OnlyFans: The Path to Legitimising Pornography
By Sandra D. Guerrero. a member of the Madrid Abolitionist Assembly
Translated by Claire Thompson
The porn industry’s looking to reinvent itself, and is looking to monetise both the ‘nudes’ phenomena and the patriarchal images that sexualise women’s bodies, instilled in imagery emerging from many sectors of society.
The success of OnlyFans is a victory for an omnipresent, misogynistic propaganda seeking to tempt the youngest of women with ‘male validation’ and ‘easy money’. These two ‘ideals’ are currently being imposed, presented as aspirational (falsely) by both patriarchy and neoliberalism.
The COVID crisis bears witness to how, unquestioningly, society both tolerates and accepts both pornographic content and women being reduced to mere sexual objects, attacked and dehumanised.
The press, as if this were something completely normal, widely spread an announcement by PornHub, one of the most visited porn sites on the web, that it would be offering its ‘Premium’ service free during the ‘State of Alarm’ (lockdown) in Spain. Meanwhile the police reports and the accusations of child abuse, of which the company stands accused, have received zero media attention.
Patriarchal ideology educates the whole of society into believing that women should be considered objects of sexual desire, always available to satisfy men. Pop culture and entertainment have, for decades, been ‘pornified’. We live surrounded by images in which women are sexualised in every situation.
Girls self/beliefs are colonised, from an early age, by these ideals of both themselves and of other women, and grow up in the certain knowledge that this is the pathway to social success.
The sociologist Gail Dines describes it thus: for women, the options are to be ‘fuckable’ or be ‘invisible’. Opportunities are closed off to them, and the solution that’s presented as a panacea is to follow the unwritten rules laid down by a patriarchal sexuality.
The whole framework, the whole structure, is designed to push women to internalise the role of sex object, and the notion that both submission and violence against their bodies can be eroticised, dressed up as ‘free will’ or ‘consent’.
Years, decades, after drawing a halt to women being ‘sexual merchandise’, it’s been decided that those who get into prostitution or pornography do so of their own free will, that they have renounced all of their own desires in order to submit themselves to those of men, or even that they enjoy being dehumanised or even violated.
Adrienne Rich (feminist poet), in 1980, expressed it thus:
The most pernicious message which pornography spreads is that women are natural sexual prey for men, and that they love it’ that sexuality and violence are congruent; and that, for women, sex is essentially a form of masochism, humiliation is pleasant, and physical abuse is erotic.
Pornography performs a triple function: it breeds violence against women; it exploits their bodies to generate profits; and it indoctrinates men and women alike into repeating this process.
Recording and sharing content in which women are tormented and degraded allows patriarchy’s ideology to spread and create a profitable market.
The industry is enjoying a buoyant moment, with the approval of much of society. It’s reinventing itself and uses new technologies and social media to offer new possibilities to ‘consumers’. The market’s rhetoric distorts the reality. Even when it comes to the most extreme sexual exploitation. It gets dressed up as ‘empowerment’, ‘agency’ and ‘freedom’. This is a result of male domination. Hidden within these seemingly positive economic categories lie power relations created by the oppression suffered by women.
OnlyFans was created as a members’ platform, in which content creators only offer paying subscribers access to their creations. Started in 2016, it has since become a porn site, strengthened by the advent of Covid.
We’re not talking about a new phenomenon here. It’s a new medium for the same old patriarchal culture, making it even easier for men who see women as dehumanised beings, depersonalised and reduced to objects, offering users access to all kinds of material. Meanwhile, many young women are falling through the net, and into a world which relies on them depending upon their own exploitation, their loss of personal intimacy, and trying to feign interest for individuals who, for the most part, they would repudiate.
Media headlines proclaim OnlyFans thus: “Coronvirus left me jobless, but now I earn 1600 euros with my nudes on OnlyFans”; “OnlyFans: You could get rich as a porn star too”. These articles, referring to women’s own sexual images, which they personally upload to the platform, talk of ‘content creation’ which they have to ‘monetise’.
“The image [presented] is one in which women are ‘enterprising’, happy, and have control of their own lives and bodies, and earn money effortlessly. In reality, their lives and bodies are being exploited to sustain men´s patriarchal privileges. We, the feminists, should never allow a phenomenon as OnlyFans to establish itself as ‘normal’.”
Already in play for many decades, patriarchal mechanisms are metamorphosing to extract maximum benefit. They make these claims so that ever more women, at ever younger ages, start to see the hypersexualisation of their own bodies as a career option, something profitable, all of which opens the door into pornography to them. This rhetoric in favour of the exploitation of women, which benefits pimps and whores, is establishing itself as something normal, something everyday.
Social media sites have become a showcase to represent women as sex objects. We hear repeatedly that this is nothing new. It is the same patriarchal model created decades ago on the front covers of Playboy and its ilk.
Hugh Hefner, the creator of the Playboy bunny franchise, stated on one occasion: “In my relationships, I’m not looking for equality between men and women. I like my girls innocent, loving.” There is no better expression to summarise the thinking of the creator of an industry based in the exploitation of women.
Society is inheriting such thinking through platforms such as this (OnlyFans). Those men truly believe that women are inferior, that women exist purely for their pleasure, just as patriarchy has taught them that that’s the way things are.
Society’s tolerance of pornography covers up the industry’s reality. The culture of sexualisation trains our girls and youths in these mechanisms from the time they discover the world, because it’s a world built on sexual hierarchy.
“It never gets asked whether, under conditions of supremacy, the notion of consent has any real meaning.”
This quote, by feminist Catharine MacKinnon, impeccably expresses why feminism must analyse and question existing structures, and not call upon individual choice, a liberty that patriarchy uses as its alibi for all kinds of violence.
The image they’re trying to sell as representative of this ‘new’ world is one of ‘enterprising’ women, happy and in control of their bodies and their lives, on top of which they’re earning easy money.
The reality is somewhat different.
Their lives and bodies are exploited so that men can maintain their patriarchal privileges. Even though there are women who will deny it, this is how things are happening, with plenty of testimonies and sufficient affirmative cases.
Feminists must not allow phenomena like OnlyFans to become the norm. We have to remain alert to attempts to allow misogynistic propaganda to legitimise itself and insert itself into the collective imagination.