Digital sex workers: standing in the criminalisation gap of South Africa

By Nonkosi Xaba

Digital sex work has taken centre stage thanks to the mainstreaming of OnlyFans. OnlyFans is a UK based, monthly-subscription entertainment platform, made popular by young twitter-active sex workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carol Leigh , also known as The Scarlett Harlot was an American artist, author, filmmaker, and sex workers’ rights activist, coined the term sex work in the late 1970s at a Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media conference (Sanchez, 2022). The term “sex work” functions as an alternative to stigmatised language like “prostitution” which has historically implied criminality and immorality. Sex work is an umbrella term encompassing street sex work, brothels, escort services, phone sex lines, massage parlours, dominatrix work, pornography, and sex work via instant messaging and webcamming (Do & Nathan-Roberts, 2021; Harcourt et al., 2010). Although this initially sounds like a distant reality for Africans (who face lack of secure internet connection and government monitoring/censorship), Southern African pornographic content has a rising demand from their niche market. This article uses the term sex work to steer clear of dehumanising and moralising the work of people in the industry.

Senegal and Mali are the only African countries in which sex work (street-based and indoor such as in brothels) have been both legalised and regulated since 1969. Regulation in the industry includes that sex workers undergo monthly screenings for sexually transmitted infections, that they carry a valid health card, are over 21 years old and are registered as a sex worker and/or brothel owner  (Francke ,Williams & Morkel, 2021; Ito, Lépine & Treibich, 2018). This state-imposed regulation secures (in theory) the health and safety of both workers and those engaging in the service. Literature on sex work is typically plagued by conversations around access to health care (Platt et al., 2018), the safety of sex workers, and sex trafficking – another paradigm and narrative that sex workers advocate against to reclaim sex work as a personal choice (Huda et al., 2022).

Sex work and the pandemic

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown regulations reminded us of the precarious situation sex workers in South Africa face, similar to the sentiments of Fera Lorde, a sex worker and artist of the senses, that “our livelihood depends on our ability to be healthy, as we have no sick pay” (Baume, 2020). The illegal nature of sex work made it difficult for sex workers to access formal unemployment insurance. The implications of the strict lockdown regulations during the pandemic were not unique to sex workers, however, their disadvantaged identities (such as being women, black and trans) further compounded their plight. The widespread hardship, disruption, and violations of health and human rights described in the 2021 United Nations Population Fund report are attributed less to the pandemic than to containment measures imposed on communities. The consequent lockdowns, social distancing measures, and quarantine procedures saw the closure of entertainment venues, the imposition of dusk-to-dawn curfews, stay-at-home orders, border closures, and the suspension of the hospitality and tourism industry. The result was a sudden and dramatic loss of income for the vast majority of sex workers with profound consequences for their livelihoods, human rights, and health care.

Sex worker organisations in South Africa, like Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), Asijiki Coalition, Sonke Gender Justice, Gender Dynamix, and the like who have been lobbying for the decriminalisation of sex work, had to respond to the new challenges posed by the pandemic and find ways to continue providing their usual health and human rights services. Their new immediate priorities included conducting rapid needs assessment surveys, applying for donor emergency grants, and negotiating with donors for long term programs. Sex worker organisations appealed for funds and goods from their members, set up crowdfunding campaigns, partnered with humanitarian and charitable organisations, or implemented income generation schemes. However, interventions to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of sex workers remained a struggle with work now including assisting sex workers to apply for emergency grants where these existed, distributing food and hygiene hampers, advocating with landlords to prevent evictions, and sourcing emergency accommodation. Despite these efforts, the gap between the need for livelihood support and the available resources remained one of the biggest challenges of the COVID-19 response. Street and brothel sex workers were left destitute in cases where organisations and allies could not help while digital sex work was on the uptick for others.

What does digital sex work look like?

The demographic range in the porn industry has come a long way from the 19th-century young white blonde woman being the object of desire. This is made particularly clear in the digital sex work industry because platforms are accessible worldwide and content creators signing up are women, men, couples, transpeople, and each race and ethnicity. Each content creator has their own niche market at fingertips’ reach. Start-up costs are low and platform sites are free to join, making digital sex work an attractive and low-risk point of access to the industry. (Hardy & Barbagallo, 2021) report that the results of a basic search for cis women sex workers on a popular site in the UK return around 37,000 profiles, while a search for cis men sex workers returns 16,000 profiles and for trans sex workers around 2,500.

South African sex work literature is largely on street-based and indoor sex work. A Belgian-funded study conducted by the Institute for Security Studies produced the book Selling Sex Work in Cape Town. In the book, Gould and Fick (2008) compare the experiences and earnings of street-based sex workers with indoor sex workers working in brothels and massage parlours. Their study outlines the working conditions of indoor and street-based sex workers. In brothels, working conditions vary enormously, and the relationship between sex workers and brothel owners is only superficially a formal employee–employer relationship. Indoor sex workers are paid on a freelance basis, only for hours worked and a proportion of their earnings, between 36% and 60%, is paid to the brothel. Indoor sex workers, unlike street-based sex workers, are required to report for duty at a specific time, and be at the agency for eight to ten-hour shifts, six days a week. Indoor workers report they are fined heavily for late arrival, for failing to come to work, or for other behaviour deemed offensive by the brothel. The 11% of indoor sex workers who are self-employed live much more flexibly, working when it is convenient for them to do so, or when they need to make money, and they have the benefit of keeping all their earnings and determining their rates (Gould & Fick, 2008).

Digital sex work presents its own cons with platforms being under-researched and focus being on only mainstream sites. Notable cons include unpaid labour, emotional labour, social stigma and online harassment.

Customer service is a form of emotional labour from which sex workers are not exempt, even in digital sex work. It takes a different form since the interactions are completely online, but creators on platforms report putting in a lot of effort to make their subscribers feel as if they have a personal connection with them to keep them subscribed to their online page. Emotional labour is a term originated by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her book, The Managed Heart (first published in 1983; the term originally referred to “managing one’s own emotions that were required by certain professions” (Hochschild, 2012; Safaee, 2021). For Hochschild, this involves the worker experiencing some sort of stress, anxiety, or other emotional disturbance because of their job. In the case of sex workers, this stress and anxiety can be caused by hearing about taboo kinks of clients, which ultimately leaves them feeling unhappy and alienated. Another important point for Hochschild is that emotional labour is not exclusive to any gender, however, studies show that women are more likely to perform emotional labour than men. A study done by the United Nations found that women do an estimated 2.6 times more emotional labour than men (Scotti, 2018).

The other aspect of emotional labour that digital sex workers experience is the stress they feel from the societal stigma against sex work. Previous forms of sex work did not require labourers to be as public on a grand scale as the internet. Many sex workers who have experience in the industry, understand the risk of their occupation being public knowledge and are willing to accept the consequences of that in their personal and professional lives. Not wanting to open up to strangers is a natural reaction for many people, but online clients expect creators to reveal more intimate details about their personal lives. Some of them are paying partially to bond with creators and in some instances, they do not respect a creator’s boundaries. Denying clients a personal bond can lead to online harassment and, in more extreme instances, in-person harassment.

Digital sex work theorists have largely been optimistic about the possibility of engaging with digital platforms to improve the conditions of sex work (Bernstein, 2007; Bradley-Engen, 2009; Jonsson, Svedin & Hyden, 2014; Pruitt, 2012). The core and most critiqued features of platform work include insecurity and exclusion from social protection, which in reality have always been characteristic of sex work and feminised work more generally. Digital sex work enables improved working conditions such as safer work (Jonsson et al., 2014) and increased wages (Pruitt, 2012), particularly with the dollar exchange rate earning potential for Southern African content creators. Digital sex work significantly reduces negative encounters with police and the criminal justice system (Bernstein, 2007; Ranmuthugala et al., 2011) and increases class mobility (Bernstein, 2007). Other studies show how the internet can remove third parties from sex work (Bernstein, 2007), increasing the autonomy of sex workers while simultaneously reducing risk.

There is a distinction between “online sex work” on the one hand and “digitally-mediated direct sex work”, which is a form of embodied “body work”, on the other hand (Hardy & Barbagallo, 2021). The focus of this piece is online sex work and training and education of vulnerable sex workers towards making digital sex work a viable alternative to the high risk of potentially violent face-to-face meets or being at the sole mercy of inflexible brothel owners.

We’re particularly reminded of the reality of street-based sex workers with the October 2022 ongoing Jozi 6 case in Johannesburg, South Africa (see Seleka, 2022).

Sex workers thriving in the pandemic

The unprecedented social distancing protocols of COVID-19 led digital sex workers in the industry to thrive. A surge in demand for digital sex work means that online sex workers found that their services were increasingly being sought out as even the most intimate and physical parts of our lives moved online. Nearing the end of 2020, digital sex work came under the spotlight in South Africa when Xoli M, a local OnlyFans content creator, revealed their five-figure dollar earnings in the climate of youth unemployment statistics resting at 63,9% for those aged 15 to 24 and 42,1% for those aged 25 to 34 years (South Africa, 2022).

Ranoszek (2021)  reiterates the findings and perspective of Nussbaum that even in the context of South Africa, sex work in was a labour market woman entered as a means to secure financial stability and not under coercion (Nussbaum, 1998). The growing literature on sex work as a means to financial stability is further reiterated by Greenwood (2019): “[Sex work] is not merely the last resort, but the last salvation for people trapped in low-wage work or long-term unemployment. Sex work has the power to lift people out of poverty because you don’t need a college degree, and it almost always pays more than minimum wage”. With mounting technological advancement, it is also possible for sex workers to capitalise on the industry without exploitative third-party management like pimps or pornography directors. The newfound dispensability of intermediaries has allowed sex workers to develop and control their own business and production models (Bernstein, 2007).

The growing attention in the media around digital sex workers grabbed the attention of SARS with reports that South Africa would be implementing a 15% VAT charge on all OnlyFans earnings. Digital sex workers have found a golden loop and are standing in the criminalisation gap. Fera Lorde, a chapter representative with the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), explains that with the proliferation of platforms like OnlyFans, some sex workers have shifted to technology-mediated sex work (Sanchez, 2022). Although high rates of destitution among sex workers have made OnlyFans an option for a privileged few (since it requires a computer and internet connection), it is still possible for sex workers to gain safety, afford health care and make a liveable wage through digital sex work, provided they have the necessary training and support (Baume, 2020).

In their study, Hamilton, Barakat and Redmiles (2022) look at the sex workers’ shift from in-person meets to online-only sex work, finding that online work offers more benefits to sex workers’ financial and physical well-being. Online-only work generates passive income from making a piece of content (video, image, voice note) and then selling it many times. Some interviewees report a vastly increased and/or more consistent income, due to their client base and earning potential being far greater online than from doing face-to-face work (Hamilton et al., 2022). It is clear that digital sex workers outearn street-based sex workers and although digital sex work has its own challenges (online harassment and cyber stalking) these are, arguably, manageable in comparison to the risk of health and safety of street and brothel sex workers. Street sex workers are furthermore challenged with securing accommodation for their work, while digital sex work is remote work.

In their study, Myers (2018) interviews a former sex worker, who recounts how much safer she felt when she transitioned from street-level sex work to digital screening. She was able to verify potential clients and interview them via email, enabling her to make safer and more informed decisions about which clients to make appointments with. She claimed that this internet screening “…lay bare the predator or lowballer that was there” (Myers, 2018, p.27). As stronger communities are being built online, sex workers can more easily and independently set their wages, assist one another with advertising, help with reputation building, and build online eco-systems for known and screened clients. The latter is especially important because screening clients is a top priority for sex workers. This is due to a need to protect their privacy and identity as a result of the social stigma attached to sex workers in general (Platt et al., 2018).

In addition to making money from clients, digital sex workers are selling online courses and hosting digital workshops to help beginner sex workers maximise non-contact and in-person (no intercourse) meets. In-depth training on online work further broadens the clientele base allowing sex workers to venture into different avenues of sex work, sexualities, kinks and interests of their new clients.

And so, the questions arise: What is the way forward while we lobby for the decriminalisation of sex work? What are the innovative ways NGOs can and should allow women to thrive in their chosen industries? Who do we allow to fall behind, when there are options? The government will not wait to tax sex workers; we cannot wait for the decriminalisation of sex work before we maximise the industry.

What should education programmes for sex workers include?

SWEAT runs comprehensive programmes for sex workers in a safe and non-judgmental space, including training and education on health, human rights and self-empowerment (SWEAT, 2022). In addition to these training programs, it would be beneficial to include upskilling of street-based and brothel sex workers in digital sex work. A rejection of such a proposal raises even more questions about how we are supporting women to thrive in their chosen work. Digital sex work is not a quick fix to the criminalisation of sex work as the industry is highly competitive and indeed overwhelming without support and training.

One of the primary concerns for many sex workers is being able to stay anonymous in their work. To successfully do this, sex workers should be educated on cyber hygiene. Cyber education typically takes place in tertiary education or an organisational work setting (Do & Nathan-Roberts, 2021) but there are currently no organisations that provide an accessible cyber education curriculum to sex workers in South Africa. However, over the last few years, South Africa has undoubtedly become stricter about what is acceptable and legal to post online. In a way, making “revenge porn” illegal has been beneficial for anonymity-seeking sex workers. Revenge porn refers to the sharing or distribution of any nude or sexually explicit material of someone without their permission or consent with the express purpose of humiliating or “getting back” at them (Lipco Law For All, 2020). In addition to this, if the Cyber Crimes and Cyber Security Bill and the Prevention of Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill are signed into law, it will become a criminal offence to spread harmful or bigoted messages online, which will address perpetuating stigma.

There is plenty that can be done for the vulnerable sex workers who currently have no economic or safety-centred solutions and learning programs developed for them. Financial literacy is a cornerstone for all freelance workers, and street and brothel sex workers need to get the necessary support in setting themselves up to receive funds through previously unexplored alternatives. This could be followed by training on setting up online profiles on relevant and identified high-earning sex work platforms. Platforms vary and while some are only for streaming, these days platforms allow users to text (sexting), and receive voice calls (anonymously) and timed video calls. Lastly, sex workers would need support and mentoring from active digital sex workers on entering new niches and transferring in-person experiences to online. Government institutions should also allocate funds to provide support in the form of work facilities similar to the age-old internet cafes. Digital sex work is sex work keeping up with the times; it truly is an age-old profession.

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