The OnlyFans Changes Are Just Another Strike In The War Against Sex Workers

Late last week, OnlyFans, a subscription-based service that once represented an imperfect but important bastion in a deeply hypocritical war against sex workers, announced that it would no longer allow users to submit “pornographic” material to the site.

The move is part of an increasingly common trend to eradicate nudity from the internet, corralling erotic content to pornographic websites. Tumblr announced that it would no longer allow users to share erotic material back in 2018. Just this year, eBay banned the sale of “hardcore” adult material, including hentai and pornographic magazines.

Instagram increasingly censors erotic content, with automated systems flagging those accounts that post nudity. Movie-logging site Letterboxd has only just allowed pornographic films onto the service, and even then, users have to opt-in to finding adult content. Even Twitter, which allows nudes to be posted to the timeline, has begun to censor pornographic videos and photos shared in direct messages.

Most of these platforms have developed an anti-pornographic bent in a move to appeal to advertisers and lobbying groups. That was the reason given by OnlyFans, with an official statement noting that the decision came after pressure from those banking services used by the site.

But the trend of sexphobia and hysterical, pro-censorship positions is almost as old as pornography itself. It’s a symptom of deep moral conservatism, a desperate desire to designate pornographic content as somehow distinct from other cultural objects.

None of this is new. But that makes it no less disappointing, nor less devastating for those artists and performers who make nudity the cornerstone of their diverse and varied practices.

These New Guidelines Are Still Not Clear

In the hours since the OnlyFans news dropped, there has been a great deal of confusion online about the nature of these new guidelines. OnlyFans Support has specifically said that it will only crackdown on “sexually explicit content”, as opposed to “nudity.” But such delineations are not clear. What separates a photograph of a naked body from that same body touching itself, or being touched by another?

Lucie Bee, an Australian sex worker, has resigned themselves to the news. “It’s happening, we kind of just need to accept that it’s happening,” Bee told Junkee. “There are sex workers saying we don’t need to worry, this is just being sensationalised. But ‘sexually explicit content’ means porn. Nudity means influencers and celebrities can continue to post slightly salacious shenaginans which does form — whether we like it or not — a big part of what [OnlyFans] has been doing recently.

“I am seeing sex educators and other people come out and say, ‘this impacts us too,'” Bee continues. “And I do think it’s important to address that. But it always starts with sex workers. And people don’t take enough of an interest when we get kicked off.”

Bee notes that OnlyFans has been under pressure from conservative politicians and groups in the US that have been calling on banks to investigate those platforms that sell explicit content, disguising their pro-censorship bent under the argument that platforms like OnlyFans are being used in sex trafficking. “There’s been a big push on banking facilities — on Visa and Mastercard specifically — to remove their services from sites that host adult content,” Bee explains.

This too is an old tactic: FOSTA-SESTA, a bill pushed through the Trump government, made it the case that “website publishers would be responsible if third parties are found to be posting ads for prostitution — including consensual sex work — on their platforms.” Designed to crack down on trafficking, what FOSTA-SESTA did was make it increasingly difficult for sex workers to operate online, taking away a great deal of advertising opportunities and chances to communicate with fans.

“Sex trafficking seems to be the buzzword they use to justify doing a lot to harm sex workers,” Bee says, simply.

“I Know It When I See It”

In 1964, a cinema owner named Nico Jacobellis was charged with two counts of “possessing and exhibiting an obscene film”, Louis Malle’s French-language erotic drama The Lovers. Jacobellis’ case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where, in perhaps the most famous moment associated with the war against pornography, Justice Potter Stewart claimed that when it came to “obscene material,” he “knew it when he saw it.”

Stewart’s words are so well-known because they speak to an ongoing inability to define what pornography even is. Those who want to censor erotic material have never developed a satisfying list of criteria that would separate pornography from art, allowing them to apply their pro-censorship position to content made by sex-workers but not mainstream Hollywood films that depict sexual activity.

Not all sexually explicit content will dependably arouse sexual feelings.

After all, mere depictions of nudity won’t cut it — the naked body is not necessarily sexual. Nor will attempting to siphon off pornography from other content by claiming that it provokes a feeling of sexual arousal in the viewer provide the kind of conceptual hygiene that pro-censorship activists desire. Not all sexually explicit content will dependably arouse sexual feelings. And what about that material which doesn’t depict nudity, but does arouse such feelings of sexual engagement — feet pics, for instance?  There is simply no easy way to censor pornography without also censoring art, and popular culture, and music.

Indeed, the recent pro-censorship move from Instagram has already proven that there is no easy way to target the kind of content that advertisers balk at without catching a diverse array of content in the process. The site has cracked down on everything from paintings of the nude form to the nipples of gender non-conforming users, making it a less varied and engaging platform in the process.

And then there’s the slow eradication of history itself. EBay’s decision to halt the sale of erotic material makes the work of archivists harder, suppressing a long and colourful genre of art that deserves to be exhibited and consumed. Queer pornographic content is disappearing, pushed into the hands of private collectors, the purchasing of erotic magazines and movies proving increasingly difficult for those who believe that we only understand our culture by watching that art that reflects it.

Sex Work Is Work

Pro-censorship positions must rely on an impossible-to-define distinction between sex work and other forms of labour. That sex workers use their body to make money will not work; so do manual labourers. By cracking down on pornographic content, making it harder to access, tech giants harm those who have a perfectly viable way of making a living, indistinguishable from any other kind of job.

“I’m pregnant,” Bee says. “Content was going to be my job. And it was going to be the way I could take some leave when I had my baby. Because I don’t always have access to the things that other people in normal nine-to-five jobs might have. I’m not getting maternity leave. And this is way for me to get an income when I need to take that time.”

Bee is matter-of-fact about the impact that these new restrictions will have on their income. “I thought we were going to be okay,” they say. “And now I don’t feel okay. And I’m joking about it, to an extent. And I’m trying to make the most of the situation. Because if I don’t laugh, I will cry. It’s happening all over again. It was FOSTA-SESTA. Then it was the pandemic. Now, this.”

Online, some have reacted to the news with old and cliched arguments that sex workers will now have to find a “real” job. But as Bee notes, creating content for OnlyFans was as real as any other job, and will now, in the months before the change to guidelines, become an even harder one. “I’m going to be working a real job times one hundred to prepare for this,” they say.

“There are so many hours that go into migrating all your content over, and finding the best way to inform [your consumers]. I can’t just go onto OnlyFans and say, ‘Hey, I’m going over to this website,’ because I don’t think OnlyFans will appreciate me posting about their competitors. So I have to find this coy way of directing people to where I’m going next. It’s not convenient for me. It’s not convenient to the people who subscribe to me.”

OnlyFans once represented a way that content creators could provide their material directly to consumers, a route that allowed people to maintain ownership of their bodies; that allowed them to dictate the terms under which they made their living. OnlyFans was not perfect — the site showed a strong bias towards advertiser-friendly softcore content. But the potential for freedom it once represented is gone. That doesn’t just hurt sex workers. It hurts anyone who believes that ours is a society that should value freedom of expression.

There are still ways that concerned citizens can support sex workers. There’s the Scarlet Alliance’s COVID relief fund, a crowdsourced resource that sex workers impacted by the pandemic can access. And consumers can find new ways to support the content that they love, paying attention to the new platforms that sex workers will move to, and staying up to date on their socials.

But despite these options, the move from OnlyFans still needs to be mourned, a new salvo in an old and tired war. “You know, everyone’s had to deal with a lot due to COVID,” Bee says. “But we’ve had a COVID-style situation every couple of years lately, where we’ve had to change everything about the way we work, rebuild, and rise from the ashes again.”

They pause for a moment. “And people don’t take us very seriously.”

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Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.