Bad Luck With German Clients: Here’s Why

Recently, I had a client from Germany reach out to me. At first, he wanted full service. I explained calmly that I don’t offer that right away—I don’t guarantee full service to strangers. I’m big on reading vibes, on actually getting to know someone before I decide what I’m comfortable with.

He didn’t like that. He also didn’t like my prices.

His tone shifted from disappointed to demanding, and it became clear that he was used to a very different system. “This is how it works in Germany,” he told me. “This is Boston, not Germany,” I replied.

He asked me how much full-service sex costs where he’s from. “€180,” he said. A blowjob? “€50.” Then came the moral lecture: We’re not as sexually repressed as you Americans. Sex work is legalized in Germany.

That’s when I stopped him.

Low Wages Are Not Liberation

I told him I don’t think things are actually that good in Germany—especially for sex workers. Legalization alone doesn’t equal empowerment. Wages do.

Germany has incredibly low wages for sex work, and that tells you everything you need to know about how much power sex workers actually have there. Low wages for women—especially in intimate labor—is a form of violence. It reflects how disposable and replaceable their bodies are treated.

Let’s do the math.

If a woman earns €180 per full-service encounter, how many sexual encounters does she have to endure to support herself? Now imagine she’s a mother of two. How many people does she have to sleep with in a year just to cover rent, food, childcare, and basic stability?

Hundreds.

At €50 per blowjob, the numbers get even darker. If someone has to service ten different men a day just to survive, that isn’t freedom. That isn’t empowerment. No human being can endure that without psychological and physical harm.

Calling that “liberation” because it’s legal is absurd.

Why Wages Are So Low in Europe

One reason sex workers in countries like Germany endure such brutal conditions—even with labor protections—is because of how labor moves under the European Union.

My understanding of the EU is this: countries band together for economic and military strength. But in order to get poorer Eastern European countries to join, wealthier nations must allow free movement of labor. That means workers from poorer countries can legally move to richer ones like Germany.

So what happens?

Workers—especially sex workers—flood into richer countries. Supply skyrockets. Wages drop. German workers lose bargaining power. Sex workers become interchangeable. Everyone gets poorer except the people at the top.

Then the poorer countries those workers came from are drained of talent and labor, creating a vacuum. To fill it, they rely on even poorer countries—sometimes outside Europe altogether. Labor keeps cascading downward, chasing survival.

This is why legalization without collective bargaining power doesn’t protect women. It just makes exploitation more efficient.

Britain eventually left the EU in part because wages stagnated and people couldn’t survive. Again, I’m not a geopolitics expert—but you don’t need a PhD to see that when workers are endlessly replaceable, no one has power.

Legal Doesn’t Mean Liberated

I told the German client something simple: if women were truly liberated, they would have high wages. If sex workers had real collective bargaining power, prices wouldn’t be €180. They would be extraordinarily high.

Compare that to my wages in Boston.

What prevents European sex workers from doing the same isn’t morality or repression—it’s economics. Legalization without control over supply and pricing does not equal freedom.

A Glimpse of a Different World

Take Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s a light, fun movie set in post–World War II New York, before smartphones, before the internet, before globalization reshaped labor markets.

Holly Golightly isn’t a full-service sex worker. She goes on dates. Men pay her $500 just to spend time with her. No sex guaranteed. She earns $500 a night simply for companionship (12,000 a month).

That wasn’t because she was more liberated as an individual—it was because labor hadn’t yet been globally displaced. The male-female ratio was more balanced. Women weren’t infinitely replaceable. Their time had value.

When labor isn’t endlessly flooded, boundaries hold. Power exists. Violence decreases.

The Real Lesson About Money

Money isn’t about excess. It’s about power and choice.

When wages are high, people can say no. When wages are low, people endure what they shouldn’t have to. Legal systems don’t matter if economic systems strip workers of leverage.

That German client thought legalization meant freedom. But freedom isn’t about what’s allowed—it’s about what you can refuse.

And until workers—especially women—can refuse without risking survival, the system isn’t liberated at all.

In some German brothels, sex workers have to pay a “house fee,” which is often a percentage of their earnings. Brothels use collective capital to promote their interests, so individual sex workers can’t compete.

I have the choice to refuse clients, take days off, charge prices I want, and I have a choice of not doing full service–and I don’t have to pay or ask permission to do anything. It seems counterintuitive, but when huge system failures are at play, reality is often different than perception.