
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Communicating across nations and time zones is exciting and the main way all of us in online adult do business. We market on adult webmaster message boards. We make deals and gossip about each other on ICQ. We correspond with affiliates and site members through live chats. We have to be accessible and Internet-based forms of communication are easy and seemingly harmless ways to avail ourselves to our patrons.
If you post on message boards to market your sponsor program, try not to include too much personal info in your user profile. If you converse on ICQ or another instant message program, always tweak your security settings. Make sure you can't be messaged by strangers without an alert/authorization. Get a whole different instant message account than your personal one if you are a cam girl and ICQ site members. If you chat, be wary of IRC chats. Users in IRC can look you up directly to your IP number if you're not behind a firewall.
Women are great. I am one. I know why women are doing better and better in the field of the adult Internet. Not only do babes make great content; they make great business partners, great sites and great employees.
We have softer voices for customer support. We're not nearly as interested in the sexual perks of this biz as our male peers are. Women make good recruiters for models because we're less intimidating than guys are. Women are masters of the tease and the tease is the core of adult marketing.
The qualities that make us great for working in online porn are also the qualities that make us vulnerable to harmful people. Our gentler natures may make us nice to work with but those who look for such things can perceive passivity as vulnerability. Girls are taught to be kind. That does not mean we have to sacrifice our dignity or safety for the sake of societal perceptions.
Being a female in this business has advantages and drawbacks. You'll get more attention as a woman but you may not like some of the attention you get. Be smart. Be aware. Be a woman in the adult net, but be careful.