Margaret Cho Gets Real About Being a Sex Worker: ‘There’s No Shame’

“I have way more PTSD from rape. That’s real. Sex work was just a good way to make money,” comedian says

Margaret Cho posted a series of brutally-honest tweets on Thursday in which she opened up about her former life as a sex worker and her heartbreaking experiences of being sexually assaulted.

“Sex work is simply work. For me it was honest work. I was a sex worker when I was young. It was hard but well paid. There’s no shame in it,” the outspoken comic wrote to her Twitter followers.

Cho, who filed for divorce from her husband of 11 years in August, was asked if it was hard to be fully engaged in a relationship afterwards. “I don’t believe so. I think being molested as a child had more to do with that. But as a sex worker I had power+$$$,” the 46-year-old replied.

Cho recently revealed to Billboard magazine that she was bullied, sexually abused and raped as a young girl. She was sexually molested by a family friend from age five to 12. “I had a very long-term relationship with this abuser, which is a horrible thing to say. I didn’t even understand it was abuse, because I was too young to know,” she said. “I endured it so many times, especially because I was alone a lot.” Cho said she was raped again at 14 and throughout her teenage years.

On Thursday, she compared her sex industry experiences with being abused. “I have way more PTSD from rape. That’s real. Sex work was just a good way to make money. At least for me then,” she said.

“I support sex workers because I was one and I know that it’s a job that’s needlessly shunned by society when frankly we should be worshipped,” Cho continued.

She went on to say that even the Bible glorified the world’s oldest profession as Mary Magdalene “was a whore and Jesus loved her.”

Another Twitter user asked Cho, who appears on ABC’s new comedy “Dr. Ken, why she had never talked about her past career before. “Nobody asked,” she quipped.

“It’s hard work that’s not protected by law enforcement or unions. It’s unfair. We have the right to our bodies +work,” she said, joining the campaign for sex workers’ rights.

See the tweets below.

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