TonioTimeDaily

Autism is my super blessing! I'm a high-school valedictorian, college graduate, world traveler, disability advocate. I'm a Unitarian Universalist. I'm a Progressive Liberal. I'm about equal rights, human rights, civil & political rights, & economic, social, &cultural rights. I do servant leadership, boundless optimism, & Oneness/Wholeness. I'm good naked & unashamed! I love positive personhood, love your neighbor as yourself, and do no harm! I'm also appropriately inappropriate! My self-ratings: NC-17, XXX, X, X18+ & TV-MA means empathy! I publish shows at 11am! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/support

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episode 88: Hayley Jade says that she is an Autistic sex worker


Hayley Jade:

"I came out as autistic during the pandemic. Being isolated for so long finally revealed that I had been “masking,” or performing social behaviors that are considered neurotypical, my entire life. And the less I masked, the happier I became.

I have this theory that autistic people know they’re autistic just like gay people know they’re gay. As a bisexual woman, I didn’t have to go to the psychologist to take a test and have an old white man tell me whether or not I’m into women. But for some reason, this is what society requires of autistic people. Without a diagnosis on paper, we’re not recognized ― even though a diagnosis still rarely helps us in society. But for much of my life, I knew I was different, even though I didn’t know why.

After hours of telling my psychologist my life story, doing multiple-choice personality tests and emailing him traits I identified with, I was devastated when he told me he didn’t think I was autistic. I tried to keep eye contact and look calm while I dissociated.

I asked him why he didn’t think I was autistic when I had been so certain. I had stayed up until 3 a.m. watching TikTok videos of other people around the world who made me feel less alone ― and suddenly my whole life made sense. Suddenly I knew why being diagnosed late with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) didn’t feel like the complete answer. I had suspected I was autistic for years ― but now I knew I was.

“Oh, I just don’t think someone who’s autistic would be able to do your job,” he said, like it made perfect sense.

I had told my psychologist that I had been working as an escort for the last few years. Unable to keep a job in my 20s, I went on disability and started escorting to make some extra money. I found it incredible that men would pay hundreds of dollars an hour to spend time with me and that the more I was myself, the more they wanted to see me."

"There are lots of reasons someone might see an escort. I’ve had a man come to me because his girlfriend had pain during sex and she gave him the go-ahead to seek out a professional. Another sex worker told me someone’s wife messaged her because she wanted her husband to learn stamina in bed. Many clients are too busy with work to settle down but are lonely, crave intimacy and are even depressed. A lot are unhappy with their sex lives and don’t want to leave their marriages.

But after a little over a year, I’ve begun to see a trend. Often the clients who contact me are older cisgender white men. This is probably the group of people you think of as johns: married professionals who travel a lot. While I’m a fan of salt-and-pepper gentlemen, seeking out a sex worker isn’t just for older white men who are lacking intimacy in their marriage and are rich enough to do something about it discreetly. In fact, about 50 percent of my clients are people of color, and many are around my age. But I want to see more variety — people with mental illness, people with disabilities, women, people who are LGBTQIA+ (yes, asexuals, because intimacy is about more than just sex)."

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 October 22, 2021  1h6m