Sex Working: Hypocritical Business!

In this post, I will tackle a controversial topic, as I explore an aspect of our daily lives that is inherently contradictory. What makes the issue contradictory is not the content itself, but the way it is addressed—that is, the behavior and the mindset. You’ve probably guessed it from the cover image. I’m certainly not going to talk about poker or Minecraft. My target is oriented toward all that content that theoretically only adults should use, although younger people are more than active in it.

If you haven't arrived there yet, this post will deal with adult entertainment—a thriving business, right before everyone's eyes, yet damnably secret.

However, I don't want to talk about it from a moral standpoint. Wasting my time writing a post saying I fully agree with such a business is not for me. This post has another purpose. Since the concept of "sex working" seems to be a plague of modern times for many, or they simply don't understand what it is, I would really like to dedicate time to explaining what it is and why it shouldn't be the problem it remains today.

What is Sex Working?

The term sex working (or sexual labor) is a simple, consensual exchange of sexual services, erotic performances, or adult entertainment in exchange for remuneration (money, goods, or services).

The concept of Sex Working, as you may have gathered, is a definition that encompasses a very broad universe and very different realities. This universe includes, for example, the creation of digital content on platforms like OnlyFans or Fansly, or "Camming"—live streaming broadcasts. Furthermore, there is escorting, accompaniment, and the use of physical services, leading up to audiovisual production, which includes actors and actresses in adult films, live entertainment like stripping, lap dancing, burlesque, and Phone Sex, which includes erotic services via telephone or chat.

The logic at the base of Sex Working should be very simple: you just offer something for the arousal of others to be part of the business. In reality, it’s not quite like that. To be considered an actual member of Sex Working, one must satisfy three fundamental requirements:

Point one: there must be consent. The act must be agreed upon between consenting adults. This is perhaps the fundamental condition, because it distinguishes sex work from human trafficking or exploitation, which are crimes punishable by several years in prison.

Point two: there must be an economic exchange. This means there must be one or more people offering their time, or even their own body, to arouse someone, and that someone must pay an agreed-upon sum. In any form or entity, there must be a specific value for that performance. If there is no such exchange, it is just sex, but not sex working.

Point three is not necessary, but it is a plus: an agency. In sex working, one can work alone (such as OnlyFans, Fansly, or all the "Hubs" or "tubes" that exist), or one can be under an exclusive contract with production houses (like Brazzers), or be under a specific agency that negotiates payments and contracts for you.

If these three requirements are present, then you are a sex worker; otherwise, it is just personal pleasure.

When did the story of "Sex Working" begin?

The oldest profession in the world.

The sex business, as the cliché circulating through humanity goes, is one of the oldest in the world, both in its free form and in its form of slavery and exploitation. For centuries, due to bigoted morality centered on honor, sex working was something used massively—because people were breeding like rabbits—but everything had to stay away from the eyes of an innocently-fronted society. A glaring example is during the Middle Ages, a period steeped in Catholic religion, where women who used their bodies for money were forced to live and offer such services marginalized from society. In short, "out of sight, out of mind." And yes, sex working existed even during a period when the Catholic Church preached sex as a mere means of reproduction. The funny thing is that the Church killed mentally free women but spared women who went against Catholic morality.

Even though it was effectively a business, almost no woman had the courage to earn money that way, because no man or family would have seen her as a potential wife and mother. For centuries, a woman had only one destiny: to become a wife and mother. This cage, which was hard to escape, was the only way to climb the social pyramid. Therefore, in the past, a woman who earned money with her body was condemned to live and die alone, without a husband and without children. Not to mention that she was almost always a woman not accepted by society, thus living as an outcast.

Early 20th Century: Watch the ankles!

The transformation of Sex Working from an "immoral and almost illegal activity" into a technological, multimedia, and especially wealthy "industry" only occurred during the 20th century. At the beginning, it was just photos in which a woman posed sensually, often showing only an ankle, a shoulder, or those body parts that a lady was forced by the same men to cover in public, but had to show in private.

What makes me think is that for centuries artists have reproduced naked female bodies in every possible way and everyone appreciated it. Yet if a woman had stripped publicly, reproducing that same painting as if it were a "live-action" version of the piece, the most ferocious indignation immediately kicked in. Consistency, I must say, has always been a strong point of humanity.

The film of carnal sin.

The modern business as we know it (with videos and films) was born with the liberalization of censorship laws between the late 60s and early 70s (especially in the USA and Europe). Milestones like Warhol's "Blue Movie" or "Deep Throat," between the late 60s and early 70s, created what we now define as pornography.

However, it was only cinema. Those who wanted to see pornography had to wear cloaks, sunglasses, and hats and sneak furtively into screening rooms, because that type of content was still morally unacceptable... widely used, but morally questionable. Not to mention that red-light cinemas were often hidden, because "decent people" were not to be offended.

Even if they were a source of social embarrassment, pornography was a great success. A success that was amplified especially in the 80s with the advent of the VHS. In these years, the business changed profoundly. The consumption of pornography moved from public theaters to the privacy of homes. This is where turnover exploded: porn became the main engine that decreed the victory of the VHS format. The VHS was the perfect medium for porn. No one had to leave the house to watch naked people having sex; all you needed was a VCR, a TV, a good sofa, some soap, and many tissues. Furthermore, you could watch those scenes as many times as you wanted, paying only twice: once for the film and once for the treatment of carnal tunnel syndrome.

Sex at 56k.

There was only one problem: VHS technology had become obsolete, bulky, and unprotected. Hiding a porn tape was highly complicated because those cassettes were massive. With the arrival of the 90s, this privacy saw a further improvement. For some years, electronic discs had been circulating on which files like images, music, and videos could be saved: CD-ROMs and subsequently DVD-ROMs.

In a few years, the business model based on the sale of VHS took a heavy blow. Physical media (DVDs) dominated the market and offered something VHS didn't: absolute privacy. A DVD was much less bulky than a VHS and could be hidden anywhere. Furthermore, the DVD took full advantage of the dawn of piracy, which allowed downloading movies for free from the internet and transferring them to a DVD, something impossible with VHS.

Throughout the 90s and the early 2000s, the DVD was the primary way to enjoy porn. However, as early as the 90s, the first paid sites and "cam girls" were born (the pioneer was Jennifer Ringley with JenniCam in 1996, though it wasn't strictly pornographic). That was the first signal of a fourth revolution.

The more years pass, the more the internet becomes powerful, cheaper, and therefore more accessible. Toward the early 2000s, high-speed internet lines took control of the market, slowly killing the DVD and giving way to something that now dominates the entertainment market, both mainstream and pornographic: streaming.

In 2007, Pornhub was born—the Trojan horse in the world of Sex Working. Following the YouTube model, born a couple of years earlier, it introduced the concept of "Tube sites," purely free video platforms that monetize through massive advertising.

On one hand, this development took porn to a level of almost total diffusion, but it also nearly destroyed the business itself. The old production houses still lived on the sale of DVDs and monthly subscriptions to access their content. With Pornhub, many downloaded videos from the original sites and re-uploaded them to "Tube" platforms (which in the meantime multiplied like mushrooms), allowing millions of users to watch paid content completely for free and infinitely, turning the content into a free and omnipresent "commodity."

Now I decide!

2016 is the date to remember. This year is surely the year where Sex Working changed completely and became a common term. In 2016, OnlyFans was founded by Tim Stokely. Initially, the platform was meant to be a direct contact platform between creators and benefactors. It wasn't designed exclusively for sex, but its structure (no intermediaries, direct subscriptions, total control of content by the creator) and no preemptive censorship—which occurred on social media and Patreon—made it the perfect tool for sex workers.

The business of sex working, until that moment, was always based on the "product" (the video, the erotic chat, paid sex, or the lap dance), never on the relationship between fan and performer. Those who offered and those who consumed lived on two different levels.

With OnlyFans, the mentality changes: the fan doesn't pay for the sexual product itself, but for the direct access to the person, the interaction, and the sense of exclusivity. Now, paradoxically, many sex workers voluntarily publish some free content on "Tube" platforms, then lure the user to OnlyFans to earn money through paid chats, sending used clothing, and creating personalized content.

Why is Sex Working useful?

In this society, Sex Working is economically terrifying, with staggering figures, and socially frightening due to a sense of progressive degradation. We have been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years, society as we know it today has been standing for thousands of years, and yet Sex Working hasn't changed a bit: wealthy and socially controversial. Now, aside from the fact that sex working would be the perfect relief valve for humanity, what few know is that culturally and economically, the sex industry has always been a technological "Early Adopter" and a social "Early Adapter."

Early Adapter.

Sex working has always been at the forefront of reading the customs and habits of a particular era. We all know it: generations change, mindsets change, and therefore laws and habits change. What was "cool" in the 80s is now obsolete. What hasn't changed is human imperfection. Every era has always left gray areas or unregulated zones. Sex Working has been a master in this sense, exploiting all those gray areas that a moralistic society always (on purpose) leaves behind to use certain services.

If Sex Working had been a rigid social reality, it would have broken, but being very fluid, it was able to move through the folds that the "respectable" society left behind. Because let's remember: the world hates sex working, only to spend billions on it.

Early Adopter.

Many of the innovations we use today were initially pushed by this sector. You will never believe it, but online payments were perfected by sex working, not by mainstream commerce. Amazon & Co. arrived later. Sex working arrived first, because customers needed a secure and discreet transaction system with credit cards.

Seamless video streaming, which we love madly today, is another technology that came from pornography. If we adore Netflix now, it is thanks to naked women in front of a camera. The technology to see videos without buffering was pushed by the necessity of viewing fluid erotic content. Think of the frustration of having your penis in hand or your vagina wet and a video that stopped every 30 seconds.

Finally, we have VR technology and Augmented Reality. Although Apple and Meta are investing in that technology, passing it off as something only they control, that is not the case. Meta and Apple have a problem: they lack the usage. For these two giants, augmented reality is just a toy, a technological whim. Very few people need to use a VR headset just to see a 3D apple. Things change when we talk about sex. Imagine using VR and seeing the actress or actor you appreciate right before your eyes. The most glaring example is Naughty America, an American pornographic site, where there is a section dedicated to VR. It is no coincidence that currently porn is one of the sectors that invests the most in headsets and 3D interactivity.

Why do we hate sex working today?

Reading up to this point, Sex Working should be something by now accepted. In short, the evolution it has had leads one to think in these terms. Instead, merely talking about this topic brings problems and controversy. Honestly, there is less controversy talking about sports and politics. This post made me think quite a lot and I think I have the answer.

Initially, I thought the Catholic Church played a predominant role. Not that the Church is free from blame given history, but in today's society where people don't follow the teachings of Jesus in daily life—committing violence and atrocities of every kind—the Church no longer plays a determining role. By now, the idea of being Catholic is only used during holidays to stay home from work, or when judging a violent act that we ourselves would commit if we were in the same situation.

Romantic Love.

The first true point of "hatred" against Sex Working is morality. For society, sex is something intimate and private. If you notice, it is one of those topics talked about, but not talked about. In what sense? In the sense that it is talked about in completely generic terms, but no one goes into the specifics of their own life. No couple on the planet will voluntarily communicate publicly everything they do in the bedroom. Likewise, no one will ever ask a couple how they have sex. If someone were to even ask, they would be labeled a depraved pervert.

With this completely silent mentality, those who have sex in front of a camera, or use their talent to make money on the arousal of others, are considered immoral because certain things are not to be done in the light of day. The truly funny thing is that people rape in private, but openly hate consensual public sexual freedom.

Furthermore, for many, the idea that intimacy can be commodified puts the romantic ideal upon which Western society is founded into crisis. If sex can be purchased as a service, then it is feared that it loses that "sacred" or "special" value that justifies the structure of the traditional family, based on sex. Those who hate sex working often, unconsciously, are defending their own idea of love.

They do nothing and they are rich!

Speaking of business, this is the other pillar of hatred. There is a rooted idea that work must be synonymous with physical fatigue or suffering ("You shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow"). Seeing someone earn (or seem to earn) a lot through pleasure or aesthetics generates very strong discomfort and disgust. People think: "It’s not fair that I have to stay 8 hours in a factory or office for €1,200 while she/he earns the same amount with a photo?" People hate the perception of a "shortcut" that challenges the system of sacrifice.

With this idea, people think sex makes you rich quickly. Well, things are much more complex than that. Before this post, I informed myself a bit, just out of curiosity. Among the information I found are the average revenues of professionals in the sector.

If we take OnlyFans, 70% of content creators earn a few hundred euros, 29% make a few thousand, while only 1% earn tens of thousands of euros—and often, this 1% are actresses or actors known outside the platform.

Then we have Camming, where the earnings can vary from 3 to 10 thousand euros a month. It always depends on how long a person stays online in streaming and how many participate in the sessions. Finally, we have escorting, which varies from 100 to 3,000 euros a night, a figure that always depends on the requested service and the duration.

Frankly, I struggle to understand this hatred. The earnings are not immediate, nor can one say "I'll do this full-time for life." I mean, I get it, because on the internet you only read about the big numbers of an extremely elite niche, but if you just went deeper, you would understand that not all that glitters is gold. Many of the girls on the platforms do this job only to round off their income.

Finally, money earned with sex has always been considered "dirty." This creates a fear of contamination: it is feared that normalizing sex working will lead young people to choose that dark, immoral, and sinful path instead of study paths or "standard" careers. Hatred thus becomes a form of protective (often aggressive) defense toward future generations, almost as if to say "earning money by being sexually happy is disgusting," while "earning money with fatigue and being depressed is the right thing!"

The control of the female body.

Sex is power. As much as it is not appreciated, people want to control it. Whoever controls the female body—and thus access to sex, because sex has always been controlled by women—controls a fundamental part of society. Have you ever wondered why women on television are often all beautiful and scantily clad? Because the man in charge knows that they attract male carnal desire and that morbid urge to look at a half-naked female body. A beautiful woman dressed provocatively brings in ratings. If you think about it, television sells us eroticism (therefore a mild form of Sex working) masked as entertainment or information. And the women themselves are fine with it. All the struggles are for the same working and economic opportunities, not on how they dress, because they too have understood the trick.

In porn, we are talking about the same thing. Porn was a world controlled by men who decided which of all those girls could work, how she should appear, and how much she should earn. Everything was based on what the man wanted to see. Now with OnlyFans and more, this power has vanished. A woman can say "I'll do it myself" and break into the business. Even already established women say "now things are done my way!". This unhinging of traditional power roles scares those accustomed to a patriarchal hierarchy or predefined standards of behavior.

De-humanization and Objectification.

Hatred arises from the conviction that sex working reduces the human being to an object, to a piece of consumable meat, returning to the discourse of sex as something of high value and intimacy. In this sense, the hatred is not toward the worker, but toward a system seen as degrading to human dignity, even when the choice is voluntary.

Which is absolutely not true. On the contrary, it is completely the opposite. When talking about sex and sexuality, a woman had no idea what to do and how to do it. She couldn't know, because she had to arrive at marriage a virgin. There were no spaces to explore that part of herself. Even during marriage, she couldn't do anything for fear of the male reaction. If a woman even thought of exploring sexuality with her man, she was a "slut."

Now that conception has vanished. That oppressive male power over a woman can no longer be exercised. A woman in modern society decides for her own body and explores everything she needs to explore. If then, in the process, money is also earned, why not take advantage of it! It seems absurd, but Sex Working is perhaps the "best" place to explore one's sexuality, dealing with an industry with various specialized production houses, specific sectors, and very strict laws protecting workers. For a person, it is enough to go on the internet, find the right platform, make a name for themselves, and wait for the right call to do what they want to do.

One cannot define self-exploration as objectification.

Final Reflections.

Sex working is not the problem, but the mirror reflecting our contradictions. We hate seeing sold what we have always tried to hide or control, but the reality is that technology has simply given voice and power to those who, for centuries, remained confined in the shadows.

Perhaps, instead of asking why someone chooses this path, we should ask why it scares us so much to see a person who takes back control of their image and their economic value. Freedom, after all, has always been the most expensive commodity of all. And you, are you ready to stop judging to start understanding?

M.