Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap

Dirty deeds really are done dirt cheap. The refrain from AC/DC’s song about an affordable hitman applies to other sordid endeavors, such as online sex work.

Recent reports reveal that OnlyFans—largely driven by pornography—is booming, but that most of its “content creators” are not sharing in the bounty. The new numbers show that content producers make, on average, about $108 a month—and that is misleadingly high, because the distribution is extremely top-heavy. The top 1% of content producers reportedly earn about $50,000 a year, while the top 0.1% rake in about 15 times that—around $750,000. Meanwhile one (very pro-porn and prostitution) outlet reported that earning only “about $20 a month” is still enough to put someone “in the top 29% of creators.”

This reporting confirms a 2021 New York Times finding that on OnlyFans “90 percent of creators take home less than $12,000 a year for what can amount to a full-time job.” The paper’s reporting on webcam sites suggests a similar dynamic, with a few models earning substantial sums from livestreaming strip shows and sex acts, but most earning very little.

OnlyFans, along with the rest of the supposedly entrepreneurial online sex industry, runs on a supply of young women who mostly earn poverty wages before quitting. And with its subscription-based approach it may even benefit as age-verification laws disrupt other parts of the online porn industry. This enormous and enormously profitable industry makes a few women rich, which helps to lure more women into prostituting themselves online, even though most would be financially better off working nearly any other job. Of course, the people running OnlyFans and other platforms get their shares before any of these women get paid, along with the various pimps and hustlers who have found niches in this new industry.

Economic exploitation is not the only or even primary evil of the online sex industry, which would still be wicked even if everyone working in it was doing so willingly and was well-paid with great benefits and a matching 401(k). However, the economic injustice of OnlyFans and its ilk is a telling example of the complete failure of the sexual revolution to deliver on its promises—a poison cherry atop a cake of lies.

The sexual revolution promised freedom and fun, that we would be happier if our sex lives were liberated from the commitments and norms of the past. But this has not happened. Sexual liberation has resulted in Americans being lonelier, having less sex, and being less sexually satisfied. And no wonder, when the sexual revolution has increasingly replaced real sex and intimacy with facsimiles and screens. Instead of the free love that was promised, there is OnlyFans, providing fake love for a subscription, plus add-ons. And instead of the relatively egalitarian distribution of relationships and sexual partners encouraged by a culture of stable monogamy, there is the bizarre inequity of masses of men sharing a few virtual sexual partners.

This is dystopian, but amid this cultural and relational wreckage, Christians can offer a better way to live. Christianity is not primarily concerned with living well in this life, but it is directed toward goods in this world as it teaches us to live in accordance with God’s created order and our own natures. The Christian insistence on marriage as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman is better for us than living by the lies of the sexual revolution.

It is relationally superior, because a lifelong union allows for far more love and intimacy than a hookup or fling, no matter how passionate. It is socially and economically better, providing stability for adults and (especially) children—the best thing Americans could do to improve everything from education to public safety would be to get and stay married. And it is even more sexually satisfying. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox points out, those who are married (and especially married churchgoers) report having sex more often, and being more satisfied with their sex lives, than their peers.

Of course, this sexual satisfaction is an average result, not a guarantee, but it makes sense despite contradicting the cultural narrative that portrays marriage (especially Christian marriage) as a place of frigid sexual repression. But marriage actually functions to secure a more stable, regular and loving sexual partnership, whereas the sexual marketplace tends not to provide the parade of attractive partners presented by pop culture—rather, it results in a string of broken relationships punctuated by loneliness.

And that brings us back to OnlyFans, which epitomizes many of the evils of the sexual revolution, from loneliness to economic injustice. The exploitation of its producers is a reminder that the promises of this world and its powers and pleasures are empty, and that the wages of sin are small.