Only a compulsive self-abuser would deny that our culture is sexually over-saturated — especially since the rise of “democratic” websites like Pornhub and OnlyFans. Despite the grave effects on the health and relationships of both performers and consumers, “right wing” newspapers are becoming PR outlets for the porn industry.

If you aren’t a celebrity, are you likely to make millions from selling yourself?

Though they threatened the progressive hegemony with stories like Hunter Biden’s laptop, Mail Online and the New York Post have dedicated tabs to OnlyFans — featuring hundreds of stories exalting how empowering and profitable online prostitution is. These include ludicrous headlines like “I’m a proud Christian porn star — God put me on earth to enjoy sexual pleasure”. (I suggest she take a peek at the Book of Revelation.) Another featured lewd photos of a teacher fired for filming TikToks with students whilst wearing revealing outfits, allowing students to follow public social media accounts linking to her OnlyFans. How can the Post rightly criticise trans activists grooming children in classrooms, whilst advertising someone selling pornography to students? 

It may just be that sex sells, and both lust and outrage drive website traction. Still, why do so many articles misrepresent how alienating, dangerous, and morally and financially bankrupting “sex work” is for most women?

There is a staggering contrast between the findings of a recent survey of over five-hundred OnlyFans creators, and how Mail Online chose to report it. The survey found that forty-seven per cent find dating “very challenging”, forty-two per cent had partners end relationships upon discovering their profession, and forty-four per cent have been incapable of finding long-term partners. Eighty-three per cent had their partners express jealousy over their partner getting nude for an audience of insatiable voyeurs. The Mail’s reporting was wilfully blind to the misery of these women, dedicating most of their coverage of this survey to testimonies from porn industry veterans as to how “open minded” the people they date are. This expedient angle omits to tell readers how this career may leave them alone long after their profitable sex appeal fades.

Other articles overstate how lucrative an enterprise it is, too. A recent Mail piece interviewed a Married At First Sight participant, who separated from her boyfriend to take up escorting and OnlyFans. The former reality star extolled how escorting gives her “independence” and introduces her to “interesting people”. She boasted about making $1.3 million and thanked the Mail “for the free publicity”.

If you aren’t a celebrity like Bella Thorne, are you likely to make millions from selling yourself? Whilst the top one per cent make $100,000 a month, this comprises thirty-three per cent of the website’s annual revenue. The top ten per cent: seventy-three per cent. Most users earn less than $145 a month — with the modal revenue being $0. On a Gini index, OnlyFans has greater wealth inequality than every country in the world. For most women, these parasocial relationships are unprofitable and could cause ineradicable damage to their relationship prospects.

Developing brains make teens most vulnerable to becoming lifelong viewers

The lengths women go to having been sold the lie are lethal. Women die getting back-alley buttlifts to achieve the heavily-edited figures of Instagram influencers. The men attracted to these unrealistic proportions have had their perceptions so warped by porn that they need extreme novelty to feel any arousal at all. Dopamine oversaturation causes shock and attraction to become conflated, causing desensitisation to normal monogamous heterosexuality. No wonder that twenty-seven per cent of men under 30 report having no female sexual partners since the age of 18, whilst women 18-24 have twenty per cent less sex than the previous decade. Nothing but supra-normal stimulus excites them anymore.

Many participants are equally exploited. In 2017, Mercedes Grabowski (alias August Ames) committed suicide after industry peers shamed her for being unwilling to have sex with bisexual men. Grabowski was a victim of family child sex abuse, and she was relocated to a group home. Louise Perry, in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, relayed the story of Kacey Jones who achieved porn fame for her “childlike body”, until driven to seemingly livestream a suicide attempt on YouTube.

These are unlikely to be isolated cases: the CDC’s Kaiser study of adverse childhood experiences found that adults with a score of four or more are 3.6 times more likely to be promiscuous, 6.6 times more likely to engage in premature intercourse, 7.2 times more likely to become alcoholics, and 11.1 times more likely to use intravenous drugs. The porn industry relies on industrial-scale exploitation for a steady supply of dubiously-willing participants and addicted customers. Likewise, it relies on willful blindness by its consumers to the abuses likely suffered by, and inability to verify consent of, performers.

AI will add problems. Algorithmically-generated images and audio will reduce harms faced by creators, but probably increase the number of consumers addicted to personalised porn. Deepfakes are already complicating the “consenting adults” argument. The ability to superimpose faces onto naked bodies, indistinguishable from real compromising photos and videos, makes anyone liable to be unwillingly conscripted into someone else’s fantasy.

How to solve this problem? Prohibitions work. After legislating age verification requirements to access online pornography, Mindgeek blocked access to all of their websites in Utah. Eleven other states are considering similar child safeguarding measures — including California, the “porn capital of the world”. Attached to intrusive surveillance mandates that should be jettisoned, the UK’s Online Safety Bill will require porn websites to verify the age of users or face criminal liability. When Louisiana passed a similar law, Pornhub saw an eighty per cent decline in traffic from the state.

This raises questions as to just how large a portion of Pornhub’s audience are underage. The website doesn’t even require an “I am aged 18 or over” tickbox for entry. Developing brains also make teens most vulnerable to becoming lifelong viewers, addicted from the age of thirteen. Of over five hundred sexual abuse cases between under-18s in Britain, fifty per cent featured behaviours learned from porn. 

Tragically, underage people can be on the screen as well as in front of it. Platforms were too slow to act when proven to host child exploitation videos. A BBC investigation found OnlyFans failed to ban accounts owned by girls under eighteen. 

For any politician purporting to care about violence against women and girls, the porn industry should be their first port of call. Culture must be de-pornified to protect children and vulnerable adults. That starts with the press. Whilst decrying the weakness and wokeness of said politicians, it must no longer promote online prostitution as a legitimate and glamorous lifestyle.