To take a job on a phone sex line?

[myphonesexdrama]

Name changer.

I'm skint, on my own with dd who is at school but has a lot of health issues, misses school sometimes and has a lot of appointments to go to.

Finding work to fit in with this is proving bloody hard, I'm not highly qualified!

So I've been browsing work at home things after realising Avon and all that guff isn't for me I came across a company looking for female phone sex chat line operators. Big company, done a lot of googling research and they are legit.

So called them, filled out my application and was offered a start. So logged on last night at 10pm for 3 hours. It was fine. Most of the guys were really nice, some shy, some not, none were creepy! I am an open minded person anyway, and very chatty. I found it very easy to be honest and in those 3 hours I made £12.80 which isn't mega bucks but considering I was sitting in my lounge watching a movie between calls I don't think it's too bad.

I'm thinking I can log on whilst dd is at school and bring in some extra cash.

Will need to register as self employed etc which I will do.

I need to get in touch with them today to let them know what I want to do.

I don't think I could tell anyone though!!

Maybe because sexual and other kinds of abuse against women are still very prevalent problems today.

And it perhaps perpetuates the idea amongst men that women can be used like this.

I don't believe men act in isolation when they get on chat lines. It's a symptom of their wider attitudes to women and will spread into their everyday relationships.

So that's why I don't think the general comparison with other menial jobs

... works exactly.

But on a personal level, I don't think it's that different to other menial jobs for a lot of people.

Yes, I can see that it perpetuates a cycle. I can see how it contributes to shit attitudes. On a personal level, I don't think it has to be degrading.

And, like I said, there are so many ways that we all keep the patriarchy going, I'm never sure why people pick on sex in particular.

FromEsme - i totally agree with you. I have worked in customer services and have been treated with contempt by customers, both men AND women (what about the sisterhood there i ask ya!).

I DO have a problem with this job being so low paid though and this put me off, because i just could not be arsed when i looked into it.

I think mumsy blouse makes an excellent point about women having to have low paid jobs though, its is a separate issue though i think. As someone who aspires to be a top scientific researcher and is struggling due to having left the field to be a full time mum - i am having to scrub floors to support myself whilst waiting to hear about funding that may get me back on the career ladder. There IS a definate lack of women at that level in science and that makes me and . It is not the issue that is being discussed here. I don't think anyone here who has considered working on or is working on a sex line is doing it as a career move, more a of a stop-gap. It should be better paid though, absolutely. I don't now how much the poor saps are charged per hour but i woudl have thought the women doing the donkey work as it were, are not seeing much of it. THIS is the problem.

If you do be wary and know your boundaries and stick to them. My friend did it and it got to her in the end many customers were wanting her to talk about things they were unlikely to get a prostitute to do and some of it is very degrading

Sure, you are right, Esme, sex is just one aspect of patriarchy.

Quite a major one, though and a particular area of vulnerability for women, which is why I think it does raise strong emotions.

Did you see that thread recently about how many mumsnetters had been sexually assaulted in some way or other? Was quite shocking how many had been affected, and also how many had previously thought it was low-level, common-or-garden stuff.

And yes, great points by Mumsyblouse, which is why I don't feel comfortable judging women who do this kind of work.

I still hate it all the same. Such a difficult line to draw.

I think that's the thing though, while you can acknowledge that it is not ideal you have to accept that lots of women don't have endless choices and it is far from 'sisterly' to attack them for doing such things.

FromEsme I do agree that anything sex related seems to get extra scrutiny, I think it is partially about peoples attitudes to sex and attitudes to women enjoying sex. Sometimes it seems like sex+women = degradation automatically.

OK, so how would you all feel about working as a phone psychic? Given that lonely, desperate people sometimes run up such massive bills phoning psychics that they end up killing themselves?

How common is that SGB? I've not heard of a widespread problem with people killing themselves by phoning psychics too much.

But if it was exploitative, taking advantage of grief-stricken people to the point of driving them into debt and ultimately suicide, then yes I would have a problem with doing it.

The entire psychic industry is ripping off the grief-stricken, really. Psychics are either well-meaning, deluded and useless, or they are con artists.

I suppose some of the con artists could claim they give people comfort, but at the same time they are lining their pockets and often target people who really can't afford them.

Awful.

I can't fathom people wanting to take advantage of people in that way.

My cousin did it back in the late 80s (0898 days) she made up to £200 a day then, while still a student.

£4 per hour? Seems like not enough money to me.

I used to work as a sex chatline worker in an office not from home. i took the job because it was either that or workfare but i ended up enjoying it and made some really good friends who i still have now eleven years later. I worked there for 2 and a half years.
i wrote a post that did raise a few points on the Relationships board. i will go and find it and c and p it here.

I agree re the psychics, it is a vile thing to do that directly takes advantage of another vulnerable person. Disgusting.

My post from another thread but it would also be relevant to this thread.

Im afraid the reality is that a lot of sex work is now advertised in Job Centres like chatline and webcam work.
You were a chambermaid for a while but another reality is that a lot of those type of jobs are now being filled by workfare.
Therefore its quite feasible that a young woman signing on can be left with a very stark choice.
I know because it happened to me. I had completed 3 months on workfare and then they wanted me to do 3 months workfare at a soup factory.
I applied for a chatline job that i saw in the paper got it and signed off.
As of this week the Gov brought in even stricter benefit sanctions. Couple that with the fact that Jobcentres can now advertise sex work due to a ruling in 2003 and you will have a lot of desperate young women (who will also suffer the abolishment of HB if they are under 25) feeling that sex work will be the only way they can afford to live.
Its a bloody big time bomb waiting to go off.

I had a friend who's mum did this when they were skint.

I have searched my feminist principles over and over again and I still have nothing but respect for her.

However, maybe you could set up a web page and advertise yourself, rather than work for someone else. There was a documentry a while ago where women had done this and made up to £180 an hour.

Don't do webchat/webcam stuff if you are not comfortable with it and make sure calls/ip address is not tracable.

I can't ignore this thread anymore! I've done this work before, paid for a lovely foreign holiday with my earnings. I wasn't desperate or on the brink of financial ruin, I just had some free time and a desire for some extra spends.

I would do about 15 hours a week in between ds and work and social life. It was quite fun really.

I also done text. I don't know about other companies but with the one I worked for you adopted the persona of a girl the user had seen on tv or on a mag but any operator could reply to the texts. It was very confusing at times and quite annoying. 2 clients stick in my mind. One was convinced he'd been texting this glamour model for 3 years. He would declare his love for her, and genuinely believed he was her partner. It was awful. Every few days he'd flip and say he knew it wasnt really her he was texting and the girls would go out of their way to convince him. It was quite disturbing to watch. He used to follow her on Twitter and ask why she'd wrote that she'd been on a date. He was always catching people out. He would text at least 20 times a day. I dread to think what his bill was. I ended up refusing to reply to Him. I often wondered what the actual model he thought he was texting would have made of the whole thing.

I also done the physics lines too. Better none money and easy long calls (hour plus) but it was draining and I felt awful for the desperate people that called looking for answers.

I stopped texting and the psychic lines because they were dragging me down, making me feel bad.

The sex lines were a hoot!

FromEsmeSun 04-Nov-12 14:15:06

Of course there's a bigger picture. But I hate it when feminism starts blaming women for their choices when sometimes they don't HAVE many choices

Spot on Esme. As you can see from my post above.

I don't really think feminism is blaming women for their choices.

Just disliking the wider picture that leads men to want to use women and treat them like objects.

It's possibly to sympathise with women's need to do this, and at the same time dislike that it needs to exist at all.

It's possible, I mean.

ashesgirl I think it is possible to sympathise and dislike it at the same time, definitely. I'd say that's my position. There are some on this thread who don't seem to be able to sympathise though.

mrskeithrichards I wonder if you worked for the same company as me. I did texting on a similar system and it was SO complicated trying to keep up with who you were meant to be, what had already been said etc.

I couldn't believe how many of the men actually believed any of it. It seemed mad. And I didn't understand why they weren't just in a sex chat room on the computer.

Same reason men go to prostitutes instead of getting a girlfriend, I suppose. Power/social ineptitude/not wanting complications.

Was it something lines? Guy called Chris texting Dionne?