Only Fans, autonomy, regulation and violence

Tatiana P ran, along with her mother, a juice and smoothie stand, which she gave them to “live for the day”. One day she read an article on Facebook in which she interviewed a girl who said she earned nearly three million Mexican pesos each month from the sale of sexual photos and videos through Only Fans. Tatiana says that she didn’t even imagine what so much money would look like together.

Interviewed by The EconomistTatiana, who asked to hide her surnames for data protection, says that this was how she began to market her content on this platform and that, although she does not even have as many followers as the girl they interviewed in that Facebook post, what she does what has happened is that he generates almost six times what he did selling juices.

“I wouldn’t know whether to say if it was a completely voluntary decision, because it was driven by money, but if you ask me the only doubts I ever had were more about what they would say than because I really didn’t want to,” he said.

In recent years Only Fans has become a very popular platform for the income that people can generate through it. Although in reality, this platform was not born to trade sexual content, it is currently the most common use. And there is a huge debate about whether these practices count as exploitation, about whether it is actually a way of living sexuality with autonomy, and about the need to regulate these platforms.

Guillermo Bermúdez Velasco has had his Only Fans account for just over three years and says that it was not a question of economic “need” that pushed him to sell his sexual content, but rather a free exercise of autonomy added to the possibility of having an extra income.

“I was chubby. I decided to change my habits for health and, after a while of doing CrossFit and eating better, one day I finally had a body in which I felt comfortable and I always liked to show it off on my social networks. And if he uploaded photos for free, then what better way to do it and have some extra money. That’s how I opened my Only Fans account, it really was a time to see what happens,” he said in an interview with El Economista.

Among feminist currents there is an important debate about whether selling sexual content or having sex through digital platforms stems from the structures of inequality and violence that force people to do this to survive or whether it stems from an exercise of autonomy and single agency.

Tatiana says that not many people close to her know that she has an Only Fans account and that she earns money through it. “The truth is, when I told a cousin, she told me not to do that, that she had better work hard or find something else. I seriously thought that with what I have managed to put together in this time it was enough to start my own business or improve my mother’s, but the reality is that I like to do what I do, sometimes I take photos and videos that even upload The self steem. I don’t want to close my account,” she says.

For Guillermo Bermúdez or Tlacho Meme, as his followers on his social networks know him, although the lines are thin to identify in which cases it could be sexual exploitation and in which cases it is not, what really generates dangers in this world is the stigma and the absence of regulation.

“We are free to decide what we want to do, and I think this is a job like any other, it happens that there are many taboos regarding sex work both digitally and in the physical sector. There is nothing regulated, there are no rights and many stigmas. It is clear that there are many human trafficking networks, many people who do sex work or who have Internet accounts that are forced explicitly or through blackmail and manipulation, but I think this is just a consequence of the fact that it is not regulated. The fact that there are so many taboos on sexuality means that there are many crooked things that are under water”, said Guillermo.

Some of the main arguments brought to the table by those who are against any type of sex work in the digital world – even when it seems self-managed – is that the majority of those who practice it are women, the majority of those who buy it are men, and most of whom seem motivated by economic necessity.

Although, at first glance, this seems true, Guillermo assures that indeed the majority of his subscribers are men, and particularly gay men, he also has female subscribers who sometimes write to him or thank him for his creative content.

For her part, Tatiana does observe a much more pronounced trend among her followers, in fact, she does not remember having any woman among those who pay to see her photos and videos. Of course, sometimes she uploads other types of content, such as poems that she writes, and some women pay to read them.

“You can upload what you want, in Only Fans there are no filters, and I think that for someone like me there would not have been another opportunity for someone to read my texts and, even more, to pay to read them, if it had not been for this platform,” said Tatiana.

When this publishing house asked Tatiana her position on the currents that do not consider that the regulation of sex work is positive because it would be “legalizing exploitation” she replied “I would like them to listen more to those of us who are really in it and I think it is necessary stop seeing sexuality as something that can only be enjoyed in private or something that only men can talk about”.

Guillermo Bermúdez believes that sex work is a job like any other, and that in fact, since it is not regulated, it falls into reproducing or pronouncing the labor vulnerability of those who exercise it, who do not have protection from anyone, do not have social security or access to health.

violence and harassment

The experiences that men have in Only Fans can be very different from those that women have, says Tatiana. There I do believe that there should also be better filters or protocols, because it is true that sometimes subscribers harass us on our other networks, they send us things that we did not ask for and then we have to block them.

As the main food for Only Fans accounts are other social networks where people advertise, it is possible that many of their subscribers are also followers of their Instagram or Twitter accounts.

In an important contrast, Guillermo Bermúdez reports that his experiences of bullying or harassment have been practically nil. Regarding the practices in which some subscribers sell or pass their content without consent to other people, he has never found out that this is the case with him. Unlike Tatiana, who has happened to him at least three times.

This is one of the strongest arguments of those who are not in favor of sex work on digital platforms, the dynamics of use show that these practices could be perpetuating the hypersexualization of women, adolescents and girls and pushing these structures towards other types of violence .

Although there are many nuances in this regard, hard data that justifies some arguments and others that open up other possibilities or scenarios, the truth is that everything that is not outside the regulations is more difficult to measure, understand and debate.

How does OnlyFans work?

Opening an account has no cost, but there is a process before the account is authorized, for identity authentication issues. It is necessary to have an official photo ID, a cell phone with a camera to take photos holding the ID and a credit card to receive the transfers.

All users can decide how much to charge for the subscription, which has to be at least 3 dollars per month. The platform keeps a 20 percent commission.

The content can be photos, pre-recorded videos and live videos, image carousels, audios and even stories. According to data from the Only Fans platform, it has about 9 million users and more than 80,000 creators with its subscription plans.

ana.garcia@eleconomista.mx