Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 284 with Elle Stanger of They Talk Sex Podcast

Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 284 with Elle Stanger of the Podcast They Talk Sex

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be speaking with Elle Stanger from the podcast They Talk Sex. There's some upcoming events we'll be attending. December 3rd and 4th, I'll be at Affiliate World Conference in Bangkok. December 7th through the 9th, I'll be sponsoring AW Summit Elite in Koh Chang, Thailand. And to start the year right, I'll be in Hollywood for XBiz LA. I hope to see many of you at these events. If you'd like to sit down and discuss business at any of these shows, contact us at adultsitebroker.com. We're proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You'll find articles on age verification laws and other attacks on our industry. It's to raise awareness of our industry's plight in the war on porn. You'll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. Now time for our properties of the week for sale at Adult Site Broker. We have a premium AI companion platform focused on emotional realism and deep memory. Users interact with lifelike companions that remember every detail and respond with real emotion. We have a network of BDSM subreddits. It has over 1.49 million users, over 3.8 million posts, and almost 45,000 comments. There's a porn picture site with both a Web3 and a Web2 domain. The keyword of the domains is one of the most globally recognized in search terms in the world, porn. We have a buyer who's looking for dating and lifestyle sites in Europe. They would also consider other geos. We're offering a strip chat white label. The average user spends 24 minutes on the site. We have a network of interracial reality hardcore sites. The main site has reality hardcore porn with amateur girls as well as some porn stars. There's a unique platform that bridges the gap between mainstream social link services like Linktree and adult content creators on platforms like OnlyFans. They combine a bio link with the ability to send virtual gifts. We're offering a growing free porn gaming site with adult sex games. The site is owned by one of the top entrepreneurs in our industry. And there's a highly active, organically grown Reddit community centered around the stocking and foot fetish niches. For more information, go to our listings page at adultsitebroker.com. If you have any questions, please contact us on our website. Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is sex worker and advocate, Elle Stanger. Elle, thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Bruce, thank you so much for having me and for saying my last name correctly. Do people say it wrong? I get stranger a lot. People see it as a stranger. Oh, I like that. Way cooler. I like that. I know, right? I do too. I know. I should have thought of that. Alas. Thanks for having me, Bruce. It's a pleasure. Let's tell everybody about you. Elle is a board member and co-president for the Oregon Sex Workers Committee. She's an AASECT certified sexuality educator, adult industry professional, writer, and podcaster. We love podcasters here. Elle uses her platform to amplify the needs of consensual sex workers and exploitation survivors globally, especially in her home state of Oregon. Elle is a parent and queer, polyamorous person with autism, ADHD, and CPTSD. I don't even know what that is. What is that? Complex PTSD. Oh, okay. There you go. You can tell me more about that. Elle aims to be grief, literate, and trauma-informed and considers herself a lifelong learner of many things. As a public educator, facilitator, and events organizer, she works with therapy providers, mental health care workers, and other harm reduction providers such as counselors, EMTs, and other crisis responders. The Oregon Sex Workers Committee, or OSWC, addresses economic and health disparities among consensual adult sex workers and trafficking survivors in Oregon, centering on at-risk communities through research advocacy, education, and harm reduction to promote safety and equity. Their focus is on the impacts of horror phobia, sex negativity, and victim blaming. Elle facilitates monthly coalition meetings for current or former sex industry workers. Elle is currently developing an STI HIV course. You can find them online at oregonswc.org. How'd you like your commercial? Wow. I am like, you're doing a beautiful job and I do a lot of things. God, I forget. That must make you tired, all that. It does, but I also, I have so much energy. I'm told that people ask me if I'm a night person and a morning person, and I think just both. Gotta be, I guess. So, Elle, what is your educational background? Does it have to do with some of the things you do for OSWC? It sure does. So, yeah, it worked out. I like to say that I use my degree and not just to prop the tripod on it when I'm filming porn or telling my subs what to do. So I went to school for criminology and with a minor in psych, focusing on criminal investigation. So a little bit of forensics, a little bit of police processes, a little bit of history. Interesting. It was, and I figured out about halfway through that I definitely never want to work for state or federal police or anything like that. We're talking, I reflect on my graduation, which was about a decade ago when I got my bachelor's from Portland State University. And I remember, and I've told this story before, but it's really, I think, timely and important now, especially with the increase of deportations and kidnappings and trafficking of human people around the world, due in part to the Trump administration. But I remember, you know, at this time, I determined to finish school and get my degree. But I just couldn't wait to look forward to my strip club shift that night. And meanwhile, behind me, two other graduating students, two guys, they were talking about like which force they were going to go into if they're going to go into immigration or, you know, Border Patrol or whatever DHS. And I just thought like, Oh, God, how disgusting because the powers that be are so fundamentally abusive. Right? So I figured that out by having exposure to people in real life, transactional, stigmatized, criminalized situations. I'm talking about sex work. I'm talking about selling nudes for money online or in person. You know, I'm talking about giving lap dances or letting people massage parts of your body or you're massaging them or X, Y, Z and beyond. Right. So I realized after a few weeks of doing strip club work in order to finish my schooling, that this wasn't going to be temporary, but that I was learning more about the world than I ever could in college. And I just met so many interesting people and I could see the value in touch and then in trade or bartering or transactions. So I thought, you know, I just want to be in adult work forever, but also I kind of want to make it better for as many people as possible because I see what it's done for me. Sure. Did you originally want to be a cop? I knew I wanted to work in investigations. And the example I'll give is like when I was a little kid, I saw Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs and I'm like, I'm going to catch the bad guys. Oh, yeah. Right. And like read the profiling books. What a powerful movie. My God. Exactly. Right. Timeless. And in order to be any kind of investigator, you have to do the basic, you know, get your associate's degree. And that is next to people who want to be cops. So that was also an interesting experience to be around people where I saw that their personality type was not befitting of like a helper or someone that should have a gun. And now that I'm working, I've done so many kinds of adult work. A couple years before the pandemic hit, a friend of mine at the time suggested that I go through formal education and training and certification to teach sexuality or health education to adults. I loved the idea. I went through instituteforsexuality.com is their website. And then I became certified by ASECT, which is the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Trainings, what you mentioned earlier. Okay. I didn't know what I was mentioning, but no, it was a mouthful. Yeah. ASECT. Certainly lots of letters going on. So I trained for four-ish years, so many counted hours, and that's teaching people in various ways about history, sexual function, dysfunction, impacts of shame, prevention of harm, just there's so many specialties to choose. So the way that I can use my formal education is in the real life spaces of strip club, you know, massage parlor, or kink space, all of these ways that I do work. And besides that, I can use criminal profiling, you know, education too, because you're dealing with people that are so emotionally loaded sometimes. Oh, yeah. No two ways about it. And that's just the cops, right? Cops, your clients and your co-workers. What did you do before you got into sex work? I worked a lot of retail and soft healthcare or healthcare light. I was never a nurse or an RN, but I did do unlicensed end of life care for a few different elderly folks. That was incredibly tough. And my hat is off to people who do that. I didn't have the guts for it. I cry all the time. I thought, you know what? I'm just going to work with drunk, horny adults. It is easier to do that for me. I would say. Having been one myself many times. Drunk, horny adults. Yeah. On a regular basis, as a matter of fact, sometimes sober. Oh, daily. Oh, yeah, sometimes sober. Yeah. So, I worked in pharmacy as a clerk. I did a little bit of food service, coffee, ice cream. I worked in the malls, top expensers. I worked in adult retail. So, I was an adult store clerk or manager for four years total. Because I was always working because I was always supporting myself even before I was doing sex work. Okay. Elle, how much time do you spend on advocacy and how much time on sex work and which is more rewarding? Oh, my gosh. Ooh, my brain wants to actually like do the math. So let's see. I would say, I mean, I'm committed in terms of formal advocacy. And that looks like working for and with Oregon Sex Workers Committee or we've changed our name. We're Oregon Safer Workers Coalition. We had to soften our name in the times. Also, it's harder for people to get grants or for our contractors to list us on a resume if it says sex. God forbid. I know. God forbid we're adults. So we did change our name, but I'm committed to at least 40 hours a month on the board. But as a working member, yeah, as the president. And then sex work is really, I usually would do between 15 and 20 club hours a week. So that's 80 a month. And a lot of times I'd be doing emails for one while I'm in the dressing room. And having a co-parent helps. I'll say I'm a parent. And if I was a single parent, I wouldn't be able to do as much as I can. You have one child? I have one child. That's all I wanted. Boy and girl. Born a girl and currently a boy. So we're also navigating that minefield of things in the media. Yeah. How old? 13. Jeez. It's a tender age to be going through that for sure. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. Another job. How do you deal with clients who fall in love with you? I don't lie to people because if nothing else, I don't want to endanger myself or them. And so that looks like telling someone that someday we'll be together when I know that's not the case. Do some sex workers do that? It's some people's hustle. Of course, considering where I live. Where do you live? Thailand. Oh. So that being the case, you know, I mean, that kind of shit goes on all the time. You know, the guys, a lot of the guys here are known as ATMs. Yeah. Well, I mean, people are living in more challenging circumstances. So I definitely like, and it works out that way a lot of times where the client will marry the provider. And if it works for both of them, you know, that's an industry in itself. And the example I used recently was strip club workers from the States that will go work in Guam under contract and they marry a sailor. Oh, wow. Yeah, I've got a friend who married a sex worker. Oh, yeah, yeah. It does happen. It does. I feel like I got away from the question. How do I deal with them? Oh, I also understand that clients, a lot of people have a certain amount of time before they're just going to want to move on and there's nothing wrong with that. So usually, you know, I don't take it personally when someone starts spacing out appointments or seeing other providers. To go back real quick, the reason I don't lie to people is because I've seen and heard horror story situations where, you know, the client doesn't take it well, they feel lied to and hurt and so can act out with violence. Yes, I was thinking that. Right. So I just want to avoid that. So and I think that's one of the reasons that I've had some clients come to see me either online or in person for over a decade or for 15 years. Yeah, because I'm pretty consistent and they don't worry about me fucking them over. That's a really good thing because there is a bit of that without a doubt. So, how does your sexuality relate to your work? Hmm. I get to do things and learn about things that may be interesting to me, but I don't necessarily feel aroused by them. I'm not going to give any examples because I don't want to disappoint anyone. I can take clients who they're really into what's happening and I feel pretty neutrally about it. I'm just trying to create a nice scene for them, but maybe they think I'm getting off on it too. And maybe that's important to them or not. But I can display enthusiasm for what I'm doing. Yeah, I'll display attention and kindness and enthusiasm for whatever we're doing. But I think that's kind of cool. Like I get to be directly involved or pretty adjacent to things that aren't necessarily my personal sex things. And I think that just helps me develop like skills and empathy. Otherwise, I am a pretty at this point, like I would say creative, spontaneous, but also intentional partner and my partner's benefit from that. And if nothing else, then I'm kind of memorable. Well, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. It's good. It's good to be memorable. It's good to be different, right? I like being good at whatever I'm doing, you know, put it on my gravestone. She was a good lay, whatever. Well, hey, that's good. She was good at sex things. There are worse things than being a good light put on your headstone. Yeah, I feel like such a bro when I say it that way. It's more my dorky self to say she was good at sex things. Look at what you studied. It was probably almost all guys. I know, that's true. Yeah, I have been immersed around men and males quite a bit, which I feel very in touch with my masculine sides. That's a part of my sexuality, too. Yeah. What impact do you think studying criminology with all these future cops had on you as a person and your future? So, something I notice sometimes is when women are trying to survive or adapt in a male-dominant society, they will take on those habits or behaviors of the men around them just to be one of the guys to be socially acceptable. To stand out is danger. To be too feminine is danger in a lot of cases. And we can also look at this with like gay men might be closeted or act more masculine to fit in or whatever. So I think there's a certain degree of I can code switch to be like the bro-iest bro that ever bro'd. And also I could speak a little bit, you know, hopefully quite a lot more articulately if needed in other settings. I've never considered myself like a girl's girl. When I was a kid, I didn't even want to be a girl. I very much wore like my dad's clothes and climbed trees. And I think when you try to put kids in a box to some degree, a lot of them will form resistance to it. So for whatever reason today, I consider myself like very non-binary. I feminize myself for work because I know that we're in a heterosexual dominant society. So wider audience to a degree. Yeah. I mean, queer is in right now, but it's also under a microscope. So yeah, unfortunately in a negative way, thanks to, thanks to the orange blob out there. So Elle, what's your current relationship status and does what you do impact your relationships? And if so, how? I like to say right now, uh, I have a couple of boyfriends and it's been a weird summer. I was in a long distance monogamous relationship with one man for about three years, and then we opened up the relationship. Things are changing all the time, but I realized that I just, I mean, I know I love love and I love sex, and I like people of all genders, but I also just really have a thing for bisexual men right now. So I'm having a lot of queer sex, and it feels very liberating. And it's also interesting because when I spend time in women's spaces or women mostly spaces like strip club dressing rooms, if I say that every once in a while, inevitably, someone will say, ew, to the bisexual men part, to which I say homophobia. And let's investigate that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's no bueno. That's no bueno. So, okay. So, for me to understand here, You call yourself queer, but you're really bisexual, right? See, I used the term bisexual for myself as a teenager and until my mid-20s. But queer is a better term because to me, and this is not a perfect definition or anyone else's, bisexual would imply that I'm attracted to two sexes and two sexes only, which I'm not. I'm attracted to an array of people of various genders. So that could mean girly men or masculine women. But bisexual tends to make me and other people think of I like masculine men and feminine women, which can still be very hetero flexible. I'm learning. I'm learning. Hey, that's the goal. It's also generational things like different, you know, older millennials are speaking differently about sex than Gen Zers are, I'm learning. Like a lot of folks my age, we are taking back the term faggot and we're using it as a term of endearment or play. Absolutely. I know. Right. So interesting. I actually have a choker and I got like a necklace in gray that says faggot. I got one for someone else. And it's like a way to reappropriate a word that a lot of us either used malignantly or had used at us when we were kids. Yeah. Much like a lot of people like to reappropriate slut when they could. Yeah. Well, that's not a bad thing. Sluts are good. Sluts are great. Sluts are great. They still suffer a lot. Sluts are good. Whores are great. I mean, come on. There's nothing wrong with either. What's something about you that most people don't expect? Maybe what you just said about having boyfriends I didn't expect. So go ahead. Surprise. Yeah, that's one. I eat a lot. I eat a lot and I'm pretty small bodied, which can be very obnoxious to some people. yeah that is that's really obnoxious to me i thought i'd mention that as a guy who's had a lifelong weight problem that is really obnoxious but go ahead i know i'm sorry no i'm like a hummingbird like i'm constantly just moving and sucking nectar or something like yeah no that's the thing i eat like every two or three hours which can also be kind of annoying when you're like damn this shit's expensive so if you if you're a client or supporter and you want to feed me i always accept fries at the club oh yeah i have like seven different bags of chips in my closet right now or in my cupboard yeah i mean you don't have a weight problem you know like again all bodies are beautiful i could have i could be full of disease and cancer on the inside we'll find out but yeah i know knock on something without getting the dog to bark yeah exactly oh and i really like poodles i'm a crazy poodle person i've grown up with standard poodles doodles are very trendy the last decade which is totally well and good but um i am a purist that is a poodle freak and i've got all mutts and one pecanese so five all together yes all puppers are beautiful we we call them tie dogs we don't call them mutts so there you go they're mixes and they are yes they are beautiful oh my god yes we were chasing a couple of them outside today because dumbass here open the gate. Oh, no. That's what happens when you haven't been sleeping. Anyway. Smarty dumbass. That's okay. We caught them. So, my wife and I caught up with them. Actually, they came running back because they don't want to – they're afraid to be away from our place. Yeah. They know where the food comes from, hopefully. Yeah. Definitely. We've had these two since almost birth. Yeah. There was a litter of like seven, I think, about an hour away. And we went to look at them. And, you know, like my wife said, well, let's take one. I said, oh, let's take two. So, we took two. The two that came up to me, I said, okay, they like me. We'll take those two. Yeah, that's how you know. Six years later. Anyway, what do you feel most proud of regarding your parenting? Ooh, so I could still screw up my kid. There's time. Like we said earlier, my kid's 13. You know, I'll check in with them in 20 years and we can get a rundown of how they feel I did. But I definitely noticed that my kid can talk to me about things and give me feedback about my communication or my patterns. Yeah. In a way that I never could have with my parents. And that even looks like, you know, when I'm very highly distractible and I have like too many things going on, like between cooking and I'm on my phone, I'm trying to manage the dog and the kid will just be like, you're doing too much. I'm like, oh, wow. And I do be mindful about, there's the term like the parentified child where the child is like an emotional support or a caregiver for the parent. I don't want that. We don't want that for sure. I don't think that's what's happening, but I'm very aware of just like, what an observant, mindful little person we've raised. Well, your kid, right? Yeah. Indeed. Talk about whorephobia. That's a new word for me. what does it mean and how does it manifest itself? Ooh, okay. I like the combo of how you asked that. So, horophobia is a disgust or hatred against people who are sexual or do sexually relevant work. You mean Republicans? Well, by default. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What's interesting is, and what I didn't expect, is in leftist or Democrat or blue spaces, horophobia also happens all the time, and it can be way more subtle. Yeah, I was being facetious. We can thank our lovely former Vice President Kamala Harris for Fostasesta, so that's all I need to say, right? Right. No, and she, I believe at some point bragged about like the number of trans women sex workers that she had arrested or prosecuted. Oh, I lived in that county. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's a bitch. Anyway, go ahead. But I mean, horror phobia affects all women. It can look like one woman or girl shaming another for like what she's wearing. like, oh, that's a lot of cleavage, you know, suggesting that there's something wrong with them. Or it could be outright, like, I'm not going to hire you because you did porn and I think you're a bad person. Or I suspect you're a stripper, so I'm going to complain about something arbitrary to the landlord, you know. That happens, sure. People get kicked out of their places for being sex workers all the time. All the time. People lose their children for their consensual, legal, or former work. People lose their children for their illegal work, which is a shame because doing something illegal doesn't mean it's not consensual. And people also lose their children even if they are victims or survivors of trafficking. A lot of states still prosecute people who were being forced to do labor by another person, which is often their partner, their partner, their parent, or if they're a migrant, then maybe their employer or a ranger. Yeah, no, that stuff happens all the time. And with the immigration stuff, now. It's a total freaking mess. How is that impacting sex workers? So, because I don't work in the immigration realm, all I can do is keep an ear. And it seems like it's such a scarier nightmare than it's ever been. Because when people are, when a massage parlor or a venue or a home is raided and people are arrested, they're opened up to having all of their items stolen, you know, or sexual assault. Oh, yeah. Cops are good at that. Yeah. I just learned interviewing this journalist, Isadora Rodriguez. He's over in New York, but that violence against people was, I'm forgetting the term for it, but it was the second most common police misconduct besides use of excessive force was some kind of like weird sexual thing. Yeah. That doesn't surprise me a bit. So, whorephobia can show up in a lot of ways. There's scales of it, but even if you aren't a whore, even if you're not getting paid for it, you can still be someone who does harm in this way or, you know, receives harm. How can people prevent sexual abuse or trafficking? So, we need funding for social services, and that looks like housing, education, and jobs for youth, Right. A lot of people who do dangerous or criminalized or underage sex work, it's because they need shelter and food. Of course. When people run away, the chances of them becoming a sex worker and even being trafficked are very high. Right. And that can look like over in Portland here, it's going through a weird evolution right now. But the Lloyd Center mall was a fixture of commerce and socializing like lots of malls were for decades and things are changing now. But typically it was pretty well known amongst a lot of us here that pimps hang out at Lloyd Center because they tend to be men in their 20s who are looking for teens that can't go home or don't have a home. So where do you look for people that would love a couch to crash on, but you know, they just got to do something for you, a few things for you first. So it's not that complicated, right? It's just a really boring answer, which is like we need to give places for people to live and work and survive so they don't have to do something that's dangerous. And, you know, if you're an adult and you want to work in sex work, like the avenues exist, but then you have a lot more options to actually enjoy it and thrive and do it safely if your basic needs were met already. A lot of those options have been taken away by FOSTA-SESTA, though. Yeah, since 2018, everything got way worse. Even as a privileged worker who's been online for 20 years and has different in-person legal options to work in Portland, like my money went down big time. I feel like my income was cut in half compared to what I made like six or eight years ago. Oh, yeah. But everything costs more, so. Well, yeah. So, you got the double whammy there. Mm-hmm. Lovely. Yeah, it's a really tough time for people that are up and coming in the industry. Granted, I graduated in the era post the 2008-2009 recession anyway, and the hits just kept coming. But with interest rates, it's just even harder for people now to maybe even try to buy a house someday. It's hard for everyone who lives in the US. It makes me doubly happy that I'm not in the US anymore. I've been out since 2010, and I'm just so happy about that. I couldn't be happier, especially considering who's president again. Again. I mean, how stupid are people? How stupid are people? I was stupid to think the first time he couldn't get elected. I was naive. A lot of people didn't vote because of that. Nobody's going to vote for Trump. I don't need to go vote. By the end of it, after Bernie lost, I was like, oh, shit, I don't think Hillary's going to win because the misogyny was so apparent. So I'll say at first, I didn't think Trump had a chance, but after it dwindled down past the primaries and it was just him and Clinton, I was like, oh, sweet Jesus. Once I looked around and noticed that it was Trump v. Hillary and not Trump v. Clinton, I'm like, that's the misogyny right there. The women, and this happened also with Kamala, is her being named mostly by her first name and mispronounced. But we tend to do that to women in positions of power. Oh, shit, I mispronounced it, didn't I? Sorry. You know, we're all problematic sometimes, or you can edit. No, it's okay. I'm not going to edit it because I know her as Kamala, so I don't care. I don't like her as a person, so when I say her first name wrong, it's not because she's a woman. I was raised by a woman and I have a great deal of respect for women, including my wife. I don't like her, so why should I correct it? I wonder what she'd be like at a dinner party with me. I've wondered before. As far as Hillary goes, look, Hillary was as competent and as experienced as anyone who ever ran for president. But people weren't ready to vote for a woman. And quite frankly, she's not very well liked and for good reason. I think of that photo of her. I don't know if you saw it, but it's like when she was entering into just some like average voter's apartment. And like the look on her face, it's just like just a small apartment. And there's like a plant on top of the fridge and just she looks horrified. She's a bad human being. Let's face it. And obviously, so is her husband after all this Epstein stuff came out. Oh, yeah, of course. No, totally. That was probably a political power marriage. Like, I don't think those two like each other. Of course it is. Of course it is. They had sex once and it was for Chelsea. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I'm surprised. I'm surprised they haven't even had sex once, to be honest. Well, you know, another example of transactional arrangements, which some people decide to make. essentially. Exactly. Exactly. Why did the current laws in nearly every state in the US make it harder to serve victims and catch abusers? So, so many police are doing what is called either the Nordic model or the Swedish model or the end demand model, right? And that's where buyers or clients or some people call them johns. I don't, but because they're not all men, but clients are criminalized. And in Portland, what this looks like is police pulling people over or surveilling people that are soliciting, usually women working on a stroll on certain areas of town. And they're like, oh, well, we don't target the women. So that's good. And it's like, well, how do you expect them to make money when you're taking all their clients? Also, it's a huge waste of your anti-trafficking funding, which is where the money comes from. They're funding these anti-prostitution operations and get to play little spy games and feel exciting out of funding that is meant to prevent trafficking. So if these working women on the stroll do have a pimp or a manager or someone they're giving money to or holding their documents or whatever, if this is the case, you just made it harder for them to leverage anything they have. They don't even have money to bring home. Right. Because the pimp's taking all the money. Yeah. And I've heard not too often, but I've definitely heard a stripper on the phone be like, oh, baby daddy or boyfriend's going to be so mad if I come home with no money tonight. Like it's some of these domestic situations that people are entangled in, like they need relational support. They need social support, but they're being manipulated to do the labor. So it's not even necessarily that the labor is dangerous. Like I'm right next to you doing the same labor, but I get to go home with my own money. Right. So it's criminalizing clients and it's just a lack of resources for survivors or victims. So what's the best alternative to these laws in your opinion? So we need to decriminalize prostitution or anti-prostitution laws. Yeah, thank you. And that's not legalize it. Legalization is more complicated to create like the statutes for and the rules. And then the people that are in charge are going to be the ones that always were, which is the landowners, the venue owners, the managers, right? If you decriminalize something, it just means that the workers and the clients and any so-called facilitators, you know, like a bouncer or a driver, can't be punished for transacting. But if someone robs or rapes me, they can because they're still doing those crimes. But decriminalization is not understood and it's also not lucrative. So I don't know that it could ever happen across the United States and it might be able to somehow loophole win a state or two. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like pot, right? to decriminalize pot throughout the United States. There's just too big of a Bible belt. Right. And they're legalizing it too. They're not decriminalizing it, which is a little different because it's a substance. It's not people. People decide for themselves differently than plants just existing. So not totally the same, but you also have to think about the stigma against pot smokers and weed smokers in decades prior certainly existed, but being a stoner does not have the same kind of stigma to it, I would argue as being a whore or being a creep that pays for it. Not my words. Yeah, I would never do that. I would never graciously receive. No, no, no, no. I would never do that. What do you want people to understand about the adult industry? Some of us actually really do like it. And even if we like the work we do, we still have bad days or challenging or despicable clients every once in a while or conflict, right? Some of us really do enjoy what we're doing and yet it's still work and work sucks. And if we weren't working, I'd be hunting and growing the food, but I don't know how to do that. So I have to make the money to buy the food. You know, I like to use good. I like to use the gas station in the middle of the night analogy. Like if you're telling anyone, a young woman, man, like non-binary person, whatever. If you're telling them to not make, you know, an OnlyFans or subscriber page or a Pornhub account or whatever, you're telling them to not webcam or do sex work and to get another job. And the only other job that's hiring within like 10 miles of them is to work as a clerk in the middle of the night of a gas station for minimum wage where they could get killed. Which one would you pick? You know, and that's why some people do because the options can suck. People have limited options, just support them in the ones they're making. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we were talking earlier about laws. So, pimping would fall under sex trafficking, yes? Yes. Good. As it should. Yeah. If you're compelling or coercing or there's force or fear or fraud that relates to the person that's working with you or for you, then it's not informed consent interactions. Right. No, absolutely. So do you have any regrets about being a sex worker? I wish I got more organized earlier. Just lost files and stuff all over the place. I'm pretty good and had good luck with privacy and safety. But again, I went to school for criminology. So I already kind of have that awareness of how to protect myself in some ways. I would have been a little bit bolder. And by that, I wish that maybe when I was chest feeding or nursing that I did something with the milk. I probably could have sold some of the milk. Or, you know, I for years wanted to dabble in in escorting and I took my first client, you know, about 10 years ago at 28. So not late in the game by any means, but like if I was less shy, I might have done it sooner. So, but I don't know, maybe being more bold would have put me in more compromising positions and I wouldn't be here to say that today. So not really too many regrets. It's very true. I mean, talk a little bit about the safety element for sex workers and you hear all the time about murders and rapes. I mean, talk a little bit about that. I mean, I think it's every, I might butcher this, but it's too often that a woman in the US dies usually at the hands of someone she knows. I think it's every eight seconds there's an assault. That might be an old statistic, but it's still too much, right? So I don't want the focus to be on like the horrible stuff that happens to people specifically in the industry, but more so like the horrible stuff that people do to each other and how people in the industry may become targeted. And so I just really want folks to understand like, you will always have people that are aware of you. If you're online, there will be people that are obsessed with you and you have no idea exist. And just expect that to be the case. But also whether you are like a newscaster or a musician, like there are strangers that will attach to you and expect things from you. And if you don't entertain them in those ways, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I think just if you are any kind of entertainer that has a presence where people can see you in a big way, you're going to want to think about how you can protect yourself. And for me, that looks like I have very tinted windows on my vehicle. I'm able to, at the end of a long night, drive into a garage and shut the door behind me. I have a home alarm system. This is all, again, like resourced stuff. But for other people, that might look like, don't share where you're having drinks, you know. Or if you do, share that picture like after you've left or something like that. So it's not a safe world for anyone. Some people just really have to look out for themselves more. So if you're one of those people. You might already know it, but we could all do a little more for ourselves. Can you imagine the number of men who lost their shit now that Taylor Swift is engaged? Oh, my God. It could never be me now. No. And some women, too. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. I am so ready for the divorce announcement. Oh, that'd be great. Oh, I hate both of them, actually. I'm a 49er fan, so I don't like Travis Kels and her dancing on our grave up in the skybox during the Super Bowl made me hate her forever. So, that's my feeling. That's my feeling about her. Getting back to the violence thing, and I mentioned this when I spoke to Phoenix Kaleida, there was a woman that I used to see in Oakland when I lived in the Bay Area. And I saw the story on the 10 o'clock news about her murder and i had seen her quite a few times and i mean i was shocked some pimp came up to her car window while she was eating a hamburger and shot her i wonder what his uh resentment was that's terrible yeah yeah so now they knew who did it you know they caught him and everything but oh that's nice they caught it was a pimp it was a pimp yeah well that also doesn't mean anything because Because there's been people killed in Portland and there's also been phone numbers where you could send the info where you had a suspect. And some of us have sent tips to a tip line with a callback number and then never heard from the investigator. So we know that sometimes things just nobody gives a crap about. Exactly. And that's such a frustrating thing that, and you went through it, I'm sure, in school. The police really don't care, do they? Yeah. There's apathy is the word that I have heard you describe. Again, with the interview with Isidoro Rodriguez, he said he experiences and witnessed a lot of apathy in his time around police that were either training or in it or retired. That's very sad. So, tell me about your podcast. What do you podcast about and give us an idea about it. What's the name, by the way? Yeah. So I host They Talk Sex podcast, and it is myself as the host and a different guest every episode. I've had a couple people revisit, but it's always someone who works in or lives in sexuality to some degree. So either as a therapist or performer, or people just speaking to their own sexual experiences. But the goal is to be informative and sometimes a little funny. So it's an educational on Self-Help Show. That's awesome. Elle, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk, and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon. I would love to. Me too. My broker tip today is part seven of how to buy a site. Last week, we talked about the agreement and escrow. So now you own the website. What do you do now? The first thing you should do is make sure you understand everything about the operation of the site. The previous owner will hopefully be available for a period of time to help you with this. As I mentioned last week, you should establish what the former owner's participation will be after the sale. You'll need to deal with production of new content, processing, paying affiliates, and many other things. If you don't have experience in these areas, you may want to consider using our general consulting firm, Adult Business Consulting. You can get more information on what this company does at adultbusinessconsulting.com. We help website owners project manage and guide them to the right vendors. Maybe the previous owner had all the right elements, processing, hosting, payments, production, scripts, etc. Or maybe they didn't. We can help evaluate that for you. Let us know if we can help. Anyway, you'll now be operating the website. If you don't have someone like our general consulting firm to help, evaluate all of those items and everything the site is spending money on and using to operate the site. Make sure you're getting a good deal and that these companies are providing the right service and check to see if you can do better. Hosting is a great example on something where people are often both overpaying and not getting the right service. Many times a server is just too slow. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to reach out to us on our site. Next week, we'll talk about how to sell a website. And next week, we'll be speaking with Ricky Levy of Woodhole Freedom Foundation. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Elle Stanger. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.