is onlyfans really feminist? a conversation with emmy dahla

With the recent rise of autonomous porn sites like OnlyFans, there’s been debate as to whether a woman’s choice to make OnlyFans content is a feminist one or not. The argument that it is is usually grounded in the ideal of choice feminism, which says that any choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because it was a choice. While choice feminism appears to work for women, it fails to acknowledge the nuances of a choice made by a woman in an oppressive patriarchal society. Can a decision really be made freely if the choices were given by the oppressor? 

The narrative that choice feminism maintains is actually harmful to women, as it allows them to be groomed into potential danger under the guise of making the choice voluntarily. The patriarchy continues to benefit from female exploitation, whether or not we’re aware of it or think we are doing it autonomously. 

Emmy Dahla (@/emeleedahla) is a radical feminist content creator known as the voice behind the feminist oracle. Her experience in the sex trade before transitioning back to radical feminism allows her a unique perspective on choice feminism, one that is based on experience rather than theory alone. We talked about her experience in sex work as well as its impact on beauty and sex standards, and the reality of grooming by choice feminism. 

As a woman of color who grew up in a low income environment, Emmy describes herself as a perfect target. Entering the sex trade came with the promise of enough money to support herself, buy her parents a house, and create a life of financial self-sufficiency. She grew up online and before starting in the sex trade, had a large, mostly male audience who continued to pressure her to start an OnlyFans, something she says happens often to young female creators. When she did start making OnlyFans content, she had what most would consider a successful experience. She became a top creator and was able to make a living and travel, all without being physically brutalized, which is more than a lot of women in the sex trade can say. Despite still feeling exploited, she tried to convince herself she made the feminist choice. “I kept saying, “I’m choosing to do this, therefore it is feminist,” she says. 

Emmy knows what her OnlyFans audience found appealing. She had a baby face, small figure, smooth, hairless skin–all the traits that can make a woman look like a child. “I may have been 23, but I could’ve passed for any age. That’s what they like. It’s disgusting.” About a year into making content she started to become depressed and gain weight, which she didn’t even realize until her followers began to point it out. She noticed then how the tone began to shift. “You can see how they treat you when you’re no longer the object of their desire,” She says. “The goal is to be as small as possible, to have a childlike body.” And once she began to slip from those standards, things started to change. 

These expectations of beauty–being small, round-faced and hairless–are rooted in pedophilia. But what Emmy pointed out is that they are equally rooted in white supremacy. Small noses, round cheeks, slender figures; these eurocentric, pedocentric standards don’t exist only in pornography. They translate to real life expectations, creating an unattainable standard of beauty that women kill themselves trying to attain through surgeries and debilitating eating disorders. “They’re putting a tax bracket on beauty. If a woman can’t afford to get a nose job, she’s not beautiful?” This is why Emmy believes that sites like OnlyFans and the beauty standards they create are so dangerous. “Chasing beauty that does not reflect who you are inside destroys women.” She also noted that women age out of the sex trade extremely quickly, because the worst offense a woman can make to patriarchal standards is being old or undesirable. It’s not dissimilar from the way women are perceived in our real world. 

The appeal of sites like OnlyFans is that you can buy individualized, exclusive access to whomever you want. The issue with that is that it turns the creator into a commodity, their boundaries rendered irrelevant by the purchase of their time and body. What Emmy came to understand was that no matter what limits she set about what she would and wouldn’t do or show, men believed that buying access to her meant they could bypass them. “No matter how many boundaries you have, no matter how firm you are, a man that purchases your time and your body will always try and push that barrier. No matter how “nice” this guy is, if he purchases you, he is going to push the boundary as much as he can get away with. They’re going to throw more money at you so you can show parts of your body you don’t want to and do actions that you don’t want to do [...] Essentially, it’s rape.” When I asked her if any of her experience in the sex trade still affects her perceptions today, she said that seeing how seemingly “nice” men disregarded her boundaries completely changed her relationship to men as a whole, something she still struggles to overcome. 

What’s important to consider about the online sex trade is how it translates to interactions with women in reality. Conditioning men to believe they can buy access to a woman and her boundaries, expect sex from any woman in any given scenario, and find a sexually willing woman who looks as young they please, has very scary implications for how they interact with women. It further maintains the illusion of power and the rape culture that leads to rapes and assaults. It not only puts women in danger, it puts children in danger when men go out in the world looking for the real-world equivalent of their childlike fantasies. Many young girls get pressured into doing OnlyFans as part of the continuation of this cycle; the expectation is created and continues to be met, and soon it becomes the standard. Emmy often faces scrutiny from women in the sex trade who claim that opposing sex trade puts them in danger, but Emmy vehemently disagrees. “We are opposing the exploitation of our female body. We are opposing subjugation. It's not dangerous to a sex worker for another woman to say "I don't like this, it bleeds into my personal life. It bleeds into my sexual life, into my relationship with my body.” 

OnlyFans, much like some other forms of voluntary sex work, is a tool of the patriarchy used to deceive women into self-exploitation. It creates a falsified ideal where women in their thirties look fifteen, will do anything to appease male desire, and will do so willingly. Not to speak on its morality or to shame women who do engage in it, but it’s important to recognize that it can’t be done without consequently upholding the patriarchal system and subjecting other women to potential danger. What Emmy wants girls to know is that choice feminism works against women, not for them. It gives us the illusion of a choice so we can walk into the traps of the patriarchy under the impression that we’re doing so voluntarily. As she puts it, choice feminism encourages us to decorate our jail cells.  A select few are able to make a good living off sex content, and even being one of those few, she iterates that it is not worth the cost. It’s not as simple as putting your body online or making some money. There is a deeper, darker narrative at play that tricks women into exploiting themselves while still upholding the patriarchy. The real choice is whether or not we continue to subscribe to that narrative. 

emmy dahla is a radical feminist commentator, known as the voice behind feminist oracle. she shares a no nonsense, unapologetic, analysis on beauty culture, male violence, the sex trade, and all patriarchal systems that keep women oppressed through a radical perspective.

https://emeleedahla.carrd.co/ 

Readings:

Ferguson, M. L. (2010). Choice Feminism and the Fear of Politics. Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 247–253.

Thwaites, R. (2017). Making a choice or taking a stand? Choice feminism, political engagement and the contemporary feminist movement. Feminist Theory, 18(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700116683657