Men who think the ability to do sex work is a "female privilege" vastly overestimate the *economic* feasibility of sex work for the average woman

A somewhat common idea I see both here and in other corners of the internet is that the ability to have sex with people for money is an inherent privilege of being a woman. The argument is something like "almost all women can easily get sex from men" + "men will pay for sex" = "it's easy for women to make money from having sex" = "yet another reason why it's so easy being a woman".

However, imo, you have to ignore simple math and the multiple glaring logic errors to believe this to be the case. For one, just because most women can land hookups, it does not mean most women can charge money for sex. In other words, even if you ignore all moral issues, legal issues, or social issues with doing sex work, sex work is not a viable career path for 95%+ of women simply because it won't be profitable enough. To say that it's an inherent female privilege available to all women is just plain untrue, and probably the result of letting certain frustrations blind you from critical thinking.

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Let's go through the math together. Let's say you are an independent sex worker at the start of your career.

(Quick disclaimer - we are going to treat this as a job that qualifies for the word "privilege". If you believe the ability to do a job in a disgusting environment, no guarantees of personal safety, below average pay, etc., is a privilege, then by the same logic, the ability to fight in wars or do manual labor would be an inherent male privilege, and no one thinks that.)

Firstly, how many clients can one take?

• Assuming 2 weeks of vacation, 2 weeks of sick leave (this is not a job you can do while sick at all), and 2 weeks of buffer for emergencies, that leaves 46 weeks in a year.
• Let's say you work 5 days a week and see 2 clients a day, so 10 clients a week. This means 460 clients in a year. (Each time you see a client, you need time to prepare, and you also need to do bookkeeping, cleaning, marketing, etc.)
• I assume sex work has a high cancellation rate, plus you may turn people away for hygiene or safety reasons, but let's say with a robust waitlist system and deposits, it equates to 400 clients actually showing up every year.

Secondly, what is the operating overhead? Per month, let's say:

• $1500 for rent of a somewhat tasteful space with a bed and a shower, in a central location conducive to business
• $800 for private health insurance, STI tests, birth control, etc. (actually on the lower end)
• $1300 for some sort of on-call security (Google says average wage for security is $25/hr, so let's say you need 1.5 hrs per client, 5 days a week, and on average you work 3.5 weeks a month, considering the 6 weeks of leave)
• $500 for professional cleaning and disinfecting
• $500 for clothing, makeup, skincare, and general appearance upkeep
• $200 for decor, props, equipment, etc.
• $200 for marketing, accounting, and other miscellaneous business expenses

So we are looking at $5k in operating costs per month, or $60k per year. This is assuming 0 big health issues, 0 security events, etc., and ignoring one off large expenses like furnishing.

Lastly, what is a decent income for a job to count as a privilege? Let's not go too crazy and just call it $75k a year. However, you know that your career will be much shorter than the standard career, ending at around 45 instead of the usual 65. So you need to make about double to account for this (not even accounting for the time value of money), or $150k a year.

So, in total, you must make $210k a year in order to pay yourself a decent income after covering all of the overhead. Over 400 clients, that's $525 per person.

Now, most men would probably sleep with most women between 18 and 45 if it's free. How pretty does a woman have to be for you to brave the social implications and also pay $525 an hour to sleep with them?

Around 35% of US women are in the age range of 18-45, and let's say you have to be at least in the top 10% in appearance to demand that type of hourly rate. In other words, at most 3.5% of women in the US qualify for this job.

So yeah, even if you consider the above job a privilege, it's certainly not a "privilege" accessible to most women.