I want to write about what happened. Because what happened is a formative experience that changed my life forever. Maybe things would have been different if it didn’t happen, but it did. What happened is probably something I would be advised not to write about. By my family, or friends, or the social worker who encouraged my poetry but warned me to never share it with the world.

Audre Lorde famously said, your silence will not protect you. In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, she writes of the things left unsaid becoming “madder and madder and hotter and hotter” until they punch us “in the mouth from the inside.” She goes on to write that “the visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”

Owning your truth certainly means that no one can leverage it against you.

I was 16, with a past I was trying to escape. I’d just moved to North London to live with my dad in Archway after a series of unfortunate events required I moved. My house was broken into by my ‘friends’, that I met at my Pupil Referral Unit in North Lambeth. And, in true oblivious fashion with no clue about the unspoken rules of South London, reported it to the police. It’s hard to think straight when you have blood pouring down your face and you can’t locate your mum.

Archway was good to me. Apart from the PTSD from the break in. A moth would fly into my face and I’d scream. I’d mistake shadows for figures and have panic attacks. Constantly in a state of perpetual fear. Life at this time, was rough around the edges. I left school without any GCSES, with a boyfriend twice my age who had anything but my best interests at heart, and a tendency to fall in and out of dangerous situations as if it were my favourite past time.

I ended up attending a college in Holloway, studying Performing Arts. This new found interest was inspired by my new boyfriend, who was my age, and I met in the local area as he supplied me with ways to escape myself.

He studied media there and read me the courses to see if any of them resonated.

“Performing Arts” he said.

“YES!” “I used to love drama”, I replied.

I would only enter on a level 2 BTEC, due to a lack of GCSES. But this was fine, the course would require I retake English and Maths but this was also fine. Whatever, I thought. This could be fun.

For the first time in my life I enjoyed education. I always had a flair for performing. In year 8, I represented my small town for public speaking and stood on the school stage indirecting girls who were once mean to me. (Not too dissimilar for how I’d go on to indirecting men on stages years later).

In my year 9 drama class, I read a monologue about suicide weeks after my own failed attempt that none of my class mates knew about.

When I moved back to London at the beginning of year 10, my drama teacher urged me to continue performing and shoehorned me into a London school trip to see The Women in Black.

Instead of taking her advice, I started skipping school and acting in every other facet of my life.

In my second week of college, I am hit by a moving Royal Mail van on my lunch break. Suffering 13 breaks and open fractures to my right foot, passersby film the accident on Snapchat instead of offering to help.

I tell my friend “message M***” - my boyfriend - to which she hears message dad, which was of course was a way better decision.

My ankle bone pierces through the side of my Chelsea boot, like a flag of all I have buried.

I am in pain. More pain than I have ever felt before.

An air ambulance is called yet fails to find space to land. Eventually an ambulance arrives and paramedics inject me with ketamine.

I wake to a nurse asking for a signature to give permission to amputate my leg. “It’s the best thing for you”, dad sobs by my bedside.

He recounts the experience as them offering to show me the air ambulance, and I rudely refusing.

But, I am in intensive care and all I can think about is how I’m gonna lose the progress from the 30 day squat challenge I’d recently completed.

I continued to channel my pain through beauty related obstacles, attempting to get a grip on what was happening. But my circumstances were sand, slipping through my fist, constantly changing, and impossible to grasp.

// I watch as people descend from the city. Bringing me Nando’s and nachos, that I don’t eat.

I am demanding, insecure, and my family don’t want to deal with me. I shout at them because I do not understand.

The nurse tells me how I’m the first patient she’s seen with lace nightgowns, makeup on nightstands, and laughs as I am painting my nails.

I pick cornflakes up with spoon, sprinkle them down to bowl. They look like sparkles, I like how they float then fall.

My new boyfriend visits me and we smoke weed in the bathroom

I might be broken, but hell I am inviting

We’ve only dated for a month so I’m shocked when he comes every day without fail

He rides his stolen pedal bike from Kentish Town to Whitechapel, no matter rain, sun or storm

Sometimes I get so paranoid that I scream

I've lost my eyebrow pencil and he’s never seen me without plaster

My new stepmother travels to 8 different drugstores to find the exact one

He comes in, on and everyday

We play blackjack like ritual

I search for love like ritual

Somehow receive blame for being run over

Told the way I was living is the reason for stopping motion

So I fuck the hate out of me

Say treat me like an object and I’ll feel

like an individual. \\

M*** and I are fucking in my hospital bed whilst my foot is suspended in the air like scaffolding. An activity ill advised I am sure, but when you are 16 searching for love outside of yourself you find a way to make it happen.

We are in missionary, because it is all we can do. The hospital bed pushes back so much that it accidentally sounds the alarm for the whole ward. Several nurses rush in.

“In the queens hospital?!” one remarks.

The following day they detail how I will be discharged despite not being ready to return home. They send me to my cramped flat with a lack of natural sunlight, with a VAC machine on my leg. The plus is that it is closer to my boyfriend, and I can smoke inside. On reflection, this ends up being a downside.

I fight infections for months, feeling sick 24/7 and unable to stand. I drop to 6 and a half stone, which is tiny for me now at 5ft5 and 17. Partly, because my friend visited me in hospital and warned me how her sister put on 5 stone when she broke her leg. But also partly, because I do not have anyone cooking for me consistently.

I make money from my bed

hitting up people I should forget

to raise money to buy takeaway

for M*** to collect.

I don’t tell anyone about this. And, definitely not M***.

He knows I had an older ‘boyfriend’, that I escaped from South London. He doesn’t know that I miss him terribly. One day he catches me on a lesbian dating site. I don’t know why I am doing this. Maybe I am bored. Maybe I am gay, I think? I apologise and promise not to do it again. It doesn’t mean anything.

I start texting the man I left in South London. I know I shouldn’t. But I didn’t fight tooth and nail to retain my phone during the break in for nothing.

He has a laptop of mine at his, and I could really use it right now. One night at the end of December he visits my flat to bring it. For the first time since knowing each other he extends empathy. Makes some comment about the state of the flat, how criminal it is that no-one is looking after me. He’s 32, and always been the anecdote to an answer I didn’t know I was searching for.

Later, he fucks me without asking.

I crutch to the bathroom, and silently cry. I feel terrible. But I should have known better. It would never have been to just bring the laptop.

I spend the following days overdosing on codeine prescribed for the pain until I inevitably pass out. Eventually, telling M*** the truth.

He doesn’t believe me.

And, so it begins. An agonising turbulent 4 year relationship tha almost the death of both of us.

I recount these experiences to my therapist.

“How did you keep yourself alive?” she asks.

“Writing”, I say.

Tears wet the apples of my cheeks.

Laughing about all of the bad experiences that happened over, and over again.

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt of memoir style writing I am currently exploring.

Consider supporting me by becoming a paid subscriber <3

@maedbjoy on Instagram

x

SIGN THE PETITION HERE AND HELP US MAKE CHANGE

Riot Party and Sexquisite Events are leading this campaign after being erased by Meta, repeatedly. Jointly, we provide over 1000 paid freelance creative jobs for queer people, sex workers, and POC per year. We create creative opportunities in queer nightlife, for: performers, DJS, welfare, artists, stage managers, traders and more.

We sadly are not an isolated incident, over the last year, Meta have wrongfully removed over 60+ accounts in the UK as recorded by Repro Uncensored, plus many more that go undocumented.

Meta have made a reliance in society on the use of their platform. For community, connection and also for business. Removing access to our online audience has a severe impact on physical and mental health, income, and most importantly - sex workers are often targeted and their means to access other forms of work outside sex work, are blocked. Society tells us to do another job, and then blocks us from accessing other forms of work.

We have been documenting the stories and impact over the past year, as led by *Maedb Joy who works extremely closely with the sex work community through both Riot and Sexquisite. - (*Maedb was also deplatformed.)

We work primarily with the sex worker-artist community, and many of us navigate dual identities. We are artists, performers, writers, facilitators and events organisers who all happen to have lived experience of sex work.

Through various case studies we have documented, and recorded the impact of deletion to be the following:

• Many people reported being pushed into in person full service sex work following deletion despite not wanting to due to loss of income

• Some people reported doing full service sex work to raise money to pay hackers to get their accounts reinstated

• One member of our community reported becoming physically disabled and their speech impaired due to the stress of losing their account and main source of income (social media influencer / sex education coach / onlyfans)

• Multiple people reported feeling suicidal

• One person explained how they lost their Instagram when trying to leave an abusive relationship and were completely cut off from all of their community

• All participants reported that they experienced a severe negative impact to their income

• One member of our community who is a mother of multiple children, reported bailiffs at her house and was forced to downsize her house due to loss of income

Meta’s actions do not just erase accounts; they erase a whole community and dismantle livelihoods. Yet, there is no clear pathway to address wrongful deletions, no transparency, and no direct contacts to resolve.

We demand action. We call upon the government to implement regulations that hold Meta accountable for unjust account deletions and to establish a transparent, accessible process for affected communities to seek reinstatement. With a clear system in place and a dedicated point of contact at Meta, wrongful deletions could be effectively addressed, mitigating the erasure of communities.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE AND HELP US MAKE CHANGE

in restaurants,

bars,

anywhere

I would listen

to the ways

you don’t

have time for me

anymore

just to loop round again

like a zip line that never ends

my body concrete

know this road well

soon you will

hold me

ask why

I am not

kissing you

back

where we started

on our first date

you fingered me

or maybe it was our second

or third

joked about how my poems

will turn to

sapphic love confessions

girls can break your heart too

in an instant

everything we were

and will be

never was

you never believed it anyway

I barely had time to keep up

chasing a car on foot

after

you fell in love

with everyone around me

told me about it

like a big secret

I just had to know

invited me

to the fairground

beckoned me to

sit next to you

on the merry-go-round.

Photo by @feralmommy

Right now International Wh*res Day feels more pertinent than ever, with our lives at stake at the hands of the state…

Our community targeted by:

<3 Deliberately vague and inconsistent laws such as br-thel keeping legislation preventing 2 workers working together for safety, and pr0stitutes cautions fines. They tell us to do one job then prevent access to any others..

<3 Supreme court ruling - a high percentage of SWers are trans, and it is scary to be transgender rn in the UK. Changing legislation that heightens the isolation / marginalisation that pre-exists, and influences how the wider public act. Policy should push for the protection of people not co-sign the mistreatment.

<3 S-Work becomes dangerous when we don’t have rights and respect. Unfortunately due to historical societal stigma that continues to be prevalent, this can lead to our clients treating us badly because they don’t respect us too. #notallclients

<3 Currently in the UK there is no legislation that says that you cannot be an in person SWer, independent FSSW is LEGAL. And, so are many many other forms of SW - such as online and beyond. YET, mothers are constantly targeted and their job used as reasoning to remove their children from their care. The care system spends approximately £317 billion annually. Why don’t the government redistribute this money and support families in poverty, if they despise mothers engaging in SW so much? Beyond that, children in care are reported to be four times more likely to suffer from a mental health disorder than those living with their birth families. All because a mother wants to provide for her child? Make it make sense.

<3 THE ONLINE SAFETY ACT, ruining our lives, highkey. Originally introduced in 2023, and now in full force mid 2026. Impacts range from being unable to advertise online without outing yourself (sites will force workers face out because they are unable to host suggestive content), to total lack of visibility (like, no clients, anywhere). Alongside that, baddies instas and X accounts are getting deleted left, right and centre. Just let us exist?? This also impacts not only our erotic labour, but our real lives and side businesses. Once again, they tell us don’t do SW then prevent us from accessing any other form of work.

Sometimes, I reflect on how far we have come especially in the queer leftist scene, on the inclusion / acceptance of SW. All good things, change is being impacted on a small scale societal level. People respect us!! So much so that they want to be us sometimes. Which, sucks. Appropriation isn’t cool, however I will take a civ girl dressing up in pleasers advocating for our rights over a law maker advocating for our downfall.

So what is the history behind International Wh*res Day?

It is no surprise, that hate for wh_r3s has long existed, across the globe. Good woman vs bad woman. Housewife vs Wh0r!ng.

On June 2nd, 1975 - over 100 SWers began an 8 day occupation at a church in Lyon, France. With a list of demands, ranging from: end of fines, police harassment, stigma - and most importantly - the release of 10 SWers who had been imprisoned a few days before for soliciting. The aim was to raise attention to the systemic violence inflicted by the French government. On June 10th, the occupation came to an end as the police forcibly removed the women from the church. The impact of this occupation lives on today!

I will be hosting 2 events this week in honour of International Wh*res Day.

SEXQUISITE FRIDAY 5TH JUNE BGWMC LONDON 8PM - 2AM - all full service SWers go free. Email sexquisite.events@gmail.com - we will have QR codes for SWers to fill out as we collect data for DECRIM NOW about how the Online Safety Act is impacting our lives. We aim to take this data to lobby the government to influence a change in how the OSA operates. Help us make this happen!!

RIOT FOR INTERNATIONAL WHORES DAY SUNDAY 7TH JUNE ELECTROWERKZ LONDON 4PM - MIDNIGHT -

SWARM (sworker advocacy and resistance movement) will be attending collecting donations, and we will also have QR codes collecting data for the Online Safety Act survey mentioned above.

PARTYING IS POLITICAL, and it goes beyond screaming SW is WORK. Put your money where your mouth is, Show up, donate, amplify the Decrim Now survey so we can make tangible change beyond our echo chamber.

DECRIM NOW ONLINE SAFETY ACT SURVEY, please share!

References:

• https://www.internationalwhoresday.com/history

• https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/statistics-briefings/children-in-care

• https://prostitutescollective.net/know-your-rights/

If you want to help you can support me in person at my poetry and playtext Zine launch, or if you can’t come - spread the word. Wednesday June 10th, Dalston, London - details here.

You can also follow my new instagram here

It is the beginning of May 2026, and once again I have lost multiple instagram accounts. An incident that similarly occurred to me November 2025, that left me derailed, mobilised, depressed and angry. In the creator economy, we pour much of our life into Instagram - a dedicated social network, where you develop parasocial relationships with people you hardly know, share your art, build your business and pretend that life is #perfect.

Currently, Riot Party - national queer sex positive rave, that I co run, is deplatformed. Alongside my personal account, which consisted of anecdotes, and poetry, about men who don’t love me back, or whichever girl I was obsessed with in that current moment, because I am a lover girl, who will absolutely, publish, everything online.

Sometimes too, I would post a photo from an event, but always aware about adhering to community guidelines, because I used to break rules, but I’m a good girl now, #notthatkindagirlanymore - don’t want to piss Daddy Meta off.

Never was that kind of girl on Instagram, not with a mother like mine - impossible. Had to prove always, that my art comes first, and my a$$ second - artist, adherer to community guidelines, activist if you catch me on an angry day of the week.

Seriously though, I am acutely aware about the implications of the Online Safety Act - and lucky me!!

It is impacting me in all facets of my life. The ways I make money when no one is watching, and my exit strategy art jobs and event bits, that give me cultural capital and somewhat paint over the red stains on my skin.

Sometimes I pay an extortionate amount of money to someone who can claim they can allow me access to my audience again. Double fucked on a weekday? ✅

Mum tells me on the phone to focus on posting other things, and I don’t tell her that one time I posted a poem about sexual abuse, and then it was removed and I was given a bollocking by AI, and made to promise to never ever do that again.

I don’t tell her because it feels familiar, how everyone has an opinion on what happened to you but no one asks. Silence a structure to which you become accustomed.

Or how you chop and change a narrative to make someone else feel safe.

Or like how I write something but then have to change it because someone in my life will get hurt, real life censorship - censorship from all apparent angles.

Sometimes, life will present you with a hypocrisy - like this.

Yesterday my friend text me -

And how… perplexing? I can not write about my SA, or “period of sexual abuse lasting 3 years or more” (as detailed by the criminal compensation award).

But a random person online can plaster it, with the wrong date and details - and I am unable to comment.

Given a microphone just to have it muted. Built bricks from a bad situation all to have them burned.

Anyway, that’s besides the point. I guess what I am trying to say, or process, or think and feel - is that maybe this is just life now. An occupational hazard, in a career like mine. Sex positive and self employed. Shifting into someone separate from the place they wanted to save me from. Access denied. Still can’t win. Past that comes written in permanent ink. Game truly rigged.

More to life than Meta but the party still goes on even if you aren’t invited.

If you want to help you can support me in person at my zine launch of “Home Sweet Hell”, a poetry & playtext zine about performing for the patriarchy + doing things I don’t want to do for money in order to support my career as a writer - details here.

You can also follow my new instagram here.

Keep in touch with Riot, by subscribing to our mailing list

Please share this Substack, and help me connect with my online community again! And also share my new Insta if u can <3 lots of love, Maedb xxx

There’s certain things you have to come to terms with, when you are a girl like me. By girl like me, I mean a girl, who has done bad things, to get ahead in life. By bad things, I mean capitalising on the harassment inflicted upon you. Profiting off your sexuality, in one way or another. I think people assume that you don’t have feelings, just great tits and bad morals, ready and willing to gratefully accept whatever bad things people say or do, in retaliation to your ‘bad behaviour’.

I am writing this 3 weeks to the day that a journalist published intimate details and secrets about my entry to the industry whilst underage. Interviewed under the guise of being interested in my artistic practice, and my show Sexquisite which creates spaces for sex workers to process their experiences through art.

What hurts the most, is that I was interviewed by a fellow worker who also works in the performance space, and to some extent is my predecessor.

We spoke at length about my artistic practice, yet the details that were published were a copy and paste of the secrets I shared with her in confidence whilst she was sharing her history and how she got into making the work that she does.

It is beyond me that someone with shared lived experience would publish something not only doxxing me, but also with an inflammatory title (that fails to be removed from google), without checking. I have worked with multiple journalists and news outlets, and even the Daily Star have checked with me before something goes out.

I am very intentional about how I frame my work online because there are real life implications that come with an association with this industry. I have a sister that I grew up apart from who lives in America, two nieces and a nephew that I would love to get to know, now I have enough money and freedom to nurture that relationship.

Did you know you cannot enter the USA if you have done sex work in the last 10 years?

When I was 17, playing Abigail Williams in The Crucible, about to step on stage for our matinee performance, in our underfunded inner city college - I started receiving calls from old men, wanting to fuck me, for £60 an hour. I was confused - focused only on my studies, in a relationship - not advertising services anywhere. It transpired that there were photos of me taken from when I was 16, that I had only sent to my boyfriend, advertised on an escort site with my families full address, and my phone number.

Done in retaliation, since I had been busy with rehearsals and not replying, or giving closure to an argument we had not too long before.

This would be probably the most extreme reaction I had experienced from a boyfriend for focusing on my work rather than him, but not the the last. Eventually I became accustomed to the way resentment accompanied me on dates, at dinner, on trips to the theatre, or even days off.

Anyway, point is, the police were called, and I was crying from the pit of my stomach, like I had some inner organ snatched from me. Classmates paraded down the corridor, and I switched off the tears, a skill that I’ve developed over the years… Full on breakdown / PTSD problem child / to smiling like nothing ever happened.

After giving the performance of a life time, both as playing Abigail, and as a girl that was unfazed by digital violence from someone who was supposed to love her. I sat in my college office with a social worker, police officer and my teacher.

“Unfortunately there is nothing we can do. There is no way we can prove that it’s him.”

“But he is the only person who has possession of those photos?!”

“Sorry.”

And, that was that. I didn’t tell my dad or step mum what had happened, but my friend threatened him until he took the page down. Girls gotta look out for each other when the system doesn’t.

A couple of years ago, I was running an event, and I was chatting to this couple, and somehow we got onto the subject of revenge porn. I mentioned how my content had once been leaked.

Her response: “Omg babe that’s so bad.”

His response: “Where can I find it?”

He laughed, and then so did she.

There’s certain things you have to come to terms with, when you are a girl like me. By girl like me, I mean a girl, who has done bad things, to get ahead in life. By bad things, I mean if you do them, then no one cares about what happens to you. It’s like it is your fault. You deserve it. I used to think the universe punished me if I was ever going to exchange body for money. That’s why I would always get sick. I’d play games for how long I could make it without working. 1 month, 2 months, maybe a year. Always returning after a break up, a little perk that stings after. Only able to be a good girl if it was to make someone else happy. Not capable of it by myself.

Repetition compulsion, or just how I want to live my life?

When does the stigma begin and end?

Who was I before it?

How has it left me?

Who will I be when finally it is all over?

Will anyone ever let me escape it?

Allow me to be the woman I am, when no one else is in the room.

I’m an idealist. I want to be good at something - so badly. A high achiever, if you will. Whatever I set my eyes on, I get. Or at least pretty close to it, most of the time.

I didn’t set out to do ‘non monogamy’. I did the impossible. What most girls, mid twenties, in unrequited agony, dream of.

Somehow - shapeshifted my situationship, into a real relationship, one that you tell your friends and parents about, and people at work.

It was just that this relationship came with terms I hadn’t explored before.

Partly due to the world we existed in, and because life was too exciting to only have eyes for each other.

This is something we both agreed upon, after all we did meet on a sex positive dating app, equally in the aftermath of monotonous monogamous relationships; that left us re-evaluating the ways in which life was worth living.

In the fourth year of my prior relationship - the monogamous one, that made me sad but also stable, but always like something was deeply wrong - I held a match and sparked a flame and held it against that little life until it burned and burned and burned and things could never go back to the way they were before.

I felt as if the man I loved didn’t know the parts of myself I began to miss

(The parts I hid in order to access love, like exchanging time for money, because when you learn to generate income one way it’s hard to find another. It’s not that he didn’t know. It’s that he only knew half of it. The half that saw me skip lessons to sit in front of a ring light with a full face of makeup and a secret. But even the half that he did know, I initially stopped when we made it official).

We ate dinner and watched Take Me Out like a ritual we hated but did anyway

There was this brick that sat between us on the sofa, over time got bigger and bigger

Sprawled over the sides becoming all different kinds of shapes, moulding and squishing us until we were both people the other person could no longer recognise

When I left him or when he left me

Whichever way round it was

Because it is impossible to sum up the vicious push and pull

of him coming home

me asking for a hug

his body limp

because he can see my ring light

shoved in the corner

and

I am wearing a full face of makeup

and

forgot to take off

the only lingerie

I could afford

to convince men

on cam to spend £3 a minute.

So when I met an alternate man, who was impressive, valued me as an artist and didn’t care about my past, or the ways that I paid the rent - I fell deeply in love.

Maybe also too because he was distant in all the right ways, that allowed me to think, and dream, but then he was present in lots of ways too that enabled us to sustain a connection and build a life together that was wilder than all the comparisons that are too cliché to write about.

For the first time in my life, I was honest about who I was. But nothing could have prepared me for the turbulence that accompanied a non conforming lifestyle, and an exploration into non monogamy.

Perhaps because I am deeply traumatised, and the bog standard content encouraging you to feel compersion when your partner is on a date, just didn't work for me. How am I meant to feel compersion when I can only access comparison?

Abandonment continued to rear its head, controlling my behaviour when I wanted nothing more than to succeed.

I spent the best part of a year arguing that:

“I am non monogamous”

“I can do this”

“My last relationship left me so so bored and I want to live life..”

Over time it got easier, although the comments from monogamous friends or family failed to help.

“If he really loved you he would commit to just you”.

I want to clarify that this is not a departure to non-monogamy. It is not a personal essay arguing against it. It is a confession that for a girlie 12 years post Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis, that my values have fundamentally agreed but my nervous system has not.

Some part of me feels it’s important to put this out into the world, admist a plethora of short form non monogamous content mostly applicable to people with stable families and minds.

Despite the challenges, this relationship style has gifted me some amazing experiences with some incredible people. Like falling in and out of love with various women, discovering who I am, free from the grip of the male gaze.

This writing has no resolution,

other than sometimes

I wonder if I was not othered

if I could access other relationships

not that I would want that right now, but -

sometimes I reminisce on who I was

pre scarlett letter

when I was just a girl with a secret

that you could introduce to your parents

plan to get pregnant

and have children

that one day you would inevitably regret

stagnant

sticking on a smile

making dinner

like a ritual

on repeat

that I secretly hated

dreaming about who I could be

if only

I could access

a little bit of freedom.

Join us for our first ever podcast episode with 2 ADHD babes talking faster than the SWERFS trying to silence us. Passionate, chaotic + with all of the audio issues you can imagine for a girlie trying to launch a podcast for the first time with no prior experience.

We are going to be going through our backlog and posting our episodes previously released on Spotify for everyone who wishes not to use that platform.

Hope you enjoy!

Maedb xo

Photo by @whxretographer

This weekend, I lost 4 of my Instagram accounts. Most notably, Sexquisite Events, the performing arts company I run (founded in 2019) that creates paid creative opportunities for sex workers, and aims to create social change through art and performance.

Permanently deleted at 26,000 followers with no prior warnings, (all in the green in settings), with a paid meta subscription, and only told “we want to keep our community a respectable place”.

Alongside that, the creative eco-system that surrounds Sexquisite also has been erased. UK Sex Worker Pride, and the Sexquisite Podcast both of which I founded this year and have been working tirelessly to build, alongside our resident hosts ventures: Cybertease (a revolutionary all bodies, all genders, socialist strip club, which was one of the first of its kind), April Fiasco’s cabaret page, and April’s personal account.

Sexquisite and Cybertease now sit in a graveyard of deleted platforms, alongside other London based sex worker–run and women owned organisations like *One Night Parties, Sex and Rage and 3syncra. All of which create vital paid work from performance bookings to backstage roles in production and administration. This is a life line for the sex worker community, who are often excluded from the mainstream workforce. Working with us can help individuals fill in CV gaps, and develop skills that enable them to re-enter mainstream employment, alongside providing regular alternative income.

Alongside that, our events are a rare safe-haven for queer and sex working communities who rely on in-person events to find belonging, build networks, and access support.

These companies exist amongst other individuals in our network who have lost their accounts, Alice Lovegood, a sex educator and mother who was deleted at 450k, (*Miss Gold who runs One Night Parties is also a mother, and has a family that relies on her), Black Venus’s personal account, Angel Bella a sex worker and performer with national popularity and most notably joining Miss Bashful at solo and festival dates, and others who have been deleted but eventually got reinstated like popular public figures and sex workers - Rebecca Crow, Ivy Maddox, Gemma Rose and Luna Minxx.

We represent a community of sex worker performers that navigate dual identities.

We are all public about our current or past lived experience of sex work, and use it to create cultural capital in a world that profits and appropriates sex worker culture; in order to provide future non sex work creative opportunities for ourselves, and others.

We are poets, photographers, dancers, activists, playwrights, instructors, actors, performers, curators and film makers.

And to be clear, this isn’t an argument that we are more deserving of safety or rights than those who use Instagram purely to promote sex work.

What we are saying is this: when platforms remove access to visibility and creative opportunities, they narrow our choices and ability to diversify our income streams and access other forms of work.

It pushes many of us back into sex work, including those who wish not to do it, for whatever reason.

This is gendered violence and economic punishment.

We’re told sex work is a mistake, something we should “move on from”. And yet, the moment we try to step into other roles - creative, professional, public - the system shuts the door. It’s the same logic as historic prostitutes cautions. First they shame you for doing the work, then they use it to justify denying you any other path.

For me, this experience brings up a past that I have long wished to escape.

It’s the day after the attack, and I am voice noting Alice Lovegood. I say attack, because as Rebecca Crow tells me, “It feels like being a victim of a crime”; and it really does feel that way.

Anyway, so I’m voice noting Alice, with tears in my eyes, trying to place my finger on the feeling this experience is bringing up for me.

I tell her, “I don’t know if you know this, but I was arrested for sex work when I was sixteen, and this feels the same. Being misunderstood by a system. Being told you are wrong when you need help and protection and looking after. Being hurt and then blamed for it”.

She replies, “You’re exactly right.”

Then she proceeds to tell me what the deletion actually cost her: sixty percent of her income gone overnight, debt piling, rent payments missed, bailiffs at her door. She fell into a deep depression, with CPTSD symptoms she had spent years managing resurfacing. And, when she tried to rebuild from scratch, a single viral video brought a wave of harassment, without the protection of the community and credibility her original platform once provided.

It is true for both of us that we have both come from low income backgrounds, and created platforms that provide for ourselves, families, and for multiple members of staff. All of which is now jeopardised.

Sexquisite became a deeply personal project for me. I poured my life into it because for a long time I felt like a failure, a GCSE dropout, someone who’d been processed by systems rather than supported by them, and continually misunderstood. Sexquisite was my proof that I was worth something, that sex workers were, that we are multifaceted, talented, deserving of rights and respect, and that we could build something powerful and influential on our own terms.

When you can’t find your place in the world, create it.

I was also on a mission, to destigmatise sex work and spark real social change. And whether I wanted it to or not, having 26,000 followers on Instagram became part of that proof. To the outside world, that number meant legitimacy. It showed that people cared about our work and believed in it.

Miss Gold, founder of One Night Parties, tells me:

“An Instagram account isn’t just an account. It’s years of labour: writing, sharing, connecting, building. Losing one isn’t a minor inconvenience, it directly impacts a business. It took us six years to reach 30k. Do we have another six years to rebuild it?”

She continues:

“One Night is a safer space for queer people. Our work centres women. Our events are built around consent, liberation and community care. We are a marginalised community that should be protected, not erased.”

Venus, founder of Sex and Rage and 3Syncra, echoes the same pattern:

“I’ve had three accounts suspended: my personal page, Sex and Rage, and 3Syncra. My business partner’s personal and event accounts were also taken. All of this happened twice in one year. Another account we worked on - one focused only on art and music - was reinstated instantly. Mine still isn’t. I’ve lost business, opportunities, and the workers I employ through Sex and Rage have lost work. The censorship has even jeopardised our ability to apply for arts funding.”

And then there is Rebecca Crow, model, activist, organiser, whose experience makes the violence undeniable -

“I’ve lost my Instagram nine times. It was at 725,000 followers and would be over a million now if it had remained active. My reach is destroyed, posts hit 1–2% of my audience. Even when my account is fully in the green, it’s never recommended.

I lose hundreds of thousands daily. Realistically, my financial loss over time is over a million. My influencer work is gone, my reputation damaged.

And I believe it’s because I organised two protests outside Meta HQ. I was made an example.”

These stories are not isolated. They expose a pattern where sex workers are punished for existing, while the culture we created is commodified, and repackaged for mass consumption. The same imagery that gets us deleted fuels global advertising campaigns, arena tours, and multimillion pound brands without consequence.

Take Honey Birdette, for example - an international lingerie company built on strip-club aesthetics and overtly sexualised imagery. Their ads run freely and their content is algorithmically boosted. Their visuals are identical to what would get a marginalised sex worker led business banned immediately. Maybe it’s only acceptable when your business serves late-stage capitalism.

We also see it in pop culture. Lily Allen can talk about sex work in her lyrics. Herself and other celebrities can experiment with OnlyFans, and treat it like a branding exercise whilst staying fully platformed. Sabrina Carpenter can dance on a pole in a music video, and hang out of cars on highroads as if she is picking up clients and it’s labelled artistic direction, not a community guideline violation.

It’s our culture, we’re just not allowed to access it.

Dr Carolina Are (@bloggeronpole), a digital criminologist at the Centre for Digital Citizens, Northumbria University, has been tracking platform governance and online abuse since 2017. Her research confirms our experiences:

“For years now, my research participants, and especially sex workers, performers, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC social media users, have been telling me Meta’s appeals system is unjust and dysfunctional. The company disproportionately focuses on removing content but not on rectifying mistakes contrary to any democratic process, where appeals are essential for fairness.

The disproportionate targeting of marginalised communities is in direct opposition to Meta’s public claims about safety and freedom of speech. Meta say they censor to protect users - yet they show no concern for the livelihoods destroyed through mistaken removals.

Zuckerberg recently announced that new moderation policies would mean ‘more freedom’ and ‘less censorship,’ yet this freedom seems to apply mostly to AI slop and far-right content - not to the communities who rely on these platforms to survive. Their governance suggests that ‘safety’ matters far less than PR, political optics, and investor approval.

I have repeatedly found myself acting as an unofficial, unpaid intermediary for deleted users through my research, building spreadsheets simply to cope - because Meta will not.

Their broken appeals system has created a dangerous marketplace where people are now paying thousands to hackers in hopes of recovering accounts, often being scammed.

And with a Trump presidency and Big Tech scrambling to appease it, I see no political will to improve moderation for marginalised users. In fact, the situation appears to be deteriorating, unless the threat of bad press forces action.”

Carolina’s research affirms what we already know, that the systems that keep us oppressed, will not be coming to save us. Our survival has always depended on each other, on other sex workers, on our extended chosen families, and on the queer communities who consume, celebrate, and inherit our culture.

So what can you do to help? Firstly, thanks for reading this far if you already have. I appreciate you <3

Share this article far and wide.

Follow our new account and share so people can reconnect with us.

Buy tickets to our upcoming tour in London, Manchester and Bristol, and help us spread the word.

Listen to and share the Sexquisite Podcast (as we also lost that account). Click the notification bell to be reminded of new episodes!

Tell your friends, your networks, your timelines.

Every follow, every share, every ticket, every conversation matters!

This is how independent culture survives. This is how marginalised art stays alive.

Lots of love,

Maedb xxxx

I am a writer, performer and founder of Sexquisite Events, UK Sex Worker Pride, The Sexquisite Podcast and co-founder of Riot Party. I create spaces where sex workers are celebrated, not stigmatised. I create art that is feminist, political, and multidisciplinary. Stay in touch with me by subscribing to my Substack, and following me on Instagram (albeit unsafe lol).

Myself & Alice Lovegood by @charleywilliamsphotography

It’s Sunday at 1136pm, and I have just returned from a weekend away visiting the small town I spent my childhood in. Myself and the woman I am dating decided we wanted a weekend escaping the demands of London life, and so I said “I know just the place..” A small town, nestled in the West Country that is both beautiful, and haunting (perhaps only to me). Rolling hills with moss for miles, juxtaposed with people who have little to do but lots to say. Small town with smaller minds, and the propensity to make you feel just as small.

We left for a multitude of reasons. Primarily because I ended up in a “relationship” with a man twice my age, and when I say relationship I mean I was 13 and he was 30, but the police record called it that, and I also wanted to believe it too. Stockholm Syndrome in Somerset. Sentenced to 12 years whilst I couldn’t produce any. Daily day dreams about the life we could live if he returned. Imagining him knocking on the door of my boring lessons and swooping me away from school…

It’s easy to tell people you were “abused”. It’s less easy to talk about how you fantasised for them to return, and you repeated dangerous situations to replicate the feeling until it almost cost you your life. I suppose I’m writing honestly about it now because we can’t change the world by keeping secrets. The other day someone told me about a gymnast that they know, and how they were abused by their coach - but they didn’t realise until this other gymnast - wrote and released a book about what happened. Maybe this is my version of that. Maybe I just want attention. Maybe I want someone to care, or be angry.

The Saturday of this trip was spent imagining plots for a horror movie, triggered by an avalanche of thoughts. Searching the streets looking for him, placing him in every empty avenue. Shit, I could have sworn I saw him… Except I didn’t, and I was wandering paths in my mind that I had long barricaded off - and I had to answer questions quickly, from the woman I was with - like, yeah sure - sorry, I’m good. Just writing in my head. And I mean technically that wasn’t a lie, but I’m hardly gonna get into it. I’m just a silly girl, having stupid day dreams. So lost in my thoughts that I barely know what’s going on. Yeah, I’m having fun, promise.

Wanna see this river that’s really cute? I got raped there. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m saying that. Haha. Slay.

It feels important to clarify that the aforementioned rape was not by the man who went to prison, but another boy a couple of years older that made me laugh and made an effort with my mum. I thought we were friends, I just didn’t know how to say no with my chest. Like say it convincingly enough that he believed it.

It wasn’t until the police questioned my mum, and told her that the same guy had a string of rapes with girls similar to my age and friendship group that we understood what had happened.

Every time authority told me what had happened to me

I experienced an exorcism of emotion

Buried in my body, with no clue about the score

If you don’t realise it is wrong then it can’t hurt you, right?

It was like ritual. Something bad would happen and I wouldn’t notice. People would report the problem, and then I’d become one. Mum couldn’t understand why bad things kept happening, I was convinced it was because I once smashed this mirror in year 7. But, obvs now - I know that was probably only half of it ;)

So, when my friend from school in the pub asks me why he hasn’t seen me since the beginning of Year 10 - I say “I moved to London”. And when he asks me what I do with myself now, I scramble for the words to attempt to explain that I made the best out of a bad situation. But before I get there, there are others interrupting at the table, loud and leery, and drinking, and one other guy from school tells me about how this one guy who I once fucked when I was 15 has a baby now, but with a woman who is a stripper, and almost everyone has something bad to say, and so I am silent, and say “I just do events”, and leave out the important parts, that make them meaningful; to me, and so many others.

And when one of the men, I mean boys, at the table finds out that the girl I am with is not just a friend, he calls us “Lezzers”, and tells me how one of the other boys “wants to crack us”, and I am transported back to a time, before I left this small town with smaller minds, and the girls in the PE changing room told me to avert my eyes, were bold enough to consider them my type.

And before I know it, it is 7pm on a Sunday - telling my friend about how I also have a boyfriend, of whom I love - to which she calls me greedy, in response my eyes well up, and I want nothing but to leave this stupid small town with rolling hills and moss for miles, stuffed with secrets that are better off buried, and to surround myself in spaces that demand nothing of me but for me to always honestly be entirely completely myself.

Of the times

We had walls for mouths

a body made of bricks

Fully functional concrete feet

Will I remember the times I coiled my back, arched my spine

Fell into my womanhood as if I went the wrong way home

Spent a collection of seconds watching my reflection move as if it were a movie

How those seconds of sexuality were repressed i…

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And in that moment I could be anyone I wanted.

Just a successful mid twenties business woman. He’d be impressed at the investment funds I used and I could pretend it’s cause I was clued up & not because I learned it from an old business man that paid my rent & taught me how to switch between places & people - & act like I was apart of their world.

I’d hold his hand and feel how I used to. More than “hot”, “sexy” - he’d call me gorgeous & really mean it. Ask me what I was doing the following day. Talk about how he’d love to pamper me & bring me breakfast & morning coffee. But some part of me knew this would never be possible. That this could never be more than one night…

Not because I was ashamed of my work, but he had already made very clear that he was. He spoke of “the prostitutes” at the members club he used to frequent, in response to me running sex positive events stated “it’s not like you’re a brass or anything”. I’d correct him on his language. Say babe, it’s “sex workers”. Think about some of the men in my life who I love who have made similar mistakes. Flitter between “fuck this”, to “hmm maybe he just needs to be educated?”. But none of that would matter, because men like him would never make a marriage out of girls like me. And even still I’m not sure I would want to marry a man like him. But it was what he represented.

I went home after politely declining his invitation back to his. He was the perfect gentleman. Romantic. Chivalrous. Quite the contrast to keeping things casual, & the ways in which I’m treated when people have access to who I really am. So the next day I block his number with no explanation. Other than yes you made me smile, but I cannot be bothered to walk this road. Because yes he liked me for me but when he learns of the ways I pay the rent, things will change. That is the only certainty. So I don’t say goodbye. Let that moment just exist. Because undoing years of conditioning is not a past time I wish to fill the remaining years of my twenties with. Hope maybe our paths cross when I’m rich & no longer living the life I am living now.

You don’t have a home but he insists a child will make one

The baby is born to a song you can’t stand.

Given a name you don’t like.

You hold the child

Hug it tight

Attempt to draw love from the bottom of a heart you never knew you had.

He takes the child to his mother before you

are ready

It is passed around like bread and wine.

And you,

lay there

Body

broken

Constant sound of laughter

a soundtrack

Your family absent

in waiting room

Backing espressos

chain smoking cigarettes.

His mother calls you brave

Your mother calls you an idiot

And all you can think about is the collection you didn’t release.

The commission you were too pregnant to apply for.

The show you never developed.

Just before the abortion, 4 years earlier

His mother handed you a congratulations cake

at 6 weeks pregnant

He told you he would leave you

if you didn’t have children by 25.

You were 21 with dreams too foreign for him to digest.

He called you a workaholic

Claimed that because you barely had family

You can’t know what one means.

On a late winter night you make clear that you will never sacrifice

your career for love

Not knowing that you will,

one day for belonging.

Somewhere in a hospital bed you hold your first child

What is it to give life to something that ends yours?

Your body,

vehicle

Bathroom breaks,

shoulder to cry on

Dreams,

distant memory

His intentions,

good

Yours,

insignificant

No reason to leave because he is kind and better than the rest.

In between fake smiles,

blessings you don’t believe in

You are handed a life sentence

by the man you love

All in the name of compromise.

I caption it “do you relate to this?”

There’s something about being antagonistic that makes me feel powerful

Like the time he said “shame I’m not allowed to dick you down anymore”

& I replied “that’s never stopped you before”

I thank him for turning me into a workaholic

Tell him he is to praise for my successes

Tongue in cheek but some part of me really means it

You taught me how to make money, I say

Sad but grateful

I tell him if only I was older then it wouldn’t have been wrong

He calls me a hustler

I tell him he’s fucked in the head

I wonder if I’ve grown in all the ways he imagined

Remember how he told me we were gonna build an empire

& I really believed it

It usually goes like this

We catch up until he triggers me

He reminds me that his intentions were bad at the beginning

but then he fell in love

What sort of man falls in love with a girl?

I recount all the times I am raped & he has an excuse for every time

I always excuse him because it always makes sense.

I never felt sad for the ways he touched me -

but I am at dinner with a friend who is new in my life and she talks about violence being thrust upon her body before she had the opportunity to explore it

I tell her same

& for the first time, I really believe it.

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