Interview

There is a line buried near the end of Riley MacDonald’s interview that keeps pulling at me.

“You don’t have to support the job to support the worker.”

Eleven words. No flourish. No scaffolding. It arrives not as a rallying cry but as a quiet, almost self-evident truth - and that is precisely why it lands so hard.

It is the kind of sentence that only gets written by someone who has thought long and deeply about her place in the world, and who has arrived at a position of remarkable clarity.

Riley is a Brisbane-based companion, a SWCRA Awards winner, and, by her own cheerful admission, “an incredible dork sometimes.”

She grew up in remote Australia - the kind of upbringing that breeds curiosity, self-reliance, and a genuine appetite for the wider world.

She studied. She built professional careers, plural. She travelled. She developed a deep affinity for the arts. And at some point along the way, all of those strands wove themselves into the work she does now: offering what she describes as a “sweet yet sensual” girlfriend experience to a select clientele, by advance appointment only.

She is not what most people imagine when they imagine this.

The Connection Starts Before the Room

The first thing you notice when you read Riley’s answers is how precisely she uses language.

She is someone who has thought carefully about what she does and why - not defensively, but with the kind of examined confidence that comes from genuinely knowing your own mind.

When I asked her to define the GFE she offers, she didn’t reach for the obvious answer.

“For me, a genuine girlfriend experience is about so much more than physical intimacy,” she tells me.

“It’s about creating a connection - feeling comfortable with each other, enjoying great chemistry and having the space to just be yourselves.”

The “sweet” side, she explains, comes from warmth, affection, and authenticity - and, yes, from being “an incredible dork sometimes.”

The sensual dimension develops naturally from that foundation, not as a separate layer but as an organic extension of the trust that has already been established.

“The ‘sensual’ side develops naturally from that connection,” she says, “where anticipation builds and intimacy unfolds organically rather than feeling rushed or transactional.”

That word - transactional - is the one she is actively pushing against. Not because there is anything wrong with transactional exchanges, but because it is simply not the experience she is in the business of creating.

Her niche has found her accordingly: she gravitates toward longer engagements because they feel more relaxed, more natural, and give both parties the time and space to develop real chemistry.

“I can’t be anything but me,” she says. “I’m a curious cat and genuinely enjoy getting to know the person I’m spending time with.”

The Many Worlds Running in Parallel

Riley does not inhabit just one professional or personal sphere. She manages academic commitments, a separate professional career, personal passions, and her companion work - a logistical reality she describes with a self-aware laugh as “some days more like organised chaos than balance.”

But what is striking is how those worlds do not merely coexist. They actively feed each other.

Her various careers, she reflects, have shaped the way she approaches intimacy in ways she only began to recognise in retrospect. They taught her the value of reliability, respect, discretion, and full engagement - qualities that have carried naturally into the way she connects with people.

“For me, intimacy starts long before anything physical,” she says. “It begins with listening, understanding, and creating a space where someone feels comfortable enough to be completely themselves.”

Art, Travel, and the Education of an Open Mind

Riley grew up in remote Australia with a curiosity about the wider world that the landscape around her could not entirely contain. The arts became one vehicle for that curiosity. Travel became another. Together, they gave her something that cannot be taught in a classroom: the ability to sit with new experiences, absorb them, and let them reshape you.

“Art, in all its forms, encourages you to be curious, ask questions and connect emotionally,” she tells me. “Travelling has done something similar for me - it teaches you to be open-minded, adaptable and appreciative of different perspectives.”

The way this plays out in her work is specific and considered. Whether she is accompanying a client to a play, a concert, a great meal, or a football match - and yes, she genuinely enjoys football - she brings to the experience a real intellectual engagement and a capacity for what she calls “emotional, sensory” intimacy.

“Together, they’ve given me a real appreciation for connection - to people, places, and ideas,” she says. “And honestly, getting to experience that with others is one of the things I enjoy most.”

This is a woman for whom the appeal of the work is not separate from the appeal of being alive in the world. The curiosity is the through-line.

What She Actually Wishes You Understood

I asked Riley about misconceptions. It is always the most revealing question in this series, because the answer tells you not just what frustrates a person, but what they fundamentally believe about themselves and their community.

She did not hesitate.

“I would love for mainstream audiences to see sex workers as individuals rather than the stereotypes,” she says.

The assumption that workers in this industry lack agency, education, or options - that they are necessarily in distress, necessarily victimised, necessarily defined entirely by what they do - is one she encounters regularly and rejects comprehensively.

“The reality is that sex workers are incredibly diverse. We come from different backgrounds, have different interests, ambitions, personalities and reasons for doing this work.”

And then she does something that most public conversations about this industry never quite manage to do. She comes back to the ordinary.

“I’m just a normal, regular gal. I have good days and bad days. I buy groceries, I procrastinate, do laundry, binge-watch Netflix, stress about stuff, run errands, take out the trash, keep appointments and make plans.”

There is something deliberately, brilliantly mundane about that list. She is not appealing to your sympathy. She is not asking you to find her remarkable. She is simply reminding you that she is, in every way that actually matters, exactly like you.

Which brings her back to that line.

“You don’t need to choose sex work for yourself - or even agree with it - to recognise that the people who do it deserve the same rights, safety, dignity, and respect as anyone else. You don’t have to support the job to support the worker.”

It is, in the end, the only argument that needs to be made. Riley MacDonald makes it better than most.

This profile was written by Siya Mchunu and is republished here with permission. To read the original piece and support the authors series aiming to chip away at stigma, one profile at time, visit the original article on Medium.