But then along came COVID-19.

At first, she didn’t take the virus seriously and thought it would be gone soon. But when the government started to impose restrictions and lockdowns in parts of the country, Bella realized the seriousness of the situation.

Just one month after President Joko Widodo announced Indonesia’s first two COVID-19 cases last March, offline events were banned in hopes of containing the virus and the company where Bella worked started losing business. With only a high school diploma, Bella also lost her job.

“I don’t have any other skills, and I don’t know where to look for jobs,” she said.

She took her frustration to Twitter before a friend told her about “an easy job with easy money”. That was when Bella learned about virtual sex services, locally dubbed “video call sex” (VCS).

“Basically, you just promote yourself on Twitter, pose in sexy clothes and wait for clients to text you,” said Bella. “Of course, you have to hide your identity first.”

She placed a per hour price tag of Rp 350,000 for her VCS services by WhatsApp or Line, and had three to four clients lined up within a day.

It was the same for Mami Elza, a 37-year-old mother of one who worked at a beauty salon in South Tangerang, Banten, which was downgraded from red to orange for coronavirus risk only in February. She also took to Twitter to promote her services, which she said had attracted mostly young men in university.

“Almost all of my coworkers did the same,” she said. “We could barely survive if we stuck to our old jobs.”

Elza said providing VCS services was more convenient and much safer than conventional sex work, especially during a pandemic.

“Of course, I don’t want to contract the disease from a stranger, so VCS is safer,” she stressed.

But Tania, a 29-year-old transwoman based in Bali, dislikes VCS and prefers meeting her clients in person so she can be paid in cash, despite the increased risk of contracting COVID-19.

She tried offering VCS services and was earning Rp 100,000 per session at one point. While most of her clients were Indonesian, her negative experience with two foreign clients turned her against the format.

“Both of them found me on Instagram and said they wanted VCS. But after the sessions, they just disappeared [without paying],” she said.

Before COVID-19, Tania was a fixture in the local gay scene as a drag queen at a prominent bar. After the bars started operating at reduced capacity last April, she turned to sex work to make ends meet, as she lacked other skills.

Tania earned around Rp 7 million per month from her drag queen performances. Now she makes between Rp 200,000 and Rp 300,000 per month as a sex worker, compared to the provincial minimum wage of Rp 2.9 million.

According to her, many transwomen had turned to sex work since the pandemic emerged because they lacked other skills. As a result, competition in the industry had ramped up and it had become harder to find clients.

Technical issues with her mobile phone has also disrupted her work, but Tania is resourceful.

“My phone is outdated so I can’t open Michat anymore to find customers,” she explained, referring to a free messaging app popular among sex workers. “[So] I promote [my services] to a transwomen’s Facebook group, and anyone who likes what they see can just send me a message on WhatsApp,” she said.

Virtual haven

Under Indonesia’s strict yet vague Pornography Law, celebrities and ordinary people alike have been to prison, while the Communications and Information Technology Ministry has run periodical crackdowns on pornographic sites and content.

In its crusade against pornography, the government has blocked Tumblr, Vimeo, Reddit and TikTok, although it lifted the ban on the latter in July 2018. That same year, the ministry blocked 984,441 posts containing offensive content, of which 531,304 posts were on Twitter.

Read also: Indonesians find fun on OnlyFans amid draconian Pornography Law

Still, Twitter has provided a safe haven for sex workers.

“You just need to set up a new account if your old one gets blocked, it’s simple. But I lost my followers and had to start from the ground up,” Bella said, who currently has more than 3,000 followers.

Even if VCS provides a more private platform, the threat of scams remains imminent. In February 2019, the Jakarta Police uncovered a criminal group that had blackmailed hundreds of victims by offering fraudulent VCS services. It then recorded the victims’ online activities to blackmail them.

But for people like Bella, the boom in demand for VCS services has been one of the few saving graces during the pandemic.

“I still have a motorcycle loan, so what I make is more than enough to cover [my family's] daily needs," she said.

According to State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir, the economic slowdown during the pandemic resulted in job loss for 2.56 million Indonesians and pay cuts for more than 1.8 million people. The economy suffered a severe blow in the third quarter of 2020, when it contracted 3.49 percent and led Indonesia into a recession.

*The names of all sex workers in this article have been changed to protect the individual’s identity and privacy.