While not originally designed to that end, OnlyFans ultimately developed a successful business model based largely on providing pornographic content. Last month, the platform stated that it would ban sexual content because banking entities were opposed to processing payments related to adult content. In reality, it was also bowing to pressure by conservative campaigns against sex work.

And yet, a few days later, it reversed its decision following opposition, including from content creators who charge subscribers fees for watching their sexual content. The now-rescinded ban would have threatened the livelihoods of many sex workers, reminding us how these workers remain vulnerable to platforms and institutions that have power over them. Among the most vulnerable are Black women, who have been at the crux of capitalism, precarity and exploitation for centuries.

During slavery, just as common goods were available in markets, enslaved Black people’s bodies were regularly made available for purchase, including to fulfill White people’s sexual desires.

Advertisement

Enslavers held legal ownership over enslaved people’s bodies, which inevitably gave them the right to rape and force sex on them. Such rapes were actually incentivized in a system in which the children born to enslaved women also were enslaved themselves. Black women’s sexuality was thus deeply embedded in the formation of capitalism because their bodies were made to produce the enslaved workforce that, in turn, made global commodities.

After the abolition of slavery, sexual violence toward Black women remained prevalent but was no longer linked to the global economy in the same way. However, with limited freedoms and opportunities, some Black women turned, if often reluctantly, to commercialized sex to sustain themselves and their families. Although some of these women may have been educated or skilled, job opportunities were scarce for them. With limited educational and career opportunities, Black women became more susceptible to engaging in sex work.

They were never a monolithic group. They came from various places and had varying religious and cultural values. Some were devout in their faith and not groomed to engage in premarital sex or in sex labor. Their circumstances, however, found them united in navigating the parameters of their own choices and moral compasses. Any possible concerns about public perception of their work proved to be a privilege they often could not afford.

Advertisement

While occupations and roles have always varied in the sex economy, Black women were often reduced to the most dangerous and low-status labor roles, like street walkers. Many others, however, worked as madam-prostitutes and brothel and call-flat owners, which yielded varying labor experiences and occupational control.

Black women did not always engage in sex work simply for their survival. Some engaged in sex work to fulfill their own sexual needs and desires. Removing themselves from traditional ideas about sexual and marital mores, women like Martha Briggs, who was married, interpreted sex work in the 1930s as a means toward sexual fulfillment and experimentation.

In the early 20th century, when domestic work left Black women vulnerable to sexual advances and harassment, less formalized or often even supplemental labor like sex work allowed them access to more income and a form of occupational autonomy that helped them manage other facets of their lives. For example, in 1938, college-educated Carol Smith of Salisbury, Md., moved to New York for new opportunities but was unable to attain her original goals of high-paying work and social mobility. She diverted her plans to the urban sex economy.

Advertisement

In the Jazz Age of the 1920s and ’30s, Black sex workers created forms of labor that were desirable and tantalizing for themselves and others — including organizing events like “sex circuses” and buffet flats. The latter were secluded soirees for men and women, gay and straight, where one could listen to live music, watch live sex shows and engage in prostitution and fulfill one’s fetishes and desires.

In sex work, some Black women used the racist myths about their perceived sexual prowess and hypersexual natures in their favor — using their bodies and the few resources they could control to work within the racial capitalist system in which they lived. Black sex work largely shifted during the Jazz Age when Black women gained more occupational autonomy. The Black sex economy expanded from street corners, halls and alleyways to private and semiprivate working- and middle-class residences, nightclubs and restaurants.

With these changes, some Black women managed to also build successful sex enterprises that worked for them. This included having select clients or distinct sexual encounters. For example, some sex workers preferred White male clients, whom they viewed as naive and who they believed were more likely to pay more than the average rate without objection.

Advertisement

While many people — both then and today — have long accepted a vision of these women as nymphomaniacs and promiscuous, most women saw themselves differently. In their own words, Black women sex workers broadly viewed themselves as “daughters, mothers, and wives; as workers; as pleasure seekers and givers; and as religious and spiritual beings.”

And yet, this was also dangerous work laced with race and gender discrimination, infamy, imprisonment, exploitation and sometimes even death. Racism and discrimination in the judicial system has seen Black women pay greater fines and serve longer jail sentences than White women for sex crimes. In 1988, a Black woman would pay an average of $213 and serve a 43-day sentence for prostitution, while a White woman would pay $150 and serve 20 days. This unequal treatment under the law also meant that Black women risked their livelihoods and families in pursuing sex work — as many could lose custody of their children.

The long history of Black women using their bodies as independent, consenting individuals to make a living served as the blueprint for platforms like OnlyFans to exist and thrive. The platform, in turn, has helped to create alternative underground economies for earning a wage, making a living and sustaining themselves and their families. In worrying about banks over workers, however, OnlyFans reminds us of an enduring historical truth: Sex work has always been central to capitalism, and Black women have borne the brunt of its most exploitative designs.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLy2wMuopqRnYmV%2FcnuPcmZqb1%2Bku63FxZqlrGWVrb2wv8SdZK%2BtnKOys63BoqOirKliwKbEjLCmq6OVp8BusdKpnJyhkaG5unnBpZico12svK6xzWg%3D