But seriously, does anyone not have an onlyfans these days? It's probably not a good look for capitalism that seemingly 1/3 of the country has turned to sex work to make ends meet. Definitely not a dystopia.
A large part of it is capitalism failing, and a smaller but scary part of it is also the grooming of young women. I know grooming is overused as a word nowadays, but this applies here.
So many people glamorize sugar baby'ing and now OnlyFans. Woman go on Tiktok and Twitter and lie about how much money they make, how easy it is, and for SB stuff: how they get all this money without even having to HAVE SEX! (Which is 99.9% of the time a lie).
I have been a sex worker, a full service one. Normalization of sex work is good! It stops dehumanization. But normalization to the degree it is now among young, young women is disgusting. I see girls in tiktok comments saying "I'm saving this [OnlyFans advice video] for when I'm 18!" because they are seeing this at 16, 14, 13, 10.
So many women lie about how easy it is and never mention the danger: of being outed, doxxed, assaulted, killed. They don't mention that as a sugar baby, you will need to have sex with them. They don't mention that having OnlyFans can get you basically blacklisted from your greater community. That doing online work so easily falls down into you doing full-service work eventually too.
I don't know. I have so many thoughts on this new phenomena. It's dangerous. Girls are being told younger and younger that sex work is easy, safe, and the best route. I hate talking about this cause people will use my thoughts and experiences to be SWERF-y, but it is a conversation I wish was being had more in a educational and respectful way.
Normalizing sex work is good, what isn't good is hypernormalizing sex work. That is to say, take the current dangers of sex work and convince society, "Yeah, this is just what being a woman is. All the other women do it without complaining, why can't you?"
hypernormalizing sex work
That's a really good term for it, haven't heard that before.
It doesn't have anything technically to do with sex work, but I believe he got that term from the documentary Hypernormalization. Basically it's about how media and internet has shaped our lives into accepting a bizarre reality that is both real and seperate from the physical world.
I think it applies to the Onlyfans trend exactly how Doomposter says, the new constructed online reality normalizes the dangers of sex work. I hadn't really followed this trend outside of memes, but what you described in your long post seems spot on for the general hypernomalization of society. Especially the part about girls going on TikTok and lying about how easy it is, then more girls do that and it reinforces the trend. I'm sure others play it up because they don't want to be seen as losers who don't get paid much. Suddenly the "idea of Onlyfans" is completely separated from the actuality of Onlyfans.
It's not at all SWERF-y to mention the very real issues with sex work. "Supporting sex workers" had to include listening to people like you share experiences and provide advice, not paid shills or industry bosses or random creeps who just want to have a cheap supply of girls to prey upon.
Yes, the impact of this sort of stuff on people of young ages is too ignored by many voices in mainstream media and even some left media.
I hope this ground doesn't get ceded to the far right who end up being anti-sw, pro-entrenching unhealthy attitudes about sex etc. but it seems like the discussion is often between those regressive attitudes and super lib "actually the fact we're paid to be nude is good, sweaty(plz ignore who really profits from systems like only fans, its about being empowered kweens)"
The fact some young people are basically training for years to be the optimum sex worker is super disconcerting.
Yeah it really is either “sex work is DISGUSTING you should be ASHAMED” or “sex work is good and actually liberating and should be regulated by capitalism :).” There’s never room for grey area or real thoughtful discussions. But even the liberal types secretly hate sex workers who do anything full-service and not online.
As someone who has lived the life you have every right to speak about your experiences. There is nuance to this discussion and blanket statements for or against sex work are dangerous. And I think the grooming is a direct result of capitalism due to the commodification of literally everything.
Normalization of sex work and women's bodies is good. Normalization of the objectification and possession of women by (mostly) men, is not.
Are these even entirely separable? It appears to me that as soon as money enters the equation, objectification will exist.
OnlyFans is a platform built on the objectification of women.
This is really tough to answer I think, I think hypothetically in a post-capitalist society trading sex will still be a thing and you could perhaps argue that in that form it could be non-objectifying. But under capitalism? I think its a lot harder to say.
A lot of how it's trivialized is the triviality of what we're told people are doing it for (often by the sex workers themselves). Nobody's doing this for rent or petrol or medicine, nobody really needs the money - it's just pocket money for shoes and shit. Yaaas, get those red bottoms, kweeen 👑
Even if that's true (and for me, when I worked, it was truer than for most), something has still gotten seriously fucked up somewhere.
if you're doing onlyfans for some extra cash, sure, get that bag, but if you NEED to have an onlyfans, to pay rent, to pay for food, etc. if that's not late capitalism, idk what is
I know a few people who have an onlyfans to pay for rent and food. They all have college degrees. Two of them have master's degrees. ALL OF THEM ARE EMPLOYED FULL TIME. None of them are living outside of what should be their means but they still sell their bodies because they can't pay rent and their crippling student loan and/or medical debt otherwise.
Shit is fucked. These are the people capitalism is supposed to work for and they're still not able to stay afloat. It's absolute proof that capitalism just doesn't work the way it's sold, and actually knowing one of them specifically was one of the things that radicalized me.
For sure. None of the people I know are doing it because they want to. They're doing it because it's better than the alternative. Absolutely no shame in consensual non exploitive sex work (assuming such a thing can even exist in capitalism)
Its the natural extension of the gig economy into the sex work sector
Yeah. "Foraging for scrap metal" is a good and important job, but if millions of people are turning to it then maybe something is wrong with society. We should support sex workers while fighting hard to create a world where nobody has to sell their bodies to survive
Before moving I was dating an anarchist journalist/special needs teacher/care worker/visual and performance artist etc, and in order to not be priced out of where she was living she had to forsake all those useful and creative endeavours she had to become a stripper.
It's pretty fucked that you can be a 'gig economy hustler' and write great fiction or pieces that get the united states to interrogate her and detain her family and shit for exposing some stuff... but ultimately she's 'worth more' for being hot and a good dancer.
Over that period it was really sad to see her have less energy for creative writing or special needs care work, and it took a lot to get out of that feedback loop of paid hedonism. As soon as she spent less time focusing on those things, she suddenly had more money than she knew what to do with.
We were both of the opinions it's rather dire that a lot of 'sex positivity!' talk ultimately just serves interests of others making a profit while entrenching exploitative relationships involving sex/sex-adjacent stuff.
Dystopic indeed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er4RJCsW4AEwwAg?format=jpg&name=small
essentially yes, that is the case.
though tbf Vice pays like shit. You can make more money writing those boring ass intros to a recipe online that no one likes reading, and make more money than at vice.
I'd believe it from what I've heard...
Isn't that where Pim Tool got his start? Does anyone know his family situation?
Echoes of ex-soviet Ph.D women turning to selling their bodies to feed their children.
Well, I tried selling nudes before OF was that big, so that probably counts. I wasn't successful, which is probably true for most who try this sort of thing. I have mixed feelings similar to what I'm seeing in this thread. Like empowering and normalizing sex work is good, it's great, it needs to happen. But gods it's really hard to look at how such a huge percentage of women are now competing with one another to be jackoff material for men and not feel like the patriarchy really has us on a string. I'm not saying the act of being a sex worker enforces the patriarchy, I'm not a swerf, but capitalism & patriarchy necessarily shape how sex work is structured, and neither of those tend to put things on a good trajectory left to their own devices.
All I can say is that part of fighting for the rights of sex workers has to include fighting against the gig-economy-fication of the field, just like protecting any other kind of worker, because a race to the bottom in sex work is going to get a lot of girls (and guys, I know there are plenty of male sex workers too, all this applies to them as well) hurt.
This is actually fairly common during "hard times". Cause capitalism of course. Or feudalism before it, or whatever class society it was before that. Also definitely dystopic. Also I may have considered starting one a few times...
I have an OnlyFans, but I don't post anything because I'm ugly and nobody would ever subscribe.
Definitely giving off some late babylonian civilization vibes
Nerd voice: “well I was told that we are a PRO SEX WORK form! I can’t believe I’m seeing sexworkism on the time line. This is disgusting, of course it’s not a problem because it’s sex work. Also sub to my only fans so I can pay rent”
