On Normalizing Sex Work and Camgirling as Liberation

In the city of San Francisco, Aella wakes up around 10:30 in the morning and opens her phone. The first thing she checks is her OnlyFans account, to see how much she earned overnight. Throughout the day, she will update her spreadsheets and automated schedules she uses to coordinate posting content on a host of social media websites, including Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitch. Depending on the day, she will either film a short video called “The Naked Morning Coffee Chat”, where she talks, naked, to the camera about things on her mind, or create a more explicit video for her subscribers. She has 3,200 paying subscribers on OnlyFans, whose fees routinely make her up to $100,000 of income a month, placing her among the top 0.04% of content creators on the platform. Aella is a sex worker of the digital age, and while she is a particularly successful example, this practice is flourishing, both in terms of creators and consumers ¹Stenberg, M., 2020. A Day In The Life Of An Onlyfans Creator Who Makes Up To $100,000 A Month Off Explicit Content. [online] Business Insider. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/day-in-the-life-of-onlyfans-sex-worker-writer-entrepreneur-creator-aella?r=US&IR=T> [Accessed 16 October 2020]. .

In addition to sex work, Aella is also a writer-blogger, with quite a large following on her safe-for-work Twitter account (63K followers!). On her blog, she writes about a wide array of topics, from her exploration of psychedelic drugs, the nature of consciousness, and dealing with insecurity and trauma ² Aella. 2020. Knowingless.com. [online] Available at: <https://knowingless.com/> [Accessed 16 October 2020]. . One day, she asked her followers: “Happily married people: what’s your best advice for meeting someone to get happily married to? I need help” ³ Aella_Girl. 2020. Happily Married People: What’s Your Best Advice For Meeting Someone To Get Happily Married To? I Need Help. [online] Available at: <https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1316839150872522752> [Accessed 16 October 2020]. . The most-liked reply, receiving 938 likes as of this writing (compared to only 663 likes on Aella’s original tweet), was: “Delete the OnlyFans”. Among jokes and some supportive replies, many share the most-liked tweet’s sentiment that marriage, in some way, is simply not compatible with sex work.

If you’re reading this and being from a still-very-conservative background (especially like in my country, Indonesia), you might not find this assertion unreasonable. This little online interaction strikes at a core of our judgment towards sex work. Marriage is a vital part and major milestone of most people’s lives, and instinctively, we would deny this to someone due to their occupational choices. What drives this stigma, and is it justified? This short essay will explore this notion, particularly with regards to the rise of a new revolution of sexuality unfolding in more progressive societies.

The rise of OnlyFans

OnlyFans is a subscription-based content platform, launched in 2016 as a website for performers to allow followers to subscribe for a monthly fee to see clips and photos ⁴ Wikipedia. (2020). OnlyFans. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans>. Due to its content guidelines (or lack thereof), it has seen a rise in popularity for sex workers, who stream and record pornographic clips for subscribers. This form of pornography is not at all new: “camgirling” services have been available on platforms such as Chaturbate for up to the last two decades. However, OnlyFans’s recent rise in popularity has consolidated the camgirl market, and also led to a rapid growth of users.

You might wonder, why would one pay for porn, when PornHub and other streaming sites readily offer a wealth of sexy videos for free? The answer seems to be intimacy. There is a parasocial aspect to services like camgirling, also found in non-pornographic online streaming such as Twitch (where people watch content creators play games in real-time); a parasocial relationship is a psychological attachment, a manufactured sense of closeness, derived from a simulated “personal” experience with media personas ⁵ Chung, S.; Cho, H. (2017). “Fostering Parasocial Relationships with Celebrities on Social Media: Implications for Celebrity Endorsement”. Psychology & Marketing. 34 (4): 481–495. . One article explains: “If a guy is a regular customer, she (the performer) likely knows his birthday, the names of his children and his pets” ⁶ Harwood, D., 2019. How Onlyfans Changed Sex Work Forever (Published 2019). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/style/onlyfans-porn-stars.html> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. .

The Covid-19 pandemic, along with the subsequent economic downturn seems to have provided a windfall for OnlyFans. Its Twitter following has grown 84% since April this year, along with increased traffic and online popularity. The company’s Linkedin Headcount shows its employees had grown 228% over the same period, and there has been a surge in usage both from creators and subscribers ⁷ Konstantinovic, D., 2020. Onlyfans Is Exploding During COVID. But Are Its Users Safe?. [online] Media.thinknum.com. Available at: <https://media.thinknum.com/articles/onlyfans-growing-pandemic-covid-pornographic-adult-content/> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . One BBC article documents the stories of those who turned to OnlyFans after finding themselves unemployed due to Covid lockdowns: “I started selling sexy photos online after losing my job […] OnlyFans paid my rent. It’s paid for food. It’s paid for my car to keep running.” ⁸ Jones, L., 2020. Onlyfans: ‘I Started Selling Sexy Photos Online After Losing My Job’. [online] BBC News. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53338019> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. .

Sexual revolution 2.0

OnlyFans, along with the social dating app Tinder, are perhaps the two most massively popular digital platforms harnessing the new undercurrent of sexual expression brought upon by the interconnected world-wide-web. The original Sexual Revolution happened in 1960s America, signified by a dramatic shift in traditional values of sex and sexuality. During this era, sex became more widely accepted outside the traditional boundaries of marriage ⁹ M. J. Heale. (2001). The Sixties in America; History, Politics and Protest. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 13–14. . As some might know, this shift was actually driven in large part by the advent of what was, at the time, a revolutionary new technology: the birth control pill. It might seem an innocuous invention, not quite as fantastic as the internet, but its consequences were profound, so much so that some call it “The Quiet Revolution” ¹⁰ Leah B. (2009). “The Quiet Revolution in Woman’s Labor Force Participation”, ECON 183 LEC 1: Development of Economic Institutions in U.S. .

“The Pill”, as it is now called, provided women a more affordable and reliable way to avoid pregnancy. Besides giving women greater opportunities to attain education and participate in the workforce, The Pill also carried with it a change in what it means to have sex: Sex has become no longer merely a means of procreation, that a couple partakes in after marriage for the express purpose of having kids. The act of sexual intercourse was separated from what might be considered its evolutionary purpose, and from this, the idea of “recreational sex” was mainstreamed, in no small part due to the sexual freedom afforded to women, that is, freedom does use their bodies as they saw fit, without having to worry about the burden of unwanted pregnancy.

The current shift in sexual values must be seen as an extension, a continuation, of the very same social trend. From the accusation of immorality put against the practice of contraception that pervaded the 1960s birth control discourse, so too now we are conflicted on the implications of “free sex” (still a taboo in most of the developing world) and “hookup culture”, when in fact the phenomenon has been prevalent in college campuses the whole time ¹¹ Dockterman, E., 2013. What Everyone’S Getting Wrong About The Ivy League Hookup Culture | TIME.Com. [online] TIME.com. Available at: <https://ideas.time.com/2013/07/23/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-college-hook-up-culture/> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. .

As we become more accustomed to sex as a normal part of life instead of a sacred event, it only makes sense that pornography takes on a greater role. The 1960s had already introduced pornography into the mainstream (although controversially) and brought upon the so-called “Golden Age of Porn”; as social norms relaxed, the advent of the digital age could only push us further in the same direction ¹² Susanna P. (2007). The Golden Age of Porn: Nostalgia and History in Cinema. [online] Available at: https://susannapaasonen.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/01pornification23-32.pdf [Accessed 17 October 2020] . This time, the revolution manifests in increased accessibility through the internet, which has led to unprecedented consumption. 40 million Americans visit porn sites at least once a month; one-third of all downloads and one-quarter of all online searches are for porn; some experts are calling pornography addiction “our newest and most challenging mental health problem” ¹³ Maltz, W., 2015. Pornography On The Rise: A Growing Mental Health Problem. [online] Psychotherapynetworker.org. Available at: <https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/677/pornography-on-the-rise-a-growing-mental-health-problem> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. .

In the US, the porn industry is estimated at to make up to $97 billion per year in revenues in 2018 ¹⁴ Naughton, J., 2018. Growth Of Internet Porn Tells Us More About Ourselves Than Technology | John Naughton. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/30/internet-porn-says-more-about-ourselves-than-technology> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . For the greater part of the 2000s to 2010s, streaming sites such as Pornhub and YouPorn have reigned; evidently, now OnlyFans is leading the new disruption into more seamless, more personal, more intimate forms of pornography.

Obviously, this development is not exclusive to the West. In Indonesia, porn use has become so common that the government has deemed it problematic due to “indecency”, having passed the Law No. 44 of 2008 on Pornography; however, curbing online porn is nigh-impossible. Having blocked almost 800,000 sites in 2017 and more than 70,000 in 2018, one source claims they will ever only manage to block 50 percent of online porn ¹⁵ Davies, E. and Silviana, C., 2018. More Than 70,000 ‘Negative’ Websites Blocked In Indonesia. [online] Jakarta Globe. Available at: <https://jakartaglobe.id/context/70000-negative-websites-blocked-indonesia/> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. ¹⁶ Belford, A., 2010. Indonesia Finds Banning Pornography Is Difficult (Published 2010). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02iht-indoporn02.html> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . Moreover (as you might know) users can easily use VPNs to bypass this block.

This is not the start, but the culmination of at least a century-long trend of sexual liberation. Along with this, sex work too is becoming more normal, more socially acceptable. Prostitution has also been legalized or decriminalized in a good chunk of the Western world ¹⁷ En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Prostitution By Region. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_by_region> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . The arrival of services such as OnlyFans was not a matter of if, but when; and with it, the new sexual revolution is kicking into high gear.

A history of stigma

Quoting Valerie Jenness, “Prostitution has existed in every society for which there are written records”. Yet at the same time, prostitutes have lived through a history of terrible conditions and stigma ¹⁸ Jenness, Valerie (1990). From Sex as Sin to Sex as Work: COYOTE and the Reorganization of Prostitution as a Social Problem. Social Problems, 37(3), 403-420. . The commoditization of women was an integral part of the feudal system; nobles commonly had concubines (what we call “selir”) whose main purpose was fulfilling their sexual urges. In the colonial age, more organized forms of the sex industry developed, and systems of slavery were integrated with concubinage to market women in colonial lands and their origins, for the purpose of the sexual gratification of soldiers, traders, and normal citizens ¹⁹ Terrence H. (2017). From Concubines to Prostitutes. Des concubines aux prostituées. Une histoire partielle du commerce des services sexuels en Indonésie. Le commerce du sexe en Asie du Sud-Est. Approches pluridisciplinaires. p.65-93. https://doi.org/10.4000/moussons.3771 .

Despite being “the oldest profession”, prostitutes were at the very bottom of the social structure, treated with immense disdain and dehumanization. We have a very telling word for this, too – “wanita asusila”, or “woman without morals” (Indonesian feminists have retorted, “where are the men without morals?”, yet the phrase “pria asusila” does not seem to be in popular use). This social stigma has been observed to take on three distinct forms in the discourse around sex workers: containment, culpability, and contagion.

Containment argues that the existence of prostitutes and brothels are a necessary evil: necessary because it protects the virtue of “well-to-do” women. Here there is a dichotomy that systematically excludes “dirty women” from the social structure, in which the irony is that this dirtiness was typically imposed by coercion through human trafficking, slavery, or other economic pressure, wherein women were not seen as workers, and historically could not find employment as readily as men. Culpability asserts a particularly accusatory conception of the moral agency of sex workers: they are either knowingly malicious actors, who manipulate men into purchasing their services for their own greedy interests. Contagion argues that sex work causes physical and moral ruin towards men and women (in this case commonly the men’s spouses); physical by spreading infectious diseases, and moral through sexual arousal and the subsequent shame of using prostitutes.

The picture is clear, and one we should be familiar with: prostitutes are dirty and malicious, stealing men from their wives and implanting obscene thoughts into their heads, corrupting society. The contradiction with the idea that male libido is naturally occurring, and thus more understandable that they would come to prostitutes in the first place, should not be missed here.

Sex work as liberation

Having understood the present and past context of sex work, we now look towards the future. Though most progressives would agree that the current state needs to be changed, there is much contention over what change needs to be made.

The liberal position on prostitution is that the institution should be legalized and regulated, such that it becomes “just another recreation-oriented service industry”, with the goal of affording sex workers more safety, a more secure position of negotiation with clients, and more control over their own careers ²⁰ Martha Nussbaum. (1999). Whether from Reason or Prejudice: Taking Money for Bodily Services. Sex and Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 276-98 ²¹ Lars Ericsson. (1980). Charges against Prostitution: An Attempt at a Philosophical Assessment. Ethics 90: pp. 335-66. . The liberal basis for this argument is that sex work should be considered an expression of autonomy over one’s body, of which the right should be guaranteed. In the process, sex work would be normalized and treated like any other profession.

However, would this truly be the case? Radical feminists disagree, and claim that sex work is inherently oppressive and misogynistic. Andrea Dworkin, herself a survivor of prostitution, describes in vivid detail the violence exerted towards the female body by partaking in prostitution: “Women, in general, are considered too dirty. Most of us experience this as a metaphor […] but a prostitute lives the reality of being the dirty woman. She is perceived as, treated as […] vaginal slime. She is dirty; a lot of men have been there. When men use women in prostitution, they are expressing a pure hatred for the female body. I want you to feel the delicate tissues in her body that are being misused. I want you to feel what it feels like when it happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over again: because that’s what prostitution is. The repetition will kill you, even if the man doesn’t” ²² Andrea Dworkin. (1997). Prostitution and Male Supremacy. New York: Free Press. .

For radical feminists, sex work degrades women via objectification, an effect of social injustice, and in itself a cause of sexist attitudes towards women, further perpetuating social stigma. We must note that the emphasis on women is rightly deserved, as prostitution has been, for most of history, dominated by women, in large part due to the patriarchal limitations on female agency afforded in most societies. A man is much more likely to find work and sustaining himself through “normal” jobs; this is a privilege not afforded to women for a long time. Additionally, in our society, women are valued very much based on sexual attractiveness rather than other qualities, and this is particularly true in the past ²³ Milligan, S., 2017. Study: Women Valued For Attractiveness. [online] usnews.com. Available at: <https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-12-05/study-women-valued-for-physical-attractiveness> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . Thus, it makes sense that women have been commodified on the basis of their sexual value, and otherwise forced to leverage this aspect of themselves to a much larger degree than men.

However, the advent of pornography makes a significant alteration to the dynamics of prostitution. Consumers do not directly have intercourse with the sex worker. In this sense, the sex worker has much more control, much more agency, in creating and providing their services. This is not to say that the porn industry is not fraught with abuse ²⁴ National Center on Sexual Exploitation. 2019. Women Expose The Sexual Abuse And Trafficking Hidden In The Porn Industry. [online] Available at: <https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/women-expose-the-sexual-abuse-and-trafficking-hidden-in-the-porn-industry/> [Accessed 17 October 2020]. . On the contrary, the rise of camgirling platforms serves as a way for sex workers to gain even more control over their craft, with less risk of abusive managers and industry actors. This is arguably one of the drivers of its growth and its disruption over traditional pornography.

Scott Anderson puts forth a rebuttal towards the radical feminists, from a liberal perspective: Though liberals generally agree that prostitution degrades women, exploits inequalities, and objectifies women’s bodies, he denies that these are intrinsic features of prostitution, and can be solved if prostitutes were empowered to negotiate the terms of their trade. Liberals such as Lars Ericsson and Martha Nussbaum also think that prostitutes have skills that enable them to provide some people with a form of happiness heretofore unavailable to them. In all of these cases, the authors are referring to conventional, direct-intercourse prostitution; however, in the case of pornography, and even further, solo-content-creator based platforms such as OnlyFans, this argument rings much stronger.

Women have been marginalized for almost all of history; they have not been afforded the same rights as men, and they have suffered for it. To me, it seems almost poetic justice that now sex workers, the very class of women that are most despised, that receive the worst stigmatization, are harnessing their sexual value to participate in the very system they have been shunned from; in capitalism, in obtaining financial freedom, no less from the slavish sexual thirst of men. The tool the patriarchy has used to abuse them has now become their weapon to enact revenge on the patriarchy, and find, at the very least, personal liberation from it! Aella writes in her blog: “‘So shun me,’ I think. ‘At least I will have financial security. At least I’m not a stay-at-home housewife or working at a factory where I don’t see the sun.’”

Of course, the ultimate goal would be liberation from the intangible social forces; the stigma. Would “normalization” be possible from this path? Would the prevalence of online sex workers release sex workers from judgment, even in the long run? Judging from the responses to Aella’s innocuous question, this is not too clear. She writes another thread the following day: “The idea that sex workers can’t find husbands is so weird to me… I’ve run deep in sex worker circles for coming up on a decade and it’s never been an issue. Most of the girls in the chats have long-term boyfriends, a big chunk of them are married” ²⁵ https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1316925864521703424 .

But perhaps “normalization” doesn’t have to be the end-goal anyways. Perhaps what we are witnessing in the change of how we contextualize sexuality itself, such that the “new normal” does not have to be the one traditionalists hold on to. Aella also explores further the possibility of how social norms can evolve, or rather, how manifestations of values can change in unexpected ways while preserving the values they supposedly uphold: “Monogamy/trad stuff is a ‘stable setup’ – there’s a set of norms and expectations that makes things predictable and workable. But there are lots of other ‘stable setups’” ²⁶ https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1317208222780903424 . Essentially she is suggesting, we now view monogamy as an absolute boundary, of which showing one’s body to other people for money is a clear violation of the basic value of marriage: loyalty. However, this does not have to be the case, if monogamous loyalty can be expressed, and achieved, in alternative ways, such that the “preciousness” of the marriage is preserved.

Do you consider yourself to have liberal values? To be accepting of others, and judge not a person by such superficial markers as their occupation, but by the content of their character? Would you date a sex worker? Would you marry a sex worker? Would you break up with your partner if they insisted on starting an OnlyFans account? Perhaps, and perhaps not, but the beauty of social change is you don’t have to participate; it is robust due to its intersubjectivity, and we move forward in the direction of the momentum of the times.

This was a contemplation of social change, and how technological advancement can have the power to recontextualize existing practices and change social norms along the way. Technology changing norms is by no means unprecedented; on the contrary, the defining feature of revolutionary technology is how it changes not only human behavior, but also social norms, and how we view each other as human beings.