Beyond Human Trafficking: Decriminalizing Sex Work
Internet outrage hit all across the human sexuality spectrum with the recent announcement by Only Fans that it would be banning sexually explicit content beginning in October. OnlyFans user base is largely made up of people selling sexually explicit videos or photos, giving many women and marginalized communities an opportunity to avoid starvation and/or homelessness, serving a particular need during the ongoing covid pandemic.
This comes after massive pressure from national banking providers and creditors like Visa and Mastercard threatened to discontinued payments for adult-oriented sites unless they agreed to the following guidelines:
Enter into a written agreement with any individual that is contributing content to the website. This includes the individual’s consent, their identity and age
All persons depicted in the content must give consent for the content to be distributed and downloaded
Age and identity of all persons depicted is required
Only verified users can be permitted to upload content
All content must be reviewed prior to publication, or real-time if it’s livestreamed, and no content can violate the Card Brand BRAM (Business Risk Assessment and Mitigation) policies
Website must have a complaint process for reporting, review and removal of violating content
Have policies in place to make sure that the website cannot be used for human trafficking
Provide monthly reports to acquirer of flagged content and what was taken down
No search terms or marketing partners give the illusion that the content they are marketing will contain child exploitation materials or depictions of non-consensual activity
Big Money’s chokehold on sex-workers and the sex industry is nothing new and has been a part of the conservative religious right wing’s agenda for ages now. In Marie Solis’ The Verge article on OnlyFans selling out sex workers, Mary Moody, a cam model and board member of the advocacy group Adult Industry Laborers & Artists, called the move “a workers rights and human rights disaster.
“When you rip a huge market share out of the adult industry — such as PornHub or OnlyFans — suddenly they have no way to interact with fans, no way to sell or market their content,” she says. “So what happens is the privileged few are able to move and adapt, while more marginalized workers, who may have worked in riskier street-based sex work prior to OnlyFans are pushed offline, and into the streets.”
Now that the plug has been pulled for thousands of creators, the push for decriminalizing sex work is certain to grow louder and more forceful. Adult Industry Laborers & Artists, which is comprised of independent entertainers representing many parts of the sex industry including adult live streamers, artists, full service sex workers, and online content creators devoted to representing all industry workers.
“In this heated political environment, the fence feels like a safe space from which to watch the debate without risking partnerships, allies, funding, and supporters. Many fence-sitters are human rights-centred organisations for whom the decriminalisation of sex work would be a natural fit, yet for one reason or another they are not comfortable taking a public position. A few big names have taken a stand. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have made strong cases for why decriminalising the sex industry would protect human rights and create resilience to trafficking for sexual exploitation, and both organisations have been heavily criticised for doing so. Their experiences have reinforced existing tendencies within human rights circles to avoid taking a public stand on commercial sex, as other organisations don’t want the same thing happening to them,” stated Freedom United’s Joanna Ewart-James in an feature for Open Democrac.
Freedom United is the world’s largest awareness and education community dedicated to ending human trafficking & modern slavery.