Why Pregnant Sex Workers Deserve Dignity

Frenchie
Jul 30, 2025
6 min read

Frenchie is a guest author, an 8 month pregnant sex worker artivist who wrote this blog post on her phone in the parking lot of a budget motel.

Read or Listen to this post here!

I’m a California native born and raised in the suburbs of the state capital city. I understand that I grew up with more privilege than most Black kids my age. Privilege doesn’t absolve you of dysfunction, it delays it.

In growing up in constant dysfunction, I have grown used to a survivalist mentality. I began sex work when I moved into my own place- a trailer that was donated to me-with my son in my 20s. I was just trying to make ends meet in a society that doesnt provide women like me with many safe options.

It started mostly online and sometimes I had clients. Eventually, my neighbors called CPS for a welfare check on my kid. I remember being so confused as I was a single mom, no car, a college student with mental illness that wouldn't allow me sustain a typical job. I remember confiding in a younger neighbor who a white girl my age who I thought I could trust- we went to high school together.

She talked down about the providers in the industry insinuating we were disgusting and desperate. I let her use my bath tub when her water heater wasn't heating up enough. She continued to judge but never tried to understand. This moment clarified to me that you cannot be open with everyone, even so-called friends.

“This is not just about my story—it’s about how entire systems are set up to disappear people like me.”

Years later, now, eight months pregnant without stable housing. After fleeing an abusive household, surviving motel hopping, my partner and I are trying to stay afloat with the support of the county while waiting on job paperwork. I’m still a college student pursing a degree in Deaf Studies, I have less than a year left. We have our emotional support animals with us, no car, a temporary Airbnb for a few days and nowhere else to go.

I'm not here to make this just about me.

As a Black homeless person, I have experienced so much trauma within the very systems set up to help. Add pregancy and sex work into the mix, you’re stigmatized by the world that assumes you’re an unfit parent or unworthy or help and care. My story is one of many that get drowned out in the wake of systems that don’t really want people like me to succeed. Being pregnant shouldn’t mean I lose my humanity—and doing sex work shouldn’t mean I lose the right to parent.

THE REALITY NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

Pregnant. Homeless. Sex Worker. What does this combination of words bring about for you emotionally. For some, it makes them afraid, maybe rolls their eyes, or even angers them.

It shouldn’t.

For me, most mornings consist of a cup of coffee, a cigarette and some journaling for self reflection. At least, that’s the plan in my head. My mind is up before my body is and it’s typically racing with thoughts like “I have to stay hydrated” “My money goal for the day is $200” “Gotta make sure I have money to pay for the room for another night before check out”, “gotta find a roommate that accepts pregnant women, kids, and emotional support animals” and more. Since pregnancy, I’ve been more focused on the medical and survival aspects of my life.

I have a small privilege of only working online but it comes with its own barriers- being fetishishized, ghosted, stigmatized for working while pregnant, making sure to age verify buyers if they’re buying content outside of fan sites and making survival choices daily.

I have to turn in this documentation so we can continue to get help, gotta choose between buying food and risk being short on my room or having myself and my small family sticking it out with microwave meals from the gas station and covering more pressing needs like covering the storage or getting another night inside somewhere.

Cravings? Forget about that-the only satisfaction I’m finding is in the privilege of sleeping in an actual bed in a room with a door that locks. Bouncing between BnBs, DMs from mostly time wasters, parenting, doing it all while pregnant should afford me some time of award. Being eight months pregnant, I should be resting and being fed grapes and getting massages but those aren’t the cards I been dealt.

My hustle mentality has only gone up during this pregnancy, especially with such unstable housing- I’m constantly setting daily goals of how much I need to make to sustain a room and planting the seeds through posts, content creation, and marketing, to do so.

Often though, I rarely get to enjoy the pregnancy. I’m so focused on meeting my quota and end up burnt out.

I still do it because it is what I genuinely enjoy doing and I’m not able to do vanilla work so I do what I can with the tools that I have. Because time and bills won’t wait for this baby. Because my kids' stomachs won’t go without being full.

VISIBILITY ISN'T SAFETY ITS SURVEILLANCE

Visibility-although it’s key to being successful in this industry- can cause you to become a target to be surveilled.

For instance, I’ve already faced stigma in healthcare being Black and pregnant, I’m stereotyped a lot.

Before I was even asked if I was okay, I was struck with a barriage of what’s your mental health status? Are you a drug user- even tobacco? What’s your STD status?

Forced to complete forms asking about whether I’m a danger to myself or others while writhing in pain. All before receiving care.

We’re just concerned for your baby while documenting behind my back.

It reminds me that poor, Black parents are often treated as though they are guilty until proven worth of care and compassion. There’s no clear path to prove this is happening either.

GOOD MOM MYTHS VS SURVIVAL PARENTING

Ever since I had my first child, I’ve dreamed of being a Disney Channel movie mom: visibly presentable, fat house, car registered insured in my name, the ultimate pillar of a consistent loving parent.

No stressing over food, how I’m going to plan and fund birthday parties, school clothes, Christmas. No debilitating mental illness to stop me.

Again, those are just not the cards I been dealt.

My hand shatters the myth of being that good mom and the myth tarnishes the image of parents truly in survival mode.

Respectability politics don’t ever pay my BnB costs nor does it feed my children.

People stigmatize sex workers who are parents even more so assuming that there work is immoral and what would your kids think if they found out and such an unfit parent. They assume that doing the work while pregnant equates to a parent who doesn’t care about their baby, I’m equated to somehow harming my baby.

What kind of mom does Onlyfans while pregnant?

People think I am selfish for continuing through with the pregnancy ignoring my personal decisions to do so.

I’ve also personally had it said out loud.

You should keep your legs closed especially if you knew you couldn’t afford the baby.

I’m more likely to have a social worker show up in my hospital bedside after I’ve given birth. More likely to be referred to CPS at the hospital for being a medical cannabis patient that can’t afford a script.

For being a Black sex worker, especially since I’mPregnantPoorNon-white over my white counterparts. I’m more likely to be reported for what I do then be supported by the same professionals that claim that they care.

INTERSECTIONS OF OPPRESSION

Oppression wants us invisible. Dignity means refusing to disappear.

Saviorism, moral policing and charity models show or try to make us believe that dignity looks like silence, subservience, and struggle done alone and in private. In actuality, real dignity for pregnant sex workers looks like housing without discrimination, medical care without moral shame, and autonomy over our bodies, income and our families.

Pregnant sex workers are already resilient, filled with love and care and deserve the right to come as you are.

HOW TO SHOW UP

We are strongest together and as the saying goes a house divided against itself will always fall.

Support your local pregnant sex workers, especially Black and disabled femmes.

🖤 Give directly: cash, phone bill, motel stays, transportation

🖤 Mutual aid > charity: no strings, no savior complex

🖤 Speak up: challenge stigma in your own communities

🖤 Push for policy: decriminalization, housing rights, disability and medical justice

Support organizations like:

You have the right to advocate for policy changes- decriminalization, disability rights, housing rights, and medical justice.

I want you to know, reader, that there is so much power in storytelling as activism. By reading, commenting on, and sharing this, you propel the message even further. You can advocate for your fellow sex worker by standing beside them and lifting their voices.

Consider: What does real support look like? What will you do differently after reading this?