How Onlyfans and similar platforms are revolutionizing the porn industry to be more democratic

Platforms like OnlyFans have been instrumental in democratizing sex work and content creation, especially since the pandemic. OnlyFans is not the only one as other such platforms have emerged like mushrooms in the rainy season in recent years. But of course, just as TikTok in the “normal social media world” has several competitors but is still on top, OnlyFans is what people remember most about the platform that facilitates its users to share sensual photos for a fee.

In late 2022, former porn star Lana Rhoades, one of the most recognizable names in the industry in the last decade, left the genre to campaign for the production to be canceled. Her case motivated many other former Triple X stars to take aim at the industry as a whole, claiming that it was coercive, exploitative, and ultimately harmful. A voice for this is Mia Khalifa, the young Lebanese woman who rose to pornographic prominence with a video in which she had sex while wearing a hijab.

This is an example of the fetishization of minorities and the propagation of racial stereotypes. And so the debate was once again sparked about what to do with a porn industry that attracts 450 million unique visitors to its web version every month. Feminist porn, or ethical porn as some call it, has tried to answer that question with its injunctions on consent, fair compensation, and representation. Ethical porn is hard to define perfectly because everyone among feminists has a different definition of it but there are red lines that can be drawn from what they have been voicing.

Feminist porn is still very popular: mainstream porn continues to dominate the global porn audience, and streaming sites often have content that violates consent – this is what forced Pornhub, number one in web porn, to clean up its entire platform to keep it from disappearing.

Feminism

With pornography consumption on the rise, the question of ethical pornography remains an issue within feminism. With industry dynamics heavily biased towards performers, especially the marginalized, can feminism and pornography be compatible? If there are platforms that try to harmonize art and pornography such as Met Art and it proves successful as searches for Met Art nudes increase, will it apply to the harmonization of feminism and pornography?

Free porn sites remain the primary access to content, but these sites also often feature rape videos, revenge porn, and other media containing non-consensual sex. Rape culture is the basis of pornography, according to various authors, in a debate that stems from the “sex wars” in the West, where anti-pornography feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon denounced pornography to such an extent that they even found common cause with the conservative Reagan administration in the early 1980s: legislation was drafted that considered pornography a violation of civil rights, causing violence against women. 

The rationale was summarized in “Pornography is Theory and rape is Practice,” by Robin Morgan who argued against the degradation of women in pornography. This framework states that violence and pornography are intertwined, in the sense that pornography appears as a form of media that normalizes the degradation of women for pleasure and instills violence and harm. Yes, for the most part, that view is not entirely wrong but there are few genres in pornography that do not imply abusive behavior towards women. 

Onlyfans as an alternative to the democratization of pornography

On the other hand, antipornography rhetoric serves to criminalize sexual minorities as “deviant.” And other feminists point out how porn panics serve as a vehicle for conservative fears of any form of non-normative expression of sexuality. Queer theorists like Gayle Rubin also argue that “much anti-pornography propaganda implies that sadomasochism is the fundamental and ultimate truth to which all pornography is directed.” Opposition to pornography is associated with a puritanical sexual morality rooted in heteronormative norms.

From another perspective, Generation Z and Millennials celebrate the new porn, where inclusion plays a role in how pleasure is received. “Variety is trending,” summarizes Angie Rowntree, founder of ethical porn platform Sssh.com, where body diversity is encouraged. “It’s exciting to see how platforms like OnlyFans have been instrumental in democratizing sex work and content creation, especially since the pandemic,” adds Rowntree.

The OnlyFans flock is creating new niches and generating more creative freedom. “There’s an unprecedented diversity of artists and a constant demand for different bodies gracing our screens,” continues Rowntree, the voice of a new line of ethical porn sites, as they’re called.

Ultimately OnlyFans and similar platforms offer their content creators the freedom to voice their expressions and views in sensual content. It is up to them to voice their attitudes through their content and whether they focus on art, traditional sex styles, or polished content with women as subjects, it is possible.