One of the strongest forces Morena is up against are anti-trafficking organizations who intentionally conflate sex trafficking with consensual adult sex work. Many, like Morena, also find purpose and liberation in their work, viewing it as a voluntary profession that, just as with any other job, has its ups and downs. While being undocumented puts them at greater risk of harassment from law enforcement, trafficking raids and deportation - and they also lack access to health care, government aid and worker protections - sex work can provide a critical lifeline in a precarious employment landscape where the only employment options are in informal sectors. “We become dehumanized by these narratives, because it’s less about understanding us and what we’re doing to fight back, and more about depicting us as dead bodies that experience violence over and over again.”įor Morena and other undocumented sex workers, things are much more nuanced than that. “It’s very much tailor-made to a white gaze that wants to gawk at the third world and how poor we are and how we don’t have agency,” she explains passionately as she adjusts her glasses and fiddles with her red headphones. In her latest YouTube video, she talks about the problems with the 2011 documentary Whore’s Glory, which follows sex workers in three countries through a voyeuristic lens. Morena is also an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights and undocumented sex workers, something she speaks at length about on her blog, Quora account and YouTube channel. “Sex work gives me more time to explore myself, to advocate for myself politically and to dedicate time to my passions.”īut sex work isn’t all she does.
“It was great to create my own world I could be in charge of,” she tells me. She built a website, dressed up for photoshoots and set her rates based on how much she wanted to work. Morena had already built a potential pool of customers through Tumblr, where people followed her for her nudes and political commentary on immigration. “I really wanted to have a career that I didn’t have to rely on any legal status in order to do,” she says, adding that she could make significantly more money under the table as an escort and porn performer than she ever could in a dead-end retail job. But when President Trump announced his plans to end the program the same year she was fired, it was all the motivation she needed to go into sex work full-time. She was able to do so because of DACA, the program that allows undocumented people who came to the U.S. Instead, she worked while going to community college in Long Island.
In particular, her immigration status prevented her from accessing financial aid for Mount Holyoke, the private women’s college she’d been accepted to. Even my facial expressions belonged to the company.”īeing undocumented, though, she didn’t have a lot of options.
“I had to wear all black I had to smile all the time. “Every single part of my life was becoming theirs,” she explains in her soft Long Island accent. An undocumented immigrant from Honduras with curly black hair and a full set of adult braces, she’d been working soul-killing retail jobs for years and felt like she was losing herself. Instead of getting angry, Morena, now 27, felt liberated. Soon thereafter, she got a call that she was being let go - apparently, her online work was “not conducive” to selling VR consoles. He started talking, and the news eventually reached management. In 2016, 22-year-old part-time sex worker Maya Morena was working at a big-box electronics store when a co-worker found the nudes she was selling on Tumblr. Whether they’re breaking new ground on OnlyFans, using their platform to call attention to issues like racism and immigration or shattering our ideas of who’s “allowed” to make porn, sex workers are both reimagining what sex work can be and changing the world - one swingin’, phalloplastic dick at a time. This year, we’re swapping out the typical 12 days of Christmas for something even better: 12 days of sex workers who should absolutely be on your radar.
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