Shaming Sex Workers Makes You a Bad Feminist

Nope, just nope.

It’s really annoying that we have to keep saying this but nevertheless we will persist in screaming: shaming sex workers doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a villain.

COVID 19 has disrupted national economies, thrown entire communities into turmoil, and has left our cities looking like wide-shots from I am Legend. Millions of people around the world have lost their jobs, while people employed in sectors of the economy that were previously ignored or taking for granted, such as grocery clerks, postal service workers, public transportation officers, and more are now finally being appreciated for their value to our societies as essential workers. The virus has highlighted the disparities between the people at the top, who are sheltering-in-place in country houses with swimming pools and an army of staff, and a struggling majority that now has to figure out how to pay rent or take care of children while trying to maintain jobs, if they're lucky enough to still have one. It has caused us to reexamine the weaknesses in our societies, such as the paper thin/non-existent social welfare nets we have in place, what access to healthcare should really look like, and how do we serve the most vulnerable in our communities.

Amongst some of those vulnerable are sex workers, many of whom rely on face-to-face meetings with their clients as their primary form of income. A lot of them now face eviction or worse as they make decisions between trying to earn their income and trying to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from the deadly virus. Online communities of sex workers have been thrown into a panic, of trying to develop new strategies to stay connected with their clients while riding out waves that, like the rest of us, seem to have no clear end in sight.

One strategy is that many in-person sex workers, many of whom already have large online followings, are moving towards digital work. In particular, many are flocking to OnlyFans.com, a platform sort of like instagram for which subscribes pay monthly fees to receive online content. In a recent company email, OnlyFans revealed that they’ve seen a 75% increase in signups since February, a huge upmarket tick, and many long-time established escorts on twitter have posted about starting new OnlyFans pages to help them continue to generate income.

It’s not just well-established sex workers though; many young women who’ve found themselves out of work because of Coronavirus are turning to online sex work for the first time as a way to make ends meet and put food on the table, according to this huffpost article.

Inevitably, the whorephobic backlash was quick and ruthless. This article by Julie Bindel in the Spectator glosses over the fact that sites like OnlyFans are taking the power back from big-porn moguls like XVIDEOS and Pornhub, where most content is free because it's illegally stripped from paid websites, a result of which is that very little of the money goes to content creators. and instead tries to inspire horror and disgust by describing the process of producing requested content (surprise! Sex work is work!) or exploits the fact that these women were already vulnerable because of the greater socio-economic shortcomings of our societies lack of fairly-distributed resources. Her attempt to put OnlyFans content creators in the same category as victims of sex trafficking is not only harmful, but downright degrading and dangerous to those who find empowerment from being able to earn an income during these hard times. As one twitter user commented on the article, 'there's nothing empowering about having no source of income during a pandemic."

This meme puts in simple relief the hypocrisy of many 'feminists' who think that by shooting down sex workers in the name of empowerment, they are helping them. But shaming sex workers doesn't make you a good feminist. Helping women in need who are struggling during a pandemic is. Supporting women who find their work empowering is. Supporting women who don't find their work empowering (who says work has to be empowering, and why do people mythologize sex work as HAVING to be an empowering act? Sometimes sex work is really rewarding, but sometimes sex work is just a job, just like any other job) is. Supporting work that keeps women in their homes is feminist.

In a time when we are seeing many of our most vulnerable populations being the ones at the most high-risk during this pandemic, is signaling your sense of moral superiority really the most productive use of your time? Shooting down people who are already struggling is hardly classy. It perpetuates the myth that sex workers are victims of sex trafficking (they are not, and in fact many of the loudest anti-sex trafficking voices are sex workers) or that sex work itself is not a valid form of labor. the SF Chronicle gave voice to several women last week in the ways in which OnlyFans and other online platforms have become places to give them financial stability and security during these times. Because you're in charge of your own content you can make your own decisions about what you feel comfortable posting, and at what sort of frequency. As one woman said, "“I think OnlyFans has this huge appeal because it feels very authentic. You follow me on Instagram, you see all the nonsexual content I post, you know my dog’s name and you know my band and now you get to see this other side of me.” If you are struggling and you have the energy and resources to generate some income during the worst recession since the Great Depression, then girl, you do you. And if you're not in the space to be able to do that, cheer on those that can. Feminists support each other. <3