Liminal Sex & Markets: The Business Practices of Elite Online Escorts

In the neoliberal global arena of endless market niches and hyper-individualization, examples of sexual boundary crossers, or consumers engaged in acts and displays indicative of transgressive behaviors and marginal identities, are plentiful. Whether the boundary crossing spans sexual identity positions and fluid sexuality, or participation in the multitude of pleasures and vices sold across the adult industry, this metaphor implies an instantaneous shift from one place, space or identity, to another. There is much, however, that takes place in the process of boundary crossing, from legal to illegal or moral to immoral for example, where one is neither fully aligned with one side of the boundary, nor fully immersed in the other. It is in this realm of liminal spaces, of between and betwixt, that uncertainty and promise flourish. This paper examines these liminal spaces and subjects in the context of the sexual marketplace of erotic labor.

In the last 15 years, technology, the internet, and globalization have together generated a vast online marketplace for human social interaction. Further, one particularly expansive segment of the marketplace for social interaction on the worldwide web is driven by individuals interested in sexually-oriented exchange --- of ideas, images, online interactions, and in-person services. The two most common forms of online sexually-oriented exchanges are pornography and escorting; this paper focuses on the latter. Specifically, we have conducted a multi-method analysis of elite, independent, online escorts–or erotic entrepreneurs—to better understand how they use strategic business practices to negotiate the liminal spaces they occupy between legality and illegality, morality and decadence.

An escort’s status is legally precarious due to the prohibition against prostitution in the United States and the legality, if not right, of selling one’s time. The constant negotiation of this seemingly flexible boundary between companionship and prostitution manifests in numerous ways throughout the business practices of professional escorts, from the content of their marketing and their screening methods and standards, to their encounters with clients. Within the context of this boundary setting and transgressing, escorts manipulate moral boundaries in hopes of arousing desire and stimulating demand for their services, while at the same time maintaining the high value of those services through their self-presentation as moral and ‘good’ women. In short, they emphasize and operate within intentionally liminal spaces.

From September 2014 to March 2015 we constructed a database of independent escorts operating their own professional websites that advertise in the 10 largest metropolitan areas of the United States and Las Vegas. We then conducted in-depth content analysis of a sub-sample of 50 websites drawn at random from this database. In addition, we are surveying and interviewing elite online escorts regarding the strategies they employ to conduct their work safely and profitably. In this paper we draw from these datasets to illustrate how elite independent online escorts navigate, push, and construct legal, moral, and personal boundaries to maintain the legality, enhance the profitability, and optimize the comfort of their professional work as escorts.

First, escorting’s legality depends upon the assertion that they are selling their time and company, not sexual acts. This is asserted in the form of a legal disclaimer usually to be found in fine print on a page requiring that the visitor indicate that they are of legal age (18) to view the site and that they accept the terms of use. These legal disclaimers explain that sex may occur but that if so this is a coincidence and is being undertaken by two consenting adults. We demonstrate that although this assertion is a necessary part of establishing the legality of escorting, most escorts also use other tactics such as collecting payment at the beginning of a session and strongly asserting that they reserve the right to end a session at any time if made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe through the missteps of the client.

Second, the moral discourses evoked by escorts themselves provide insights into moral liminality in this online marketplace. For example, the strategies employed by escorts on their websites and in their advertising illuminate moral boundaries beyond the traditional good or bad dichotomy. For example, escorts’ direct claims to self-determination and to personal enjoyment of their work, as well as the positive impact escorting itself has on clients, pushes the boundaries of the American value of self-determination while simultaneously distancing the escort from negative associations with prostitution and human trafficking. Furthermore, there is a dominant emphasis on discretion on elite escort websites. The choice of many escorts to blur their face in photos inverts the normal moral code for discretion in which the face can be visible while sexualized private body parts are covered. The escorts themselves assert that facial blurring protects both themselves and their clients. 

Lastly we consider how some escorting policies construct personal boundaries to enhance the provider’s comfort and, we theorize, her profitability. Choices such as the exclusion of broad categories of clients (such as young men, for example, or new comers to the escort market) can be understood as a rational choice not necessarily based on idiosyncratic personal preference, but a business strategy to attract more mature and experienced clients who have the means to spend generously on extended dates, are socialized into the norms of this type of exchange, and treat the escort well.

In closing, we argue that the analysis of liminal markets provides a particularly enticing approach to understanding diverse manifestations of market morals. There are few better arenas to do so than with new online communities organized and monetized around boundary crossing sexual services and interactions. Elite online escorts provide a rich site of analysis of the relationship between market and sex-based liminality, and the ways in which business practices simultaneously reinforce both morality and immorality, and legality and vice.