In candid interviews with a student publication, two University of Sussex students working in the adult industry have spoken out about what they describe as a university profoundly ill-prepared to support them. One produces and manages her own online adult content business; the other is a trained pole dancer who performs at professional venues. Entrepreneurial, disciplined, and admirably clear-eyed about their work, they paint a picture of what they call "systemic failures" in how both the University and its Students' Union handle safety, support, and funding for students in their position. Their stories are not tales of desperation or exploitation they are accounts of capable, ambitious young women being let down by institutions that should know better.
"It's draining to constantly have to justify what we do," says one. "The Students' Union classifies pole dancing as a leisure activity rather than a sport. We go through the same funding application process as every other club training, competitions, workshops and we keep getting turned down. The moral disapproval isn't even subtle. You can feel it in every interaction."
Her colleague, who has built a substantial online content business entirely on her own terms, shares the frustration. "The University simply doesn't know how to deal with students involved in sex work, even tangentially. There are general welfare policies, but the moment you're dealing with harassment, threats, or a privacy violation, everything falls apart. You get told it's outside their remit, or you're bounced between vague policy documents that lead nowhere and solve nothing."
Chosen, Not Imposed
Before examining the failures of the institution, it is worth pausing on a point that often gets lost in these conversations: these students chose their work. They did not fall into it out of desperation, nor were they coerced or misled. They weighed their options, assessed their skills, and made informed, autonomous decisions about how to support themselves financially while pursuing their degrees. That context matters enormously, because much of the institutional response to their situations appears rooted in an assumption that they are victims in need of rescue rather than professionals deserving of respect.
Brighton's cost of living is steep and steadily rising. Student loans, for most, cover a fraction of actual living costs, leaving a significant gap that must be filled somehow. Many students take on part-time work in retail, hospitality, or tutoring. These two chose differently and in doing so, they arguably demonstrated more initiative, self-awareness, and entrepreneurial thinking than most of their peers.
"It's work, the same as any other job," says the content creator. "I have a production schedule, I manage client relationships, I handle my own finances and taxes, I make decisions about branding and platform strategy every single day. But the moment there's a sexual element to any of it, people stop seeing any of that. The professionalism becomes invisible. All they see is the label."
The pole dancer is equally matter-of-fact. "I train harder than most athletes on this campus. My body is my instrument and I treat it accordingly nutrition, conditioning, technique, rest. I take my craft seriously because it demands that. The idea that what I do is somehow less worthy of institutional support than, say, a rowing club, is honestly baffling."
A System That Fails When It Matters Most
For all the professionalism and self-sufficiency these students bring to their work, there are moments when external support becomes genuinely necessary and it is precisely in those moments that the University has been found wanting.
One student alleges she was filmed without her consent by a member of a student media group, with the footage subsequently appearing online. The violation was serious, the potential consequences for someone working in the adult industry significant. She reported the incident through the University's official channels, expecting a swift and decisive response. What followed instead was weeks of inconclusive back-and-forth, contradictory guidance from different members of staff, and a near-total absence of concrete protective action.
"The feeling you get is that the institution is primarily concerned with protecting itself," she says. "Every response is carefully worded, every process is slow, every outcome is vague. You start to feel like a liability to be managed rather than a person to be helped."
The other student has faced sustained online harassment a reality that comes with the territory for those who build a public-facing presence in the adult content space. Doxxing attempts, threats, and coordinated campaigns of abuse are not hypothetical risks but lived experiences. When she sought support from the University, she found the same pattern: policies that sound comprehensive on paper but dissolve into helplessness when applied to real situations.
"There's a gap between what the University says it does and what it actually does," she says. "They have language about support and inclusion and wellbeing. But when you actually need that support, you discover it wasn't really built with you in mind."
Both women stress that they are not fragile or easily overwhelmed. They have developed their own robust systems for managing risk, protecting their privacy, and maintaining their mental and physical wellbeing. But they are also clear that the existence of those personal systems should not excuse an institution from its responsibilities.
"I've built my own safety net because I had to," says the content creator. "That doesn't mean the University gets credit for it."
Funding, Fairness, and Moral Gatekeeping
One of the most concrete and illustrative examples of institutional failure involves funding. The pole dancing society a group of skilled, dedicated students pursuing a physically demanding discipline with genuine competitive and performance dimensions has repeatedly applied for funding from the Students' Union, only to be turned away.
The grounds given are procedural: funding must be distributed democratically across all clubs and societies, and the amount requested represented a significant proportion of the sports budget. But both students are unconvinced that the decisions are purely financial.
"If we were a football team or a gymnastics club, we wouldn't be having this conversation," says the pole dancer. "The skill set is comparable. The commitment is comparable. The only difference is the association with sexuality and that association is apparently enough to disqualify us from being taken seriously."
She describes the experience of applying for funding as demoralising in a way that goes beyond the practical impact of the rejection. "It's not just about the money, though the money matters. It's about what the decision communicates. It says: we don't see what you do as legitimate. We don't think you deserve the same resources as everyone else. And we'd rather not engage with the question of why."
The online creator draws a broader point from this. "Universities love to talk about diversity and inclusion. They publish strategies and appoint officers and run awareness campaigns. But inclusion that stops at the boundary of sexual stigma isn't really inclusion. It's just inclusion for people who don't make anyone uncomfortable."
The Skills the University Refuses to See
What emerges most powerfully from conversations with these two students is the sheer breadth and depth of the skills their work demands skills that are genuinely impressive, professionally transferable, and entirely invisible to the institution that is supposed to be developing them.
Running an online adult content business is, in every meaningful sense, running a small enterprise. The content creator manages her own production: she plans shoots, handles lighting and camera work, edits footage, writes copy, manages multiple platform presences, handles subscriber communications, analyses performance data, and makes ongoing decisions about pricing, branding, and content strategy. She files her own taxes, manages her own contracts, and maintains a sophisticated understanding of the digital landscape she operates in. Any business school would be delighted to count her among its graduates.
"I have learned more about running a business from this work than from any module I've taken," she says. "I understand marketing, customer psychology, financial planning, risk management, digital security all of it, because I've had to. Nobody handed me a framework. I built one."
The pole dancer's skill set is no less impressive, though it manifests differently. Her discipline demands exceptional physical conditioning strength, flexibility, coordination, and endurance developed through years of consistent training. It demands performance intelligence: the ability to read an audience, adapt in the moment, and deliver a compelling experience under pressure. It demands professionalism in a business context showing up, meeting expectations, managing relationships with venues and clients, and representing herself and her craft with integrity.
"I've been training seriously since I was a teenager," she says. "I know my body better than most people ever will. I understand how to prepare for a performance, how to recover from injury, how to push myself without crossing into damage. That knowledge took years to build. It deserves to be respected."
Both women also point to the sophisticated risk management their work demands an area where they have developed genuine expertise.
Protecting anonymity online, for instance, is not a simple matter of using a pseudonym. The content creator has developed a comprehensive personal security system: careful control of every visual element in her content, rigorous separation between her professional and personal digital identities, ongoing monitoring for unauthorised distribution of her material, and a clear understanding of her legal rights and how to enforce them.
"I think about operational security in ways that most people in this building have never had to," she says. "I know what metadata can reveal about a location. I know how reverse image searches work and how to protect against them. I know the legal frameworks around image rights in multiple jurisdictions. None of that came from a lecture. I learned it because my safety depended on it."
The Human Cost of Invisibility
Beyond the practical failures of policy and funding, both students speak to something harder to quantify but no less real: the psychological weight of being rendered invisible by an institution you are paying to belong to.
"Being a student here means living two parallel lives," the content creator says. "One inside the lecture hall, one outside it. In the lecture hall, I'm a student like any other I take notes, I write essays, I participate in seminars. Outside it, I'm running a business, managing risk, dealing with the occasional threat or harassment campaign, and building a professional identity. The University sees the first life. It refuses to acknowledge the second."
The pole dancer describes the particular sting of condescension from people who presume to know better than she does what her life should look like. "I've had people staff, students, it doesn't matter tell me I'm too smart for this, as though intelligence and sex work are mutually exclusive. What they're really saying is that they can't fit me into their existing idea of what a sex worker is supposed to be. That's their problem, not mine. But it's exhausting to keep encountering it."
Both are clear that the solution is not sympathy or special treatment. It is simply the same basic respect, access, and institutional support that every other student receives as a matter of course.
"We're not asking to be celebrated," says the content creator. "We're not asking for anyone to approve of our choices. We're asking to be treated like adults who have made legal, considered decisions about their own lives and to receive the same level of support that any other student can access without question."
A Wider Failure of Imagination
The experiences of these two students point to what may be a much broader institutional blind spot one that extends well beyond the University of Sussex. Universities across the country are home to students who engage in sex work in various forms, whether online content creation, escorting, dancing, or other adult services. The financial pressures driving those choices are not going away; if anything, they are intensifying. Yet most universities continue to approach the subject with a combination of ignorance, avoidance, and poorly disguised moral judgment.
The result is that some of the most self-reliant, professionally capable, and resilient students on any given campus are also among the least supported not because their needs are unusual or difficult to meet, but because institutions have not taken the time to understand those needs and design systems accordingly.
Clear, non-judgmental policies. Trained staff who can offer real, practical support rather than vague signposting. Funding processes that assess applications on merit rather than through a filter of moral acceptability. Reporting mechanisms capable of handling the specific forms of harm harassment, doxxing, non-consensual image sharing that disproportionately affect people in this space. None of these things are radical. They are simply what good institutional practice looks like.
"The irony," says the pole dancer, "is that we are probably among the most professionally prepared students on this campus. We manage our own businesses, our own safety, our own public profiles, our own finances all while completing a degree. We are not the ones who need help figuring out how to function in the world. We need help from an institution that has the power to make our lives easier and keeps choosing not to use it."
Students' Union Response
The Students' Union, when approached for comment, said it takes the welfare and safety of all students seriously, including those engaged in sex work or adult performance, and that it is actively reviewing the concerns raised.
A spokesperson stated that funding allocations are determined through a democratic process and must be distributed equitably across all clubs and societies. In this particular case, the amount requested represented a significant share of the total sports budget. The Union noted that its Activities team has been in contact with the club in question and remains open to continued dialogue.
The SU also confirmed it has been in communication with the group regarding access to rehearsal and performance space, and that its Diversity, Access and Participation Officer has offered support and directed students toward relevant complaint pathways.
On the question of non-consensual filming, the SU said it has no record of a formal complaint having been submitted through its processes, but confirmed it is reviewing its records and remains willing to meet with the students concerned to follow up.
University Response
A University spokesperson said the institution is committed to fostering an inclusive environment and treats all reports of harassment and discrimination with seriousness.
The spokesperson stated that staff receive training to advise students on a range of sensitive issues, including those relating to sex work, and drew attention to existing reporting mechanisms and support resources available to students. The University also referenced recent efforts to strengthen its reporting systems and provide clearer guidance on harassment and misconduct.
Students were directed toward the University's "Report and Support" platform, which offers the option of anonymous reporting alongside access to practical advice.
The University added that it would welcome the opportunity to speak directly with the students who came forward with their experiences.
