BBC suggests Only Fans is 'empowering'

Toseland · 23/11/2024 13:56

"A bit of a punk protest" ?! Fuck off!
Selling your body is prostitution not punk. You are normalising that shit to your young fans and the BBC are fucking pimps promoting it.

They've obviously never heard of Honeybane, who wrote the song "Porno Grows," to protest about pornography and the sex trade:

@GiveMeSpanakopita God men are so fucked up (not all I know) so many "philias"
So many tastes and obsessions
And how messed up to desire something they despise.

They didn't have to interview her though and give OF a platform? Makes a change from their obsession with drag queens I suppose.

The BBC didn't suggest it was empowering. They interviewed somebody who said it was.

Yes. This is true and is how these men's minds work. This also helps explain the phenomenon of AGP, and why men with that disorder tend to dress as cheap prostitutes - fishnets, short skirts, caked on make up. They are not trying to resemble 'ordinary' middle aged women, at all. They get their erotic charge from the disgust and humiliation they feel dressed up as a sexual object which they desire and also despise and revile. This is why men with this disorder are especially dangerous to women.

Amala Ekpunobi discussing what happened with Lily Philips (and OF generally), she makes some good points:

Yep empowering is such bullshit, let's call it what it is.. giving sleazy disgusting men what they want and normalising women being objects.
I just want to cry at the thought of young women thinking taking their clothes off or letting a man grunt away on top of her is empowering..

Absolutely, and as they can be influential towards other men, everyone who gets it can help breaking up this system. But it's also true that we have to still be aware of their other goals and beliefs.

@GiveMeSpanakopita @ScrollingLeaves

Very good point! That's why "customers" can never be allies, even the "decent" ones - there are sometimes discussions about how self-employed "sex workers" who have higher "prices" screen better and can choose "nicer men" and that this would at least be better than trafficked / desperate women - but the power imbalance never goes away.

They feel disgust and the disgust is part of the erotic high they get

I had not realised this before. Thank you for your insight.

The BBC are full of people who embrace paedos and porn. It is a disgusting anti women organisation.

You say this but plenty of vile men pay for OF pics of Danniella Westbrook, who is extremely unwell and now severely disfigured from her years of drug addiction.

Some men like prostitutes to look as dissipated, unwell and desperate as possible. They feel disgust and the disgust is part of the erotic high they get. Because they KNOW that prostitution is a form of degradation and abuse and THAT is what turns them on from it.

It is disgusting to use and abuse sick, vulnerable women like this and yet that is at the core of why men like to use prostitutes. And that is why sex work will NEVER be positive because it rests on implicit assumptions of power, and of men's god-given right to degrade women.

THAT is what the BBC (our state broadcaster? HA!) is promoting!

@unclebuck you nailed it. I don't believe anyone would pay for photos of Kerry Katona or Katie Price, although they are very likely plumbing some low depths to sell anything. I think it's very likely that OF are paying them to claim they're earning thousands a month so younger attractive women think they're in with a chance.

Plus who owns the data? I doubt the users at given many rights over their images

Yes, exactly this, it is complacant to say how wonderful sex positivity is and sex work is work. It'll get posh media types plenty of brownie points on the North London dinner party circuit.

They can afford to luxuriate and feel smug in their faux liberalism because they are confident that their money, education and social capital will mean that the horrors of prostitution will never touch them.

@GiveMeSpanakopita complacent is a very good term. It ties in with the topic of luxury beliefs and that it happens to other people. They also mix up not judging women who do this as last resort with saying it's ok for everyone, nothing to see here, no problematic structures behind that.

The criticism here is not about an individual in a problematic situation, it is criticism of the system as such, about how women as a group are perceived, how people are fed into the system as material and about exactly fighting what you and @duc748 mention, that the normalization could make this a reality one day as a suggestion at the employment office.
And that is why celebrities taking part is a problem, as they can be role models for people.

Don't you realise, @GiveMeSpanakopita , prostitution is only OK for other people's daughters? 😡Just how morally bankrupt do you have to be to propound something like that? And the BBC are far from the only ones plugging this line.

All prostitutes are trafficked women. All prostitution is rape.

If prostitution is so empowering then where are all the middle class professional parents urging their daughters to choose it as a career? Where are all the initiatives to encourage young women into careers in prostition like we encourage them into careers in STEM?

Why is that all prostitutes are vulnerable, traumatised, sick women struggling with abuse, violence, addiction?

Shame on the BBC for propagating this stupid, complacant, spoiled, luxury viewpoint.

I gave up on the BBC well over a decade ago when I finally realised it has no interest in exploring the real lives of working class people, and propagates nothing but nepotism and luxury beliefs.

Everytime I see something like this, I'm pleased once again with my decision.

What guff, OF is today's soft porn.

Razzle anyone?

There’s been a political realignment going on everywhere for about a decade, as people come to terms with the fact that liberal social values and leftish economic values don’t necessarily go together – indeed that in practice the former destroy the latter, because you can’t fully divide the economic from the social, and left to itself the money is liberal.

It’s been going on everywhere except the UK at least, it feels like. Here we still don’t seem to be able to separate the two. There’s always so much bewilderment when ‘our’ side support the wrong thing, and so much cognitive dissonance around finding our own views coming from the mouths of our opponents. For some reason people here seem more inclined to stick with their teams, regardless.

Must say it feels a bit weird – I’ve always been used to the UK being one of the cool kids, and I’m not ready for us being the last ones waving the flag for a happy globalised utopia.

I think you'll find most sex workers are in it for reasons other than making more money than Tescos. It's a dangerous industry and risk getting injured or even killed. I think you will find most of them are pretty desperate people

"Where can we learn from the sex workers? Maybe we can learn something from this

There is nothing glamorous or pleasant about being a sex worker, selling one's body to get used and abused, so men can do whatever they like. It's grim

@duc748
If you want to start a thread on that, I would support it

"I'd agree, Unherd especially. I usually find their pieces thought-productive, even if I don't particularly agree with them, but the BTL comments are often scary."
@duc748

Yes, they are coming from completely different viewpoints, but it is interesting to see the thought process. And sometimes there are interesting ideas laid out. I'm often disappointed by more middle of the road-media because they don't question things enough. Many articles are just a collection of facts given from press statements, from governments and institutions. I don't think the information is unreliable, but often enough it contracts other articles and no-one looks at the contexts, bigger pictures or problematic outcomes; it's just a bland observing of topics. It isn't as unbiased as it seems, because there isn't enough challenge by some reporters. In that sense, Unherd & co are refreshing, as long as it's clear they have their own agenda.