Reddit can be a pretty a bleak place for feminists, with upvoted posts like this and this floating around. But redditors—or lurkers like me—who delve beyond the front page know there are corners of this sprawling open platform ruled by badass, empowered women. Take, for example, Reddit’s growing sex work community, where women are making bank selling adult goods and services on subreddits such as /r/pantyselling, /r/CamShow, /r/KikSnaps /r/fetishitems, and /r/Sexsells.
So today I’m bringing you a few TIL dispatches from their neck of the Internet woods. Here are seven gems of knowledge I gleaned while perusing the site:
- Sellers come from all walks of life, and do sex work for all kinds of reasons (all of which are valid). During an AMA, one successful seller said she’s entirely self-employed, thanks to panty-selling and writing erotica. Werk.
- While panties (worn, farted on, period-stained, you name it) remain the most sought after novelties, some sellers also offer other bespoke fetish items, too, like sweaty socks, peed-in jeans, used lactation bras and pussy pops (yes, vagina-glazed lollipops). I even spotted a few listings for pussy-dipped cigarettes and cigars, too.
- Threads like these are hardly the sketchy dives you’d imagine. /r/SexSells, for example, is an intentionally “sex-positive hub” run by a husband-and-wife team who carefully screen and verify their sellers in an effort to prevent scamming, blackmailing, and stalking. The threat of losing online anonymity is still possible, but mods do their best to protect buyers and sellers alike.
- Personalized videos and custom cam-shows are also popular, a more appealing alternative to traditional porn. As one seller explains, intimacy and attention are what buyers crave, not just the sex. Buyers can request certain thematic elements (Feet! Smoking! Tiger roleplay?!) or buy premade one-on-one clips.
- Steamy Snapchats and Kik conversations now have their own subreddit! What an ingenious social media, amirite?
- Cock ratings (read: dick pic reviews) are also heavily requested, and sellers usually charge about $10 for their feedback on a sampling of photos.
- For reference, there are nearly 20,000 users subscribed to the panty selling subreddit, and 9,000 subscribed to Sex Sells. In my humble opinion, that seems pretty sizable for a “niche” market. Hell yes for independently contracting business women!
Bonus fact: There’s a mod on the panty selling thread whose username is Lady Fappington. If that’s not the best username I’ve ever come across, I don’t know what is.
Read more on Bust.com:
Should We Rebrand Prostitution As Sex Work?
Top 5 Hilarious Finalists for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Sex Toy Reviews, in Comic Format!
Images courtesy of Mic.com and Flickr
