Kadın/Woman 2000, June 2024; 25(1): 39-56

Online Sex Work of Women on OnlyFans Platformunda

OnlyFans: Oppression or Kadınların Çevrimiçi Seks İşi:
Empowerment? Baskı mı Güçlenme mi?

M. Dilara Cılızoğlu
Abstract Öz
(Online) Sex work is a hot topic in (Çevrimiçi) Seks işi, feminist literatürde
feminist literature which is mainly genellikle iki perspektife dayalı olarak
studied with respect to two perspectives incelenen bir konudur: baskı ve
towards sex work: oppression and güçlenme. Bu çalışma, "OnlyFans
empowerment. This study aims to üzerindeki kadınların çevrimiçi seks işi
understand “How online sex work of nasıl yorumlanabilir ve OnlyFans'ın
women on OnlyFans can be interpreted mağduriyet ve güçlenme perspektifleri
and try to understand if OnlyFans can be aracılığıyla açıklanıp açıklanamayacağını
explained through the perspectives of anlamaya yöneliktir. Bu amaçla, bu
victimization and empowerment. For this makale, literatürdeki iki ana tartışma
purpose, this paper will provide a (baskı ve güçlenme) hakkında teorik bir
theoretical discussion about two main tartışma sunacak ve bunu bir vaka olarak
debates (oppression and empowerment) ele alarak analiz edecektir. Çalışma
in the literature; be analyzed by taking sonuçları, kadınların çevrimiçi seks işi
OnlyFans as a case. Study results show deneyiminin sadece baskı veya güçlenme
that women's online sex work paradigmalarıyla açıklanamayacağını,
experience cannot be explained purely bunun yerine baskı veya güçlenmenin bir
by oppression or empowerment arada var olduğunun göz önüne alınması
paradigms, instead coexistence of gerektiğini göstermektedir. İkinci olarak,
oppression or empowerment should be sadece baskı veya güçlenme
taken into account. Secondly, paradigmasına vurgu yapmak, kadınların
emphasizing only the oppression or çevrimiçi seks işi deneyimlerini
empowerment paradigm underestimates doğrudan etkileyen kadınların
women’s differences that directly affect farklılıklarını küçümsemektedir. Bu
women’s online sex work experiences. nedenle, kadınların OnlyFans
Thus, intersectional analyses that are deneyimlerini anlamak için kadınların
taken into women’s age, race, and gender yaş, ırk ve cinsiyet gibi demografik
considerations are necessary in order to değişkenleri içeren kesişimsel analizlere
understand women’s OnlyFans ihtiyaç vardır. Son olarak, kadınların
experiences. Last but not least, women’s çevrimiçi seks işi deneyimleri kadınların
experiences of online sex work can bu işi hangi motivasyonun ile
change according to the motivation yaptıklarına bağlı olarak değişkenlik
behind being a sex worker in OnlyFans. göstermektedir.
Keywords: OnlyFans, online sex work, Anahtar Kelimelers: OnlyFans, çevrimiçi


M. Dilara Cılızoğlu, Research Assistant, Middle East Technical University, Department of
Sociology, Ankara-Türkiye. E-mail: dilara.cilizoglu@gmail.com. Orcid No: 0000-0003-
3858-8455.
(Bu çalışmanın makaleye dönüşmesini verdiği geri bildirimler, öneriler ve beni
cesaretlendirmesi ile mümkün kılan sevgili hocam Ezgi Pehlivanlı’ya teşekkürü bir borç
bilirim).
Original research article Özgün araştırma makalesi
Article submission date : 2 February 2024 Makale gönderim tarihi: 2 Şubat 2024
Article acceptance date: 8 July 2024 Makale kabul tarihi: 8 Temmuz 2024
1302-9916©2024 emupress
 40 Cılızoğlu
women, empowerment, oppression, seks işi, baskı, güçlenme, betimleyici
descriptive literature analysis. literatür analizi.

Introduction
OnlyFans is relatively a new online space and studies concerning this platform
are mushrooming. Launched in 2016, OnlyFans is a subscription-based social
media platform where users can sell and/or purchase original content. When
utilized as an adult site, users will post videos and photos to their accounts,
which are protected by a paywall1. Subscribers to this online platform
increased especially during the Covid-19 pandemic in the world. The content of
this platform is not limited to women's sex work or nudity but if the contents
are reviewed the main way of using this online platform is based on women’s
sex work. Today this online site is an important way for women to earn money
and it seems it will be increasing in the upcoming years (Boseley
2020). According to Litam et al., (2022)’s study which explores the
demographic characteristics of OnlyFans users shows that, although most of the
sexually explicit material users are male, content creators of those materials are
mostly female. Because most of the content creators on Onlyfans are women
and the platform’s content are based on women's bodies and nudity, this paper
focuses on intentionally only women's content creator’s experience.
Studies concerning the platform (Fabiyi 2022; Rodriguez 2022) indicates an
effort to understand and evaluate this platform, where women often earn
money by using their nudity or by doing sex work. This effort mainly divides
literature about this topic into two. The first perspective is conceptualizing sex
work on OnlyFans through the commodification of women's bodies and
emphasizing how women are exploited and are in a victim position (Jones
2005; Prior et al 2013) or sex work as a type of work in that women can earn
money and they can empower through this work (Döring et al 2022; Jones
2005).
This study is aiming to examine the mentioned dominant perspectives of
OnlyFans in the literature to explore the peculiarity of women’s experiences
who produce content on this platform that would be lacking in mentioned main
literature veins. The main question behind this endeavor is to understand “How
online sex work of women on Onlyfans can be interpreted; whether it is
exploitation that women are in a victim position, or it is a kind of work and
platform that can empower women?”. Thereby to further the debates by
offering a new strain of understanding for the platform which interprets
women’s unique experiences, rather than the binary discussion in the
literature, which seems to overlook the possible simultaneity between
oppression and empowerment, although the relative weight may change
depending on the circumstances, and even they may not be an explanation for
certain experiences of women in the process.
Based on these, this paper proceeds with perspectives on the (online) sex
work in the literature (perspectives of oppression and empowerment),

1https://www.complex.com/life/a/joshua-espinoza/what-is-onlyfans-explainer
Accessed on 08.01.2023
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 41

discussions found to be dominant for understanding the OnlyFans platform.

After the methods section, results section shows how polymorphous
perspective is beneficial to understand content creator women’s sex work
experience on OnlyFans is suggested after discussing Onlyfans based on
mentioned dominant paradigms.

OnlyFans: Sign up to make money and interact with your fans 2

OnlyFans is a website launched in 2016 by a United Kingdom-based company
and became more widespread, especially during the pandemic. It is an online
platform that allows content creators to share photos and videos with their
subscribers in exchange for a monthly fee. The platform takes a 20%
commission from the subscription fee, while the content creators receive 80%
(Van der Nagel, 2021). Besides subscription fees, tips, private messages, and
the pay-per-view feature are other fund resources of this platform. Although
OnlyFans advertise itself as open to a variety of content, the majority of content
is adult content which consists of sexual photos that include nudity and videos.
The most unique characteristics of OnlyFans that are separated from other
online social platforms are adult content and a subscription-based model where
fans directly pay creators through tips, gifts, and subscriptions, not the
payment system based on the number of views like YouTube and TikTok.
(Hamilton et al 2022). Individuals who are 18 years old and above can create an
OnlyFans account, but those who have a significant number of followers on
other social media platforms like Instagram, particularly influencers and
celebrities, have an advantage in gaining subscribers on OnlyFans. This is
because they can leverage their existing fanbase to promote their OnlyFans
profile, increasing their chances of attracting more subscribers (Boseley 2020).
The most popular example of celebrity participation in OnlyFans is Bella
Thorne who is an American actress and singer. She is so popular because she
earned 1 million dollars in the first 24 hours after setting up her account. These
kinds of examples are significant to understand that OnlyFans is not only a
platform where women create content because of financial necessity but also
celebrities and wealthy individuals like Bella Thorne create content on this
platform to make adding more money to their earnings (Sanchez 2022). The
price for a subscription on OnlyFans typically ranges from five to twenty
dollars, which may vary depending on the content creator and the level of
explicitness and nudity in their content (Hunt 2022). The platform is available
worldwide and supports international payment gateways, allowing creators to
receive payments from different countries but there is currently no application
for the platform, and it can only be accessed through a web browser (Ford
2022).
The number of users of this platform is increasing from 7.5 million to 85.
million (Boseley 2020). There are several reasons why OnlyFans is increasing

2 Promises of OnlyFans on their website: https://onlyfans.com/

 42 Cılızoğlu
during the pandemic. Firstly, because sex work requires physical contact, sex
workers have to digitalize their work to prevent themselves from Covid
(Sanchez 2022). Secondly, this increase is also explained in relation to the loss
of income sources for a lot of individuals during the pandemic period (López
2020). In other words, during the covid period, a lot of people face the risk of
unemployment or lost wages because of the economic instability and recession
and in this context, OnlyFans can be interpreted as a “mode of survival” for
those people (Sanchez 2022, p.7). Thirdly, Hamilton et al (2022) study based on
22 semi-structured interviews with current and past OnlyFans content creators
show that people have more leisure time during the pandemic (especially
marginalized groups) is also one important reason why OnlyFans as a platform
become so popular during this period. OnlyFans is a pioneer in the
transformation of sex work and especially with the increased usage of this
platform during the covid period; research studies, academic and journal
articles, and thesis studies have mushroomed to understand this relatively new
platform in terms of sociologically. One of the efforts of literature is to
understand its effect on women’s lives and understand the positive and
negative sides of this platform for women and their position on it. If the
literature is revisited according to this effort, the literature can be divided into
two. One side focuses focusing the positive effects of OnlyFans on women’s lives
which can be interpreted as empowerment, the second side is mostly focused
on the negative effects which focus on the victimization and exploitation part of
sex work. Following section is elaborating on this main channels of
perspectives.

Perspectives Towards the (Online) Sex Work

Sex work is defined as “sexual services or performances in exchange for
material compensation (Weitzer 2000, p.259). The term is developed as an
alternative to the concept of prostitution which mostly implies criminality and
deviance (Sanchez 2022) but still, in the literature, it can be used
interchangeably with prostitution. Most of the time sex work is conceptualized
in social sciences as “a form of deviant behavior, a type of gender relations, and
as a distinct occupational sector” (Weitzer 2009, p. 214). Although there are
some different types of sex work, prostitution and female sex work are
overstudied types of sex work in the literature. Today, sex work become an
umbrella term that includes direct and indirect types. While street prostitution
escorts and brothels are categorized as direct, lap dancing, swinger clubs, and
massage parlors are categorized as indirect ones (Harcourt and Donovan
2001).
Together with technological advancements like every occupation sex work
has undergone some changes with technology. As an output, there are some
new types of technology-mediated sex work like phone sex, instant messaging,
and webcamming (Cunningham 2018). OnlyFans can be interpreted as an
indirect sex work and it is a relatively new output of this technological
transformation of sex work. Because this is the platform that gives the
possibility to content creators to earn money. Since OnlyFans is a platform that
allows content producers to earn money by presenting sexual content, the
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 43

literature on this platform cannot be considered independent of the sociology

of sex work discussions. When the literature is revisited, the paradigms
perceiving online sex work as a source/outcome of oppression and
empowerment, are two important paradigms to answer “how sex work is
interpreted sociologically” in the case of OnlyFans.

Sex Work Interpreted as Oppression

According to the oppression paradigm, historically sex work is a reflection of
the patriarchal structure of societies and it causes exploitation, subjugation,
and violence against women. (Weitzer 2009; Farley and Kelley 2000). In other
words, it “objectifies women by reducing them to sex; sex that incites violence
against women and reduces women to commodities for market exchange”
(Barry 1996, p.1) There is an essentialist understanding of the oppression
paradigm that almost all women who earn money by sex work experience
physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, using drugs or drug addicted, all
customers used sexual violence and physical assault, experience terrible and
exploitative working conditions. (Farley 2004; Weitzer 2009). As it can be
understood from the assumptions there is understanding that desperate
women become sex workers because of economic insufficiency and precarity
and they want to exit sex work if it is possible. Because the main reason for
engaging in sex work is financial necessity, most disadvantaged groups have to
become sex workers.
Monroe (2008) emphasizes the link between poverty and prostitution.
According to Monroe (2005) female sex workers, particularly those from ethnic
minority backgrounds, tend to be in a state of financial hardship, lacking
education and marketable skills. Traditional theories of prostitution are based
on oppression and mostly overemphasize insufficient economic conditions like
poor housing and living conditions, lacking education, and previous coercive,
forced exploitative sexual experiences. In other words, “prostitutes were
described as being dispossessed, dislocated, and helpless” (Kisil and Davey
2000, p.5)

Sex Work Interpreted as Empowerment

Second perspective is the empowerment perspective which is totally opposed if
it is compared to the oppression perspective. Contrary to anti-prostitution
feminists (Pateman 2016), according to this perspective, sex work is just
another type of work (Mcleod 2022) and it has the potential to empower
workers as other occupations have (Carmen and Moody 19859). From this
perspective, sex work is not the last option for poor women to earn money; on
the contrary, it involves human agency. The most important empowerment
paradigm emphasizes that exploitation is not inherent to sex work. In other
words, exploitation can be a part of sex work like other work’s
part. Furthermore, “sex work can enhance a person’s socioeconomic status and
provide greater control over one’s working conditions than many traditional
jobs” (Weitzer 2009, p. 215). Mcleod (2022) criticized the criminalization of sex
work by emphasizing sex work should not be interpreted as work that only a
 44 Cılızoğlu
small number of deviant women engage in. Augustin (2007) is a scholar who
studies sex work in the migration context and her study based on migrant sex
workers’ testimony criticizes mainstream understanding interpreting poor
migrant women who sell sex with human trafficking. However, Augustin
underlines that migrants have an active agency that can calculate pros and cos
and they prefer to sell sex with their free will because they are “fleeing from
small-town prejudices, dead-end jobs, dangerous streets, and suffocating
families” (Augustin 2007, p.45). This study and its results are important
literature overstudy migrant women’s sex work experiences by emphasizing
victimization and exploitation.
In general, scholars who support the empowerment paradigm believe that
sex work can be “edifying, lucrative, or self-esteem” (Weitzer 2009, p.213).
Because both the perspective one- dimensional most of the time oppression
paradigm scholars focus on the most dramatic example of sex workers and it
also affects their language; they mostly use sexual slavery (Barry 1984), paid
rape (Day 2021), and survivors. On the contrary, scholars from the
empowerment paradigm mostly focus on success stories of sex workers that
caused liberation and upward mobility in the sex worker’s life.

Methods
In this study, I relied on descriptive literature analysis to answer my main
question. This study can be interpreted as the first part because, after this
descriptive analysis, I will plan my interview questions to explore the
experiences of women content creators on OnlyFans by using in-depth
interviews. For this reason, this first step based on descriptive analysis is
important in terms of understanding discussions on literature about OnlyFans
and preparing interview questions accordingly.
To find related scientific material, I utilized resources like jstor.org, Google
Scholar, and libgen focusing on materials published up to May 2023. After
conducting a literature review on this topic, I identified several themes and
formulated my research question. In order to access appropriate literature, I
employed the following keywords: “Women experiences of OnlyFans”,
“interpretation of OnlyFans”, “empowerment of women through OnlyFans”, and
“Exploitation of women through OnlyFans”. Through this process, I realized
that when studying OnlyFans in conjunction with content creators’ experiences,
scholars generally hold two main perspectives. The first perspective revolves
around empowerment, emphasizing the positive effects of OnlyFans and how it
provides women with a possibility for liberation. The second perspective view
OnlyFans through the lens of oppression and exploitation, considering it as a
new version of traditional sex work with similar mechanisms of exploitation
that have not changed fundamentally for women. However, it also
acknowledges the emergence of new challenges and negative aspects unique to
this platform.

Limitations of study
We know from the literature that there are not only women who are sex
workers in OnlyFans but also there are a lot of people from different genders. It
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 45

is a well-known fact that LGBTQ+ identities are experiencing inequality and

harassment in society (Mckay et al 2019; Hoskin, 2019; Tran et al 2023), and
most of the time they have to struggle to get rights that heterosexual people
already have like marriage. Thus, this can change the direction of oppression
and empowerment discussions. However, this does not mean that their
OnlyFans experience only can be explained with an oppression paradigm, not
empowerment. This only meant that their sex work experience in OnlyFans has
need direct focus. In other words, because of the limitation of time, I have only
focused on women sex workers' experiences of OnlyFans but I am aware of the
fact that LGBTQ+ sex workers' experiences require a specific and direct focus.
Thus, explanatory studies based on qualitative empirical evidence about both
women and LGBTQ+ individuals OnlyFans experiences will be an important
contribution to the literature which is my future study plan.
Another limitation of this study is not elaborate on immanent stratification
in OnlyFans. Although it is a digital platform that can open to everyone who is
older than 18 years old, OnlyFans like other digital platforms cannot be thought
of separately from stratification mechanisms and inequalities in society. Thus,
the hierarchy of OnlyFans is also an important topic that should be taken into
account. For example, literature shows that content creators and users are
mostly White (Litam et al. 2022). In other words, like sexual orientation and
gender, race is an important factor that can be thought of together with the
OnlyFans structure because it directly affects a person’s OnlyFans experience in
terms of oppression and empowerment. Besides race, to what degree one’s
content is explicit or whether one have any fan base account or popularity
before you signed up for an account in the OnlyFans account are another
important indicator that shapes this hierarchy. The following results section
will focus on the descriptive examination of empowered positive) and
oppressed (negative) aspects of sex work in OnlyFans by focusing on related
literature.

Results
OnlyFans: “Old job, New Name”: Tracing oppression on the online space
As discussed in the “Perspective Towards the (Online) Sex Work” section,
there is some literature that claims that although this is a new form of sex work
that is technology-mediated, oppression and exploitation is an intrinsic
characteristic of OnlyFans like in all other types of sex work. In fact, because
digitally mediated sex work has some unique characteristics compared to
traditional sex work, there are different kinds of oppression and exploitation
mechanisms that are sociologically important. Doxing and capping, emotional
work and overworking of online sex work which are significant exploitative
characteristics of online sex work on OnlyFans will be discussed in this section.
The first one is the possibility of doxing and capping which are specific types
of online harassment. Doxing is a complex and gendered process where one or
more individuals intentionally seek and widely distribute private or personal
identifying information about another person (subject/target) through online
channels without their consent (Eckert and Metzger‐Riftkin 2020). As it is
 46 Cılızoğlu
understood from the definition OnlyFans opens the possibility for doxing when
content creator women share personal information about themselves with
their subscribers. Capping is another form of online harassment. Capping refers
to the unauthorized recording and dissemination of explicit performances by
content creators. While customers are initially restricted to using these
recordings for personal purposes, “capped” videos are frequently uploaded to
adult websites and can be sold without the performer’s consent (Jones 2015).
Taking screenshots of content without permission from the creator can be a
common example of how capping occurs in OnlyFans. The possibility of doxing
and capping destruct the anonymity character of OnlyFans and it create
dangerous results in terms of privacy. Atkinson’s (2022) qualitative study
results show that some content creators worry about blackmailing especially
when their parents and relatives did not know about their OnlyFans account.
Besides doxing and capping which are a specific type of online harassment,
literature shows that (Atkinson 2022; Safee 2021) content creators can get
hateful comments about themselves, their bodies, and appearances which is
also one form of harassment. In other words, OnlyFans create an online
environment where any type of harassment (except physical one) can emerge,
there are not any mechanisms to prevent insulting comments and hateful
attitudes in OnlyFans.
The second one is the emotional labor that OnlyFans required. Emotional
labor is developed by Hochschild (2012) to understand workers' experiences in
service sectors which require face-to-face and voice-to-face contact with the
customer. In the “Managed Heart” (2012) book by Hochschild, the author gives
examples of emotional labor by explaining flight attendance work experience
which is directly related to making customers comfortable and happy. Thus,
even if they felt bad and sad, they should smile, and be respectful and kind all
the time to transfer positive feelings to the customers. This situation is
conceptualized as “acting” (Hochschild 2012, p.38). Hochschild also mentions
most of the time employers expect this kind of emotional labor, especially for
women’s service workers. For those reasons, most of the time emotional labor
is interpreted as an unpaid and unspoken part of women’s service work (Safee
2021). When emotional work is interpreted in OnlyFans context, it can easily be
said that women's content creator work is also emotional. Although they
haven’t got any supervisor that should control and check customer satisfaction,
the number of subscribers and money they can earn is an important element in
their job. For increasing their subscribers, producing content is not enough but
making them comfortable and happy is one side of their work. As Safee (2021)
emphasizes in her master thesis based on in-depth interviews with content
creator sex workers on OnlyFans Subscriber interaction is one of the important
elements of OnlyFans that require emotional work. According to her result
acting as if they were happy is just one part of emotional work but content
creators spent “a lot of effort to make their subscribers feel as if they have a
personal connection to them” (Safee 2021, p.44) This personal connection
requires knowing subscribers’ personal life like their current problem at work
or name of pets. Especially considering that the use of OnlyFans has increased
during the pandemic period, the emotional work of content creator women's
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 47

efforts to make their subscribers feel good and comfortable will be more
visible. Safee’s study results support this argument because the study shows
that the number of subscribers who sought meaningful conversation increased
and this could be attributed to people's desire for solace and support during
difficult circumstances.
The third one is overworking. Although most people assume that being a
content creator on Onlyfans is not a real job or that creating content on
OnlyFans is an easy way of earning money, it requires a lot of labor. First of all,
like every content producer, OnlyFans content producers have to be creative
and increase the number of subscribers by constantly producing new and
interesting content. Secondly, besides being creative, their jobs are directly
related to their body and they invest their body in order to make more
subscribers and sometimes to change their physical appearance to create more
original content. As Cardoso and Scarcelli (2021) ‘s study based on OnlyFans
content creators' body preparation and representation processes shows that
content creators “have specific hairdo routines, or using specific outfits; and by
changing the physical properties of their bodies via exercise or the thought-out
deployment of specific dietary routines” (p.106). Thirdly, their job did not end
when they prepare content but editing the visual or audiovisual material is also
an important part of the post-production process. Although this seems like a
technical part of this job, this technical part which is related to how they frame
and pose their body is related to the question of which narrative they want to
have in their content. As a result of Cardoso and Scarcelli (2021)’s thematic
analysis of in-depth interviews, there are mostly three types of narratives that
OnlyFans creators use while they create content. “Glamourised” is related to the
accepted aesthetic presentation of self which is associated with sexual tropes,
“everyday life” is a standard and normal presentation of the normal and casual
appearance of women's bodies, and “an essentialist embodiment” which
implies their body is their biological inheritance (p.107). As it is understood,
creating content on OnlyFans and earning money on it requires a lot of time
because they are not just providing some nudity content but they create
content that tells stories according to subscribers' preferences.

OnlyFans: Possible Empowerment Path for Women?

Mentioning some empowerment side (positive) of OnlyFans in terms of the sex
work experiences of women is possible by focusing on literature. The first one
is decreasing physical violence toward women because OnlyFans (digital
commercial sex) do not necessitate physical contact due to the technologically
mediated nature like in phone sex, and instant messaging. In other words,
technology creates an environment that is not based on physical space and
prevents violence against women (Sanders 2016). In other words, it eliminates
risks associated with traditional street sex work like “risk of arrest, violence
from bystanders or targeted hostility from perpetrators” (Cunningham et al.
2018, p.54). Besides preventing physical violence, this characteristic of
OnlyFans gives the possibility to sex workers to maintain their job without
being Covid during the Covid-19 pandemic period.
 48 Cılızoğlu
Secondly, most of the sex work literature mentions how sex workers are
exploited because of intermediary agencies (Gerassi 2015; Karandikar and
Prospero 2010). In other words, most of the time, women’s labor in sex work
is controlled by “third-party management like pimps or pornography directors”
(Sanchez 2022, p.2). This cannot be the case for women who earn money
through creating content in OnlyFans because they have the ability to control
their accounts, content, and money.
This also brings us a third positive effect of OnlyFans, controlling the
working schedule and deciding which kinds of content women are going to
create for whom (Jones 2015). Hamilton et al.’s (2022) studies focus on the
motivations of content creators’ adults (most of them are women) and study
results emphasize that one of the motivations behind being a content creator
on OnlyFans is perceiving OnlyFans as a better alternative to other kinds of
service or gig works3. In other words, women are active agents in this period
because they compare OnlyFans with other kinds of informal (gig) jobs and
they prefer OnlyFans by calculating the pros and cons. Besides, as mentioned in
the introduction section there are a lot of celebrities in OnlyFans who create
content to earn money. In this sense, stereotypical poor or migrant women who
had no choice other than being sex workers are not relevant for all women
content creators in OnlyFans.
The fourth characteristic of this platform which can empower content
creator women is their relationship with their bodies. One of the important
results of Hamilton et al. (2022) study is women use OnlyFans because they
interpret this platform as a form of sexual expression. Most of the content
creators that they interviewed stated that they already have sexual content
archives and making money from their already available archive is logical and
fun for them. This study’s results also show that most of the women did not
start creating sexual content with the emergence of OnlyFans, but maybe they
decided to sell their sexual content via OnlyFans and earn money. Besides
sexual expression, Atkinson’s (2022) qualitative study with content creators in
Onlyfans suggests that confidence building is one empowering result of
OnlyFans. Some of Atkinson’s interviewees mention they “become more
comfortable and less insecure with their body” (p.66) after they create and sell
sexual content in OnlyFans.
Fifthly, if it is compared to a direct type of sex work like street prostitution,
OnlyFans give a possibility a certain degree of anonymity to a person and this
anonymity characteristic of OnlyFans decreased stigmatization of sex work in
women’s social life. Moreover, OnlyFans cannot have a search feature which
means to access someone’s account either the user knows the specific
username of the content creator or the link should provide to the content
creator themselves. OnlyFans is a platform that combines sex work and social
media, and for this reason, the stigma associated with sex work is decreased

3 According to Flanagan’s (2017, p.379) definition, gig work is “platform-based ‘gig’

employment, which uses digital technology to mediate the process of commissioning,
supervision, delivery, and compensation of work performed by workers on a contingent,
piece-work basis.”
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 49

(Hamilton et al. 2022; Lippmann et al. 2023). When we evaluate the indirect
feature of sex work on OnlyFans along with its anonymous feature, OnlyFans
provides the opportunity to have a second job (additional source of income).
Last but not least, although the content creator’s work on this platform is
conducted individually, there is a community aspect of OnlyFans like in all
other social media platforms. In other words, “OnlyFans offers a community
feeling” (Atkinson 2022, p.82) to both creators and fans. Like in other social
media, content creators can support each other’s OnlyFans account by re-
sharing their posts which increases their popularity and they can earn more
money. Besides the economic aspect, it is a community that enables interaction
(Uttarapong et al. 2022). Content creators can interact with each other and
share their both good and bad experiences regarding OnlyFans and give some
tips.
From now on, I focused on the interpretation of online sex work in
OnlyFans from the oppression or empowerment paradigm. However, I think it
is more productive to focus on the unique experiences of women who produce
content and the content production processes of women on Onlyfans, instead of
fully adopting one of the two views and coming to a conclusion about Onlyfans.
For this reason, the next section will focus on how polymorphous
understanding can be developed for OnlyFans without reducing oppression or
empowerment.

Polymorhopus Understanding of Sex Work in OnlyFans

Although points highlighted by two opposite views toward sex work in
OnlyFans in the previous section are valuable, they are not enough to
understand the experiences of women. Because either the oppression or
empowerment perspective interprets sex work in OnlyFans as deterministic.
Instead of a static understanding that is based on the reification of sex work in
OnlyFans, I believe that we should focus on the agency side of the story. In
other words, instead of developing one static perspective of sex work in
OnlyFans and trying to understand all women sex worker experiences in
OnlyFans through this perspective, social scientists focus on the agency part of
the sex work considering all agencies experiences are unique and most of the
time it cannot simply justify neither oppression nor empowerment paradigm.
In the light of those understanding, in this section, I highlight three problematic
issues if either oppression or empowerment paradigm is adopted to
understand sex worker women's experience in OnlyFans.
The first problem can be summarized with the question: What if the
women's experience is not purely oppression or empowerment? Women's sex
work on the OnlyFans platform can include both oppression and empowerment
experiences. In other words, it is possible to talk about the coexistence of
oppression and empowerment, instead of describing a women's experience
where only one of these two perspectives dominates. For example, a woman
who has been subjected to sexual and physical violence many times because of
her direct sex work experience can continue to earn money through this
platform without being exposed to physical violence thanks to OnlyFans. But
 50 Cılızoğlu
again, the same woman may have been exposed to the types of online
harassment discussed earlier, such as doxxing and capping.
As can be seen from this example, women's online sex work experiences
cannot be solely explained with the empowerment or oppression paradigm, on
the contrary, it can be explained with the coexistence and intertwining of these
two. Besides the coexistence of two paradigms together, the online sex work
experiences of women can change over time. In other words, at the beginning of
online sex work experiences of women, the positive sides of OnlyFans can be
dominant for women and women can feel empowered but after a while the
situation can change and negative sites can be dominant. For example, as
mentioned before, during covid direct sex work becomes more dangerous for
women because of the possibility of infection but for most women, sex work is
the only way of earning money. Besides sex workers, a lot of women lost their
jobs because of the economic depression that is experienced during the
pandemic. In this context, doing sex work in OnlyFans has empowered both sex
worker women and women who lost their job. But after a while, women can be
exhausted because of the emotional work that OnlyFans requires. As those
examples highlight time and context are two important elements that directly
affect women's sex work experiences on OnlyFans. That is, while empowerment
and exploitation may occur simultaneously, which one dominates in women's
experience may vary with time and context.
The second problem comes from assuming that women as a homogenous
category and that their experiences of online sex work are similar. However, it
should not be forgotten that women's age, class, and race can totally change
their online sex work experiences. For this reason, instead of trying to answer
whether OnlyFans is a platform that empowers or oppresses women, we should
ask which women experience what. For example, is it possible to explain the
OnlyFans experience of a White, middle-class, young woman and the OnlyFans
experience of an Afro-American, working-class woman with three children
from the same paradigm? There is also important literature on how race is an
important factor that shapes Black women’s online sex work experiences (Jones
2015; Evans 2021) and how intersectionality discussion is necessary to
understand Afro- American women's online sex work experiences (Moorman
and Harrison 2016). Therefore, it can be said that OnlyFans cannot be
considered apart from the inequality mechanisms that already exist in society.
Therefore, the two women in the example have different experiences and
practices in every stage of life, not just the practice of experiencing OnlyFans.
For this reason, focusing on the uniqueness of the online sex work experience
of these women from different races, ages, and social classes will be more
valuable than focusing only on the oppression and empowerment paradigm. In
other words, the question of how existing inequality dynamics affect the sex
work experience of women in OnlyFans would be much more appropriate.
The third critic is also related to the second one. Women's experiences of
online sex work can change according to the motivation behind being a sex
worker in OnlyFans. As it is mentioned previously, there can be different
motivations behind being an online sex worker like economic necessity, fun,
and second gain. In this regard, understanding those motivations are important
 Online Sex work of Women on Onlyfans 51

because it also changes the total experiences of content creator women in

OnlyFans. Let’s remember Bella Thorne who is an American actress and singer
and she earned 1 million dollars in the first 24 hours after setting up an
account. Although we cannot easily answer the question of what is the
motivation of Bella Thorne to be a content creator in OnlyFans, I believe that
we can easily say that her motivation is not an economic necessity but can be
fun or gaining additional income. In other words, it can be easily said that Bella
Thorne's motivation is totally different from a content creator woman who is
poor, comes from Afro- an American background, and has three dependents.
Besides, their relationship with OnlyFans should be different because if Bella
Thorne feels exploited or has any negative experiences in regard to OnlyFans
she can quit easily but this does not relevant for other women who have to earn
money to sustain their life or Bella Thorne has a chance to mention her
negative experiences about OnlyFans via in social media or giving press
briefing which means she has the power to create public agenda. For sure,
those motivations did not only change the sex work experiences of these two
women in OnlyFans but it also changes all negotiations and strategies that
women can develop in this platform.

Conclusion
This paper's main aim is to elaborate on why victimization and empowerment
perspectives provide a partial understanding of content creators' experience in
OnlyFans. For this purpose, after explaining dominant perspectives in the
literature towards (online) sex work and explaining OnlyFan's characteristics
as an online platform, I focused on how dominant perspectives toward sex
work can be reflected OnlyFans which are either oppression or empowerment
paradigms. Although most of the scholars did not mention explicitly using
oppression or empowerment conceptualizations, when the studies are
reviewed, there is a dominant tendency that either focus on the negative or the
positive sides of online sex on OnlyFans. Some scholars who mainly mention
negative sides claim that there is no big difference between direct sex work and
online sex work on OnlyFans and they interpret online sex work on Onlyfans as
a sex work that contains all negative and exploitative characteristics of direct
sex work. Another group of scholars who focus on negative and exploitative
sides claim that because it is digitally mediated there are some new negative
aspects different than direct sex work. Those groups of scholars mostly focus
on increasing the possibility of doxing and capping which are types of online
harassment, intense emotional labor that sex work on OnlyFans requires, and
mentioning how being a content creator in OnlyFans requires overworked by
focusing on the content creation process requirements.
Scholars who focus on the positive sides are mostly focusing on OnlyFans’s
empowering characteristics. Those empowering characteristics are most of the
time based on a comparison between direct sex work and online sex work on
OnlyFans. Those characteristics are decreasing physical violence which is
common in direct sex work, not containing any intermediary mechanisms that
exploit women’s earning through sex work, creating opportunities like
 52 Cılızoğlu
controlling working schedule compared to other types of gigs works, allowing
space for sexual expression, providing a certain degree of anonymity which
decrease stigmatization, offering communal interaction and solidarity based on
the interaction between content creators.
Although those paradigms can be beneficial to understanding women’s
online sex work experiences on OnlyFans, there is a danger that most of the
time they end up with a deterministic understanding. Thus, this paper suggests
polymorphous understanding due to the fact that all women’s experiences are
unique and most of the time it cannot simply justify either oppression or
empowerment paradigm.
To support this argument, I highlighted three critical points. The first one is
most of the time women's online sex work experience cannot be explained
purely by oppression or empowerment paradigms, instead coexistence of
oppression or empowerment should be taken into account. Secondly,
emphasizing only the oppression or empowerment paradigm underestimate
women’s differences that directly affect women’s online sex work experiences.
Thus, women’s age, race, and gender are significant characteristics that affect
all experiences. In relation to the second one, thirdly, women’s experiences of
online sex work can change according to the motivation behind being a sex
worker in OnlyFans. Thus, it should not be forgotten that celebrity women’s
motivations for being content creators on OnlyFans cannot be interpreted as
same as women’s motivations whose only income source is OnlyFans.
Taking into those three critics and this study's limitation indicated in the
method section consideration, further studies based on intersectionality will be
necessary for the literature to draw a more comprehensive picture of content
creator’s online sex work experiences on OnlyFans.

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