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.
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?"
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.
[adam Curtis voice] but then... something horny happened
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.
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.
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.
Capitalism has been the real pimp all along lol.
Sex work is work, and we need to liberate all workers
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.