Welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays. Today's episode is one that I've both been eager and hesitant to share. While I've spoken about my journey through faith, fitness and personal transformation that there's one chapter I've largely kept private until now....
For most of my life, I was fed a specific narrative: go to college, get a degree, build a career, and don’t worry about prioritizing marriage or family. Financial independence was the ultimate goal.
After graduating college, I moved from Virginia to Portland, Oregon, to chase my career as a personal trainer, lifestyle coach, and professional circus performer. My income relied on clientele, and while I had busy seasons, nothing was ever truly stable. With inconsistent income and the ever-present pressure to make ends meet, I found myself in a space that many glamorize but few truly understand—the world of sugar dating.
At first, it didn’t seem that different from the casual dating I was already doing—except now, dinner was covered, and there was a financial incentive. But the deeper I got, the more I realized how unstable and unsafe it was. Most of these men didn’t care about you as a person; they just wanted no-strings-attached access to your body. And when I found myself in situations where I wasn’t in control—where boundaries were ignored, protection was negotiable, and at times, I left empty-handed even after doing my part—I started to see the cracks in the ‘empowerment’ narrative. I remember one night, sitting in my car after being verbally and physically assaulted, I realized I had no one to report it to. No way to warn the next woman. That’s when the illusion fully shattered for me.
That’s why today’s conversation is so important. We’re unpacking the hard truths about the sex industry, the myths that keep women trapped in it, and the cultural shifts that have normalized what should never be considered “just work.”
But we’re also diving into something deeper, faith. Both Sloane and I have gone through our own journeys of deconstruction and reconstruction. She’s seen firsthand how the church can mishandle encountering survivors and how delicate and complex these situations can be.
The Reality of “Sugar Dating”
Some nights felt harmless—like having dinner with a businessman who just wanted company and conversation. But most nights? They were anything but that. The truth is the fantasy of sugar dating—mutually beneficial, long-term arrangements with financial stability—was just that: a fantasy. Most men weren’t offering monthly allowances or ongoing support. They wanted pay-per-meet agreements—no strings attached, no safety net, just transactional sex. And when survival depended on it, I found myself scrambling to secure the next “daddy.” That’s what led me into dark and dangerous situations.
I don’t know about you, I struggle with asserting myself even when asking for help at the gym with new equipment or asking for help when I’m lost. and when I was in the sugar industry, I struggled to assert myself, especially in two key areas: insisting on protection and ensuring I was paid upfront. That put me at immense risk—both for my health and my safety.
Some men had hidden home cameras, recording our time together without my consent. Others were forceful, rough, and used sex toys in ways that crossed every boundary I had. And yet, as awful as those experiences were, I knew I was lucky—because it could have been so much worse.
Most of these men pushed to move conversations off the platform as quickly as possible, demanding explicit photos before agreeing to meet. When you’re in a financial bind, it’s hard to say no. That’s how exploitation thrives—through desperation.
The Trap of a “Luxe” Illusion
Looking back, I wonder—why didn’t I just walk away? Why didn’t I see, from the beginning, that this wasn’t sustainable? I wasn’t like most women in the industry. I was white, college-educated, and didn’t even have student debt shackling me. My financial stress came from my own reckless spending—maxed-out credit cards and the relentless costs of bodybuilding, a sport I was pouring everything into. So why, with all the options I had, did I keep chasing this?
I think part of it was desperation. The MLM-like promise of sugar dating had me convinced that if I just worked harder, played the game right, and landed the right arrangement, I could have financial security and independence. I put more energy into curating the perfect sugar persona than I ever did into building my personal training business. And maybe, just maybe, I was chasing the mirage of someone close to me—someone who had made sugar dating “work.” I saw her succeed, and I kept believing I could, too.
But there’s another layer. One I don’t love admitting. My mother praised me for it. She told me, “I wish I had done this when I was your age.” That kind of validation messes with your perception of right and wrong. It made it seem like I was onto something genius, like I had cracked the code other women were too scared or too moralistic to try. Was I subconsciously trying to prove something? Was I filling the void left by emotional neglect?
Or was it just my own damn fault?
That’s the thing about these choices—they never come down to just one reason. It’s always going to be more complex. It wasn’t just the financial stress. It wasn’t just my upbringing. It wasn’t just the influence of someone I admired, it’s not just the culture or zeitgeist of Portland, Or. It was all of it, tangled together, keeping me locked in place. And it took me years to realize that no amount of effort or strategy would turn sugar dating into the safety net I desperately wanted it to be.
The Lie of “Sex Work is Work”
For a long time, I believed the mantra: “sex work is work.” It’s the rallying cry of the sex-positive movement (which is huge in Portland OR), a phrase meant to legitimize the industry. Prostitution is often called “the oldest profession,” but historically, it has always been a last resort for survival. Women don’t enter this industry because it’s empowering. They do it because they have no better options.
The real harm in prostitution isn’t just about bad working conditions or societal stigma. It’s about dehumanization. When sex is reduced to a transaction, people become commodities and body parts. And when we treat people like products to be bought and sold, we strip them completely of their dignity.
, in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, makes this point powerfully. She argues that the sex industry’s only real defense is a hollow, commodified version of “liberation”—one that insists, "Everyone consents, everyone is an adult, the women enjoy it, so who are you to judge?" But when consent is the only moral standard, we ignore the broader ethical issue: that people are being treated as means to an end. Consent alone does not erase coercion, exploitation, or harm.In our postmodern culture, we’ve rejected objective morality and replaced it with a consumerist approach to sex. If both parties “agree,” then anything goes. But this is a dangerous slope—one that allows predatory men to exploit desperate women under the guise of empowerment.
Insights from Recent Research
New research exposes the blurred lines between sugar dating and traditional sex work. A study published in The Journal of Sex Research found that over one-third of sugar babies have engaged in other forms of transactional sex work, such as escorting or stripping. This challenges the narrative that sugar dating is different or “classier” than prostitution. The reality? It operates on the same fundamental exchange.
The study also found that sugar benefactors reported an average of over six arrangements, indicating a revolving door of sugar relationships. For these men, sugar dating is just another avenue for purchasing companionship and sex.
Beyond the emotional toll, sugar dating carries serious legal and personal risks. Legal experts warn that these arrangements can lead to blackmail, coercion, and threats—especially when expectations aren’t met. Many women find themselves in vulnerable situations with no real recourse. The illusion of control is just that—an illusion.
The Flawed Narrative Around Sex Work and Deconstructing Purity Culture
In the deconstruction space, there’s a growing trend of equating sexual liberation with empowerment while rejecting any critique of the sex industry as moral panic. A popular post circulating on International Sex Workers Day exemplifies this mindset, arguing that deconstructing purity culture requires deconstructing any negative views of sex work. The claim? Sex work and sex trafficking are entirely separate, and many big Christian anti-trafficking organizations wrongly conflate the two to push an agenda. The post insists that if a person is not forced, defrauded, or coerced, they are simply making a free choice to engage in sex work. But this argument is deeply flawed when examined through historical context, real-world data, and the experiences of women who have lived through it.
The Demand Problem: Why Legalizing Sex Work Doesn’t Protect Women
One of the most critical oversights in this argument is the failure to acknowledge that sex work is a demand-driven industry. As Louise Perry outlines in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, countries that have legalized prostitution have seen an increase in trafficking. Why? Because legalizing the industry normalizes the demand for paid sex, and when there aren’t enough willing participants, traffickers step in to fill the gap. Studies show that in places like Germany and the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, trafficking rates have skyrocketed because the market rewards pimps and exploiters. The idea that sex work can be fully separate from trafficking ignores the economic reality that supply follows demand.
Linda Lovelace’s experience in Deep Throat is a perfect example of this. The film was a massive success, grossing over $600 million, and was hailed as revolutionary at the time. But years later, Lovelace revealed that she had been coerced into performing in the film under violent and abusive conditions. Her book Ordeal exposed the hidden abuse within the industry—an industry that thrives precisely because there is a market for extreme, degrading content. This isn’t an isolated case; countless women have echoed similar stories after leaving the industry, only to be dismissed while they were still in it because they were expected to uphold the “liberation” narrative.
The Exploitation Behind the Industry
Another major flaw in the sex-work-as-liberation argument is the lack of accountability within the industry itself. MindGeek, the corporation behind the world’s largest pornography sites, has faced multiple civil lawsuits for monetizing non-consensual content—including child sexual abuse, rape, revenge pornography, and voyeuristic recordings of women showering. Reports from December 2020 revealed that the platform was infested with videos depicting abuse and that it profited from some of the darkest corners of human sexuality.
The industry thrives on the illusion that all participants are willing, yet it repeatedly fails to ensure consent. The reality is that the vast majority of those in sex work come from backgrounds of financial instability, trauma, or coercion—not from an empowered, freely chosen career path. The notion that sex work is “just another job” ignores how uniquely dangerous, exploitative, and often inescapable it can be.
The Broader Issue: Normalizing Harm Under the Guise of Liberation
This same pattern of dismissing harm under the banner of liberation isn’t exclusive to the sex industry. I recently came across another example in the deconstruction space where an account that advocates for women’s sexual empowerment was documenting her abortion experience on National Abortion Day. She filmed herself taking the abortion pill as if it were nothing—a casual, almost celebratory act. But this kind of messaging erases the medical realities and risks associated with the abortion pill. It ignores the fact that women absolutely should get an ultrasound before taking it to determine gestational age and rule out ectopic pregnancy, which can be fatal if left untreated. Reducing such a serious medical decision to a political performance trivializes the real consequences that many women face.
This connects back to the issue with sex work: the rush to de-stigmatize everything labeled as “empowerment” often leads to a dangerous lack of critical thought. If deconstruction is about questioning harmful narratives, then why aren’t we allowed to question the harm within the sex industry? Why does rejecting purity culture mean embracing an industry that, time and time again, has been built on coercion, abuse, and exploitation?
Deconstructing purity culture shouldn’t mean abandoning discernment. If anything, it should mean taking an even closer look at these industries and asking hard questions about who truly benefits from them. Because when we actually listen to the stories of women who have left sex work, the pattern is clear: what is sold as empowerment often turns out to be exploitation in disguise.
Healing & Advocacy
Looking back, my perspective has completely shifted. The journey out of the sex industry has been long and complicated, but I’m grateful for the clarity I have now. Organizations like Exodus Cry work to expose the realities of the commercial sex trade and fight for real change. And voices like Louise Perry’s are crucial in dismantling the harmful myths that keep this industry alive.
The sexual revolution promised liberation, but for many women, it delivered exploitation instead. The more we normalize the commodification of sex, the more we enable the very systems that harm us. It’s time to rethink everything we’ve been told about “sex work” and start asking: Who really benefits from this industry? Because it’s certainly not the women inside it.
In today’s episode, I sit down with Sloane Wilson from Exodus Cry to unpack these issues, discuss the misconceptions around sex trafficking and exploitation, and explore what true healing looks like.
If you’ve ever questioned the narrative around sex work, if you’ve been curious about the reality behind sugar dating, or if you want to hear from someone who’s been there—I invite you to tune in.
It’s time to move beyond the glamour and face the truth.
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