Amy Ginger Hart was raised in a conservative Catholic household where discussions of sex were non-existent, and masturbation was a sin. For most of her life, she thought something was wrong with her.
When she was 25 years old, everything changed after she moved to New York City, and a Bumble date led her to a sex-positive brownstone commune, filled with sex parties, kink workshops, and open discussion of consent.
As a 34-year-old woman, she admits that the experience changed her view of her body, sexuality, and her career.
Messages from home defined her feelings about herself long before she went to New York.
“My mom told me when I was young that masturbation was a sin, which created a shameful relationship with my body because I was still going to do it,” Hart said.
The message didn’t stop her from doing it, but it made her feel guilty.
“Every time I did, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is so bad,'” she said.
The shame made her also hide her feelings about liking women and discussing her other interests.
“I carried a ton of shame about it. It was super secret, and I was sure I would never explore that part of myself or tell anyone,” she said.
The shame returned when she became older and discovered more of her sexuality.
“As my sexuality evolved, I developed kinks, which made me feel weird all over again. I remember thinking, ‘Why can’t I just be normal? Something must be wrong with me,'” she said.
Hart thinks that being raised in a household where sexuality was taboo made her more curious. Around 19, she started posting nude photos to Reddit, but not for the purpose of earning money, but for the excitement of doing it and receiving praise.
“When something is kept hidden, you become far more curious about it than if it was just out in the open where you could talk about it,” she said.
Her upbringing made her posts unique.
“The fact that my Catholic upbringing made it feel ‘naughty’ to do that built up a deep fascination for me. It felt so risky to post these photos, and I got great feedback from users on there,” she shared.
Strangers’ reactions reached someone who spent her years feeling weird.
“Growing up as the ‘weird kid,’ I was really insecure, so knowing that a bunch of random people found me attractive provided a new kind of validation,” she said.
The biggest change in her life happened when she was in her mid-twenties, when she moved to New York and started meeting people who were openly sexual. The distance from home let her experiment.
“I had just moved to New York and could do whatever I wanted, as nobody was watching me and I didn’t have to explain my moves to anyone,” she said.
She downloaded Bumble and found a man who spoke about sex positivity and hoped he would allow her to explore this side of her life, but instead she found a whole community.
“I met up with him at his place, and it turned out he lived in a sex positive brownstone commune in New York City. It was a complete stroke of luck,” she said.
The house had a special routine.
“I thought he was just some guy, but he was connected to an entire community. Through him, I got involved with their events. They hosted sex parties, as well as educational workshops and demos on how to explore different kinks safely,” she said.
For someone who had hidden her interests her whole life, the idea appealed to her.
“Taking your sexuality out of the shadows and into the light was part of their ethos, which was perfect for me,” she said.
Hart started dating someone from the commune, which led to more parties and pole dancing. The most important thing she learned was how to speak openly about boundaries and consent.
“Going in, my expectation was just kinky sex. At the time, I didn’t know about consent, and I had never talked openly about my sexuality with anyone,” she said.
Her experience was completely different before that.
“Up to that point, my normal experience was just having a man act upon me while I sat back and let them do whatever,” she said.
The community was doing things differently.
“That was not what happened. Consent culture was very important to them, so instead, we just hung out and talked about sex, what I was into, what I wanted, and what I didn’t want,” she said.
Open discussion felt strange at first, especially after years of keeping parts of herself secret.
“I had been so ashamed and weird about my sexuality that being asked to open up forced me to grow in that moment,” she said.
Those conversations changed everything that followed.
“Afterward, when we did have sex, we had already negotiated all the boundaries, likes, and dislikes. It was super fun, and it completely changed my idea of what was normal and what I could expect from men,” she said.
She considers that night very important.
“It was my first experience with mindful consent, and that was deeply important for me,” she said.
Time spent with the community also changed Hart’s opinion about her body. During parties and in the house, she found herself naked because there were no rules about dressing up there.
“Being at the sex parties and just at their house in general, I was usually naked because you didn’t have to wear clothes there,” she said.
The attention she received couldn’t go unnoticed.
“I loved being naked, and I noticed that people would have a strong reaction to me. Even if they didn’t say anything, their body language showed they noticed me and kept looking,” she said.
At that time, Hart was studying dance and working as a barista, which gave her an idea that her sexuality could allow her to earn some money.
“That sparked a sense in me that there was something powerful about my body and my sexuality,” she said.
But she didn’t know how to use it yet.
“I realized people reacted to it, and that I could capitalize on it if I could just figure out how,” she said.
The first thing that came to mind was becoming a stripper, and she got a job at the club, but soon realized it wasn’t for her.
“I am on the autism spectrum, and I knew those types of social interactions would be too much. I would have had to use substances just to get through a shift,” she said.
She knew before her first shift there that she couldn’t do that.
“So, I never ended up working there,” she said.
Instead, she started creating content online, first on Patreon and the Reddit account that she started quietly many years ago. After about a year, she found OnlyFans thanks to other sex workers on Twitter and decided to try it.
“As soon as I got on OnlyFans, things started to pick up because the user base was already there. It felt amazing and truly transformative,” she said.
Joining the platform paid off, even though she knew almost nothing about social media and creators when she started.
“I had never used social media, and I didn’t know what OnlyFans was, so I truly started from zero,” she said.
The income was higher than she expected.
“In my first year on OnlyFans, I made about $200k, which was just an unimaginable amount of money,” she said.
Originally, it was meant to give her time to avoid burnout and dedicate more time to her passion for dance. But now it has helped her in many ways.
“Being able to financially support myself by leaning into an aspect of myself I was taught to hide and deny allowed me to pursue therapy and alternative healing, recover from alcoholism, develop a spiritual outlook that supports me, and love myself for the first time,” Hart said.
The studio became possible because of that.
“All of those changes are what empowered me to create a community by cofounding and financially supporting a donation-based queer pole dancing studio after being isolated by shame for most of my life,” she said.
Dance was the end goal all the way.
“In doing so, I’ve achieved my goal of devoting more of my life to dance, but again, it’s beyond how I would’ve dared to imagine it,” she said.
