I Have Some Theories On Why People Like Me Can't Get "Real" Jobs

Besides, this is a real job, bitches

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

It’s strange how many people there are who think that writers and content creators should just go and get “real” jobs.

Ossiana Tepfenhart

and I have been discussing just how frustrating the content creation scene is right now. Ossiana is, by the way, a kick-ass writer and worth your time and money.

The thing is, some of the people who are demanding that I just get a “real” job are people who do actually follow other influencers or writers. Really the the issue is the assumption that if a writer is struggling, we are just not very good at it.

I’ve been a writer for almost twenty years. I make less than $1,000 a year on writing and content creation and yet I bust my ass working. After a while it just gets disheartening as I see others “make it,” even those who I cheered on and followed early in their own careers who now make their living as writers and influencers.

I’ve often been told that I still don’t create enough value yet, although my skills and topics are comparable to others make a hell of a lot more money. Some of them even make a living, and yet they will also join the chorus of people telling me to get a real job.

We can use marketing language until the cows come home as I said growing up in Australia, but that doesn’t actually make things any easier for some of us. I’ve been working for a few years now in creating a personal brand, and I hate that I have to think of my work as a brand because I’m not a brand I’m a human being. Marketing language dehumanizes us in many ways, but I digress.

There’s an annoying group of people who sit around smugly insisting that we shouldn’t write for money, we ought to be okay as a hobby. This group of people can be so obnoxious because some of them will insist that nobody should make money from their content, because capitalism forces us to market ourselves when we shouldn’t have to.

I actually agree that people should be free to have hobbies without pressure to monetize them, but I also believe that if I’m good at writing, I should be able to make a living from it. I mean, people seem to be mostly okay with paying professionals to play a ball game instead of insisting that they should do it strictly as a hobby, so that argument is void.

First off, this is a real job, bitches (and I use that word as a gender neutral term of endearment or annoyance, depending on the situation) and as such we deserve to make money from it.

Second of all, people like Ossiana and I have been unable to get “real jobs, as in W-2 work and there are several reasons why, and I believe they are important to discuss.

I actually have a pretty strong theory of why people like myself and my writer friend don’t even get interviews for “real jobs” to begin with, and it is not our fault. The problem is that we begin to think it’s our fault when everyone else tells us that it is. Unless you’ve been there, you really do not understand the struggle.

See, Ossiana and I are trafficking victims and so there is sexual content on the internet featuring us that we did not get paid for nor did we consent to producing. We were sex slaves doing what we had to do. I believe she and certainly I also later did sex work voluntarily, but it’s not how we started out.

Despite the fact that we were slaves rather than free doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to a prospective employer, and I believe that sometimes, the fact that we were trafficked into it makes us even less likely than other people who have been involved in the sex industry to find regular work.

Here is why.

Trafficking is deeply traumatic, and since my life as a sex slave began when I was still an infant, I ended up with a rare disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder. This means I don’t function like regular people do and really I’m hundreds of people rather than just one, it’s just that we all share the one body and yet we also exist independently of one another.

It’s a hard disorder to describe, but basically the other “people” inside me, called personalities or alters, all have their own lives. Some of them are babies, children, and teenagers. They all have their own likes, dislikes, hobbies, beliefs, opinions, and styles. It’s why if you see me several days in a row you’d likely see me in outfits that don’t match the style of the day before.

Even for people without Dissociative Identity Disorder, trafficking is of course horrific. My point really is that trafficking is something that is so life-changing that employers seem to be able to sniff out the fact that we are victims of deep trauma and therefore they do not want to employ us.

They’d rather employ people, who are usually women but certainly not always who engaged in sex work voluntarily, and even then those women have a hell of a time getting “real jobs.” The reason it’s worse for people like my friend and I is the trauma.

People can just tell. It’s like the stench of our sorrow clings to our skin and we have a neon sign on our foreheads warning employers not to hire us.

Not only do we have the stigma of sex worker, but ours is even deeper. We were sex slaves and apparently that means we are worthless. Employers don’t want to take the risk on people their spidey senses tell them have suffered greatly in life. Sex trafficking didn’t just fuck up our lives while we were being trafficked, but it fucks it up in the here and now because people just know there is something about us and we get rejected.

Yes, I do truly believe that. It has happened too much to be merely a coincidence. We deserve a shot at a normal life even though our lives have been so abnormal that we are fundamentally different from other people. We are seen as a liability but I’m not quite sure why.

As far as the writing world goes, people love to read about the sex life of others, even voluntary sex workers as it often gives them the same sort of satisfaction that porn does. But write about sexual slavery and people are suddenly not so interested in reading our work, because rather than entertainmen or porn, it would force them to think about how cruel the world can be.

When someone says to me “you could get a real job if you really tried hard enough or really wanted to,” I know they are absolutely tone-deaf. These are people that also call the reasons why we don’t seem to be able to get their idea of a real, respectable job “excuses.” Again, it’s easier than having to actually take any viewpoint other than their own into consideration.

The “if I can do it you can too” crowd really piss me the fuck off. This group of people usually have privilege that they refuse to acknowledge in their judgment of those they see as lesser. They are people who often have had certain things come easily to them. This isn’t a character flaw, but being judgmental of those without the same privileges is.

So people like me and my colleague already have a harder time of it. We aren’t able to get “real jobs” like people expect us to, but we also aren’t allowed to get ahead and make a living with writing and content creation because well fuck us, that’s why. The world is crueler and harder for some of us than others and it’s time that was acknowledged more.