Under the guise of feminism, modern day sex work is praised by a generation of young women. The idea of publishing the female body, letting men observe or touch it with a tainting lust for the exchange of money, is labeled as women’s sexual empowerment. A celebration of sexual liberation – how exciting! So why are we encouraging this behavior, a behavior that will only keep our sexual freedom locked away?

Before I share my points on why sex work is not empowering, I must recognize the women who resort to the one thing we can all give. Those women who would be dead on the streets if not for price of their body. All women deserve to be protected, these women facing cruelty and dangers every day must not be shamed or ridiculed. Those who are a sex worker, are still important as women and should be treated as such.

The problem itself doesn’t necessarily lie within the working women themselves. It is the ones who encourage the continuation of such degrading work, it is those who consume the content.

The porn industry primarily caters to men and their sexual desires. It seems within recent years, their perversions have been normalized and accepted. The idea of abuse and degrading a sexual partner is most common, that being rough and dominant is the only way to have sex in today’s world. Not only do they promote this ideology through their published content, but as well as in their active practice of it. Large porn sites are notorious for human sex trafficking, using underage actors, and publishing videos of rape on their sites. Yet this is so widely ignored because we have seemed to embrace porn.

Why have women accepted the abuse so openly? Why is being beaten and bruised in bed, in our most vulnerable moments, the new face of female sexual empowerment?

Trailing back to the original point of sex work, the porn industry feeds off these normalized behaviors, that women are meant to be just the objects men use for their own pleasure – that women must feel pain to feel pleasure. These ideas are so ingrained in us, from years of being told a lady is submissive all the way to what porn has shown us.

Porn websites are often easily accessible for children to find, these ideas being their first exposure to sex will only lead them to accept this as how the act is meant to be. How they must perform in the future, what they are meant to like. It rots their brain. It is ruining our future generations, those who we are fighting to protect, who we are trying to make a better world for. Promoting such videos through empowerment will only betray children, taking away their safety, their understanding of love.

Can we blame it entirely on men? Perhaps there can be a generalized “yes.” Men are the number one consumers of porn. They have objectified women, our bodies, our beings, every inch of us for as long as we have been alive. They are the reason we are abused in the streets, in homes, in bed. Once again, I stated a generalized yes. Women are also capable of doing these things and men are capable of being victims to these things. It’s undeniable though, how women are mostly the abused and men the abusers. This is the problem that I will be focusing on in this piece – misogyny.

It may be more agreed upon that porn found free on public websites is immoral, these are large corporations exploiting women. Then this brings up where the main concern of made-up feminism comes in – sites like Only Fans.

Only Fans allows creators ages 18+ to sign up and publish sexual content for profit. This gives women more autonomy with their work, however, it is still causing significant harm to the feminist movements we need to continue fighting for.

These creators often submit posts to cater to their largest audience, once again being men. This circles back to the normalized perversions that flood the larger porn sites and the porn sick consumers. Playing into men’s fantasies of a sexual woman only welcome these fantasies into a harsh reality.

The use of Only Fans and other similar self-publishing sites may protect some women from larger industries and their exploitation, but it is still ultimately promoting the harm of what the porn industry truly is. Furthermore, promoting the harm of young women everywhere.

Reoccurring types of content take from the identities of women everywhere. These videos often fetishize different races or ethnicities, playing into stereotypes, belittling a woman’s sexuality into a racist caricature. Queer identities are also damaged through being a porn genre. Lesbians are portrayed in porn solely for a man’s desires. Two women could be walking hand and hand down the street only for some man to utter sexual atrocities at them, as if that’s all their love was – sex.

A very common one is promoting the content with the word “teen” in the title. There are videos with “young” or even worse, “barely legal” littered all throughout these websites. Technically, it may not be child porn, but it is the closest these men can get with fulfilling such sick needs in a legal way. Only another point on how abuse is so normalized within this industry.

Only fans creators may sign up at a young age and use this to their advantage. Damaging themselves and other young women out there.

As I write this out, it seems so shocking that this is not so recognized and easily agreed upon. The damage is undeniable and with each day, as more and more young women embrace it and young men enjoy it, the further we stray from making our way out of the patriarchy.

Sex should be something more than lust. As humans, we are sexual beings. We all have desires, wants and needs during such intimate moments of our lives – why must we find it in abuse or in hatred? Why have we dwindled sex down to something so meaningless? And why are we encouraging others to do the same?

Emphasizing the importance of understanding our bodies, our wants, our comforts is what is most important in the fight for sexual liberation. As women, we are still shamed for simple things, even in loyal private relations, may we still be shamed. How could we be free from these misogynistic ideas when we play into them?

I emphasize the importance of protecting the young generation of women ahead, but even more do I emphasize the importance of teaching these future men to not lock our freedom up in their instilled hate. In a dance together, may we finally see what feminism and sex can look like together.