Rosei Quartz's Journey From Pastor's Kid to Porn Star

When Elon Musk was forced to follow through with his promise to buy Twitter, he blundered his way into making changes that were supposedly going to make Twitter better. While he still has a fanatical following, most people can see that he is fantastically ill equipped to take over a major social media network. While his misadventures did eventually lead to reduced insulin costs, it wasn't some master plan of his. That silver lining does little to quell the worries of some of the most marginalized communities online.

In the wake of the self-described free speech absolutist's purchase, the use of the N-word on Twitter increased by almost 500%. But while racism and transphobia apparently count as free speech, arousing boudoir photos do not, at least not for Rosei Quartz. As a sex worker and adult content creator, she wakes up every day and checks her social media accounts to see if she's been banned. "I've been living every day being like, 'Is it gonna be Instagram? Is it gonna be TikTok? Which one of these is gonna get me first?' And then, all of a sudden, it was Twitter."

It felt like a betrayal because Twitter, along with Reddit, "were kind of the reliable places you could, in sex worker terms, post full hole without repercussions." Twitter had guidelines like any other platform, but the enforcement of those guidelines for posting nude and lewd content (both professionally and recreationally) wasn't always the most stringent. She remembers a time when Twitter and JustForFans allowed you to promote adult content directly. But that time appears to be over. When she was banned, her account's profile picture and banner image were a far cry from full hole. "I'd paid a professional photographer for very tasteful boudoir pics." Then she received a warning from the mods. "They told me, 'Your photo may be intended to cause arousal.'"

That was obviously her intent, but she'd posted plenty of content that was specifically intended to cause arousal before. After Musk fired, forced out, or froze out most of the content moderation team, it was strange that the few remaining members were suddenly interested in Rosei's relatively tame profile pics.

It might have something to do with the fact that the new head of Trust and Safety partnered with Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a purported anti-trafficking group with a dubious relationship to truth and effectiveness. Groups like OUR often conflate consensual sex work with human trafficking.

This organization [OUR] works in ways that cause an enormous amount of harm to sex workers. They cost us stability. They cost us visibility in the name of doing better for us. None of us actual sex workers like these organizations. We can't stand them. They're not working in our best interests. They don't help keep us safe.

She was told she had to take the photos down. "Instead of removing the photos, I re-uploaded them with 'My Body Is Not A Violation' in the banner." The mods were unimpressed and within hours of doing so, they banned her account. "I decided to brat whatever mod was watching my content and it resulted in them coming back with a very final 'you are permanently banned.'" But permanently didn't turn out to be that permanent after all.

"I got very angry with them about that and decided to make their life a living hell. I rolled up in the DMs every single day with 'Give me my content back. Give it back. Give it back.'" Eventually, they relented and reinstated her account.

Rosei's anger wasn't just at the professional inconvenience of losing one of her formerly most reliable platforms. "I was angry because it triggered my religious trauma."

Wayward Daughter

Rosei grew up the daughter of a Seventh Day Adventist pastor. Coming to embrace her sexuality has been a journey and her explicit content has been part of that. While sex work had always fascinated her, the biggest drive for taking the plunge into producing adult content had more to do with survival than it did exploration or empowerment.

A confluence of forces opened up her eyes to how abusive and cultish her church and her marriage were. As she pulled away, "what I experienced at the time was technically financial abuse where our [her and her now ex-husband's] joint accounts were cut off and things like that. So essentially I ended up going hungry for several months."

She made enough from a Patreon featuring witchy and psychology content to pay half of the rent in the apartment she still shared with her ex, but it wasn't enough to cover more than that. Because some of her content dabbled in discussions of kink, she had a ready-made audience for the transition into selling adult content. And while Canadian creators experience significant delays in payout, "OnlyFans was what allowed me to really survive the two years following 2020."

It's opened many doors for her. "Work is not inherently empowering, but my experience of sex work was. It was empowering to me. I have a lot of fun with it."

She started with kink and cosplay content, exploring various characters until one resonated with her burgeoning audience. "The one that took off was like a joke at myself." There's a meme on various social media sites about getting yourself a Big-Titty, Goth Girlfriend. After receiving a black wig from her wishlist, she couldn't pull off the "big-titty" part of the equation. "I was like, I can't do that, but I can still goth. So I decided to flex my skill set, and I made a POV of a goth caregiver." POV stands for point of view. In this particular context, that means videos shot as though the actress is talking directly to the audience.

It was my very first one. I did this POV where I'm waking you up and being like, "Hey, this is your day. I know you're kind of anxious and stressed. Here's all the things I've taken care of and what you can look forward to after we get through that stressful stuff."

And although the persona was more meant as a joke, "That was one of the first semi-viral things that I ended up doing. So many people resonated with it."

She ended up pulling in a whole new audience. "With social media, if you see something take off, you bring it back. So I ended up giving that look a name: Tiny-Titty, Goth, Domme Girlfriend." She made another cosplay original character, "Brat Kitty'' so she could make spicy skits of the two characters playing off each other for both SFW and NSFW content.

For two years those characters and a couple others fed a lot of her content, but she's moving away from a set cast. "There's only so many times you can put the same makeup on, do the same character without completely wanting to lose your mind." She moved on to a more general persona as a 'side quest giver.' "I'm basically this positive affirmation NPC." The freedom has meant, "I can make much more unique content that doesn't mentally drive me into the ground."

But just because she's not using the same characters doesn't mean she's abandoned cosplay. While some of her content is more straightforward - such as her nude getting railed in a sex swing or wearing workout clothes while fans try to interrupt her exercise routine by controlling her remote vibrator, there's still a significant portion of her content that features elaborate costumes. "I'm hoping to go more into special effects, doing things where you actually add gills and stuff like that."

But how does someone go from pastor's daughter to the Tiny-Titty, Goth, Domme Girlfriend and beyond?

Eyes Open

2020 was a tumultuous year for many people, and Rosei was no exception. "Myself and thousands of other people ended up in crisis essentially during a pandemic because we were stuck at home with our abusers." If not for a few factors that happened in the lead up to lockdown, Rosei may not have realized exactly how abusive her relationship was. One of the major contributing factors was friends introducing her to TikTok in the winter of 2019.

"My whole background is fundamentalist, evangelical Christian and I was very closeted." And while she may have been hidden deep in the closet as far as her family and church were concerned, TikTok's algorithm was soon showing her a lot of lesbian and witchy content. "I was kind of like, 'Oh my gosh, there's all these very cool people who have the same interests as me.'" As the app started showing her more and more of KinkTok and exposing her to various sex educators, "I ended up getting some education regarding consent and legal rights. And that sort of opened my eyes to some things that were happening in my own relationships that were not technically legal or consensual."

Without the app, she might not have found these resources.

A lot of people associate TikTok with dances and very shallow social media stuff when the reality is, it's allowing for a lot of professionals to share very vital and important information clearly, succinctly, and quickly. It was a little bit of a mind blowing experience just swiping my for you page and then suddenly getting life altering information.

Without those outside voices showing her what consent really was, all she had was what her church taught. "It's all headship under Christ. From Christ to husband to wife to kids. So, if your husband in Christ decides certain things, that's what consent is."

Though TikTok wasn't the only place Rosei found information that ran counter to what she was taught in church. One of the first places that opened her eyes to a different perspective was, oddly enough, a Seventh Day Adventist university. A professor of social work said something that was the first step in Rosei's journey away from the church.

He looked at all of us very sternly and he said, "You can't save people." Which ran contrary to everything I'd ever heard in Christianity because it's all about saving people. And he followed it up with, "You are not the expert in your client's experience. They are. You are there to help them help themselves and you have to keep your bias about their wellness accountable because you do not actually understand what is best for them."

That wasn't what the Seventh Day Adventists had taught her. "In Adventism, you are given a prescription of health and wellness that everyone's supposed to hit and if they're not hitting it, they're not well, so you have permission to overstep people's boundaries."

It made her realize, "I would be a bad therapist, bad social worker, bad caregiver if I were to treat my clients the same way I was treating everyone else as an adventist."

Now she sees her former church in a whole new light. "Adventism at its core is infantilizing and condescending." Rosei views the Seventh Day Adventists as a cult, even though "Adventism does not technically qualify as a cult under the [Steven Hassan] BITE model simply because of membership size." But it still fits most of the criteria. "If you actually sit through the sermons and stuff and you're really paying attention to it, you'll hear things like, 'Don't trust your feelings,' 'Don't trust your heart,' 'Control your thoughts.'"

Rosei compares the church to a multi-level marketing scheme.

If you look at something like Avon, all of these companies initially look so good. They're promising you wealth. They're promising you a lifestyle where you can be at home with your family. They target you based on your life stresses, and Adventism works like that.

And like many MLM's what Adventism sells is a health and wellness image. 

It tries to give you this beautiful happy sterile family package where if you live this way, you tithe 10%, you believe in God, you become part of this in-group, you give your volunteer time, give of all of yourself to Jesus in this way and that will equal happiness.

Rosei has seen how much that model has failed herself and others, especially with how Seventh Day Adventist treat sex and sexuality.

If you grew up a woman in Adventism, you often grew up with things like the 72 hour rule where you cannot let your husband go without being sexually pleasured for longer than 72 hours or you're a bad wife. You failed in Christ. If you do not pleasure your husband sexually, doesn't matter how much pain you're in, doesn't matter how uncomfortable you are, you have to pleasure him sexually in Christ, or else Christ will withdraw from your relationship, withdraw his protection and blessing. And then Satan will get at your husband and your kids.

Even though married women are expected to provide sexual gratification regularly, the unwed are expected to remain ignorant about sexual matters. "In Adventism, health and sexuality is when you are completely abstinent and then you get married to a godly man and then basically mostly missionary sex with him so you can punch out a few kids in Christ."

The model, of course, has a lot of flaws.

I can't even begin to tell you how many people, myself included, people I grew up with, went to school with, who married too young just to have sex only to find out that they didn't feel safe having sex. They didn't know how to have sex. They didn't know how to have good sex.

Thankfully, Rosei's current relationship is a far cry from the one she was in pre-pandemic. She describes her partner as "my resident himbo." By the time they started dating, she was already making explicit content and informed him of it. She told him, in no uncertain terms, "I'm not gonna stop making explicit content and I will leave the relationship if I feel that you are not comfortable with it or you want me to stop doing it."

He's supportive of her work and all that it entails, including scenes with other people.

They are both coming to this with their share of religious trauma. "We met in university and it was really funny to reconnect years later and find out we're both abject sinners."

Trauma Informed Content

The religious trauma she suffered informs the content that she makes.

I focus very much on enthusiastic consent, particularly my own. When you land on my page, you get a message saying I am okay with you fantasizing about my body. I'm okay with you participating in these POVs. I am okay with you enjoying yourself and participating in self pleasure, learning things about yourself. This is the place I have made where I'm absolutely okay with you engaging with my content in a way that is explicit and is safe for you to do.

She strives to counter the anti-sex work messaging of groups like OUR. "I'm putting this out here of my own free will. I enjoy making this content. People do not need to feel guilty about participating in it. I don't want people to have a shame-guilt response from enjoying my content."

While her pastor father continues to preach against trans people, Rosei has made her content and her platforms LGBTQ+ welcoming spaces. "I basically decided as an adult that I would be the antithesis to my pastor parents. However he conducts his platform, his audience, his church, I'm the opposite." Everyone is "welcome to come in, interact, find knowledge, stories, and get uplifted. That community base is my main focus." She says "The whole point of my content is to make your brain go BRRR. The way I view my platform and my community is we are all on this glitterfied struggle bus together."

And she sees how the glitterfied struggle bus has been struggling lately, especially her fellow sex workers. She counts herself as lucky that part of her audience and her skill set are safe for work. "I have ten years of experience in caregiving and things like that. I don't need to do sex work to survive anymore. If worse comes to worst, I could still make subscriber based content that is completely safe for work and still make a living." Though she admits it wouldn't be "at the same level as having the explicit content, but I wouldn't go back to square one of 2020, where I was literally starving."

But she can see where these legislative pushes and moral crusades are going and it isn't good. "We're basically gonna bring back the pimping era."

Anti-trafficking groups like OUR and legislation like SESTA/FOSTA have made it harder and harder to practice sex work safely - or even to advocate for sex worker rights. "A lot of people are getting scraped away, they're getting removed simply because they are a liability to a platform." And there's a deafening silence from the moral crusaders on how people are supposed to make ends meet without sex work. "You're gonna see a lot of people being in very unsafe, actual trafficked situations. You're gonna see people resorting to more and more unsafe situations in order to just pull that income in whatever way they can."

And because social media companies constantly deplatform sex workers, 

We're looking at a lot of very at-risk people being lost to time and ending up homeless, ending up dead. Their visibility is getting removed and we're not going to see from them. There's going to be a lot of people in economic pain that we're just not gonna hear from because they will not be allowed to speak about it.

Unless people support sex workers and let them advocate for themselves instead of having outside groups try to "save" them, the outlook can be bleak. Rosei describes her current situation as

...like a disaster movie where the tidal wave is coming in and I'm on the verge. I'm standing on the line where I can step out of the blast zone. But there are a lot of people a lot closer to the disaster that's coming, who will get obliterated by it based on conservative Christian values that are infiltrating legislation right now.

It triggers a lot of her religious trauma. "I see the same dynamics played out in legislation that impacts my life as I would see in the church. A lot of the same messaging. A lot of the same negation and invalidation of individual autonomy." She adds, "There's a sense of hopelessness about it and grief processing because you're literally pre grieving. A lot of us sex workers are."

Part of the problem springs from people's reticence to stand up for sex workers or admit they use their services or profit from them. Even OnlyFans nearly banned explicit content and has attempted to distance themselves from adult content, claiming they don't know how much money porn makes them. It's difficult to find allies, even in supposedly sex positive places.

"Quite often, what you will find is that even in kink, sex workers will be ignored or intentionally excluded. There's so much stigma around paying for sex-based services."

It's one of the reasons Rosei values her fans and places like Mister Pierre Fashion. "To have a shop be like, 'No, we're also here for the porn stars. It's not just people in the kink community. This is for those who make money in the kink community.' It was very refreshing."

Rosei was happy to join Mister Pierre Fashion's affiliate program. "They are currently putting together an outfit for me to wear. I very much enjoy working with them."

Like most of her audience found her, she found Mister Pierre Fashion through TikTok. She fears the possible TikTok ban working its way through the US congress. Even though Rosei is based out of Canada, an American TikTok Ban could be devastating. Nearly 40% of TikTok's total users are in the USA, including Mister Pierre Fashion. Since she uses her SFW TikTok content to draw in her audience, losing nearly half that audience would be devastating.

More Than A Side Quest

Despite all the challenges she faces, Rosei plans to continue making sexy caregiver content as long as she can. She's doing her best to make the ride on the struggle bus as enjoyable as possible. She'll continue to hand out side quests to her audience. "I'm gonna have my magic school bus of mentally ill, neurodivergent queers who are all doing their best. We've got our girls, gays, theys, men with the bi wife energy."

And while she enthusiastically gives consent to that audience to engage in her content, soak in some positive affirmations, or just engage in self pleasure, "My hope is that my content inspires people to question their perspectives on health and wellness as being very concrete." She encourages people to "Be curious, to grow and adapt and to focus on their own autonomy and on their own agency in their body and in their health and wellness overall. In every form, from spirituality to sexuality to physical health."

After spending years cultivating her audience, she enjoys the feedback, especially when people tell her the positive impact her content has had. And some fans have gone above and beyond to show their appreciation.

Because I often use spoon theory, the metaphor for energy, one of my Twitch viewers took the time to print out all my little self care affirmations and put them on spoons. So I've got some spoons that say, "You're not a burden," "Respect your boundaries," "You're deserving of care." I almost cried when I saw that. It is very much a confirmation that my content is doing something out there for somebody.

If you're interested in any of her content, you can visit her website with links to all the places you can find her. She hopes you'll join her on this journey.

We're here to uplift and affirm each other and get to the end of this drive in the struggle bus as best we can and hopefully have some adventures and fun on the way. I'm this little queer disaster person who is just trying to put the antithesis of what I grew up with out into the world.