If you haven’t heard of the OnlyFans platform, know that it is a social network that allows you to create exclusive content and connect with followers, known as fans, in a monetized way.

From nudity to explicitly sexual content, the platform has gained momentum during the social lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This content can be consumed through a digital subscription, available only to persons over the age of 18 with a bank account that allows international transactions, as payments are made in US dollars.

The monetization of the hypersexualization of women is indeed a form of empowerment — Credit: Pexels Disclosure/ND

We will need to define two concepts to start our conversation today: objectification and empowerment. Terms that are often confused in the name of women’s freedom and are also often used by patients who seek psychotherapy for sexuality in my office and in online consultations conducted through the Sexo sem Dúvida platform. Let’s go to settings:

Objectification: According to the Aurelio Online Dictionary, this word means “a process that attributes to a person the nature of a material object, treating it as an object or thing; objectification.” That is, a person as an object, the most important characteristic of which is appearance.

Empowerment: also by the definition of the same dictionary “the act of gaining power, gaining strength, authority, dominion over …” Here, in this case, the woman takes power over herself and exercises it in its entirety. Keeping in mind that this term is associated with the collective and the search for gender equality.

Given these perspectives, is OnlyFans providing female empowerment or a new form of objectification for women?

OnlyFans is a platform where women – whether they have worked or not – in the porn industry can control their images, what they do with their bodies, their time and the money they make from it. They avoid possible abuse from the porn industry, but are more vulnerable to digital violence.

If a woman must have her body according to a template or specifically cater to a fetish, freedom of choice can be used as exploitation. And who benefits from this? Feminism is definitely not. Because women (myself included) will only have freedom of choice when society is egalitarian. The monetization of sexuality and sensuality is not empowerment. Trivialization of sexuality is not empowerment.

The financial independence of women implies an essential factor of their autonomy. Many women have opened accounts on OnlyFans due to lack of work or good pay.

Knowledge, information and reading are important for decision making and empowerment discussions. – Photo: Pexels Disclosure/ND

If the cause is primarily economic, it is necessary to warn against digital violence and consider the two sides of the same coin that OnlyFans brings: so-called female empowerment reveals a lack of opportunity. This is a portrait of gender inequality. Therefore, it is necessary that women really be able to talk about choice, about empowerment.

Winning freedom over your body and sexuality is of great importance in the struggle for women’s autonomy, including sexual autonomy. But we are confronted daily with the hypersexualization of the female body, which is so ingrained in our society and usually goes unquestioned. Thus, to call the hypersexualization of the female body in OnlyFans empowerment is to empty its original meaning.

Perhaps today’s conversation was different from what you expected. But it is important to have knowledge, information and reading to be able to really make choices and talk about empowerment.

Since the focus is on women’s autonomy in its broadest sense (emotional, sexual, financial), in addition to the right to choose, it is necessary to be aware of how the discourse about women’s empowerment is being sold.

To uphold the norm of “being a woman and what is female sexuality” based on what is most traditional and patriarchal, namely the hypersexualization and objectification of women, is to deny the emotional and social consequences that keep them in the place of subalternativeness.