Bella Thorne

[HarryHarry1]

Not sure if there is already a thread about her. I hadn’t heard of her before today so for those of you who might not know, she is a 22-year-old Disney star with an estimated net worth of $5-12m. She is in the news because she has recently joined the website Onlyfans, on which people can sell their own adult entertainment, and has already made over $2m from selling “nudes” of herself (in which she wasn’t actually nude) to subscribers. She initially claimed she was researching a film role with a certain director (Sean Baker) but he has since said that this was a lie.

I have so many questions about this, the first one being WHY??? Why would a young woman who is already rich, famous and successful feel the need to do this?

I’m also confused about parts of Sean Baker’s statement in which he described himself as a sex worker “ally” who seeks to “normalise” their “lifestyles”. What does it mean to be an ally to sex workers? Can sex work really be considered a lifestyle? Should it be normalised? Is this just another example of American/liberal feminism being sort of at odds to feminism almost everywhere else?

Interested in other people’s thoughts.

Our society is so fucked up. Porn and prostitution is abuse of women and girls. Anyone who tries to justify it as "work" should consider what boundaries have been trampled over before anyone gets involved.

Sex ‘work’ is abuse, often compounding previous abuses again and again. It harms and disempowers the individual woman and all women. It supports the objectification of women and sexual entitlement of men and financial exploration of women and that is a harm to all women. It is a horrific pincer movement on women of capitalism and misogyny. That’s not to denigrate any individual woman involved- those women are not morally culpable for sexism and misogyny or sexual violence and financial exploitation- but we have to look at the overall picture which is beyond awful for most women.

‘SWIW‘ the mantra is also a glib, tokenistic lie out of the mouths of most of the people who say it. They would be absolutely horrified if they, their kids, any women in their lives ever had to turn to sex work, or even opted for it as a career ‘choice’.
Yet it’s fine for those abused, desperate, no capital (financial or other), powerless women to do..