Unless you have been living under a rock, i am sure you have heard of the ever contraversial onlyfans, the online site that many men and women globally have been using as a means of safe consensual sex work.

This article will explore personal experiences of content creators past and present, we will look at topics such as leaking of nudes and slutshaming. I will also give an account of my own personal experience as a content creator on OF. The main aims of this article are to highlight the impact of these topics mentally and emotionally as well as helping other people to discern wheter they want to create an account or not. We also hope to inspire others to come together to defeat these sexually stigmatizing attitudes towards content creators and women in general aswell as  making the move to criminalize the act of revenge porn and image based sexual abuse “leaking nudes”.

I decided back in August to start on my onlyfans journey after hearing a radio interview where Niamh O’Connnor an Irish TikTok star known as “Kneevo” shared her onlyfans story. Niamh’s radio interview inspired me to create an account. At the time I had gotten out of a long term relationship was newly single and quite frankly disgusted at how some men were approaching me sexually, in terms of unsolicited *cough* pics and the out-and-out sexual harassment of being begged for nudes. Due to the constant sexual objectification, I decided I may as well cash in on this toxic culture because I was experiencing these things anyway.

I followed Niamh on Instagram where I seen her posting a story saying she would help potential creators to set up the OF account using her referral link and I thought why not? Niamh was very supportive to all the girls who set up their accounts and gave us very detailed descriptions of what and what not to do which including having strong boundaries, never meeting up and knowing our worth, this group chat still exists today and the people in there support each other in all aspects of life.

I began my journey as a creator with a private account and I used an alias. I would recommend this to anyone starting out to see if you like it or not. I found the community of OF creators to be very empowering, supportive and non-judgemental people and I really enjoyed my first 3 weeks as a creator.

Niamh gave me a shout out on her OF and my account started to grow, after a few weeks I decided to go public. Unfortunately, I did not give enough thought to this decision and the aftermath left me in emotional and mental turmoil for weeks. I was shamed by my own friends, people from my hometown screenshotted my content and sent it around group chats and some even went as far as to send my content to my mother.

I was not prepared for this. I was told to kill myself and that I was disgusting on many occasions. Eventually it got to the point where I decided I did not want to experience this anymore and I went ahead with deleting my account.

For weeks after I struggled with my self-esteem and I felt worthless and like I ruined my own life. Before this I had no issues with the fact, I was creating this content. I should not have, but I let other people opinions define me.

Its very important to be mindful of the consequences of creating an account like this, you need to consider your mental health and decide if you are emotionally equipped to deal with a backlash such as I have received. Which brings me to the main point here, we shouldn’t have to be mindful of these things, I shouldn’t have experienced the harassment which I received, it is up to us as mindful members of society to challenge these attitudes towards women.

“Slutshaming” is unfortunately a very prominent attitude towards OF creators and sex workers in general. Most of the slutshaming comes from men, who are ironically, the biggest consumers in this industry. OF creators tend to perceive a similar pattern of men being outraged that women want to create a market that is consensual, paid work which also reduces the need for free porn in turn combating human trafficking and revenge porn. It has become a well discussed topic within the OF community that many men are paying to subscribe to creator’s accounts only to leak these creator’s nudes on threads such as discord and reddit.

This issue has been highlighted due to the very confident outspoke attitudes of OF content creators, unfortunately this is not only happening to OF creators, slutshaming and leaking of nudes are becoming general societal norms at this stage and there have been thousands if not millions of non-consenting women and teen girls nudes leaked on threads and porn sites such as this.

Niamh kindly offered to answer a few questions for this article in the hopes of helping others to discern whether to create an account and highlight awareness around some of the issues mentioned above.

1. Why did you decide to do onlyfans?

“I decided to do onlyfans because it was always something I wanted to do. My parents raised me to be sex positive and I loved the idea of it. I saw girls the same age as me making hundreds of thousands from it and immediately I wanted to do it.”

2.what kind of negative reactions did you experience after going public?

“When I started onlyfans I already had a huge following. Hundreds of people leaked my onlyfans, I had hundreds of DMs telling me to kill myself. People were sending me my nudes & telling me I was disgusting etc. they were on every single porn site; they were sent to my 12-year-old brother and my whole family.”

3. How did you deal with the negative comments and experiences?

“I personally have a very very supportive family who supported me throughout as well as very supportive friends. This helped.”

4. How did it make you feel the first time your nudes were leaked.

“To be honest I was made to feel by the public that it was my fault and I deserved it + that’s how I felt.”

5. Is slut shaming a prominent consequence of being an onlyfans creator in your opinion?

“Absolutely, you could do something illegal and people will think better of you then if you do onlyfans.”

6. What advice would you give to women considering SW (Sex Work)?

“Only do SW if your bulletproof. It’s not for the faint hearted and it’s unfortunate that that’s how it is.”

Chloe O’Brien a female content creator from Ireland shares her story:

“I had my content leaked by people in my immediate area a month after I started onlyfans! there was guys texting my boyfriend, saying they seen the stuff and trying to instigate a fight. It was so horrible to go through, having to put my head down walking through my area as I did not know who had seen it! 100% not fair as I am just trying to make a living from it not enemies!!”

Kala another content creator from Ireland who shares her story says:

“I started my onlyfans page over a year and a half ago and the first girl guy video I put up was screen recorded from the site and shared through text WhatsApp and Facebook to thousands of people , even now I get messages from people telling me that it’s still be shared . I was never able to find out who stole my content as it was screen recorded.

Girls everyday have their content stolen on all forms of online sites where they think it is safe and they put trust in their subscribers that are paying for the content to keep it to themselves. My entire family was torn apart. Luckily, I had a very strong friend base to hold me up through it all but not everyone is so lucky. My content was also stolen on another occasion by a different man and posted on the porn sites on Pornhub and xxnxx. A fake profile was also created on get life with my content claiming to be me.

I hope that sharing my experience can help other girls know they are not alone. I hope people will realize the explicit content that content creators share online is not for everyone to take. Just in the way music is stolen from artists and shared as other peoples or shared on platforms they did not give consent to. Photos and video like this should not be allowed to legally be shared to whoever people feel they want to share it with. I hope that together we can make a difference in the sex work industry no matter how small

Kala”

I and a few others have chosen to contribute to this article to challenge the objectification of women and misogynistic attitudes and behaviours which are accelerating in our society in Ireland today, this treatment of women contributes to rape culture, we as mindful caring humans need to spread awareness of these issues before there is devastating effects, only today in Ireland it was uncovered that there was a server shared with over 60 men, sharing nudes from women who are content creators to those who sent their content privately to someone whom they trusted. The server contained over 11k files, including files of minors.

The question is why? Why are we allowing this mindless objectification and harassment of women? Why do men not stand up to other men who are contributing to this toxic culture? Why do these men not respect consent? Do we want to allow the acceleration of rape culture and sexual abuse? Why is this lack of respect for a woman’s bodily autonomy ingrained in our societies culture? These are questions we need to answer to heal as a society together.

This event has caused a stir in Ireland today with many men and women from all ages and backgrounds coming together in the hopes of defeating these attitudes and making image based sexual abuse punishable by law. It is disheartening to see that it had to come to the point where images of minors were shared to combat these issues.

No woman should have to feel unsafe in her country, we Irish women and men hope you will join us in signing this petition and starting a healing journey for our society where women don’t feel shamed and victimised for being sexual. Sexuality is a huge part of our lives it should not be a taboo subject nor should it be an opportunity for abuse. Thank you so much for reading, if you feel inclined to sign the petition, I have linked it below.

http://chng.it/CjvK7nGbKT