To be a sex worker, especially in America, is to sustain constant animosity from every corner of society while inhabiting its margins. The discourse surrounding sex work is supercharged with emotion — it makes sense since it fulfills such a primal need for human beings — but seemingly out of disinterest or lack of trying, passionate posturing always triumphed over tact and measuredness. A vulnerable cohort languishes ever-hopeless in dire straits as the debate on how to rescue them continues to rage fierce, a stern reminder of just how much we’re woefully ill-equipped to handle the situation with the urgency it so desperately requires.
Much hubbub was made in 2018 about the need to restrict sex work platforms out of the fear that they’re imperiling America’s most-potent political pawn — those being children — and close to three years after the signing of FOSTA-SESTA into law, state surveillance has been further bolstered under the pretense of maintaining decency, even as Section 230 continues to take the brunt of it. The fallout from that law proving catastrophic, sex workers are yearning for a re-match, looking preferably for their social standing to undergo serious reevaluation, especially as sex work has become a recourse for those seeking refuge from the pandemic’s economic devastation. That’s by no means an invitation for sex workers to resume their prior livelihoods when things go back to shape — far from it, and it would be a misdiagnosis of the issue to declare it so — but if more are using the services of platforms such as OnlyFans, the legal neglect/stasis they’ve been caught under for so long is in urgent need of change.
Of course, no industry is free of its warts, and much like other avenues of online content creation, they reward fanfare more than they do investment. It’s reasonable to call out that a slim cohort reaps the bulk of the spoils as a lagging majority struggles, but the issues plaguing the field are systemic, even if their outward symptoms can appear at times highly-individual. Labor naturally invites those disparities, and while an algorithmically-fueled subscription platform is the apotheosis of such phenomena, it hurts little to…
