A different kind of moonlighting

Tracy Quan looks at what she calls "Kinkonomics":

As the economy takes a spanking, many women are turning to freelance fetish work to supplement their incomes.

"I've seen it before," says Linda, "during the tech bust in 2002. Women who thought they would always make a decent living in the tech sector lost their jobs." They came looking to Linda’s industry for freelance work, and now it’s happening again: professional women whose cubicle-bound careers have been downsized are entering Linda’s corner of the "gig economy" — a corner that involves whips, ropes, and occasionally, nipple clamps.

With staff jobs evaporating and former nine-to-fivers cobbling together incomes through scattered side projects, freelancing as a dominatrix — or "pro-domme," as industry types prefer to call it — has become a plausible gig option. As a former call girl, I know plenty of people in the industry, and I recently spoke to several who have started doing kink work to supplement their incomes. (I've changed their names to protect their privacy.) They agree: The sector is poised for expansion as more unemployed and underemployed women begin looking for extra cash.