(Disclaimer: my blog is my personal opinion from information I have sourced. My opinion is obviously not ‘factual,’ however, I strongly believe my statements. In other words, I’m right.)

A Sex Work Apologists Guide to OnlyFans

“OnlyFans! The used to be platform aiding female empowerment that has taken off during the coronavirus pandemic! Easy money on an online platform allowing for physical distance between the worker and consumer!”

Ultimately, to embrace yourself comes from being able to have personal autonomy over your body, sexuality and self. This can take a variety of forms; from sexual activity, clothing, opinions and so much more. Liberal feminists would say that OnlyFans provides predominantly women and the LGBTQIA+ community a sense of autonomy. Essentially, women (as our main category of thought) get to choose to partake in sex work. It has also been constructed as a palatable, safe and secure site. This frame of thought has been circulating after the recent announcement from the CEO Tim Stokely, who told the Financial Times he was forced to ban pornography and explicit content on the platform. The ban was supposedly due to the ‘increased level of obstacles from banks’.

Who knows really. All I know is that the ban is obviously not due to the fact that capitalists have profited off sex for centuries.

It’s due to pressure… from… banks?

Nonetheless, the media still glamorised OnlyFans by stating that sex work is sexy, fun and easy money. This glorification has taken many forms; through Beyoncé’s featured single ‘Savage’… “I might just start an OnlyFans” and the use of the site as a noun to represent online and consensual sex work. As a result, the entity that is OnlyFans has had more than $2 billion in sales in 2020 and had over $400 million in revenue (source: Bloomberg).

These soaring sales have showcased how online sex work is a normalised industry that aids to empower women through their choice to solicit pictures and videos.

Ironically, liberal feminists have constructed OnlyFans as empowering when it is a platform created by men, consumed by men and profited off… by men. Although women may receive monetary benefits, their wage in comparison to the profit that male owners take cannot be compared. The interesting thing about OnlyFans is that it has created a whole new dimension to the sex industry, where it has been founded upon its personalisation for the consumer. It trickles into both prostitution and pornography, but has become so popularised that it can be conflated with non-sexualised social media apps. This blurred distinction allows for liberal feminists to construct the use of OnlyFans as a choice for women.

Empowerment or Exploitation?

“The sex work apologists romanticise “empowerment” for women in the sex industry and locate female power in the very behaviours that feminism has rejected – sexual objectification, acceptance of the use of women’s bodies as commodities for male pleasure and for profit, and misrepresentation of this as rebellion.” – Raymond (2013)

Attempting to locate power in the very place that objectifies and commoditises a woman’s body is not what I call female empowerment.

Do you think that we can source female power through the heart of a system that exploits them?

While OnlyFans is soft-core and can be seen through the lens of choosing to solicit pictures and videos, it is still a gateway into sexual exploitation. Think about it… can we actually choose to solicit pictures when the primary aim is to monetise off of them?

Essentially, women are consenting to monetising off sexually explicit content. They are not consenting to sharing these explicit pictures without something in return.

As OnlyFans also acts as a palatable platform that many people are aware of, I feel like this sort of site acts as an agency to hide how extremely exploitative the sex industry is.

The next question that tends to be on a lot of people’s minds when debating sexual exploitation is why women choose to put themselves in these situations if this is the case. Why women choose to stay exploited if it’s that bad. Why women choose to partake in a system that exploits their physical and mental wellbeing.

Well… this is the crooks of it. Women are not in fact choosing to remain in the sex industry as their preferred way of living; whether that be online or in person. Studies have shown that the majority of women who are trapped in the sex trade were either exploited as children and forced into it or are from widely poor areas. If you are choosing to enter a profession in order to survive… the issue of consent becomes a paradox.

Can women consent to sex under an umbrella of survival and monetary gain?

The answer for me, is no.

Women in these professions are victims. Their victimisation cannot be denied.

It comes to a point where we have to relieve women of the responsibility of the sex industry and bring it right back around to the real culprits. We can no longer say that prostitution, trafficking and rape are inevitable.

Sexual violence is not inevitable. And! There is no such thing as sex work. Using the term ‘work’ normalises the sex industry as a legitimate form of work. In reality, the sex industry has been created through legitimising mass rape, creating financial incentives and framing it as consensual.

How have we industrialised sexual exploitation and allowed it to become a blurred line of consent when men both profit and consume “sex” in its most horrifying form?

• 

Sex positivity does not come from legalising the sex trade, it actually comes from all people being confident and comfortable in their sexuality and sexual activity without monetary coercion.

Next time we make jokes about becoming a stripper, starting an OnlyFans and glamorising the term sex work I think we should think twice about the realities of the industrialised and exploitative sex trade.

In framing OnlyFans as female empowerment, it is time we think about what this is doing to people that are readily exploited by the sex trade… OnlyFans: A was ‘Casual’ Exploitative Platform.

SilverJay x