TRIGGERnometry - Aella - Why I Became An Escort

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Aella is a sex worker, writer and researcher. She is one of the most successful content producers on OnlyFans and an escort. She conducts research on various topics, though mostly pertaining to sexual... behaviour. She publishes her data, analyses and other thoughts on Substack @ https://aella.substack.com/ Join us at the Battle of Ideas festival, a free speech event taking place in London 28-29th October 2023. Members of the TRIGGERnometry Locals community can get 20% off tickets! Visit: https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/ SPONSORED BY: EasyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | info@xentricapc.com | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: marketing@triggerpod.co.uk Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Ayla, you go from Christian conservative family to only fan star and sex worker. How does that happen? So I worked at a factory for a year. And I was like, wow, this really sucks. It's better than like a life spent work at the factory. That was really awful. You think sex work is less bad than working in a factory? I mean, it depends on the person.
Starting point is 00:00:25 But for me and a lot of girls that I know who are in sex work, it was very... Absolutely. How do you be seductive? If I lower my voice and talk slower, and I don't use big words, and I smile, make eye contact. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad that we're that predictable, every single one of us. You must enjoy escorting.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Yep. Clearly, right? Which I was surprised to find, yeah. Ela, you go from Christian conservative family to only fan star and sex worker. How does that happen? A long series of baby steps. Okay, tell us.
Starting point is 00:01:05 Well, like, when you're raising a Christian conservative home, they kind of don't prepare you for the real world, at least not the way that mine worked. So, like, homeschooled, expected to be a housewife kind of deal. So I got in the real world, and realistically, my options were not great. So I worked at a factory for a year. And then I was like, wow, this really sucks.
Starting point is 00:01:25 I don't have an education, and I'm really, like, culturally isolated from the world. Like, it was really hard to, like, get along and understand what was going on because, you know, we were allowed to watch a lot of normal media. And so I had a friend who suggested trying camming because he did camming. And then I was, like, really poor sleeping on a friend's couch. I was like, you know what, I'll give it a shot and made a lot of money the first night. And then one thing led to another. And I just like, like, oh, this is the way to, like, have many an agency when there was no other option for me.
Starting point is 00:01:57 I'm guessing by this point you would have had some kind of ideological shift as well because not many Christian conservatives would be like, I'm working in a factory, it sucks, let's try camming. It's quite a transition in terms of culture and all of that, right? Yeah, very much. I lost my faith maybe like a year or so after I left home, which was like a pretty rapid shift. I think like the exposure to being in a non-Christian world really helped me be able to think that maybe Christianity was false.
Starting point is 00:02:27 Like, I think it's very difficult to actually consider that everything that you believe is wrong when every part of your culture is enmeshed with this. Like, every, you don't know anyone who disagrees. Like, I didn't know any non-Christians in my personal life. So it's just like your brain just to some degree can't, literally cannot consider this as an option. Or at least it was quite hard. It was quite hard for me. And so I think after I finally left home and I was like briefly attempted to do college,
Starting point is 00:02:54 I was surrounded by people who weren't Christian and they were living life. and being happy and fine, and it was okay somehow. And then this somehow allowed some part of my subconscious to be like, maybe this is all false. Is there any part of, so, because you talk about leaving Christianity, is there any part of religion that you miss? Because there's a lot of people who say, you know what? It gives me a lot of structure.
Starting point is 00:03:17 It gives me purpose. It gives me direction. Yeah, absolutely. It's like something that a lot of people have tried to replicate outside of religion, and it's really hard to do for a lot of reasons. But yet there's like the, there's an intense community. You just have like a pre-built community
Starting point is 00:03:30 that trust each other. Like a lot of help. Like, for example, my family moved from California to Idaho when I was quite young. And they just had like a church in Idaho like send out all of their people to help us unload move in and out of like various apartments for free.
Starting point is 00:03:46 For no reason. It was just like because you're part of the community, you get you're part of the in-group. You get this kind of help. And that's super cool. I mean, it is. And particularly nowadays where people are struggling for communities.
Starting point is 00:03:57 I mean, did you find that difficult? The loss of a community, the loss of structure? A bit. I found community in other cam girls at the time, so that helped a lot. And then I found rationalists, which in a lot of ways, actually operate kind of similar to churches. So, the fly finds you very attractive. Yeah. They can't stay away. It's into you. It's into you. It's one of your fans. So you start camming. And what's that like? Great. It was scary the first night, but after that it kind of got fine. And I was pretty awkward. Like a lot of instruction about how to be flirty and seductive as a woman, like the general, like you watch movies, like teen movies about how you flirt and what kind of things mean what. I didn't really have any of that. Like to the degree where I remember my first time at a bar, somebody walked up to me and offered me like, can I buy you a drink? And I was like, sure. And they bought me a drink and I just took and I walked away. I didn't understand that that was like a cultural indication of interest. To me it was literally I want to give you money for alcohol and I'm like, that is a nice stranger.
Starting point is 00:05:03 So it's like this level of not understanding. You're very literal, Ayla. Very little. Like someone comes up to you, gives you a drink. You're like, thank you and just walk away. That guy must have been devastated. Yeah, I know. I feel really bad looking in hindsight.
Starting point is 00:05:17 He's like, oh, you probably think women are bitches. But no, I'm just either autistic or homeschooled or both. unclear. But yeah, so I really did not have a lot of the organic understanding of what it's like to be a seductive woman, like how you're supposed to signal us. And so a lot of my early years, camming was very goofy. I just was very funny. I was a mime, a sex mime, and I would do just wacky stuff all the time,
Starting point is 00:05:46 before eventually figuring out that that's not the best way to make money. So how, it's interesting. sounds to me like you've had to almost kind of mechanically work out how to do certain things that you didn't get from your upbringing or whatever, and one of them is being seductive. How do you be seductive? Well, it's a multi-step process. So what I'm doing right now, this is not seductive. If I were trying to, like, eke you for all the money you had, there's no way that this would work.
Starting point is 00:06:15 But if I, like, if I, like, adjust my posture slightly. and if I lower my voice and talk slower and I don't use big words and I smile, make eye contact and really drop like my sphere of energy into my lower stomach that it does a lot better. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:40 Yeah, I'm glad that we're that predictable. Every single one of us. That makes sense. Logically, that makes sense. It took me so long. to figure that out. Like when I was camming, I had a paper with like rules for myself. So with camming, it's very rapid feedback. You get like live people coming in, you see the numbers of your room rise and fall depending on what you're doing. You see your money per hour averaged over the last
Starting point is 00:07:04 60 days as shown as a score. This is my free cams. So you get like very rapid instruction about the kinds of behaviors we're doing that work or not. So I had a paper behind my webcam, which is the rules I eventually figured out, which was smile always, keep eye contact with the camera, talk really slowly, way slower than you think you need to, and use simple language. And that, when I did that, my money increased quite a lot. Why do you think you have to use simple language? It's like, I think it's, there's like a couple theories, some of them flattering and some of them not. Like one of them is like, if you're very horny, you're probably not thinking in like higher
Starting point is 00:07:42 brain language. You're probably just, which is kind of true, right? Which is legitimate. So if you want to give a really intentional signal that you are aroused, you know, you probably shouldn't be using multisilobic language or whatever. But another one is that you don't want to appear too intimidating. Like you want to be accessible. This is like one of the biggest rules for seduction is you want to be as accessible as possible and as reactive as possible. And if you're using like big language, maybe it's subtly signaling to the men that like,
Starting point is 00:08:09 oh, I'm going to have to try harder to have an impact on her in the way that I want. And Ayla, was this only fans? platform before OnlyFans when you started? This is my free cams, which is actually owned by the person who bought OnlyFans. Okay. And this was it? What year was this? This is, this was when I was like 21 or 20 years old to 25 or 26. Cool. So that was how long ago now? And I'm 31. Okay. All right. So because I'm just trying to work out at what point of the internet. Because now apparently OnlyFans is super competitive. Yeah, super competitive. So when you started, that was, was it like a gold rush era for camming?
Starting point is 00:08:50 No, camming had been around like maybe five, ten years earlier before I started. It was sort of the golden era, but it wasn't like a spike in the way that we see this happened to Onlyfans. So the OnlyFans that came in and it changed the world. And with like my free cams and related campsites, it was like a slow climb over, you know, the early 2000s. Yeah. You say changed the world. How did the OnlyFans change the world? It's just radically changed the Internet.
Starting point is 00:09:14 Like, I'm a big Internet person. I feel like internet is my culture. I grew up on the internet. I love the internet. And the introduction of only fans, like modified rules across the internet in order to handle only fans. Like, one of the things that I'm not sure if only fans did intentionally, but might be genius, is that they don't have internal discovery, which is like, for example, what my free cams
Starting point is 00:09:35 had in every other public sex site, as far as I can tell, had internal discovery. That's like the value that's giving. But the only fans, if you sign out... Internal discovery is when you can be found on the... platform by accident or by being recommended. Is that what in terms of? Yeah, by like recommendation, right? You watch a video, you get a bunch of suggestions. That's what you're talking about. Right. Yeah. So if you put a video on YouTube, you expect YouTube to provide the viewers to your video. Yes. You don't have to go out and like post on Twitter and be like,
Starting point is 00:10:03 hey guys, come see my video. Yes. So with OnlyFans, they have no internal discovery, which means that if I'm a girl and OnlyFans and I want subscribers, what do I have to do? I have to go out to other websites and post my link and try and convince people to come subscribe to me. And this is just every user on OnlyFans that makes any money has to do this, which means that we saw like a rapid influx of any place on the internet that allowed not safe for work posting, just became completely dominated by OnlyFans. And they had to change the rules to handle that. And why wouldn't you use your own website to do that? Where do you get the traffic for that website? But you are having to bring the traffic to OnlyFans. Yes. So Reddit, for example, is a great thing. Or TikTok
Starting point is 00:10:42 or Instagram. Those things will promote your video to other people. Those have internal discovery. So you post something that, like, is a sexy video to one of these platforms, and then people see it, and then you have a funnel, and then they go find your OnlyFans. I know, but what I'm saying is, why would you not just use your own website instead of OnlyFans?
Starting point is 00:10:59 Oh, well, it's very hard. So I did look into this. So I misunderstood what you were saying. Because, like, OnlyFans takes 20%, and you're like, maybe I could get to say. Right. But payment processors are terrible. If you want to use payment processors to accept funds for what you're building
Starting point is 00:11:13 and you're selling not safe for work stuff, the fees are massive. And I think it's my understanding that OnlyFans, because you're doing such huge volume, managed to negotiate some sort of like lower fees for those payment processors. But if you're doing it as an individual, you have no bargaining power. And I looked into it and it would just, you can't, I wouldn't be able to, I would be losing 20% easily. And just for the cost of setting up the website, it's just not worth it. And I mean, OnlyFans is one of those. things, it became super successful over the pandemic. Do you know how much is turnover now at OnlyFans?
Starting point is 00:11:46 How much money are they making? They must be making... I don't know. Massive still. Because it just seems that it just hit the Zite guys, whereas before I'd never even been aware of it. Yeah, it was around for years beforehand. It started in 2017, I think. I think that's what I joined. I remember joining Onlyfans and nobody was on it, nobody had heard of it. And I like posted some things and made like 40 bucks and then never signed on again. so it's really weird. And why do you think, I mean, not to state the obvious too much,
Starting point is 00:12:14 but there's a lot of porn on the internet. Yeah. To know you noticed. Why do you think the camming thing is taken off in the way that it has, as opposed to watching, you know, a recorded video produced by a porn studio or whatever? I mean, I think there's a subset of men for which it's very interesting.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Like, lots of guys, like, don't care about the thing where you pay for an interaction, But we have examples like strip clubs throughout history are really nice. You go and the girl makes me feel special for a little while. I think that's a big part of why only fans in Kemming are successful. It's because despite the stereotypes for a lot of men, sex is not completely separable from romantic interaction. It's very much about validation.
Starting point is 00:12:56 Like guys, like when I was an escort, about 80%, I would say, roughly, of men really wanted to make sure I had a good time. Even though they didn't have to, they were paying me a ridiculous amount of money for me to do whatever, they wanted and they spent that time trying to please me. And so I think like what guys are really want is like for a woman to sort of like gaze upon him sexually and be like, yes, you are valuable. I am sexually aroused by you. I affirm you as a sexual being. And that's not something that
Starting point is 00:13:24 porn can do. Who's the type of person that uses only fans? Is it all male? Is it male and female? Does it have like a component where a couple will watch a cam girl together? Occasionally, but it's quite low. I haven't actually tracked stats for this, but off top my head, I'd say 99% male. Every once in a while I get a couple being like, hey, we watched you together. And then even rarer than that, I get like a lady who's like,
Starting point is 00:13:50 I'm gay and I'm really into you. But it's almost entirely men. It's almost entirely men. I mean, look, that does make a lot of sense. And when did you know that you were on to something, that you could make this really work for you? For Only Hands? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:05 Pretty fast. The thing is, like, I just happened to already be in a position for OnlyFans to work for me. I've been doing sex work for a long time, but I'm not very, I'm not like a top 10 at Charisma skill in person. So if I'm doing a thing where I have to seduce a lot of men by acting like this, like it's quite, I have to figure it out top down. A lot of girls are able to emanate this bottom up.
Starting point is 00:14:26 But with OnlyFans, the strength is not in being charismatic. The strength is in knowing how to market, how to market to men, how to do funnels, how to, like, track conversion. Like most of my job with OnlyFans was not posting to OnlyFans. It was like 80% sitting behind spreadsheets when I was doing it for the time. Doesn't sound that sexy when you say it like that. It's not. And I'm curious, I mean, obviously the one thing we haven't talked about,
Starting point is 00:14:51 and this isn't going to be news to you, but doing sex work online exposes you to a lot of people, and with that comes certain risks. So here you are, you have a factory job. You tried this camming for a night. you make more money than you make at the factory. Did you at that point think, well, like, this has got some serious trade-offs, let's put it like that.
Starting point is 00:15:15 I mean, in contrast to the factory, like, I mean, I was vaguely aware of them, but, like, my current life was so bad I was willing to take them. And in hindsight, it's still worth it. But for a long time, it wasn't that bad because I wasn't super well-known. And it's been getting worse recently. But it does, there are downsides. Like, I'm not saying that, like, every girl, should just go try sex work.
Starting point is 00:15:36 If you're desperate, it's probably better for you because, like, even with the downsides, it's better than, like, a life spent work at the factory. That was really awful. You think sex work is less bad than working in a factory? I mean, it depends on the person. People have different constitutions and tolerance for things. Like, I'm not universally recommending it. But for me and a lot of girls that I know who are in sex work, it was very...
Starting point is 00:15:58 Absolutely. They're like, I can't believe that people are so... This happens all the time. I'm like, oh, I'm in sex work, and people are like, oh, are you okay? like, are you worried about the downsides? You know? And I'm like, nobody ever said that to me when I worked at the factory,
Starting point is 00:16:09 which was way worse for my mental health. I was, like, drinking to cope. And that's like a classic sign of like, oh, this is really hard for you. I've never had a drink to cope with being a sex worker. But I think the thing that people think when they see sex works, one of the downsides, should we say,
Starting point is 00:16:25 is a reputational damage, Eil. Yeah, particularly for a woman. You know, if you then want to move on and you want to leave, because there's going to be a time, I assume, that you're going to want to leave this behind. know if you want to start a family, if you want to get married, all of those things. And you go, that's something you can never truly leave behind, is it? Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:16:44 Although I suspect that when most people are evaluating this, they're not aware of how different cultures can be. Like, I think the thing that you're describing would be true for a pretty large majority of American culture and probably in general, Western culture, and especially non-Western culture. We're going to keep going. Yeah, can't imagine it would go down well in Saudi Arabia. No. Although I'm sure there's plenty of consumers from Saudi Arabia, but anyway, carry on. Yeah. But this is, this is never, legitimately never been a problem in my life because I'm
Starting point is 00:17:14 polyamorous and there's just like a whole subculture, thriving subculture of people who are pretty sexually open and don't mind it. Like in my friend groups, like especially in the Bay when I live there, so people don't give a shit. I'll go up and I'll say, hey, I'm a sex worker on dates and a guy will be like, oh yeah, my ex-girlfriend was a sex worker too. She was, she really liked it. It's a very common conversation. It's just not a thing that registers as an issue. Really? Like, you know, I've always thought I'm very liberal. Maybe I'm just old and conservative, because I can't get my, look, I can't get my head around polyamory. Please explain it to me. Like, what are the benefits? Like, to me, it just looks like needless admin,
Starting point is 00:17:53 complications, frustrations. Is it, is it, what, just explain it to me, please. I don't understand. Well, I mean, you're not wrong, but the full story, I think, is a little bit more nuanced. Yeah. Like, I did a study where I measured, I think, 30,000 people. I asked them about their relationship and then do a survey. I asked them how polyamorous, how monogamous are you on a scale from like one to seven. And then I asked them a whole bunch of questions about the quality of their relationship, how much sex, how long have you been in this relationship. And people who are fully monogamous and fully polyamorous have roughly the same relationship quality.
Starting point is 00:18:28 They've been in relationships for the same amount of time. So it's not like people who are poly are breaking up more. And they were like, yeah, it's still going strong. But people in the middle had much worse ratings. And the problem is if you're going to be selecting from a poly population, most people who aren't monogamous are only slightly not monogamous. They're like a little bit poly. The majority of all people who are not monogamous are in the middle.
Starting point is 00:18:52 So if you're just selecting randomly for the non-monogamous population, it's going to look pretty bad. What does slightly poly mean? Usually a married couple opens their relationship, but they still, they date together. Or married couple opens their relationship, but the person isn't having a full-time relationship is just sex. That's an example. So the question I guess I want to ask is, how do you divorce sex from feelings, or are these people who, by their nature or biologically, able to do that very easily?
Starting point is 00:19:22 Yeah, my guess to some degree it's innate and genetic. A lot of probably people I know myself included don't really process jealousy the same way. Like I remember before I had heard of polyamry I was trying to do this guy when I was a teenager And he went and he was like, I caught him sexting with another girl And I was like, gur, don't do that But I remember not really, I was like, I couldn't summon the genuine anger Because I'm like, what does this have to do with me?
Starting point is 00:19:44 Like he still wants to have sex with me, still loves me. Like I don't understand why this is hurting me in any way And then as soon as I heard what polyamory I was like, oh yeah So my guess is if you're thinking of this closer to like Almost to sexual orientation, I think that this I'm not necessarily accurate, I think this explains a lot closer to what's going on. People are just processing relationships differently.
Starting point is 00:20:03 And if you have a whole bunch of those people in a culture, it goes pretty well. But the problem is you have to be quite dedicated for it to seem to go well, at least in my data. I think a lot of people are doing the partial thing as a way to sort of solve problems that exist in previous relationships. Like if you have an anonymous people going, oh, we're going to try opening it up because we're having these issues. I'm like, if you're opening it up to solve issues, it's not going to solve your relationship. Like now you're just going to be Polly with a terrible relationship. And it's also as well, I think, you know, there's an element of fashion to it where kind of no one wants to be like a straight white dude anymore. Like everybody like wants to be, you know, something fluid or you know, Polly's is something else.
Starting point is 00:20:43 But I just don't think many people are compatible with it. I think most people would really struggle to see their girlfriend go off and get, you know, have sex with another dude. I think to some degree you're right, but there is a thing where, so one, most people kind of aren't monogamous. Anyway, you don't want your partner to go fuck other people, but you want to, right? Like the cheating rates and long-term relationships are really high. Like if you measure cheating rates by the amount of time you've been in the relationship and not by age, which is what most cheating rates do, it seems to be much higher, like 40, 45%. Yeah. It's really depressing.
Starting point is 00:21:20 So most people buy action in a world where we're horribly punished cheating are still cheating at really high rates, which makes a thing that we're not inherently monogamous in the way that we would like aspire to be. This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Well, monogamy people would argue, I mean, Louise Perry, who you've done a debate with, who's a friend of ours, she would argue monogamy is an adaptation for stabilizing society that works very well to do that. I think this is probably true at some points in history. Do you don't think it's true now? My guess is that it is not sustainably true now.
Starting point is 00:21:56 Or rather that, like, there are a lot of things which are good if you only have the capacity to process, like, simple nuance. Like, it's probably if you have, let's see, I'm trying to think of the example. If you have somebody who, like, abused their wife, it's probably good as a social construct who just, like, punish that person. But if we have the capacity as a society to make nuance between, did you do it, like, because you had a brain tumor and we remove the brain tumor, you no longer feel violent urges, then I would say it would be good to make this nuanced distinction. And so, like, I think that a lot of these rules are sort of good for more simplistic versions of society where just cultural we don't have the ability at scale to determine nuance. But I feel like we're kind of
Starting point is 00:22:39 hitting the point in culture where we are able to. And I'm like, the reality is if we are going to look at the nuance, like, monogamy is like stable in some ways. But there's lots of versions of non-monogamy that have been stable throughout history, and a lot of people are deeply unhappy in it. And is there a way that we can figure out to move forward where we're not crushing people's souls? Like, if you look at satisfaction rates, happiness rates in really long-term monogamous relationships, they're really low. And to be fair, they're not great in polyamory either. But I'm saying, like, whatever we're doing, like, whatever conception we're having about relationships, like, I believe that we can figure out a way to move forward and to, like,
Starting point is 00:23:15 figure out how to raise happiness and it's probably not going to look like the thing it used to look like. No, and it's an interesting point. I suppose the one thing is that what you're talking about is essentially you're saying there is room for subcultures to exist within society where people can go and live in the way that's suitable for them. The bit that that leaves out is the raising of children because you may be Polly and you will be with, I suppose, several people over the course of your lifetime.
Starting point is 00:23:43 if you were to have kids, you don't know if you've got a genetically poly predisposed kid and they're being raised in that culture. Just kind of like you were raised in a Christian conservative culture and you had to go and find a different one, right? So it complicates the raising of children because norms that exist, they exclude minority people, but they also give the majority a structure for how to live life, without which people will be lost quite a lot of the time.
Starting point is 00:24:12 Would that be fair to say? I think that this is true, but you could argue should we not have gay people raising kids. And some people do argue this. But they are a minority raising children, and we generally seem to be okay with this. And secondarily, like, my guess is that probably more people are interested in some degree of the polyspectrum than we think. Like, we have such, like, can you remember the last romantic movie you saw that was polyamorous? No. Yeah, they don't exist.
Starting point is 00:24:38 We just don't have monogamous. Give it a couple of years, either. I reckon we're going to see one soon. I would hope so. The thing is, like, we have, like, a lot of, like, gay cinema, but we have nothing for polyamory at all. And we have, like, a whole culture that's structured to show monogamous people, like, how to live.
Starting point is 00:24:56 This is, these are the subtle social rules for how to communicate with each other in a monogamous setting, which I think is great. Like, it really helps it run a lot smoother. And if you, and my guess is if we had some instructions, like some cultural media instructions for, like, how is poly relationship? work. How do you handle jealousy? Because we just don't know this. And I think it would make it go a lot smoother and I think probably a lot more people would feel comfortable trying a poly lifestyle
Starting point is 00:25:21 in a way that actually ends up being successful. But that is slightly besides your point. Personally, so I think it is true, it does seem that poly people raise a lot fewer children. In my data, they have kids at around half the rate of people who reported being monogamous, even controlling for age and relationship length, which is not great. But I know a lot of people, probably people who do raise kids successfully. So. Hey guys, trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show. And for us to keep doing the incredible work that you all love, we need your support. That's the only way we're going to stay independent
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Starting point is 00:26:53 We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear. Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. And, Ela, do you think that this rise of Polly and, you know, these other kind of lifestyle, should we call them, are ways of living? Do you think it's because we're viewing sex more and more as a form of recreation, rather than, in the biblical sense, where it was procreation? I guess, which, I mean, comes from probably birth control, right?
Starting point is 00:27:28 Like, if you're not, we no longer have, like, a God's eternal punishment for having sex. I got sex without the punishment. That's a very, very particular way of describing children. You met my son earlier. I don't consider him God's punishment for sex, I have to say. I'm thinking of like horror houses back in the day without birth control where all these children are running around. You don't have the societal capacity to care for them.
Starting point is 00:27:53 This is what I mean about. Children are lovely. I would like to have kids. But in this sense, yeah. But it's divorced because of birth control. Yeah. That's an interesting point. What I was going to ask you about coming back to,
Starting point is 00:28:07 sex work is one of the things I read or watched you say, which I found very interesting, was Camming and Onlyfans, you said, was quite unhealthy in terms of your well-being, but being an escort was much better. Yeah, very much. I think that is incredibly counterintuitive to a lot of people. Because I suppose because of the attachments they have to what sex means, I suppose they would see it as unwanted sex. and therefore if you can at least not have it with another person, then it's good.
Starting point is 00:28:41 But you clearly have a completely different experience of it. Well, we have a norms where people are expected to have unwanted sex all the time in long-term monogamous marriages. And I wouldn't argue that's necessarily bad. Like, maybe to some degree there's a duty where, as a wife, you should keep your husband satisfied because if he can only get sex from one place. And typically it's the main one, sex from the women, although it's not always. So I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:02 Like the concept of having to have sex that you're just not that into is like, sure, people do this. have been doing this for all of human history, man. It's like, but yeah. And by people, you mean women. Mostly. Mostly, yeah. But I was also really surprised to find this with the sex work thing, too.
Starting point is 00:29:17 Like, it was after I did escorting and I went back to Onlyfans and I was like, it just feels dehumanizing, like in both ways. I feel like I'm dehumanizing my customers and my customers are dehumanizing me when I'm online. But in person, like, to the degree that I can safely and comfortably feel love for my client, I allow myself to do so. I really like feeling like a part of me really cares about them in that moment.
Starting point is 00:29:41 And that's the thing that I just can't experience with OnlyFans because it's somebody on the other side of a text box and you're communicating often asynchronously. But like in person, you get to like have that one-on-one thing. Like my entire being right now is like having a genuine connection with another individual. And then that you can like touch souls a little bit.
Starting point is 00:30:01 And I love every, like that this happened for every client that I've had in the past. That's just not so much of the only fans. It's interesting. I have a couple of questions about that. But the first one is I think what you're describing, oddly enough, and I didn't expect this to come up in a conversation with a sex worker, is actually the human paradigm in the 21st century,
Starting point is 00:30:22 which is we're all connecting in ways that are fake through avatars. And actually, we all crave a real human connection in meat space. Yeah. And I found it made me feel better, too. Yeah. So the question that I was going to ask, though, is and this is coming from a normy place, so I hope it doesn't sound judgmental or whatever,
Starting point is 00:30:43 but I think a lot of people will want to know this, is like you can't be attracted to every guy that wants to pay you money to have sex with you, right? That's not possible, I'm guessing, right? Yeah, well, I'm not attracted to most men. Right. Yeah. Thank you for making that clip.
Starting point is 00:31:02 But you know what I mean, though? It's like you talk about having that connection and almost feeling a love for somebody that you're not even attracted to. How does that happen? I can't tell how much I'm a normal woman or a weird woman when it comes to sexual response. But I just, like, my vagina just responds with lubrication when there's a new penis. It doesn't matter if I'm attracted to them or not. So it worked fine. But like to me, I'm not processing, like, is this guy hot?
Starting point is 00:31:33 to me there's just like dude it's like a generic like dude form and I just like have sex it's like giving them a massage I don't know it's like do it have to be attracted to someone to give them a massage it's like giving them a massage or like yeah or doing therapy it's like I don't have to find you hot to do therapy no I get it but but sex is different surely I'm yeah this is why I can't tell if I'm similar to most women or not no you're not similar to most women I can tell you that but a lot of other sex because I've talked to it's like I don't know yeah well this is this is why I don't know yeah well this is
Starting point is 00:32:03 is where we're getting to is like I think there's probably a minority of women who are able to process sex in a very different way to the to other women don't have to call it normal you can just call it the majority or whatever where sex is a tool for creating long-term attachment to create security for the for the potential creation of life that then is protected and fed etc right But Yeah, it's a, sorry, I was just going to say So, I mean, okay, right
Starting point is 00:32:40 I guess the question I want to ask is Isn't sex more than that? Isn't sex about connection? Ultimately, isn't it about, you know, trying to create a bond? And therefore, I mean, that's what I feel sex is. But if that is the case, then don't you catch feelings, as the kids would say, from your clients? Not really. Not like, it takes a lot more than sex for me to catch feelings.
Starting point is 00:33:10 Like, I have to like the person. Like, we have to have a connection in ways that aren't just about sex. Sex can help. But there's an example where, so I used to throw naked parties. And people before they would come would be like, oh, God, this is going to be really weird. What if I get a boner? What if I'm staring at boobs the whole time? It was really nerve-wracking.
Starting point is 00:33:29 Then they would come and then often report, I'm actually shocked by how quickly my brain recontextualizes nudity. I'm here, and there's just a bunch of bodies, and it's, like, somehow not sexual. I didn't expect that this could happen because we've never been exposed to nudity in, like, wide non-sexual context before. And I think that there's something like this going out with sex.
Starting point is 00:33:47 Like, if you've only ever experienced sex in context where the narrative is that this is, like, a highly important connective thing, then that's what you're going to expect. But, like, weirdly, if you just... just kind of start experiencing sex in other contexts, it works there too? Like, exposure to the naked parties didn't make nudity less sexy in other contexts. As I assume, doctors still can get aroused fucking their wives, even if they look at a bunch of vaginas.
Starting point is 00:34:10 But it just expands the ways that sex can be meaningful to you instead of keeping it narrow. Okay. So the other question is the biggest threat to women is men. And have you ever worried that... you were putting yourself as a woman in a vulnerable position by doing this type of work. Definitely. It's like, oddly, like the internet stuff has turned out to be a little bit more threatening. There's a guy he showed at my house and tried to murder me last year, which was pretty scary.
Starting point is 00:34:44 I can imagine. Yeah, that's awful. So, and was it, I mean, obviously we don't want to go too much into detail because we don't want to give this person publicity, but was it former client, former, no idea. complete rando. Never seen him before. He had never tried to contact me. The guy just showed up at my house just as an FBI officer and told me to get in the car, so I was under arrest, which I believed him because he don't expect. But it turned out he had brought like a garote and hunting knife and stuff. Wow. And luckily I did not get in the car, but. Yeah. And so, and people tracked this person, and obviously the police tracked this person down.
Starting point is 00:35:20 Yeah, he's in jail. Yeah, and they have no idea how he came to discover who you are, why he believed these things. Just random internet. But they found, they told me that they found the information of other sex workers in his house.
Starting point is 00:35:34 So my current theory is that he was just targeting sex workers, basically. Because when I was doing research, you sound like you do very well out of this, very, very well. I was reading like $100,000 a month,
Starting point is 00:35:48 OnlyFans, $3,000 an hour for like a session or whatever it may be called. You're coming across very comfortable. Yeah, I know, mate. I know. Yeah, I know.
Starting point is 00:36:02 But I guess do you not feel like you put yourself in danger every time that you do this? And I guess is that not a concern, a worry that you, especially if you don't need the money anymore? Yeah, but I would rather, like, die being who I am than live. trying to hide. Like, if I could go over and be like, you, oh, you're no longer at risk from murder, but you are not very open about who you are on the internet. Are you trying to hide? Like, I would rather, I'd rather take the scary road. And do you still do escorting? So, I suppose the question is, given that you, as Francis says, you do very well out of only fans, you must enjoy escorting. Yeah. Clearly, right? Which I was surprised.
Starting point is 00:36:55 to find, yeah. I think that's really the core of where I think a normal, I don't use it in any judgmental sense, it's just like a mainstream, whatever the fucking, I hate this world where you can't just say what you mean. Yeah. I think the disconnect between a normal person and what you're saying is contained in that thing, which is you enjoy that. You enjoy that work.
Starting point is 00:37:20 Yeah. I turns out that I like sex with new people. It's just really nice. And it's difficult to do for me in that, like, I feel kind of awkward and confused about how to initiate sex with another person. But if they're paying for it, then it's clear. Oh, you show up and the whole thing is laid out for you. So you kind of, you would be doing this anyway, but you're just getting paid for it. Is that what you're saying?
Starting point is 00:37:45 To some degree. If I were doing this for free, which I do, well, I have a survey where people can apply to have sex with me. And then if they're, like, highly sexually compatible, then I contact them. You've really taken the admin side of this to the next level, haven't you? I don't think you like sex. I think you like admin. I think I like spreadsheet. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:04 I think what gets you off is Excel, let's be honest. Yeah. Yeah, so you have the survey and you have sex with some of the people who are highly compatible with you. What does highly compatible mean? If they're into the same weird kinks that I'm into. Okay. And this was going to be my other question, which is I imagine the people who pay to have sex
Starting point is 00:38:22 with the sex worker, they have an idea of how they, they want that to go? Yeah, generally it's quite vanilla. Really? Yes, super vanilla. They just, they pay money to have sex in the missionary position, basically. I mean, so I'm not saying that they don't have fetishes. I'm saying that in general, the way that escorting is structured is that you're not supposed
Starting point is 00:38:42 to discuss what you're into beforehand, because for legal risk reasons. There's a lot of things about the fact that escorting is illegal that makes it, like, dangerous and hard. Like, for example, I did get assaulted once when I was escorting, couldn't go to the police. But that aside, yeah, so you're not allowed to basically talk about sex acts in advance. And so it's quite hard for people to locate and negotiate people who are open to various specific things. So I have met a lot of people who maybe have preferences for fetishes, but they tend to be kind of mild and they tend to be shy about asking for them. Ayla, we've had a feminist on the show called Julie Bindle, who is a fantastic writer and thinking.
Starting point is 00:39:22 and we both love Julian, both big fans. She has campaigned for a long time to make prostitution illegal and to criminalize the men who seek out prostitutes. What's the other side? Why should prostitution and escorting? Why should it be legal?
Starting point is 00:39:40 Yeah, if you talk to any active escort, almost all of them will say that they would disagree with making it illegal. Yeah. So, like, usually when people advocate that, I'm like, sounds like you have either not talk to escorts or you have talked to like a small percentage that left it and had a bad time. But there's a whole bunch that are, this is your life's work.
Starting point is 00:40:01 And if you talk to us, you would find out that man, I would like to see men and then not get punished for it. And I would like to see men and not have them get punished for it. The Nordic model is also pretty bad. And like the incentive structure is like one of the ways that you get treated better as an escort is if you're able to like charge more and basically have more bargaining power. If you increase supply and reduce demand, this makes it so that the supply side has less bargaining power, which means that you're more likely to take safety risks in order to, like, and charge less money. And in my data, charging less money is correlated with higher rates of being offended against or like having bad things happen to you, like being assaulted.
Starting point is 00:40:44 So if you are making it illegal for the men but not the women, you're going to have a higher supply of women and fewer men, which just basically makes the power imbalance pretty bad and makes it way more prone to having bad things happen. But yeah, I'm not asking for much, I would just like to go to the police when someone assaults me and not have them arrest me because I accepted money for something that a lot of other people do for free.
Starting point is 00:41:07 Right, and I do find it upsetting, Ailer, I'm going to be honest with you, that you talk about being assaulted in such a casual manner. You know, it's, I, that's just a natural. human response for me. I'm just being honest with you. It's really not great. I agree. It's unpleasant. I would rather have been assaulted than worked at the factory, to be clear. But also, like, the fact that I was assaulted could have
Starting point is 00:41:33 been prevented if it were not illegal. If prostitution was criminalized, the thing that got me into that place. Yeah. Because what happened is, like, if you can vet men properly beforehand, if you're able to have, like, more resources poured into excellent blacklists for women to share, which right now that you have to operate in the shadows because this is a aiding prostitution. So, like, if you decriminalize prostitution and then
Starting point is 00:41:59 women will have the tools to make themselves safer, and it will dramatically decrease the risk of assault. And is there any particular country that, you know, gets it right as far as you're concerned, or does better, is better to the model that you would like to see? I don't know. I haven't talked to enough sex workers from those countries.
Starting point is 00:42:16 Yeah. Which is the way that I would determine. I would go to the sex workers and be like, how safe. do you feel? How much do you feel like you're getting your money taken away from you by like coercive brothels, for example? So I don't know. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website? Because if you do, then EasyDNS is a company for you. Easy DNS is the perfect domain name registrar provider and web host for you. They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancelled culture, de-platform attacks, or overzealous government agencies.
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Starting point is 00:43:18 Use our promo code, which is all. also triggered and get 50% off the initial purchase. Sign up for their newsletter, Access of Easy, which tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. We've talked about escorting, we've talked about only fans. I mean, we kind of haven't talked about the porn industry, which is the making the movies, etc. Did that side of it ever appeal to you?
Starting point is 00:43:43 And if not, why not? It didn't because you make a lot less money. Okay. For a lot less control. I think like the advent of like to some degree camming, but especially only fans, has just ripped the power away from the like the centralized industries, which I think is kind of good. It's like the new media of porn, right?
Starting point is 00:43:59 It's like YouTube taking over the TV. That makes a lot of sense. I suppose, you know, I'm just curious asking all these questions from a normally perspective because I think a lot of people watching will have them. The thing that I think a lot of people would say is that sex is I mean sacred makes me sound like a religious nut
Starting point is 00:44:22 but that's how a lot of people will feel about it whether they're religious or not a lot of people feel that sex has a meaning beyond the physical act and Louise Perry who as I say you've debated before she gives us example of if we just treated sex like any other service there would be absolutely no reason why
Starting point is 00:44:41 it would be offensive for your boss whose secretary you are to say well if you give me a blowjob I'll give you a raise, right? Because it's just like giving a massage, like you said. Why wouldn't, do you see what I'm saying? Do we consider offensive to be like, if you give me a massage, I'll give you a raise? Only because there's a sexual dimension to it. If I said to my secretary, if you make my coffee on time every week and it's exactly the way that I want to, I'll give you a raise. I mean, I'm Jewish, so I wouldn't do that. Like, if you're like, if you wash my car, I'll give you a
Starting point is 00:45:14 race. Like, that starts to feel a little bit weirder and exploitative. because it's outside the job description. Like, I don't think we... Okay, if I have a PA and I say to him or her, in our case it's him, can you go and take my car to the car wash? You could argue that's within his job description. Let's pick something that is clearly not within the job description. Okay.
Starting point is 00:45:35 Can you watch my kids? Like, in the same way of blowjob. Watch my kids. Right, that would feel a little weird. As weird as having someone a blowjob? Well, I think it's just like the sense of exploitation that we have, have, like, oh, I have power over you, and I will dangle money if you do something, like, personal for me.
Starting point is 00:45:52 Okay. But what I'm saying is something else, which is, if I was to say to my PA, watch my kids for an hour and you get a raise, I don't think that in society and under the law and in all sorts of other important ways, that would be treated anything like me offering my secretary a raise for a blow job. Yeah, I agree. So I think there's two things going on that I think this analogy is conflating. and one is like exploitation of power
Starting point is 00:46:20 but the other is like it is clear that a lot of people have a lot of loaded feelings around blow jobs if you were like hey I have a job description in which I want you to assist me and also part of the job is give me blow jobs and somebody signed up for that people might be horrified but I think that we should allow this as a society like two consenting adults
Starting point is 00:46:39 deciding that they are want to voluntarily enter this agreement let's get the job advert out right now I just realized I've got my job my hands that looks dreadful that looks dreadful and we probably need to cut it this has not been my no no this is going in this is going in the one thing that we're not acknowledging here a laa and i think we need to is there's a fly on your head yeah there's a fly on my head this looks like an episode filmed in africa yeah yeah exactly i don't know what's happened with the flies anyway anyway so the question that i want to ask is this why i am literally surrounded by flies i've got one
Starting point is 00:47:15 and I've killed one. We can cut that. You're Barack Obama. Do you remember when he killed the fly? Really? Yeah, everyone thought he was a real man. Yeah. There you can. They did. He killed the fly and was like, get that. Show it on camera. Show that I'm a man in charge of my own destiny. I can kill an insect.
Starting point is 00:47:29 Obviously, all the Buddhists have switched off now. But what we're not acknowledging here, Eila, is the power dynamic. Yeah, she did acknowledge it. But I don't think that we really delved into it. Do you see what I mean? there is a very, very real power dynamic, and we've seen it again and again. And we use the example of PAs, but there's other industries, particularly the performing arts industries, for instance, where this has been in existence for decades, it's not centuries,
Starting point is 00:48:00 and it's deeply exploitative. Yeah, I generally don't, like, I find the world exploitative to be, like, a little bit confused and loaded, but I agree that, like, sex is a very loaded thing that a lot of men want, And a lot of women are like, garr, don't have it with me. And so if you introduce this thing with, like, really intense incentives into anything, it's going to, like, warp things around it. People are going to be like, oh, maybe if I have sex with my boss, he'll give me a raise. Or, you know, the boss will be like, oh, maybe she'll have sex with me to get a raise.
Starting point is 00:48:31 I agree that this is, like, a thing that warps incentives. Okay, listen, I've got a way of adding to the example we were working with earlier that might be helpful. Let's say I go to my secretary. And I say to her, your job description currently is to make coffee, to run my diary, to book appointments, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. However, you currently get paid, let's say, $50,000 a year, let's say, right? I'm going to double your salary if we modify your job description to include the following sex acts. You think that's a perfectly reasonable thing of an employer to offer an employee? I think it should be allowed, yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:13 Like, because she can say no, right? She can, but I imagine most people's reaction to that sort of proposal would be one of intense horror. Oh. I don't have that horror reaction. I can tell. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting that you don't have that reaction
Starting point is 00:49:33 because also as well, the woman tends to... Sex for a woman is far more fraught than sex or a woman. a man. You can lose a lot more. You have more risk of catching an STD. There's a potential for pregnancy, et cetera, et cetera. There's a reputational damage as well. So... You would say take away the reputational damage, I'm guessing, right? I would say what? For most people, there is reputational damage. Yes. I agree. Because, you know, if somebody does that and you know it's you know and you your argument is look these are two consenting adults and they come to this agreement who are we to make a comment well we all know that society and by society
Starting point is 00:50:21 I mean women don't really see it like that because there will be a lot of women who will actually yeah a lot of men as well who will just say look this is disgusting and I know how borrower and this person is a you know and they will say all these awful things yeah that's true There's a lot of, it's very intense stigma against sex work. But I think it's interesting. So, for example, seeking arrangement is this, are you familiar with this website? It's a website where it's not escorting and it's not quite dating. It's like you can be a sugar daddy.
Starting point is 00:50:50 And like, so it's typically for wealthy your men to find poor women. And then you take them out to dinner and you buy them gifts in exchange for an arrangement, typically involving sex. And this is not prostitution because it's like dating. This happens all the time. That doesn't watch for me. But like normal dating, a lot of normal dating culture abides by these rules unspoken. Like girls want a rich man.
Starting point is 00:51:14 Rich man fantasies are like everywhere. The 50 shades of gray is a billionaire. Like Twilight, he's a super like wealthy old person or something. But I'm saying that like in general, the ancient exchange is like a man provides financial stability for a woman and she provides him a child or bribe proxy sex. Yeah. And I'm saying to some extent this is always taking place. you obfuscate it, the more you're saying, oh, I'm not exchanging sex for money, I'm exchanging money for some other things, like financial support. It's very trad. I'm saying very trad things.
Starting point is 00:51:47 This is not crazy. Then people are much more willing to abide by it. What's interesting is that the seeking arrangement prices are much lower than the escort prices. Like if you're a seeking arrangement girl, you can charge maybe 50% if you were being an escort. And this, I think we can see as the premium on explicitness. So if you're a girl, doing this thing normally, but you say explicitly, I'm going to just have sex, you get to charge a lot more because fewer women are willing to do that. So I think, like, the question is not, are women willing to exchange sex for value, but rather the horror is at explicitly saying that they're doing that. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that is a very trad thing to say in many ways. And many a
Starting point is 00:52:29 comedian has done a bit on this, obviously. But moving on, I'm curious, you also do a lot of research with the stuff that you do. And I was curious if you had any insight. I mean, 50 Shades of Grey was like by far in a way the best book, the best selling, but not the best. I'm not personally endorsing it. Good Freudian slip there. We've covered ourselves in glory on this one, mate.
Starting point is 00:52:52 In this interview, we look even worse than the Theo Von interview. Yeah. Anyway, what I was going to say is it was immensely popular and it feels to me like within that there's some kind of social social taboo about naming whatever that power dynamic tends to be between men and women. What is your insight into why that book was and movie was so popular and what sort of is behind all of that? I mean, it's just porn for women.
Starting point is 00:53:19 Like, this is... No, but the narrative is, though, that evil pornography has created the demand in men for rough sex, which is horrific to women. and this is kind of like male exploitation. You laughed when I said that. Why did you laugh? It's just, like, there's a lot of things I can agree debates about. Oh, is sex work bad or good for society at large?
Starting point is 00:53:45 I'm like, this is like a reasonable thing to inquire. But like when it comes to the porn thing, it's just one of the things that I find to be so lacking any evidence. The evidence is all to the opposite, and there's quite a bit of it. Like, my research and a lot of established research is so that women have way more interest in like violent rough power dynamics. and men do. Significant, like, it's just clear.
Starting point is 00:54:05 It's like one of the most established things, which is why I'm like, I don't understand why this narrative is so popular. So, I'll sorry to interrupt. I really want to hear the rest of it, but just to spell it out, and what you're saying is the evidence is, in your opinion,
Starting point is 00:54:20 that women are more interested in rough sex than men? Very much. I did one survey. It was both of my own audience and also paid random sample. of people asking to predict what you think the other person would like in bed. And then for men to predict to women, what do you think the woman would like in bed?
Starting point is 00:54:40 And I listed a whole bunch of things. And then I asked women, assuming that the guy is well-intentioned, like he actually thinks you're going to like it, assuming he's safe, whatever. What things would you respond well to if he tried them in bed? And so we get to see like a list of like what guys think ladies like and what girls say they actually want. But then I checked it by how much porn do you want. And the more porn a man watched, the more accurate he was at guessing what women
Starting point is 00:55:03 wanted in bed. And the big difference, that the biggest difference was choking between what women reported they wanted to happen and what men thought that women would be okay with. This is just like one small study. There's like a whole bunch more. And the evolutionary rationale for this, I'm guessing, would be that a lot of women have DNA. I mean, a lot of women historically were in situations where it was advantageous to be turned on by somebody who was strong and powerful. And quite often, actually a rapist, right? Yeah, like, I mean, if you look at like chimps, for example, their whole sexual world is full of violence
Starting point is 00:55:40 and like aggression and mate guarding and like the males making sure the females aren't, don't go off alone with another man and like threatening them. So it seems like pretty possible that we have something like this in our own history. But there's other questions like it's possible that it's a falling testosterone thing because there's some evidence to suggest
Starting point is 00:55:57 that testosterone is correlated with sexual dominance. And if everybody's testosterone is dropping, then we would see women more submissive and men less interested in dominance is a possibility. Wow. There's also a thing where as a female, like maybe in history, if you reproduce with like a very aggressive man,
Starting point is 00:56:14 your sons are going to be more likely to reproduce. Like you're going to give birth to like more like, I'll say rapy, but like more like, you know, dominant. More like kind of aggressive kind of males, which are going to have greater reproductive success. Yeah, so the history is not always flattering, but... So you're doing your sex, research, which is very interesting. So, I mean, the billion-dollar question is, what is it that women
Starting point is 00:56:38 want from men on the whole? What is it that they want from a partner? What is it that they want, on average, from a sexual partner? It depends a lot. It depends a lot in the woman. Like, a lot of women are submissive, but this is, like, roughly 60 percent, and it depends on how you define submissive. There's, like, different way, but roughly 60 percent. So that's, like, barely more than half. So we have a whole 40 percent that aren't interested in that at all. So, like, just say, like, one generalization is going to be quite hard. Yeah. But I think generally competence is pretty valued.
Starting point is 00:57:07 Competence and attentiveness and power. Like, if you can establish yourself as a sexually desirable mate, like a lot of other women want you. But basically, if you could just be a romance novel protagonist, honestly. Yeah, a lot of other ladies want you. But you are kind of non-reactive to women. What does that mean non-reactive? Sort of like you
Starting point is 00:57:30 in the same way that like being an attractive woman is being very reactive to the man Like he wants to know that he has like the ability To like change your mental state And like positive and negative ways Make you laugh. Yeah like you yeah like you tease you and you're like have a strong response Yeah And this indicates like vulnerability and I don't know like pliableness
Starting point is 00:57:49 But like what women want is basically the reverse You want like a man who is not like super reactive to you You wants to be like steady and strong and sort of stoic in a way. It would be very common. Really? And normally women always say sense of humor. Is that a thing or is that just a myth? I know, that's a thing. Just demonstrating the competence and intelligence. Yeah, but the thing I would suggest with humor is humor frequently is a coping mechanism. It's a coping mechanism. It's normally, you look at every stand-up comedian that I've ever met.
Starting point is 00:58:23 They're all ADHDed out of their brain, including me. So, like, how does that work, you know? Are you, do you use this as a coping mechanism? Yeah, absolutely. I see. Yeah. I wonder if there's a difference between comedians and normal people, though. Who are just funny. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:58:38 There is. Yeah. Comedians are fucking mental. Yeah. That's the difference. Dude, I know, one of the most emotionally traumatized clients I ever have as a comedian. I'm pausing for an extra time waiting for you to say his name, but I didn't be expected to come. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:58:54 That's interesting. Okay. That would get a lot more clicks earlier, you know, right? Yeah. We're going to do a little poll to see who we think it is. Yeah. But so let's look at it in terms of a kind of almost like a league table, as it were, and unscientific as that term is.
Starting point is 00:59:14 So what is the thing that women desire the most on average? Is it the stoicness? Is it dependability? Is it the competence? Is it? This is like asking, like, what is the most central feature to being a, woman. It's like, oh, we can name some things, but like, it's a really fraught topic. Yeah. I think, like, generally, power is pretty close. And that can manifest in a lot of different
Starting point is 00:59:39 ways. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And for very good evolutionary reasons. In terms of your research, what I'd love to know is, what do you think are some of the most misunderstood and also just, like, we don't talk about the truth about sex dynamics, men and women? Like, what are the things that people pretend that are true that are not true, pretend aren't true that are true? Do you see what I'm getting that? In set? Oh, probably the origin of fetishes. Oh, tell us about that. Well, so, well, fetishes in general. Like, we don't have good research at all about how sexuality works. I mean, we know a couple of clues here and there, like maybe hormones cause being gay
Starting point is 01:00:18 or something. But beyond that, we just don't have a clue. And the contrast of how much we know versus the amount of very intense cultural supposed knowledge. Like you'll have people very confidently making claims about like, oh, well, you know, you're into like sexual, like rape play because you're abuse as a child, which technically is correct, but you don't know that. There's just a lot of like, oh, you know, you're into foot fetishes because you're exposed to feet as a kid. Won't we all? Exactly. Exposed to feet. I mean, I saw quite a lot of feet.
Starting point is 01:00:51 I don't have a foot fetish. But also as well, what is a fetish? Because in this incredibly polarized time, you know, if a guy, for instance, likes more sexually attracted to, I don't know, Asian women, that is seen as a fetish, or is that a sexual preference? Yeah, I don't think like these words are, like, we can use words to refer to things, but there's no hard line. And I think in general, like, when people are, like, researching fetishes and parapherias,
Starting point is 01:01:19 I don't think those terminologies are very useful. All we have is just sexual interests. and some are more common than others. We have a spectrum, and we have a spectrum of, like, how taboo is your sexual interest. And we can, like, use a word to refer to, like, well, kind of the fetishes at this far end are maybe more fetishy or something.
Starting point is 01:01:35 I saw a great meme about that, which is, like, it's three normal boxes, like guys who like boobs, guy who likes butts, guy who likes somebody else, and then feet, and there's like this guy. I think you've seen that. Fucking brilliant. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:47 So how do fetishes develop? You were saying earlier. We don't know. Don't know. This is one of the things I'm trying to find in my research, and it's like a weird amount of stuff doesn't correlate that you would think do correlate. Like, for example, being spanked in childhood does correlate with interest in spanking in adulthood, but only barely. Like, you wouldn't be able to predict it very much. And this is, like, really counter to a lot of narratives about how, like, spanking fetishes develop, for example.
Starting point is 01:02:14 It's really weird. Yeah. Although, one of the strange, I need to look at the, I have a lot of data that I'm, like, slowly working through. so I've kind of done some glancing. So it's taken out a grain of salt. But it seems that there's an unusual relationship in childhood and fetishes for trans men specifically, but not trans women or straight or cis people.
Starting point is 01:02:35 Like, as in things in childhood correlate a lot more with fetishes in adulthood, but only for that category. That's really interesting. Why is it that a foot fetish is a pretty mainstream thing, yet it has such a strong... Like, if I knew someone had a foot fetish, I'll be honest with you. I think they're a little bit weird.
Starting point is 01:02:53 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, foot finishes are actually relatively uncommon given how aware we are of them. Yeah. It's like, but it's... They've got great PI. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:03 It's like, you know, there's a... And we don't know, this is a rumor. You know, Tarantino has a foot fetish. And then you look at every single one of his movies. And then there is like, you know, there's the toes sucking or whatever it may be in his movies. And you go, I kind of... And maybe this is me.
Starting point is 01:03:21 being prim and proper. Like, there's a slight judgmental air to it. Do you know what I mean? Do you feel the same about, like, gay people, for example? No. No, but I just think foot fetishers are wrong. What about, like, fuzzy handcuffs? Sorry?
Starting point is 01:03:34 Fuzzy handcuffs. Like, somebody's like, I really want to be in fuzzy handcuffs. No. Okay. I just like trying to find, like, where the line is. Yeah. What about pee? Somebody wants to pee on you.
Starting point is 01:03:43 Sorry. That's fucking weird. Okay, that's too far. That's weird. Yeah. Okay. What else somebody is really into, like, braids? They really,
Starting point is 01:03:51 If the girl puts her hair and braids, they're just like, that's really hot. Is that a sex fetish? That's just a hairstyle, surely. Anything is a fetish. Well, look, I kind of get, like, if you're having sex and you pull the brakes. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you see what... You can pull...
Starting point is 01:04:09 Look, this conversation is going the wrong way fast, because I was about to say you can pull hair too. Anyway, no, braids is not weird. Peeing, weird, feet weird. Okay. Feet weird. Feet weird. It's just weird. And you ask me and like,
Starting point is 01:04:25 but you go, right, let's look at this logically. Right, do you like boobs? Yes. Do you like bums? Yes. So what's a difference? There is nothing. There is no difference.
Starting point is 01:04:33 Between like bums and feet? Well, it's just a part of the human body. You're attracted to a part of the human body. Some people are attracted to that part of the human body. So is the toenail. Yeah. Doesn't mean toenail fetish as a normal. It's fucking weird.
Starting point is 01:04:47 By weird, you mean abnormal. Yeah. But most fetishes are pretty abnormal. Yeah. And it's just like, I don't think I'd trust someone if they had a foot fetish. No. I go wouldn't! You should be able to ask that on an employee survey.
Starting point is 01:05:01 You probably know a lot of friends who have a foot fetish. Say again? You probably know many people, many of your friends probably have a foot fetish, but have not told you. Well, if you are, you're no longer a friend. Yeah, unsubscribe. Definitely. Imagine we come back to the channel, say half. Turns out we just attracted a legion of foot fetishes.
Starting point is 01:05:19 Well, Eilet, is it? It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for letting us sort of prod and find stuff out. It's been really cool to chat with you. I feel like my virginity has grown back at time, so thank you for that. Yeah. No, but it's been really fun. The question, last question we always ask is, before we go to our locals where we ask you questions from our audience, and if there's any foot fetish people, you're getting deleted. Unless you're a top-level patron, in which case, welcome. Yeah, exactly. Will you be posting photos of your feed for your patrons? We should do that, shouldn't we?
Starting point is 01:05:50 Do you know what? Imagine we could make way more money than we do now, just selling pictures of our feet. I mean, we're not women, so it wouldn't happen. No, it wouldn't. Imagine that.
Starting point is 01:05:59 Imagine if, like, Rogan contacted us like next year. It's like, hey, lads, you want to come back on the pod? Turns out, mate, we're making way more money sending pictures of feet. Feetanometry.
Starting point is 01:06:08 Yeah. Anyway, Ella, before we go to locals where we'll ask you questions from our audience, the last question we always finished with is an opportunity for you to basically say whatever you think,
Starting point is 01:06:17 which is, what's the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that you think really should be? I'm trying to think of what we already covered. Maybe like a modification on some things I've said. For my perspective, having been in sex work for 10 years, in the last, I would say two to four years,
Starting point is 01:06:36 there's been a change on the internet, like a prudish chilling effect. There's been a backlash basically against sexuality that's starting to shut down what is allowed to be posted where that I find to be quite tragic. a lover of sexuality. And this is, I haven't seen people talking about this. Like the Neo-Trad.
Starting point is 01:06:55 So tell us more then, because what are you talking about specifically? Just like, the things that are allowed on the internet just aren't anymore. Like, on OnlyFans, you can't do bondage material. You used to be able to, like, they've taken down a whole bunch of fetish options from websites. A whole bunch of sex subreddits got banned from Reddit like a couple of years ago. Anything that's, like, abnormal. The sex web credits, by the way, the niche ones got all. also banned with like a lot of things dedicated to trans discourse on both sides.
Starting point is 01:07:25 So whatever sort of prudish effect is Cummings is stilling like, oh, anything that's like too edgy or too inappropriate might make people feel offended. These are just getting whitewashed off the internet. Like duck, dot go, for example, used to be the go-to porn engine. It's supposed to be the uncensored one. You can't search porn on there anymore. It's non-porn. So basically like sexuality, especially niche sexuality and especially like edgy ones
Starting point is 01:07:49 that most people are little offended by are slowly getting censored off of everywhere and nobody cares because it's porn. With trans discourse, people fight about it and then we have a whole culture war, but nobody's willing to stand up publicly for the weird niche sex stuff and I find that really tragic.
Starting point is 01:08:08 Actually, I was going to ask you about trans, but we'll ask you about that in the local section. So thank you so much for coming on. Head on over to locals where we continue the conversation. What do you make of the whole trans conversation? session.

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