There's something particular about Belfast that took me a while to figure out, and it's this: in a city this size, with this history, your presence in any space carries more information than you intend it to.
If I'm seen going into a certain hotel on a certain street, someone will notice. Not because sex workers are especially visible, but because everybody is. People watch. It's not malicious necessarily. It's just what people do in a place that spent thirty years being very alert.
I've been working twelve years. One close call, which I've written about elsewhere, and the rest of the time I've managed through carefulness and probably some genuine luck.
The carefulness involves: not using the same hotel twice in a month. Not taking bookings near where I live. Varying my routes. Checking in under a name I've used consistently for twelve years. A mobile number that does nothing else, which I've had so long it feels more natural than my actual number.
Some of this sounds paranoid. If you're from somewhere without Belfast's particular social texture it probably does. But I know women who've been identified here and the consequences ripple out through family, community, and in some cases safety. I'd rather be overcautious.
The industry has changed a lot since I started. Online advertising changed everything: who's working, how they work, what clients expect, how you communicate. Not all the change is bad. I have more control now than in 2012. I set my rates, choose my clients, set my hours. None of that was fully true at the start.
What I'd like, and I'll say this directly because it doesn't get said enough, is legislation that decriminalises the worker without criminalising the client. And beyond that, resources that make it easier to report when things go wrong. The current situation in the north is a mess. It harms women who need help. I've talked to enough people to know that several of them have experienced things they should have been able to report and didn't, because the legal situation makes reporting feel unsafe.
That's not abstract for me. Those are people I know personally. So when I hear debates about sex work policy that don't include voices from inside the industry, it's frustrating. Dead on that people care. Less dead on when the caring doesn't extend to actually asking us what we'd want.
I'll get off that. Back with something lighter next time.