OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetize sexually explicit images and videos in a safe online environment. But a Reuters investigation found women who said they had been deceived, drugged, terrorized and sexually enslaved to make money from the site. The findings are based on redacted U.S. police complaints and international court files, lawsuits and interviews with prosecutors, sex-trafficking investigators and women who say they’ve been trafficked.
In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce porn for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.
Generating less attention are cases Reuters identified in the U.S., where some women endured weeks or months of alleged sexual slavery in ordinary-looking homes in quiet communities. The victim sometimes was a fiance or girlfriend, abused to pad the household budget, fund a couple’s retirement or cover children’s expenses, according to accounts in police or court files. Reuters is withholding the names of women who say they have been trafficked.
I’ve always believed that sex work in all its forms should be subject to regulation. Amateur pornography was very much touted as the response to corruption and sexual exploitation in the porn industry itself. Ignoring, of course, that women are sexually exploited all the time, most often by people they know personally. The pornography industry was and continues to be a gigantic mechanism by which women suffer sexual exploitation to produce content for which they are unfairly compensated.
Platforms like OnlyFans are difficult to regulate by design. They offload the process of sexual exploitation (which they absolutely know exists and knowingly benefit from) onto private citizens because it allows them to procure many of the same kinds of content as traditional pornography platforms while maintaining a distance from it’s production.
There’s a lot of ways it could be better. Making creators paid employees would be a start, which would subject their employment to the same regulations applying to any other kind of employment. Requiring creators to routinely meet in person with company representatives and have conversations with some kind of financial auditor would help as well. A lot of exploitation, like mentioned in the post, takes the form of financial exploitation. Which is easier to understand and help with if there’s kind of clarity on where money is going.
This would turn OnlyFans into a completely different company. I believe similar things should be done for doordash drivers. The whole concept of a “gig company” is built on worker exploitation. They won’t legally hire their workers because it allows them to function outside the bounds of labor regulation. In the case of OnlyFans it’s just. You know. Partly the sexual abuse of women that they are profiting off of.
Demonizing women for sexually expressing themselves is important in controlling their bodies.
That’s why we won’t legalize sex work. We can’t let them be proud of anything besides sexual servitude to a husband/master.
It’s a control mechanism.