BBC suggests Only Fans is 'empowering'

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygdzn4dw4o

What a very depressing article.

Female singer promoting Only Fans:

'it's bit of a punk protest as a woman to take control of my body and sell it' - Kate Nash

'Musicians could follow a lead from people who earn a living from selling sexual content on sites like OnlyFans, she suggested.
...
"Where can we learn from the sex workers? Maybe we can learn something from this industry. How do we get empowered as artists and take a bit more control?"'

That link goes to another article pushing Only Fans as a great way for women to make money. Also mentioned is Lily Allen, selling foot pics on Only Fans.

Absolutely no comment on any potential issues with this. No counter balance.

What is going on?

There are about 30-40 BBC pieces tagged 'Onlyfans'.

This one seems another barely disguised advert, a couple of weak mentions of risk and lots of positive promotion:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-62377737

Gosh that is depressing. The singer possibly has problems with depression, poor self-esteem, and maybe even self-harm for all that they know.

Presumably ‘sex positivity ‘ and ‘sex work’
approval is part of the BBC’s rule book now.

It boils down to the Left now supporting the commodification of absolutely everything...so long as it supposedly furthers 'individual choice'.

Marx thought that alienation from self and community was the result of industrialisation and capitalistic practices. He thought this was a bad thing. Marxists now seem to think it is a good thing.

Soon it will be the expected norm.

Where is the counter argument, BBC?

This is the ultimate in exploitation.

Exploiting people for their bodies at the same time as persuading them they are getting ‘empowered’.

To be fair there are several pieces among the 30-40 on Onlyfans that are critical. Looking at CSA images on the site, etc. But there are two or three that read purely like advertorials.

I reckon that gay men have a dominant role in BBC policy these days.......promoting typical patterns of male sexual behaviour that are widespread on the gay 'scene'. Lots of cold, transactional sex.

Lily Allen and Kate Nash? To me it just shows they’ll literally do anything for money. What does it matter if you have integrity or not? Plus the elephant in the room is that they are making money from sending images of body parts because they’re already famous. Not the same if Sally down the road tried to do it and expect the same level of income. (No offence to fictional Sally).

That's a good point about "individual choice" in contrast to circumstances created by capitalist exploitation and choices you have to make when your situation lacks options. @AliasGrace47 gave a good description.

OF used by chefs for cooking stuff is a different topic; I can get that because recipes are difficult to copyright, that relates to all of the long texts before the actual recipes by food bloggers, too. Cooking and other skills on OF is more like teaching or Youtube.

The normalization of sex work is especially problematic in that context that there have been experimental moves to suggest these to jobseekers at employment centres in some countries. When this is a job like any other, it may come to that you cannot refuse it or your support money will be reduced or cancelled.

I would put struggling to feed and clothe your children into the “forced” category.
Those I referred to having zero sympathy with are young women like a friend of a friend’s daughter who sells herself to fund exotic holidays, fashion and cosmetic treatments for herself.
The harm done to women in general in allowing men to buy sex and indulge their repellant perversions is immense.

Mittens, yes definitely that's depressing if women who don't need to are doing it bc of stupid trends on Insta. Women on unis are having it pushed, in some cases, & while they're probs not in dire financial straits, they are being taken advantage of by the media & even sometimes unis making it look cool.
In your post you referred to women in Tesco's- I wasn't thinking necessarily struggling to feed or clothe children, I was thinking more paying for extra things that might help the children but aren't bare necessities. I've read several AMAs w women who sell sex, & they seemed to be doing it to give their children more than the bare minimum : outings, extracurriculars. Another answer was that they were bullied in jobs like waiting tables etc & found sex work they had more control. (Obvs this isn't true for many sex workers). Depressing if sex work is seen as preferable to these other jobs...
Simone de Beauvoir reports a similar thing in The Second Sex- maids etc say their previous job is in some ways as miserable as selling sex. They as now, maids were often seen as fair game to be harassed by superiors, which could aid the slippery slope to prostitution. (My mother worked in a fairly good restaurant as a student & said that she was left alone bc she was English, bit the other waitresses were Japanese immigrants & felt they couldn't say no to the manager's unwelcome advances).
A lot of the criticism I see from sex workers is that we criticise their choice as demeaning but ignore that they found other jobs worse. I will never ssupport the position that sex work as something that's fine & inevitable, but I do think a solution to it needs to focus on why the other options are seen as worse for poor women. And ofc, the unis need to stop prompting this retrograde lad culture w onlyfans... We seem to be foing through a revival of what Ariel Levy talks about in Female Chauvinist Pigs.

The empowerment argument for only fans is one step up from people declaring that women objectifying themselves to get people buying music, movies or any audience. I remember having this discussion with 4 - 5 women who were very much of that opinion, and I was the only one to say just because the women are doing it themselves doesn’t mean it is empowering.

It is not empowering it's sinister and misleading. You're right it is depressing that this is happening

Ridiculous. It’s no different to the music industry. No mention of the fact that “a great way for women to make money” still involves a company owned by men taking a decent percentage of that cut at the expense of exploitation of those women. The more the women are exploited, the bigger the revenue, the bigger the revenue for the men in charge.

OnlyFans is the pimp.

Also:

The pictures she's posted on OnlyFans so far are revealing but not explicit.

Well done article writer Ian Young, I’m sure you checked out the site for, er, research purposes only.

The BBC should stay away from talk about OnlyFans as that was what started the Huw Edwards scandal.

“I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cos everyone knows that’s how you get famous”

I know it’s ‘only’ feet in her case, but still

Empowering my arse. Every time I see this empwering bollocks in relation to women and prostitution, I wonder how empowering it would be for men to do the same thing. Where are the BBC articles about men showing their arse or feet on OF for money because it's empowering? Why is it always women who need to be empowered in this man-pleasing, sexism-entrenching way? Can't imagine...

Ariel Levy’s ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’ is a wonderful book that completely knocked me out of the LibFem mindset that I had drifted into in the early 00s because of ever present cultural messaging. It brought me back to my material realist feminist analysis and I will always be grateful to her for that,

I think with relation to Only Fans etc you are definitely correct @AliasGrace47 that early 00s raunch feminism mindset is having a resurgence (although, I’m not convinced it ever really went away it just bided its time).

On book recommendations, I have: Natasha Walter: Living Dolls. The Return of Sexism.

It's a book from 2011 and begins with an overview on lad culture and how women stripping in clubs to win a magazine cover is seen by them first of all as the possibility of a career and secondly, they were not paid for the competition, though many guys took photos and videos - the description was enough to make you feel nauseous about the role of women in current times.

I am in the middle of reading this, after finding it from a neglected stack in the back of the shelves and thought at first it must probably be out of date now, as it describes the years before 2011, but no, it is still completely relevant, and mentions being "empowered" by dressing as a playboy bunny on a night out; you just need to exchange the format of media mentioned for newer ones, but the concept stays identical.

What power is gained by the women involved?

The feeling that men ‘want them’ enough to pay.

I do/did....until I saw her at a festival last year and she was saying what a dick head J K Rowling was.

Male and female Olympians also doing it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crg5g8jjr36o

I think it's weird. But it is ever more normalized in our culture.

DDs friend is dating an only fans model, and none of them see anything wrong/weird about it. So different to my generation.

Interesting that men are doing it, though the article about Jack Laugher does not mention him being "empowered" and it's all a bit "don't worry it's nothing rude" whereas for Kate Nash it's about showing her bum and going on about how great bums are.

It really does come across like OF are paying the BBC to promote them.

The other "power" is to control the situation, or have the appearance of controlling the situation. If you assume a world where content made by men - both legal and illegal, like in a relationship and then posted online - is the main driver, releasing your own pictures give the impression that you control the narrative and the situation.
In reality, it is just another angle to entice women to play the game where others set the rules.

Empowering would be to not care about it and / or to have the financial and legal safety to not have to take part because the pay gap would be erased and single parents would get more help from the state to make sure that the fathers (usually the fathers) pay their share of parenting costs and other measures.

The issue about the olympians and other athletes on OF is also connected to the dress codes. For a male swimmer this might indeed be the same as what he wears in sports for being faster, but for other sports like beach volleyball or running the dress codes for women are all about the male gaze, too, so whether there are photos from competitions or from OF, the look could be identical for sexist reasons, not for athletic reasons.

So the dress codes for female athletes in competitions can easily segue into the looks they present on OF. It's because sexism is everywhere, that the steps from one area to the next seem so small and inconsequential.