Onlyfans - good or bad for feminism?

[JustGraduated]

Hi all - I’m new here so not sure if this is the right topic for this forum. Sorry if it isn’t but would love to hear your opinions! Also sorry for how long this is!!!

I recently graduated from uni & one of my housemates (and best friends) had an onlyfans page. It was the cause of disagreement between her and our other housemate (and friend) who is a really strong feminist.

She is stunning and loved doing it, so regularly posted on it & did really well (like insane well). She made enough to cover tuition fees, rent, bills & a whole lot more beside. And don’t get me wrong she works hard on it.

Our other housemate was strongly against it. Saying that it was demeaning her as a female & that she should stop it if she respected herself.

The three of us all get on really well and besides a few little arguments between the two of them it never caused anything serious.

I just want to know what you guys think. Can you be a feminist and on Onlyfans? I often play with the idea of starting my own, especially when I look at my student loan debt and how well my friend did!

Anything that involves providing titilation for men using your body is anything but empowering.
The world is always trying to modernise and advance, womens rights etc and yet things like onlyfans are allowed to exist.

🙌🏼

Of course it matters. Talented and hardworking women should not be moved off teams and have their professional career go down the pipe because “someone at the client” said she was on Pornhub without even talking to her first!

If it only takes a rumour that you were on OF (or Pornhub) to destroy your career with you none the wiser, then what is the point in avoiding OF? Doesn’t matter if you do it or not, all that matters is whether someone decides to allege that you did.

So yes, it matters how the poster and her colleague handled this situation. It matters for all women.

Don’t you think women know that which is why a lot of OF content is focused on parts other than their face. There was an item online the other day where a student made £15k a month by selling pics of her fanny, “sailing her pink canoe “. I guess the danger comes when they see it has more than just paying their student fees and convince themselves that it’s a career choice.

If this is empowerment feminism has completely failed.

@postcardpuffin
That was quite the manifesto. But then I don’t expect all choices for earning money to be empowering or to also free me or others from oppression.

I felt pretty oppressed and not at all empowered when I chose a job cleaning public toilets. Cleaning up shit & vomit smeared walls & floors was just a job, it wasn’t meant to be a feminist act to empower me or fight back against oppression. My choice to clean public toilets, similarly didnt impact other women in the sense that it did not perpetuate some societal view that women are just dogsbodies who clean up mens shit and vomit. And even if it did, so what? It’s not the individuals responsibility to keep their job choices politically pure and only do work that advances feminism.

Women just want the freedom to make some cash how they choose without it being judged as some sort of political activism and for how empowering it is or isn’t.

You do know that by your logic everyone who goes to work, is therefore complicit in the oppression of the working class?

Thats a lot of baggage to dump on women. They’re not responsible for our oppression and choosing to not go or to go on OF isnt going to change womens rights, status or empowerment one iota.

This is an exceptionally daft argument, @AuntSallie. So: people judging a woman on rumours of being in online porn is such a terrible, serious thing that it “matters for all women”. Yet the degrading of women in online porn, the depiction of women as sexual objects to be used, and the selling of this to naive young women as empowerment doesn’t “matter for all women”? It’s “neutral”?

You can’t have it both ways. If it’s a terrible thing for all of us that we might be judged on rumours about sex; then it’s a far worse one for all women to be judged by how much they are fuckable sex objects for men wanking.

It might, in fact (whisper it softly), even be part of the exact same terrible thing.

Hint: go and look up “patriarchy” in a good introduction to proper feminism. You might find it an enlightenment….

Before I log off for the night just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s commented.

Never thought this would get some much discussion and opened my eyes a bit.

I think you’re debating with several posters at once here as you have written this response as if I had said those things about OF. I don’t think OF is empowering, and also don’t think it has to be or should be empowering. I don’t think everything on OF is degrading. I have no issue with men or women being objects of sexual desire and capitalising on it for their own financial benefit.

I do think the judgement of women is far worse and more damaging than women using OF to make some money. If all it takes is scurrilous gossip to take away a woman’s career, her means to earn a professional living, then we have not progressed beyond the Victorian “fallen woman” moral code. Women who go on OF should not be viewed as damaged goods unable to even do back office things like statistical analysis. It’s fear of moral contamination. “Won’t be taken seriously” “the client won’t like it” are pathetic excuses for rank sexism towards women for not keeping their reputation sexually pure.

The judgement of it is what is terrible. That is what materially oppresses women- the harsh societal punishment that follows if you go on OF or are even alleged to have done so.

Thank you for the hint, but as I am sure you know there is no one orthodox “proper feminism.”

I think you've misunderstood: the poster upthread said the woman was moved onto a different team, not sacked. She didn't lose her career!

A lot of jobs have clauses in their contact about not bringing your employer into disrepute with your actions. Your employer does get a say in your extra curricular activities if it will look bad for them (similarly also working for a competitor is usually frowned upon).

The judgement issue is any interesting one. I don't see 'Victorian judgement' in most of these replies. I think you will find a lot of judgement from the men that buy sex though. Do you think they respect the women whose bodies they bought?

You can assume the usually sensible poster who wrote the post knew more than she wrote. I very much doubt no verification had happened at any point.

The fact is willing or victim. Just known about or losing job worthy the effect on the woman is usually all the same.

So the real problem is that men might treat some women as if they are the kind of women they pay to watch do sex acts; and not that men might pay women to do sex acts in the first place?

The whole “Victorian moral code” you speak of was part and parcel of the huge explosion in prostitution during the nineteenth century (and other early bits of the sex industry, like pornographic photographs and stage shows). Women were judged on their sexual worth, precisely on whether they were a sex object/body for general hire; or an “owned” woman who was the sex object of only one man.

The root of the problem is the commodification of women as objects. You don’t have one without the other. If men see women as bodies to wank to on a computer screen, they are going to regard the women they use as wank fodder as lesser beings. They always have done. It’s not feminists doing this, is it? Feminists don’t want women to be used as objects in the first place.

I cannot think of any sort of genuine feminism which applauds men first objectifying women, and then judging them for that objectification. That’s what the patriarchy has done since time immemorial.

I felt pretty oppressed and not at all empowered when I chose a job cleaning public toilets

I felt happy i was getting paid the adult rate of pay considering I was only 14.

I dont think anyone hete us suggesting that women on OF should be viewed as fallen women.

A sector of society does see it that way though. Why do you think that might be? It's almost as if patriarchy uses sex as another way to oppress women...therefore supporting a company that so blatantly promotes patriarchy, while saying that society should just somehow change for the better (become less judgemental), without any of us taking positive action, doesn't really make sense.

What do they actually do on Onlyfans? I’ve never been on!

Which was to be honest a damn sight better than the clip round the ear used to get at 4years old if I didn't clean the men's toilets quickly enough in the offices my mother cleaned in at night. The mens toilet with playboy magazines stacked in each cubicle, will thumbed, and well used.

Yay. Let's play oppression Top Trumps.

I may have misunderstood. I saw she was moved off the client team, but I do wonder with this rumour/knowledge circulating and the comments made whether she will be quietly managed out.

I don’t see Victorian judgement in most of the replies either, only a few.

I think those clauses are loopholes and do not view them favourably when used retroactively.

Yes, there is plenty of judgement from 360degrees towards women making such choices. It’s not limited to any demographic.

Respect is an interesting issue, does any gig to earn money have to also command respect from the consumers/customers/clients for you as a person? I don’t think it does. None of them know you as a person, so how can they be expected to respect you? It shouldn’t matter really, because respect based on what a person did or does to legally earn money is just a form of biased judgement.

Id keep it that way. All sorts of people doing mundane hobbies for payments. Then the other 99.9999999999% sex work from little cleavage to shoving who knows what up your anus. And things I've probably never even imagined.

What do they actually do on Onlyfans? I’ve never been on!

Shove dog toys and dragon dildos up themselves in exchange for money and male approval empowerment.

@AuntSallie and I apologise for my sarcasm in my previous post the decapitate Terfs LRM in parliament and the male rapist wearing woman like a disguise and getting way with it has frayed my last gives a fuck.

Yes, I do believe that the real problem is the judgement from all sources (not just men).

We could have women doing sex work without the stigma and negative judgement. All sorts of work has cycled through different views. Women doing medicine was called witchcraft and they were executed by state sanctioned murder. Women being actresses for centuries had the exact same stigma as women on OF today, but that’s not how we view actresses today is it? History is littered with examples of society harshly judging women and even killing them to keep them in their box that society’s moral code dictated as acceptable occupations.

The only reason you think that the root cause of the judgement is the sex work itself is because of your moral code telling you that the harsh judgement is correct. Therefore, to you, in order to solve the problem of harsh judgement of women on OF, all sex work must be eliminated. If women can’t do OF, then men won’t view women as sex objects, oppress us and view us as lesser beings. I’m not at all convinced that would be the outcome. It seems to be blaming the actions of women for their oppression and argues that if we stop women going on OF/doing sex work, then men will just stop and we will be equal? Will they stop? I don’t have faith in that.

I only have faith in what I’ve seen and what history tells us and that is removing the stigma and negative judgement from choices is what has resulted in advancing womens rights and status. There’s not one single freedom of choice that we have taken away from women that has advanced us.

Thank you, but no need to apologise, I wasn’t playing oppression Trumps anyway…so didn’t even think you were talking about me with that bit. I mostly saw you got my point about earning money doesn’t have to be empowering.

Im not sure what happened in Parliament that you are referring to but can understand how certain news stories can be distressing.

😁You might not of been I was, I was feeling snarky!

Parliament. Lloyd Russell moyles had a big rant and finger jabbing go at Miriam Cates who had just described being intimidated by a man in the ladies toilets. After shouting at her Lloyd cross the floor and sat in the opposition seats right near Miriam and glared right at her. Another male saw him and positioned himself between Lloyd and Miriam and then escorted Miriam from the chamber. It was appalling.

This really is daft though and hilariously naive - so it’s judgment that’s the real problem? Women will stop being abused, exploited and raped by men if everyone just stops being so judgy-pants about everyone else’s choices? Oh yeah! (You know that bridge I mentioned…? It’s still for sale!)

You are missing the point that some choices are simply unethical. And here’s a problem: if I believe the way women are represented by the sex industry is harmful and unethical, why shouldn’t I judge it? I judge plenty of people’s choices to make a fast buck doing lots of other unethical and harmful things: selling arms, owning puppy farms, working for a tobacco company, selling drugs, flogging unnecessary cosmetic surgery to vulnerable people; writing for essay mills; selling vapes; being Scientologists; dealing in derivatives; making anti-vax conspiracy videos — we could go on and on!

What you are arguing is arse about face - at best it’s naive; and at worst it’s in knowing bad faith. But thinking that everything goes as long as nobody “judges”, and that’s the real problem, is turning a blind eye to the perpetrating of wilful harm by pretending that somehow the systematic exploitation and degradation of women is all down to essentially a few gossips at the gate, rather than deliberate choices by men to use women as objects — well that’s farcical, really.