|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
N
epal’s underground sex industry just got a bit more dangerous following the upending last January of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration.
Several nongovernment organizations in Nepal had relied on the U.S. aid agency for their safe-sex programs that included free health check-ups and condoms for sex workers. With the U.S. aid funds suddenly gone, the NGOs now have to scramble harder to keep the sex workers and their clients from getting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
But Pasni, a sex worker who identifies as a Dalit queer, is not worried. Like a growing number of Nepali sex workers, they have done most of their sex work online in the last few years and plans to continue doing so. Although they know that the digital space has its own dangers, Pasni believes the benefits it offers far outweigh these.
“I see sex workers either stopped by police for standing on streets or bullied by random people,” they say. “It’s unsafe, whereas digital space comforts me with a sense of safety and privacy.”
Especially finding the internet a more comfortable workplace are sex workers who often suffer discrimination in face-to-face encounters because they are transgender, or because of a disability or their caste or ethnicity.
Dwarthi, a young sex worker with disability, says that physical meetups often ended up with clients “reluctant to receive service from me.” She also says that aside from being body-shamed, she has been taunted for choosing sex work as profession.
Dwarthi, though, has yet to experience these since she shifted online. She indicates that she is even enjoying her work, recounting: ‘I conceal my body unless I am comfortable, or use filters, emojis or stickers while sharing content online with clients for my pleasurable work experience. They would not necessarily know my disability. I love these digital hacks.”
Dwarthi’s story actually points to what sex workers say are among the more significant benefits of going digital, aside from safer sex: feeling empowered and of being in more control despite the nature of their work. As Aava, another sex worker, puts it, “Sex workers are undergoing a revolution in achieving sexual liberation and body autonomy that society always wanted to control.”
A bill currently pending in parliament, however, may end up slowing down that revolution – or even stop it altogether. Already under fire for its potential to suppress dissent, Social Media Bill 2081 includes provisions that will ban anonymity on the Net – crucial to online sex work – and “obscene” content, without clearly defining what the term covers. The notion of consent is also absent from the bill, further raising the risk that the online sex industry will run into legal trouble.
Trend latecomer
Sex work online is nothing new. But Nepal’s digital sex industry had a very slow start and began catching up with the rest of the world only during the pandemic lockdowns. The trend has been boosted all the more by increased smartphone ownership among Nepalis, with the latest government data showing 76% of households in the country as owning at least one smartphone.
Today the shift online by a considerable segment of Nepal’s sex industry may be why the country’s so-called “hotspots” for sex workers seem to have shrunk in number – at least by the reckoning of the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) and the National Center for AIDS and STD Control.
Sex work remains illegal in Nepal, which is largely why the sex workers in this piece use pseudonyms. But like most other countries, Nepal has yet to be without members of the world’s oldest profession and their clients. The MoHP itself says that as of 2024, the country had 86,809 female sex workers (FSW) and approximately 163,820 male sex workers (MSW) and transgender sex workers (TGSW).
The age range among the sex workers in the government tally is from 18 to 55 years old. Older sex workers have been observed to be less likely to engage in online work, partly because of their unfamiliarity with the Internet, as well as with the apps that are often used to solicit and engage clients. Niju, for instance, encourages her clients to join the less-used app Signal for sex services as it’s encrypted.
One noticeable result of the trend toward digital sex work is a wider view of sex beyond physical intercourse. Pasni points out: “Sex and sex work can be just sharing of a dance video, body plays, or comforting fetishes. Sometimes it’s just an act of appreciating, or moaning where physical interaction is not required.”
And while the media often portray sex workers as “victims,” Pasni says that many of them actually derive pleasure from what they do for a living – and that the Internet gives them “greater pleasure-privilege” than offline sex work.
“Pleasure is a wide concept,” remarks Riju, co-founder of a community-based sex workers’ organization in Bhaktapur. “For me, pleasure is a genuine appreciation for my sexual performance, or my body from the client. It’s validating and comforting.”
Another advantage of online sex work is that it enables the sex workers to keep most, if not all, their earnings, since they can book clients by themselves and can reduce other expenses, such as that for transport. This has given many sex workers financial independence, which Aava says is “a powerful tool to reclaim our respect and body.”
The online community that sex workers have formed adds to their feeling of security as well. So do digital features such as disappearing messages and the relative ease of assuming identities other than one’s own.
Comments Riju: “Anonymity is a key strategy to survive and exist online precisely for those who are unable to come out publicly.”
Challenges in cyberspace
For sex workers, the opportunities to self-navigate security, encryption, and have control over audiences in safe platforms is liberating, as well as empowering. Yet while going digital has also meant sex workers cannot be physically harmed by clients while on the job, and are not at risk of getting and spreading STDs, abuse of a different kind remains a serious concern.
Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), which includes explicit screenshots or videos taken and posted without the consent of the images’ owners, has been known to happen to sex workers, with the perpetrators often assuming that it is par for the course for those in the profession.
The stills and videos have also been used to blackmail the sex workers – who usually have not told their family about their job – either for free services or money.
According to Riju, sex workers who experience IBSA either just accept the situation or leave the digital space. Most of them believe legal recourse is not possible since they are unlikely to receive attention or sympathy from authorities. Nishu adds that some sex workers choose not to go online at all because of their fear of digital violence and the assumption that they will be unable to legally defend themselves should it happen to them.
A sex worker who is constantly online may also have to put up with at least a periodic barrage of insults and derogatory remarks. After all, as in many other countries, sex work is considered immoral and dirty in Nepal and there is always someone itching to say that out loud to a member of the profession; digital anonymity makes not only sex workers feel secure, but trolls as well.
One participant in a safe-sex workshop for sex workers says that they used to provide services via a gaming app but stopped because the people on the platform were “queerphobic” and used “hateful words” about sex workers.
On the surface, Social Media Bill 2081 would be able to protect sex workers and just about anyone else from online hate speech, among other things. The government itself has argued that it is meant to regulate social media and have users and platform owners be accountable for whatever happens online.
But Nepal already has laws on defamation and for all the other issues that the bill supposedly seeks to address.
What the bill does introduce are ways for the government to intrude in private spaces and impose jail terms on what should be civil liabilities, largely by using terms that it has left undefined and therefore open to interpretation. Should it become law, sex workers may well give up cyberspace because staying online could mean more serious punishment than if they were to walk the streets.
It can’t be an easy choice: risk getting years of imprisonment and hefty fines versus risk temporary detention and the potential of being beaten up or getting an STD — plus losing the sense of control and empowerment they enjoy online. But until she is forced to choose, Pasni is likely to stay digital.
“Sometimes,” Pasni says, “I just scroll down through my previous clients when I am sexually aroused.” ◉
