ONLYFANS: The Porn Paradox
This video from CBS 8 San Diego details the situation, and asks some Onlyfans creators for their opinions about the elimination of pornographic material from the site, what it means for their income and everyday lives.
In August of 2021, users were shocked and appalled to discover that the creator platform, Onlyfans, was planning a ban on all adult content affective October 1st of that year. The site hosts content creators who charge a subscription fee for access to their exclusive videos, photos, gifs, and even personalized messages. This platform became an hub for adult entertainers creating pornographic content for willing, paying audiences in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The online medium gave sex workers a new, Covid-friendly avenue to make money during quarantine. Although this wasn’t it’s original intent, pornography became a cash cow for the site, bringing in millions of users as Onlyfans’ value skyrocketed.
The platform may have been intended for artists, celebrities, and influencers, but it quickly became an amazing opportunity for adult entertainers to control their content and make more money. It presented them with a safe, easy way to own and control the distribution of their own videos, and make a profit within the comfort of their own homes. Onlyfans does an 80:20 split, with creators keeping 80% of their subscription profits; although this may sound like a huge fee, it’s nothing compared to the contracts that actors in the traditional porn industry used to endure. Former adult actress, Mia Khalifa, famously spoke out against the porn industry and claimed that she made roughly $12,000 throughout her entire career in adult film, much less than one would expect from such a high-profile career. This is while Onlyfans creators like Meredith Jacqueline, featured in the video above, make close to $25,000 a month through the platform.
Before sites like Onlyfans, porn stars would be paid per scene, anywhere from $300 - $2000 depending on the sexual act being performed, their popularity, and other factors. For many actors, particularly women, the large-scale pirating of pornographic content meant that they were underpaid and their videos exist forever on free streaming sites, outliving their porn careers and following them in every profession afterwards — that’s a lot to carry around for only $12,000 total. The societal stigma makes it incredibly difficult for them to find employment outside of the industry, as detailed in my last post, All About Ethical Porn. The dual consequence of piracy is low pay along with the loss of anonymity.
Houston, also known as Kimberly Halsey, was fired in 2008 from her job in Real Estate after she was recognized from her adult film career.
In a 2013 article from Salon, she talks about the devaluation of the porn industry and porn professionals with the rise of the internet.
“It’s embarrassing to be a porn star now, there’s no movies being made anymore, it’s all scenes. There’s no dialogue, there’s no craft service, nothing […] now there are girls in [cam] rooms doing anal for, like, $50. It’s crazy, but it’s the only way to make money now.”
Back in 2013, the availability of free, stolen porn on the internet was killing the industry. Now there’s been a great boom in what was an otherwise dying profession, and cam girls no longer have to settle for measly fees and mistreatment. Today, in 2022, the internet gives adult actors the freedom to control their prices and content, build a following, become a personality, and gain respect as entrepreneurs.
The industry is in the midst of a major comeback at the hands of independent creators. Onlyfans has been a major vehicle for the valuation of adult entertainment and its’ professionals. Thus, the (averted) ban on sexual content was an incredibly shocking disruption of a mutually beneficial relationship. Although Onlyfans reversed their decision — not even a week later — this blatant disregard for the creators who built the platform’s profitability is shocking, and a wave of insecurity was felt nationwide.
Siri Dahl, adult content creator and Onlyfans critic
In this article from The Wrap, Onlyfans creator, Siri Dahl, has this to say about the relationship between Onlyfans and its sex-worker creators:
“We’re it. OnlyFans would not exist (without sex workers) [...] The platform was pretty much built by sex workers, popularized by sex workers, yet OnlyFans has never truly openly acknowledged that this platform is serving mostly sex workers and their fans.”
I don’t wish to discuss this without proper context — Onlyfans proposed this ban on adult content as a result of restrictions and pressure from banking partners. Many major banks block, restrict, or monitor purchases associated with sex work. Oftentimes this is a result of efforts to crack down on sex and child trafficking, but it is also the result of stigma. While strip clubs, peep shows, legal brothels, and other sex-industry businesses have the luxury of dealing in cash, Onlyfans has to deal with the red tape that comes along with credit/debit cards.
Although the decision was reversed and the platform continues to host explicit sexual content, the supposed ban on adult entertainment left creators in a bind. For some of them, Onlyfans was their main source of income, and much more profitable than other modes of employment.
In a world where sex is in such high demand and labor is so completely undervalued, sex work has become a way of achieving financial freedom, stability, and prosperity that hasn’t been accessible for adult entertainers in a long time. To be honest, Onlyfans has become almost aspiration in a time where home ownership, living debt-free, and luxuries like raising children are unattainable for Millenials and early Gen-Z. That’s a whole other post though.
This corporate move towards respectability outlined the instability of this prosperous moment for sex workers everywhere — a decision that was only reversed when the site was reminded who brought them value, and the loss that would be felt if/when sex workers left the platform for good.
OnlyBans, created by Lena Chen, is an interactive online game based on threats of censorship that surround the precarious prosperity of online sex work. Players act as adult content creators attempting to make money, gain a following, and navigate the online sex industry.
Chen, a sex worker and artist, was a little bit of an oracle. She created this game preceding the Onlyfans ban, but it wasn't mystical insight that led her towards this theme for her game:
According to Chen, players are “encounter[ing] images and stories from real erotic content creators who face censorship, shadow-banning, and de-platforming”: issues that were present even before Onlyfans made the move to ban adult content.
The de-platforming of sex workers doesn’t come as a shock to any industry veteran, many were expected the site to abandon them as association with sex work became a barrier to mainstream success for Onlyfans. This censorship isn’t anything new, and many suggest the creation of one’s own website and diversification of platforms in order to combat this issue. Onlyfans isn’t the only name in the game when it comes to online sex work and independent content creation.
Ultimately, if sex workers are just seeking to stay ahead of de-platforming, what should they do in the long term? If there is a black mark on sex workers from their entrance into the industry, making it hard for them to gain employment outside of sex work and devaluing their own within the industry, how do they ever win? How do we create a permanent solution to an ever-lasting problem instead of expecting a profession in such high demand to punish its’ industry professionals for working and existing?
Online sex work is a fucking Catch-22: it is going to exist because it is in such high demand, but simultaneously our society and so many folks who consume this labor want to devalue, demean, and punish the folks who fulfill our desires. The rights of sex workers are just as important as the rights of any other laborer/worker — they have a right to live, make a substantial income, and navigate the world without limitation or shame.
Destigmatizing sex work is at the center of this debacle. In an era where sex work is lucrative and equitable for creators, where they can make their own money from home, and of their own volition, the backlash is incredible. Our society devalues this type of work, claiming that it isn’t real labor, that it’s shameful, dirty, and thus should be undervalued. Now that we are living in this paradigm where adult entertainers are earning their worth — the demand for their labor is matching their income — and they cannot be exploited in the same ways as before, the criticism of Onlyfans are resounding.
These comments were under the video from CBS 8 San Diego featured at the top of this post. It’s telling that the these comments are made under this video detailing the loss that an Onlyfans ban represents for sex workers. I see comments like this all the time on twitter, hear them in real life, on podcasts, videos, and more. It seems that a lot of people feel they have the authority to speak on who should and shouldn’t be able to make a prosperous living because they don’t value the labor — not even because they don’t consume it. Misogynists like these — and yes, I’m including women and folks of all genders who devalue sex work — believe that it is not only good but necessary for a moral society for sex workers to both fulfill the needs of their client base AND be in dangerous, precarious living conditions at all times. It’s a dangerous double-think that characterizes our society’s relationship with sex, capitalist consumption, and power.
It’s about more than just devaluing adult entertainers, or supposed morality — it’s about maintaining a status quo. One in which men lord over women, queer men, and all other genders through the control of their bodies (here I am thinking about Body Power, as defined by Michel Foucault). Forming boundaries and goalposts for “good” women, and “successful” men that are impossible for gender and sexual minorities to reach because they are constantly being moved. Misogyny casts women, femmes, and gendered others as sexual objects; making us puppets and products to be consumed by men. Moving beyond sexual objecthood is what makes empowered gender and sexual minorities “whores”, “sluts”, “jezebels”, “skanks”, “cunts”, “bitches”, and all of the other terms that just mean “I am not your hole to fuck”.
The damning double bind is that there is no difference between the virgin and the whore, ultimately both are punished by their inability to fulfill the doubly-conscious demands of normative sexuality. One cannot be both sexually exciting, experienced temptress and pure, untouched, sexually-passive object — explaining the demand for both the whore and the virgin to exist in competition, even within the self. It is a false division built on the premise that some people are “dirty” and others are “clean” because of the sexual choices they make. In reality, sexual choice in and of itself makes disempowered sexual actors “unclean” in a society that does not value non-cis-straight men who are sexually active — in thought or deed. Furthermore, although we are all allowed to make the choice to remain abstinent, if this choice is the only one aligned with success and safety, is it a choice at all? Ultimately even this choice is an illusion, as the judgement of who is a virgin or a whore lies outside of our grasp. The power to dictate our wholeness and righteousness has always been in the hands of the men who perceive us, and their perception outweighs our truth every time.
This philosophical/theoretical divergence from the point of this piece holds weight as we continue to think about sexual stigma, sex work, and misogyny in it’s wake. I work from the Black Feminist model that we cannot be free at all until everyone is free — sexual freedom must include and uplift sex workers. Dismantling the misogynistic contradiction that lies that the center of simultaneous demand and degradation of pornography is a case study for our entire society’s relationship with sex, and our own relationships with sex.
This 2-part exploration of pornography has challenged me to really engage with the audio-visual consumption of sex in our world. Where we place the creators, platforms, producers, and consumers of porn on a spectrum of power, and how we must reorder those positions towards a more equitable future for sex workers. At the close of this installment, I am asking you, dear reader, where you lie and who you want to lie in alignment with going forward. Whether you consume, create, or avoid pornography, whose side are you on in the ongoing conversation about exploitation, liberation, and labor rights that this industry presents?
In this video, Megan thee Stallion, shaking ass on her thot shit, levels a glaring critique towards men in power (and everywhere) who hate on her sexuality while consuming her content and being aroused but it. It is a mirror tilted back towards the consumer in a world where men’s demand and consumption of sexually explicit content is never examined or criticized, but women who fulfill that desire are always punished.
