THREAD

On doing sexual camwork for three months - what it did and didn't do for and to me, and why everyone on each side of the sex exploitation debate is talking about camgirls in the wrong way.

1. On how easy it is to fall into camwork, even if you never thought about doing it at first.

In April I had to come back to my home country of France because of Covid. I couldn't find a job, also because of Covid. To make some money I decided to open a Vinted account.

Vinted is not AT ALL meant to be a sexual website. It is a European website that operates in France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands and is meant to be like Britain's Depop, a website to sell and buy clothes and accessories.

But, mid-May, having only made about 50 euros in a month and a half, I got an odd private message. Now, you have to understand that I am overweight, and some people do have fat fetishes.

Actually, my first EVER Vinted message back in April was a man saying "congratulations on your femininity" as I had posted a photo where I was wearing the dress I was trying to sell, instead of just a photo of the dress. But the one I got mid-May was something else entirely.

Basically, the man was asking if I'd be willing to sell him dirty underwear, that he would pay me a lot. Turns out there's a massive, underground market for that on Vinted. I never replied to that man, because Vinted can terminate your account for this sort of sales if they learn

about it (they almost never do, but you never know.) I was curious, though. "A lot of money" for selling dirty underwear is enticing when your bank account is in the red. So I did what anyone who is curious with an access to the Internet does: I googled "selling dirty panties."

That is how I stumbled upon panty dot com, an international website that, for twenty euros a month, lets men and women from all around the world sell and buy used underwear. So I created an account, and soon posted my first ad for selling underwear. And I did sell a few pairs.

Six to be exact. Three in France, and one each to men in Belgium, Switzerland, and the USA. And while selling panties comes with its own problems I will discuss later on, you realize quite quickly that a lot of men don't want panties. They want photos. They want videos.

They want phone calls. They want sexy chats. Panty dot com itself has categories to sell just that. And when I realized that most men wrote for videos and photos on my panty ads, needing the money, I gave in.

That's how easy it was to fall into it for me, a twenty-nine year old woman who is an anti-porn, anti-prostitution feminist and knows about the dangers of the sex industry. was just trying to sell old earrings and tee-shirts I had not worn in five years.

Imagine how much easier it is for teenagers who grow up with onlyfans being touted as the most empowering thing a young woman can do. We are headint to a generation of women who will do camwork before they've been to college.

2. On what men asked of me and why it is wrong to present the pro-"sex work" vs. anti-sexual exploitation argument as "privileged camgirls" vs trafficked women.

TW for some descriptive language.

The first man who got videos/photos from me was a 60 year old Frenchman named Philippe. He had seen my photos of me wearing underwear for sale (with my head cut off to protect my identity) and told me he would pay me fifty euros for an hour of sexy chat with photos and videos.

He was in a now sexless marriage and dreamt of having a younger mistress. In the span of an hour, I had to text him how much I loved old, married cock. How much I wanted him to give it to me. All the while sending him photos and videos where I was carressing, fingering myself.

Honestly, for a first experience, it was rather tame. I didn't enjoy it, I hated the fact that he had seen my face as he had asked for a video of me saying his name. But he had been rather polite in his requests. I thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I was wrong. I had drunk two glasses of wine before starting with Philippe to be more comfortable and it became a habit. I spent most of my evenings in June tipsy. Men on Skype video calls would notice and took advantage of my tipsy state.

In the span of a month, I put in my vagina many objects that should never have been in it. Countless beer bottles, countless wine bottles, lollipops, a cucumber once. One asked I shoved scissors in there and it's the only object I refused,

By the end of the month of June, my relationship with my own vagina had become so warped I could not even wear a tampon when my period started. It wasn't the only part of my body I felt alienated from, however.

My breasts, obviously, have always been for men a source of perversion. I used to wear a French 95E, now a 105F as I put on so much weight in just three months just from the drinking and eating (some of that due to my mother stressing me out, but a lot due to camming.)

I don't know how many videos of me putting my own boobs in my mouth are out there. I don't know how many times I have had to pour food on my own breasts and eat it. What I know is they are out there, on men's laptops and phones and probably on websites too.

My feet too, My arse too. So many times I spanked myself. So many times I fingered my toes. My entire body became a virtual playground, and, in the process, became less and less mine.

That's the first, most immediate effect of camming to me. Losing your body as your own. No man touched me, and yet it felt like they had all marked my body and alienated me from it. I was not Marina anymore. I was a toy.

The next obvious effect is the way it destroys your mental health and the self-loathing that comes along. I could not deal with the things I was asked to do. I spent every shower crying. I ate and drank so much I weigh 101 kgs now, when I weighed 89 kgs when I landed in France.

(turns out you can only make threads of 25 tweets at a time, so let me go on)

I also personally grappled with the hypocrisy of being porn critical while I was, essentially, producing low Q, amateur porn. I hated myself for being so hypocritical, hating men and yet depending on their perversion for money.

Having both this account, where the people I followed were porn critical, and another twitter account to promote my panty dot com profile where ever the people I followed were praising sex work as empowering and beautiful gave me severe whiplash.

And here is the thing. None of the people I followed from that twitter account were making it. I was not making it. I got 500 euros in June. Hours and hours and hours for 500. I would have gotten more in a minimum wage job.

Most camgirls you've ever got into a fight with, telling her she was privileged, telling her she was downplaying trafficked women's suffering - she is like me. She pretends she loves camming. I did, on my other account, before coming on here to rant about it.

I don't deny it is easier to be a cam girl than to be in prostitution. But being a cam girl is not easy. It is just a different kind of trauma. There are real risks involved with it that make you go absolutely mad. I shall speak of those risks now.

3. On the risks of being a camgirl or selling your underwear online.

The first obvious one is that men whose identity I often didn't know, whose face were hidden, have intimate photos and videos of me. Maybe one of them is a future potential employer who will either not give me the job or give it to me and then blackmail me into sex.

Maybe one of them is my neighbour and he recognizes me and thinks that gives him the right to rape me, coz if I do it online why would I not want to do it for real. Maybe one of them is a family member. Maybe, whoever it was, he posted this material on porn sites.

Maybe I'm out there, naked, tipsy, a bottle up my vagina, moaning, for everyone with an Internet connection to see. Forever.

The second one is that it is insanely easy to fall into prostitution from camming. Insanely. In early July, after a month of camming, I created my GoFundMe. You ladies came through and to this day I have collected almost 1500 euros, after their commision. https://www.gofundme.com/f/gofundmecomfhelp-marina-get-to-her-new-job?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet

It allowed me to do less camming in the first three weeks of July. I still did it, but not nearly as much. But the donations slowed down, and, still short 1000 euros from my goal, I started doing it again more in the last week of that month. A Swiss client offered me paid sex.

I had sent him a pair of panties. He had seen the enveloppe had been mailed from a border village, He offered me 500 euros to come and meet him for sex. I almost did it. I actually booked a return train ticket to go to Lausanne.

I was gonna go the week-end of August 1st, National Day in Switzerland. But a supermarket I had given a curriculum to in May called me to work in August. That's how close I was to prostituting myself.

It is incredibly easy to view paid sex as just another transaction when you have cammed like this. I know it's not. My rational, feminist brain knows it's not. My self-hating, desensitize psyche forgets it.

That story with the Swiss guy also shows another way camming is dangerous: your physical safety. Men will ask where you're from. I lied to everyone. Said I was in Perpignan, as far as possible from here. But some men did know I was here on the Swiss border with IP trackers.

Those who found out asked me to come visit them or else. All the men I sold panties to had the stamp from the village post office and knew where I was. It isn't big, here. One could have driven here, found me on my way to the post office, abducted me.

Some men WILL cross the country for you, whether you want it or not. It is an open door to actual sexual violence in your life.

Camming ruined my mental health, physically changed me with the weight I put on, and almost led me straight into prostitution. And I just did it for three months. I hurt myself and couldn't work at the supermarket the last week of August so I had to go back to doing it this week,

There's a mojito mix next to my bed because yesterday I showed my pussy on camera for two hours. My Swiss client is asking me to go visit him before I leave for Brittany on Thursday and then Latin America in September or October. And I am considering it again.

I know that I should not. But I need the money. And my lizard brain is telling me I'm already worthless from camming, so I can go and fuck a rich Swiss dude. Close your eyes and think of Ecuador. You're worthless. Even "feminists" have told you so two days ago.

That's what cam work does. That's how easy it is to fall into it. That's how easy it can make you fall into much worse. And that's how it scars you. Three months of camming. I don't know how long it's gonna take for me to feel normal again.