OnlyFans and the Sexual Revolution
by Samuel D James, First Things:
A few years ago I read a fascinating report from a journalist who had attended an “Adult Entertainment Convention.” He noted that there were hundreds of male fans waiting in line for high-priced tickets to watch pornographic exhibitions. This was interesting because the convention just happened to take place near a community in which prostitution was legal, and, as the journalist pointed out, almost certainly available for less than what these men were having to pay to watch. Thus the observer was left with a lingering question: Was the convention really selling sex, or was it selling something else? And if it wasn’t sex, what was it?
The answer is suggested by an amusing week in which the website OnlyFans, a crowd-funding platform invented specifically for amateur pornographic entertainers, stunned its membership by announcing a ban on “sexually explicit” material. To put this in perspective, this would be akin to an app like Instagram announcing a ban on selfies, or SoundCloud suddenly forbidding the electric guitar. OnlyFans explained the ban by citing pressure from its banking partners and payment companies. OnlyFans’s patrons and content creators—some of whom insist on being called “sex workers”—were outraged at the betrayal. A few days later, deluged with irate messages from users, OnlyFans reversed course. “OnlyFans stands for inclusion,” the company tweeted, “and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”
This therapeutically-phrased statement suggests that OnlyFans knows its creators see their exhibitionism not merely as a desperate financial necessity, but as a kind of identity. And this gets to something important about the current status of the sexual revolution. Sixty years after “free love” declared independence from backward parents and irrelevant moral norms, its heirs are gainfully employed in a sexual pyramid scheme, invulnerable to slut-shaming but surprisingly vulnerable to the corporate policies of J. P. Morgan.
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