No sex please, we’re Westernised... (but we will shoot you in the foot)

By Craig Hanlon-Smith

And so pornographic site Only Fans announced it was to change its content model from October, banning all material containing “sexually explicit conduct” to focus upon more “mainstream content”. Like Tumblr before it. This should perhaps not seem such a surprise, as Facebook and Instagram – the same company – have banned such content for a number of years now. It is part of a not-so-secret cleaning up of the most popular forms of online communication.

Cleaning up in terms of sex and nudity that is. Not cleaning up in matters of political misinformation, minority group humiliation and all forms of extremism, from bomb-making how-to guides, to misogynistic women-blaming for home-grown masculine inadequacies. Such as the online postings of the mass murderer in Plymouth last month. No willies, bums or other bits please, but threats of violence and murder are to be encouraged.

Within a week, Only Fans did an about turn, perhaps because it realised its very existence is porn driven. “Only Fans’ success rocketed in lockdown, and it now has over 130 million subscribers. Those of us who have kept our jobs or enjoyed the luxuries of furlough and government subsidies may want to pause for thought.”

Websites, publishing any kind of material, should be subject to checks and balances, and pornographic sites in particular have become notoriously easy to upload to, with zero administrative processes examining the source of the material. We live in an age of so-called ‘revenge porn’ and child sexual exploitation and these sites need to step up to take responsibility for the material they host. Without question.

That said, the initial announcement of the banning of all material of a type is concerning on a number of levels. Does a total ban indicate that it is not possible to filter appropriate material? Are these highly advanced technical companies - which regularly listen in to our online conversations then advertise our children’s ‘Dear Santa’ lists back to us, as if spontaneously - incapable of such sophistication? No. This would require investment and a combination of human and technical resource would not come cheap.

Let us not forget here that the pressure on Only Fans, as with Tumblr and Facebook before it, comes from their financial interests and partners. Banks and financial processors, themselves under scrutiny from their own boards and trustees, have threatened to stop supporting them if such content is not removed. Of course these banks have, in each separate case, waited until these high-flying tech companies have established themselves financially before making such threats.

In short, we were fine with turning a blind eye before, now we’ve got all the money it is time to reveal our puritanical core. Utter hypocrisy. That there has been a U-turn is confirmation of hypocrisy: “Oh – we’re about to lose the money – the sex is fine after all.”

Only Fans’ success rocketed in lockdown, and it now has over 130 million subscribers. Those of us who have kept our jobs or enjoyed the luxuries of furlough and government subsidies may want to pause for thought. Millions of people did not have any work or means of income. Some of those who did had their earning potential more than halved.

If during that time, some of those people took advantage of the online opportunities available to them, so what? Only Fans hosts tens of thousands of sex workers providing explicit content to subscribers, who can earn up to £36k per year with the company taking 20% of their earnings. If there were 50,000 sex workers earning the full pelt, that would have given the site £360million. Even if the figure was half that, it is an astonishing amount of money. Money already processed through these banks who now want it all cleaned up.

There are individual sex workers on the site earning in excess of £50k a month. That is not a typo. Disappointing but not unexpected was the online response from some in our own community to the initial shift in policy. Vitriol not aimed at multinational financial institutions, nor the CEOs of these advantageous tech companies. You can guess it. Blaming those creating the content – the sex workers. LGBTQ+ people (and of course not) earning money during the pandemic.

Sex work is work, and in my book the only work more valuable than any other is those of the medical professionals inserting a ventilation pipe down your throat to keep you alive. All other work is on the same level and should be respected as such. We should also be mindful of the puritanical creep. These movements begin with a whisper and start from the outside in. Our so-called civilised societies stare in shock and awe at events and regimes across the world.

We gasp at the march of autocracy in far-flung lands, at their obvious oppressive approach and yet ignore the warning signs in our own front garden. In March of this year three advisors to the government on LGBTQ+ issues resigned citing a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ people in Number 10, the seat of government in the UK. I am not linking a pornographic website to the LGBTQ+ community as Only Fans runs the spectrum for all. I am connecting a creeping puritanical and judgemental society to the infringement on our way of life in the long term.

Since 2016 we have seen how our civilized Western cultures are extremely polarised and when the chips are down, aggressively so. LGBTQIA-YMCA-D.I.S.C.O-OPP ‘Yeah You Know Me’ rights will not be at the top of the agenda in a society whose main concern at the beginning of the pandemic was toilet paper. There were fights in supermarkets over the last packet of Andrex. Just think about that for a minute. Human kindness or toilet paper?

Section 28 was introduced in this country over concerns that we were indoctrinating our children into the ways of homosexuality. Jenny Lives with Martin and Eric was considered to be a scandalous publication that would infiltrate the minds of children and suggest that a gay family was a normal family. This is a book no one in government had read, let alone the public. A book that was not freely available and actually quite difficult to get hold of. Yet it inspired legislation that meant generations of young people were met with silence on matters of LGBTQ+ understanding. Silence. The puritanical creep is real. You need to see it, notice it, and speak about it. The rest is just toilet paper.