The article is not exactly sympathetic to the "virtual pimps":
> Like many industries that rely on talent that is often young and naive, greedy middlemen (almost always men) who control production and channels of distribution take all the upside for themselves. A perfect example is porn mega-name Mia Khalifa, who was paid a grand total of $12,000 for only a handful of shoots - a tiny, tiny fraction of the value her content has generated for distributors like Pornhub.
Nonetheless this problem is not unique to porn. We don't criminalize Patreon, Medium, Spotify, PayPal, or Visa. We probably should, but if we're going to start dismantling exploitative business practices on moral grounds, why start with the most precarious workers and not the most entrenched and richest middlemen?
>A perfect example is porn mega-name Mia Khalifa, who was paid a grand total of $12,000 for only a handful of shoots
This specific example is used by the author to illustrate how OnlyFans is better for performers in comparison. OnlyFans performers keep 80% of their revenue and retain the copyright to their material [0]. Operating in the light of day as opposed to in a legal grey area means the copyright actually gets enforced.
New artists and performers get paid less until they have a marketable reputation. That's how the art/entertainment IP industry works, from porn to music to movies to books.
Khalifa is rich now.
Couldn't you say this comment is virtually pimping an idea? What a culturally inflammatory term you've chosen for any service that does anything to help facilitate sex work.
They are literal pimps doing literal pimp work: recruiting young girls, connecting them with clients, and taking a cut of the profit, while keeping control of the whole business.
It is not my fault you are offended.
I would have no problem if these sex workers setup their own site and did their own business directly with their clients. No pimp would be involved then. There would be no recruiting, which is also where I see a big problem. And nobody would be taking a cut.
- Recruiting young girls: Good infantilization here, you mean young women over the age of consent that can decide for themselves what they can do with their bodies? Those women? And how are they being recruited? By demonstrating the value of their service and being an attractive alternative to McDonald's minimum wage burger flipping? Is McDonalds in the burger-work pimping business?
- Connecting them with clients: So basically any communication network is a pimping network?
- Taking a cut of the profit: They are a popular platform like any other, a place where users know to go to find sex-workers, and they are using that platform as a business. Film festivals also act as middle-men in this regard, but does anyone say film festivals are in the "film pimping" business?
- While keeping control of the whole business: I think I need a source on this, are they shutting down OnlyFan creators because they are linking to an external website? I couldn't find anything in their terms: https://onlyfans.com/terms/user-content
Yes in some ideal environment a sex worker and a pimp could have a mutually beneficial relationship. But that is not why pimping is looked down upon. And you made no honest attempt to address the issues that exist in practice.
I suppose that's technically true, but in the same sense you could say that YouTube pimps its content creators, Hollywood pimps its actors, record labels pimp their artists, etc. Do you honestly think every entertainer and content creator should build and run their own company? Most people don't have the skills and ambition to be entrepeneurs, and content creators need to spend their time focussing on, you know, creating content.
Personally, I would love this conversation to move more toward an issue with capitalism in and of itself, which is a much more worthy debate than talking about if the facilitation of sex work is morally justifiable.
If anyone actually has problems with "People exploiting their bodies to functionally exist in society", then please, let me introduce you to this guy called Karl Marx.
> let me introduce you to this guy called Karl Marx.
Despite his feminist leanings Marx himself had a terrible attitude towards sex work and seemed completely incapable of applying his own theories to it.
I would usually direct people towards Silvia Federici's work with some introduction, but I don't believe most people in this thread are engaging in good faith and worth the time.
> if these sex workers setup their own site and did their own business directly with their clients
That's exactly what they can't do. No major hosting providers allow pornographic content; none of the mainstream payment processors will handle the money; no advertisers will run their campaigns to find customers. This is specifically because of moral panic like yours driving anti-pimping regulations.
OnlyFans isn't great - none of these more-than-a-payment-processor-less-than-an-agency platforms are. But if your outrage is truly about exploitative work and not oh look someone's having sex, there are dozens of organizations you should be lining up to take down first.
You seem to have missed a staggeringly huge piece of the picture here:
Clients aren't paying to actually have sex with OF creators!!
I say seem to because I think you're arguing in bad faith. You've already made up your mind and continue to press on hoping you can say "pimp" enough times to draw attention away from the absence of actual prostitution.
This is a bad argument because it tries to divide sex work into "not really sex work" and "really sex work" and then move all moral objection the latter case. Sex work is work and deserves a safe environment and fair compensation whether or not it involves intercourse with clients.
> Clients aren't paying to actually have sex with OF creators!!
You may not be familiar enough with the Sex Worker industry as a whole, but this absolutely can and does happen.
Oftentimes, it is under a plan discussed in private over a secondary channel (Signal or Telegram or Wickr if they're real pros, Snapchat if they are less careful.) Most common scheme I've observed is either you finish the transaction on a side app or purchase a large amount of their video content and it is applied as a 'credit'.
No, this is not what the majority of OnlyFans creators do. But the legitimate sellers and rest of the market provide a smoke-screen for those who wish to do less accepted forms of Sex Work.
