You have to be strong to do this work, “says Dominique (27).” Yes, you can earn a lot, but it also requires a lot of private life, “says Hugh (38). They only want to work in NRC with the name they work. (Their full names are known to the editors.) That has to do with the profession they practice: Dominique makes “spicy online content” for platforms such as ONLYFANS and F2F (Friends to Follow), Hugh is an actor in porn movies. With that experience they have been holding a physical consultation hour for people who are in the same profession since last week, or consider stepping in.
The consultation hour is an initiative of the Amsterdam Center for Sex Workers (ACS), where Heleen Driessen is the coordinator of the so -called trust team. She is sitting next to Hugh on the couch to explain why the consultation hour started this week. There are already help lines for sex workers in prostitution, but not for people in (online) porn.
It started with an intern at the ACS, who did research into the porn industry in the Netherlands. She found indications of abuses, but could not quantify them. Her conclusion: the government has too little insight into this sector. After De Volkskrant had reported last year on incidents of violence and coercion by a Dutch maker of porn movies, the Scientific Research and Datacentrum (WODC) of the Ministry of Justice to ‘explore’ to the porn industry.
‘If you do sex work, nobody thinks it is crazy if you suddenly lose your income through the decision of a platform’
Hidden terrain
With the new consultation hour, the ACS wants to do the same in the coming year: explore how things are going in this branch of sex work. In particular, practical advice is given, such as how do you make sexual content online and how do you present it? But by seeing and speaking many sex workers in these professions along this road, the care providers suddenly get a view of this largely hidden terrain.
During the consultation hours, people are guided by Driessen and the experiential experts when they choose this career, but they are certainly not encouraged. It’s intense work, Dominique says by phone. Hugh: “Your images always remain online. Realize that you can meet people who have seen you as a sex worker – even if you have already left this career behind you.” He says he had wanted politics or education. “But that path is almost cut off by the work I am doing now.”
“Never use your own name,” says Dominique, “because he stays on the internet forever. My first name is really Dominique, but if I could start again, I would choose an artist name.”
E-pimps
The consultation hour is not an abuses investigation, says Driessen with emphasis, but that does not mean that she closes the eyes: “We can get a view of abuses that the clients are confronted with. We find out more by questions and questions.” If they encounter criminal offenses, they discuss this “always in consultation with the client himself” with the police, says Driessen. “You also have the option of making an anonymous report.”
The experiences of Hugh and Dominique come in handy, thinks Driessen. “I think I can help prevent people from ending up in the dark corners of this work,” says Dominique. Three years ago, in order to be able to earn a lot of money, she started placing ‘lingerie photos’ on ONYFANS. Then she “always went one step further.”
Someone had downloaded all her photos from her Onlyfans platform and offered elsewhere under her name.
The dark corners she is talking about are experiences with so-called ‘e-pimps’, men who stand up as manager of the models, and who “just calls pimps”, those women are dragging off their money. In the thesis of the trainee, a woman says that “more than twenty e-pimps contact with her recordings in the first days after registration”.
Dominique says she would work once with a woman who had a pimp. “I wanted to record a video with her. We were in a hotel room. She suddenly opens the door and stands there that friend. He wanted to do a threesome and film that. When I got rid of me, he really got angry. I left.” Such an E-Pimp fails to take half of the income from the women who work for him, she says.
This year Dominique has only recovered from a huge setback in her work. A year ago she received messages from her subscribers – people who pay for more spicy photos and videos on Onlyfans or F2F. “Whether I was sometimes on Snapchat. Whether I had a telegram group.” It turned out that someone had downloaded all her photos from her Onlyfans platform and offered elsewhere under her name. That’s called catfishing. “All my content had become worthless in one fell swoop.” Theft – “You are talking about every creative profession,” says Dominique. “Even if you write books.”
She called in an American agency that specializes in online theft. All her stolen and images published elsewhere have therefore been removed from the internet. Some platforms for sexual content now also offer these services.
Theft
In the porn industry, women are more vulnerable than men, says Hugh. But male actors can also be put under pressure to perform actions in front of the camera that were not agreed and that they do not want. “In such situations, men ask less quickly, is my experience, and they are also offered less often than women.”
Hugh avoids some clients. “I’m not going to work abroad, I don’t trust it. Will I be paid? Do they reimburse the airline tickets?” He has never felt unsafe, he says, except when people used his photo on a porn platform to search him via Google. “That’s how they ended up on my Facebook page. Then they suddenly stand in your real life.”
The experiential experts continue to underline that the work is heavy even without serious abuses. “Girls who tell me that they are considering starting on only fans, think much too light,” says Dominique. “I also thought that I would upload a few photos and then quickly earn 30,000 euros a month. But the competition is so big, and only grew up. You have to find a way to stand out among all those thousands and thousands of women with their photos.”
Hugh: “You have to find a niche. A good tip for ladies: foot photos. That is anonymous and a big niche online. What is now very popular: breast milk. Women who show their breasts where the milk runs out.”
Heleen Driessen: “That is forbidden on Only fans, by the way.”
Big Booty
Dominique: “My niche is Big Booty.” Before she started with Content Creation, says Dominique, she had already surgically enlarged her buttocks. “My friend said: You now have such big buttocks, why don’t you go on only fans?”
She hears from sex workers who are in prostitution or escort service, that they consider the transition to only fans and such platforms for safety and because they see it as less demanding work. “Then they say: at least I will not be touched online.” But the work is much more than posting videos and photos, says Dominique. “You have to be online continuously” to chat with fans – they pay their subscription money for that.
She had a manager for a while who helped chat. “But he spoke to my fans in a very different way than me. I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I said goodbye to him.” Now she works alone. “You don’t always get nice reactions. Sometimes customers take my appearance. Do they push me that I have to make my butt bigger.” When are you doing the next operation? ” People dare to do much more unkind online. ” Fortunately, she says, there are plenty of ‘fans’ who make the work fun. And you can block the really annoying people.
Hugh and Dominique have thought carefully about the end of their career. “I started as a porn actor ten years ago,” says Hugh. “Now I am 38. I have partly invested my income in crypto. I have made a trip plan.”
Dominique says she already had a goal in mind before she started on Onlyfans. “I want to have put 100,000 to 200,000 euros aside that I can invest in a company that I feel passion for. I don’t want to stop before I have taken out what is in it. But in ten years I will not do this work anymore.”