OnlyFans Didn't Save Sex Workers, Sex Workers Saved Themselves.
Camming sites foster autonomy and creativity, while eliminating middlemen and thwarting vice cops.
HD Download"I thought it would honestly be really funny if I read my blog posts naked," says Cathy Reisenwitz, a former Reason staffer and freelance writer who joined the web-camming site OnlyFans during the COVID-19 quarantine. OnlyFans reports that with the world on lockdown, its traffic has grown at a rate of 150,000 new users daily.
OnlyFans is a social network like Instagram or YouTube, except that creators get to charge for their content, and they keep between 70 and 80 percent of the proceeds. Nudity is common. Reisenwitz says her goal is to break down stigmas around mixing sex and money. People assume that "you're either someone who makes money from their brain or their body," Reisenwitz told Reason. "And I think that's dumb."
OnlyFans is another milestone in the long fight for sex worker freedom, who have embraced peer-to-peer platforms as a way to eliminate middlemen, thwart the vice police, and ply their trade with more creativity and autonomy.
"So many more women are able to be their own producers now," Film Studies Professor Constance Penley told Reason. In the early 1990s, she and her colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, were among the first academics to give pornography serious scholarly attention. Penley says that camming has birthed a new world in which performers are calling more of the shots, edging out studios and distributors.
It's also turned sex work into a more common side hustle. "It's not the main part of their living," says Penley.
Professional sex worker and writer Siouxsie Q started in the industry after college, performing on stage and in live peep shows at San Francisco's Lusty Lady Theater. But she eventually migrated her career online, where it's possible to interface more directly with her customers. Q has seen many camming sites come and go, but over time, platforms have shifted to giving performers more autonomy and the freedom to be creative.
Siouxsie Q runs part of her webcam business through a website called Modelcentro, which owns Fancentro.
"Modelcentro really created essentially the adult industry's Squarespace and the ability to just plug and play your own site where you could feature your own content and then users can access that via their smartphones," she says. "That really changed the game,"
Before the commercial internet, sex work was done mostly on the street through pimps. It was a dangerous trade. The internet has made the industry safer by integrating customer screening tools and reputation networks, which mitigate risk even when sex workers choose to meet their clients in person. OnlyFans and websites like it mean sex workers get to decide who they let into their world.
"It's funny, I've been on social media, I'm super active on Twitter. I have been for a really long time," says Reisenwitz. "OnlyFans is like the nicest place on the internet for me right now. Like, by a lot."
Written and produced by Paul Detrick. Graphics by Lex Villena. and Detrick.
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People assume that "you're either someone who makes money from their brain or their body," Reisenwitz told Reason. "And I think that's dumb."
"I'm not particularly hot *or* particularly bright."
That quote puzzles me. What else is there, inheritance, dumb luck? You'd still have to hang on to it, and that takes one or the other.
I think the person's point is that it is not "either...or", it can be both.
And that your average human is too stupid or sheltered to have stumbled across this 'both' concept until reading this article.
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Correct. A woman either respects her body or she does not.
I might respect your body if you show it. I won't respect your brains; you have none.
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Does your daughter have any photos of her gaped asshole for sale?
The projection is what got me.
If a guy started off an article with "Women just assume that a man is either a good provider or phenomenal in the sack, and I think that's dumb." it would say an awful lot about him depending on the context. If it were a medical journal, the guy likely is well off, possibly married, and may have a legitimate scientific conclusion about performance in the sack. However, if it's a 2nd tier internet political blog, he's probably a stupid superficial douchebag.
But Reisenwitz is a liberated woman, well technically, her mom's mom was a liberated woman and, arguably, her mom was a sexually liberated woman, and Reisenwitz is just an entitled twit doing her damnedest to "perpetuate their glory" (or whatever) but she's white and female so we'll indulge her idiocy.
It's funny isn't it.
Western women are the wealthiest, most privileged people in the history of the world. Possibly only Gulf State Emirs are more entitled.
But yet they pule and groan about microaggressions, triggers, being othered, safe spaces, and their own personal pronouns.
As if any of that shit matters, or ever could matter. Fuck them, and fuck their enablers.
Agreed, but at least a few of them were smart enough to realize that the most important thing is perpetuating their victimhood status, and they do that very well.
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Reisenwitz sounds like a really smart 10 year old. Not surprised she writes for Reason.
"It's funny, I've been on social media, I'm super active on Twitter. I have been for a really long time," says Reisenwitz. "OnlyFans is like the nicest place on the internet for me right now. Like, by a lot."
She better have some throating skills.
>paying for pornography
SIMPs belong in the gas chamber
Pictures or it didn't happen
That will be $14.99 per album.
You wanna see real libertarian women at work? Watch what happens when I try to buy half that album off of you for half the price. It's been a real problem with/for OnlyFans.
I'd pay a dollar to watch ENB read her articles naked.
I'd pay her a dollar to stop.
Start! Stop! Start! Stop!...
That could add up quick. On second thought I think I'll pass.
I’d pay a dollar to watch Stossel read a Shikha article. That would be funny.
Yo Detrick! Does ENB know that you're standing on her corner, ho?
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So do you not know what a middleman is, or do you not know what a cam site is? Hint: a middleman provides some sort of facilitation between a buyer and seller in exchange for a cut of the transaction price. A cam site provides the telecommunications infrastructure to host and stream content, process payments, and match buyers with sellers in exchange for a cut of the transaction price.
I'm pretty sure when historians look back on this era, they'll view OnlyFans as a sign of societal decay, not a symbol of freedom.
Neutral at best and that's assuming future historians are able to extract anything remotely related to OnlyFans from the digital fossil record.
What is new about this other then you get to shop the wares on line instead of on the street? It still ends up with the same conclusion. I guess the sex workers can preform for the Johns better on line then on the street to show off what they are capable of.
Women are rising to new heights in selling their bodies for pleasure. Trying to make is seem more high class though is absurd. They are still hookers.
A friend of mine set up a cam house in the 90's for a strip club owner. It was raking in $900/hr the second week.
That was until it got shut down for a zoning violation.
Velvet Jones saved them with his new book, "How to Be an Instagram Ho".
Good for them but watching online porn is not really a fully effective substitute to in person action.
Bingo! This is mildly better than the billion porn clips available for free online and I'd guess that it's already devolving into ever more 'interesting' fetishes.
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