Stop asking if I have an OnlyFans you weirdos
setting boundaries
This essay is a response to every man who has ever asked me if I have an OnlyFans, if I want to make one, when will I finally make one or why I haven’t made one yet. I have been on the receiving end of this question since OnlyFans became somewhat mainstream, but men were asking me for nude pictures on a regular basis long before that. When I was a teenager on Tumblr, they would ask without even knowing my age. When I was hanging out on Facebook during the years of my bachelor’s degree, they would slide in my messages despite seeing that I was the same age as their daughters. Sometimes it feels like every time I have ever felt beautiful in public, a guy was there to make it about his sexuality. And I think I'm fed up with it. I'm angry. I try not to write out of a place of personal anger, because I find that the thinkpieces that this mentality produces are rarely productive for my audience. But this is something that I feel very strongly about and it’s something that I’ve been wanting to say for many years, so I will allow myself one exception. Consider this essay as me setting a boundary: this question is not appropriate. I don't think it ever was.
In 2018 and 2019 I used to post on Instagram quite a lot of lewd photos because it made me feel good about myself, as discussed at length in my zine Ways of Being Seen. I stopped doing it 4.5 years ago, because I accepted that I don’t like male attention and I never liked it. I find it annoying at best and threatening at worse. The idea that a guy that I’ve never met is attracted to me makes me want to puke.
In case you haven’t noticed, women who have an OnlyFans make it pretty fucking obvious that they do sex work. I am not a sex worker. It is obvious that I am not a sex worker, because the link in my bio does not point to a porn website. It points, instead, to my writing. You know, that thing that I can do regardless of how I look? That career that I specifically chose to separate my income from how sexy I am? I do not have an OnlyFans and I will never have one, because if I made rent by pleasing men I would hate my job and I would want to kill myself. I hate male attention and male lust makes me feel objectified and afraid. Your erection means nothing to me, keep it away from me. This is very normal and very reasonable: I’ve never met you, so why would I feel any different? Why would I allow a total stranger to dictate my value, especially when they demonstrate such superficial taste?
Many women (who look much more attractive than me) make a living showing their bodies online, and they seem happy about it. There is probably one on your explore page, right now, struggling to pay rent. I love them and support them. I’m in solidarity with all workers, especially sex workers: I want them to have unions and pensions and freedom and agency. I want them to feel safe and valued. I’ve shouted out the ESWA and the Red Umbrella Fund before, and I’ll do it again. SWERFS can eat my ass. But it is incredibly obvious that the value I’m trying to provide has nothing to do with porn. The men who ask me if I’ll ever make an OnlyFans could watch the porn that is made by actual sex workers (who, again, look incredibly more attractive than me) and they could support those girls. These men could get their fantasies fulfilled instantly, without having to bother me. They could get a better version of what they want, right now, from the comfort of their phones. They could leave me the hell alone. Instead, they choose to ask me, a non-sex worker, if I am willing to undress for money.
When I confront men who ask this question, they usually get defensive. They inform me that there is no need to get upset (this is not how getting upset works, it’s not something we control) and that they are “just asking”. To which I’d like to respond: no sweetie, you’re not “just” asking. You’re asking. You’re asking because you feel like there’s nothing wrong with asking, and you feel like there’s nothing wrong with asking because you think that your attraction to a woman is enough to ask her to undress. Who convinced you that, deep down, women’s bodies are a service that you have access to, if you just pay enough? Who convinced you that every pussy has a price? Who convinced you that context (in this case the context being that I am not a sex worker and I obviously don’t want to be) doesn’t matter, when it so obviously does? Who convinced you that the discomfort I feel when you reduce me to a sex object is an ok prize to pay for maybe satisfying your fantasies? This is stupid, in the same way that asking a computer programmer if she sells apples is stupid. That is clearly not her job. This is inappropriate, in the same way that commenting on your female coworker’s skirt is inappropriate. That’s not the right context. And this is insulting, in the same way that asking a random woman at a bar if she’ll suck your dick is insulting. She has given you no signal that she might be into it, so leave her the hell alone.
Some men are convinced that male attention, and the possibility to make money out of it, are a form of privilege that women have, and that therefore I shouldn’t complain about it. This is very stupid. Firstly, because these men could make money from male attention too, all they’d need is a pair of cat ears, a razor, a lot of vaseline and a can-do attitude: it’s called gay porn, and it pays just as well as my OnlyFans would. Which is, by the way, very little: most creators on OnlyFans make pennies, because most independent online business owners make pennies. OnlyFans girls are not doing fine, and since the beauty standard is very fixated on youth, the longer a woman stay in this industry, the less she will be doing fine. The idea is that since women like Amouranth are making millions off of lewds and porn, then the beauty standard benefits women overall. This is also very stupid. That’s like saying that because Jeff Bezos made a lot of money, then the system of capitalism is completely fair and no man should ever complain about his job. Most women are not Amouranth, just like most men are not Jeff Bezos. Most women are too old, ugly, fat, poor, disabled, mentally ill, trans, black or androgynous to ever benefit from the beauty standard. Most women cannot afford fillers, botox, facelifts, straight teeth, PDO threads, perfect noses, clear skin, good hair, nice nails, bigger tits or the free time to hit the gym regularly. I wouldn’t even make enough money to pay for groceries if I had an OnlyFans, because I don’t fucking look like Amouranth, because Amouranth has spent five figures (at least) on her face and body, and was blessed with once-in-a-generation genetics. I am infinitely more smart and funny than I am beautiful, and if you haven’t realised that, I’m sorry to inform you that you have bad taste in women. There are some so-called “mid” women (most of which look absolutely gorgeous and usually also have sense of humor and charisma and patience that I simply will never possess) who actually have an OnlyFans, and they barely make a living, because the porn industry is oversaturated with content that is completely free.1 There is extremely little money in amateur porn for someone who doesn’t look like a Barbie doll, and even for the ones who do look like that it’s a very steep path. Most women will never make a penny off of their looks, because beauty labor is a lot of fucking labor. And the ones who do make some money, very rarely make more than mimimum wage once you add up all the hours that independent porn takes to produce. This is an intuitive fact that most men can easily grasp if they listen to sex workers (and women in general) for more than 5 seconds, but the weirdos online that repeat “OF detected, opinion rejected” on a loop refuse to acknowledge it.
And in exchange for all of this labor, what do sex workers get? Treated like garbage from resentful idiotss online, that’s what they get. In her book Playing the whore Melissa Grant makes the argument that sex workers are basically the scapegoat of the patriarchy: the world treats whores terribly, and then it turns around and tells to all other women to never be a whore, because look at how bad those sluts are treated. Even if you think you’re one of the good guys (and if you ask a random woman if she’s willing to undress for money I would maybe reconsider that idea) I’ll have you know that horny men online, in general, are insufferable. Whores are the ones that men pay to act like entitled horndogs: they pay precisely so that they don’t have to pretend to care about women’s safety or desires. It doesn’t really matter if the guy is a “good guy”. It doesn’t matter if he treats the other women in his life with dignity and respect (and again, I think I have good reasons to be skeptical about it) because the whore never gets to see him as a full, well-rounded person who’s capable of care and empathy: the whore sees him as a client, someone whose desires she has to cater to, and she is on the receiving end of his sexual fantasies, which usually involve tropes that are degrading, humiliating, violent, dangerous and just flat out disgusting. That’s literally what most men are looking for, when they pay a hooker or when they click on porn. For many men, the objectification and degradation of sex workers is necessary for pleasure. This is why so many men degrade sex workers online, leak the material, or send the material to people’s bosses, parents, children. This is why they have so much hatred for sex workers: the idea of degrading a gorgeous woman gets them off. Treating them like garbage is part of the fantasy. This is also why so few men openly defend the women that they jerk off to. Porn is the place where men go to be sexually selfish, so the women in porn must be disposable. They think of porn not as a product that was made by a person, they don’t think of it as a depiction of the naked body of someone who really exists and has a life and emotions. They think of it as a thing that they bought (stolen, in the case of leaks) and therefore is now theirs. If they have a video in their phone of someone giving a blowjob (and oftentimes it doesn’t matter how that video got there, it doesn’t matter if it was filmed or leaked without the consent of the person depicted) that video is theirs. They think they can do whatever they want with that material: they share it without consent, they upload it to PornHub and get ad revenue from someone else’s labor, they keep it circulating on the internet decades after the OF model is retired, they use it to train AI without the consent of the person depicted.
Misogyny against sex workers works like all other misogyny: abuse is always happening somewhere else. There’s always a (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) dude who is behaving worse, so what I’m doing must be fine. And the worst dudes, who know deep down that what they’re doing is unjustifiable, blame women: she should have thought about it before becoming a whore. The guys who watch leaked OnlyFans material don’t feel guilty because “well I’m not the guy who leaked it!“ and the guys who leak OnlyFans material don’t feel guilty because “if she didn’t want those photos on the internet she shouldn’t have posted them“. They don’t see her as a person. Would you like to be constantly surrounded by entitled and sexually selfish men? Would you like to have their envy and rage and contempt constantly thrown at you? Would you like your healthcare, housing and access to food to depend on your ability to put up with it? Would you like to see every single day the painful, traumatising and scary things that men say and think behind close doors? Would you like to have to receive all of them with a smile and a sexy wink, otherwise you don’t get to eat? Would you like all of your romantic and personal relationships to be affected by the insane amount of emotional labor that sex works requires? Would you like to face the rejection from your church, community, friend group, family, roommates and future partners?
There are sex workers who are not women. There are even clients who are not men. As an anecdote, back when I had more disposable income I’ve subscribed to Spencer’s OnlyFans for a while. I found out that I like some parts of it, but it’s ultimately not for me and I don’t watch enough porn to justify the expense. He’s cute and I wish him the best, 11/10 no notes. But sex work still has, overall, a dynamic that is highly gendered. Sex workers who are women, or who are perceived as women, face a lot more stigma and much less safe working conditions. And the overwhelming majority of clients are men. So, even if not all clients are men and not all sex workers are women, it is still sexist to ask a woman if she has an OnlyFans, because it’s a question that stems from male entitlement and female objectification. I wanna acknowledge that some of my male mutuals get this kind of attention too2 and if they find it weird or annoying, I want this think piece to make them feel seen and heard too. I think everyone has the right to complain about objectification, and to set boundaries with their own audience if they so wish, and I think their audience should respect those boundaries or expect to be blocked. Men face sexual harassment regularly, and you’ll catch me dead before I deny it. But I still also think that asking me if I have an OnlyFans is sexist, because it plays into the trope that women are objects, which is a misogynistic trope. Men are objectified to a degree that is nowhere comparable to women, and when they are, it’s usually in a context that is much more safe. And also, even if it wasn’t sexist, it’s fucking rude!! I’ve made it abundantly clear that I am not and will never be a sex worker. I’ve made it clear by, you know, not doing sex work. You think you’re the first guy who wants to see me naked? You think you’re the first guy who tries to reduce me to an object? Do you think men have not been trying to convince me that I only have value as a sex object since I before I was a teenager? Do you think I haven’t found out the hard way that it’s a trap?
If you’re not here for my ideas, you should not be here. If you’re not here for my writing, I don’t want you here. Appreciate me for the right reasons, or get the hell out.
Source: the hot women who read my zines and message me about them
everybody say thank u Noah Samsen for confirming this