I was once asked by a mainstream production executive what my name on IMDb was.
We were having a meeting at a café in Beverly Hills—the very same one Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner were dining at and where, days earlier, thieves ripped a designer watch off a man’s wrist at gunpoint—discussing a film possibility, when this happened. What an odd question, I thought, as he typed letters into the search bar on the IMDb site. I had been on the Internet Movie Database since I started in Hollywood, though no one really knew about it back then, if it even fully existed yet. In those late days of the past millennium, you still used Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and the TV Guide to get information. I thought this executive was joking at first, or playing off the fact he actually knew me or my work like, “Hey, do you, who I don’t even know, happen to be on here? You seem familiar but really, I never watch your porn—I mean your teen comedies…”
I’m faced with a lot with people who jerk off to me but don’t want to admit it in daylight at a café with color-coordinated table linens. But this guy seemed genuine in his pursuit and was getting progressively more frustrated with himself and with technology in general. “Let me,” I said, motioning for him to hand me his device. But when I typed my name in, clearly spelled and spaced and how it appeared on countless credits, I couldn’t find it either. My whole persona and résumé and lifetime of achievements were just missing. I audibly gasped because I knew immediately, as a sex worker, what had happened.
I was being shadowbanned.
Shadowbanning, or the policy of actively censoring online accounts by making them invisible to others on a common search, is pretty much a practice reserved for sex workers and pornographic performers—either that or serial killers (if they’re especially obvious about it). If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t find your favorite porn star when you put their name into the search bar, it’s most likely because Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or any other platform that’s beholden to big money targeting porn for being “the enemy” to everything decent in the world doesn’t want you to find them. When they don’t outright deactivate your account, or ban you completely, they’ll make it nearly impossible for anyone to find you in their search bar, therefore no one will pay attention to you, help to grow your brand or buy anything you’re selling. You’re alive but you’re completely invisible unless you do the search straight through Google.
All sex workers have experienced this on social media platforms—long periods of punishment due to largely bogus infractions (She implied she may take her clothes off after this shot was taken! Decency must be restored!) for weeks or months or even longer, but IMDb was different, I thought. IMDb is a database of facts. A place like Wikipedia, where people go when they need résumés and information on actors, or producers, or writers, or anyone involved in the entertainment industry. But here I was, an actor with more than 20 years of credits, and all of it was missing because now I was a porn star too. The implication that I was now something other than an actor, other than a professional, other than someone deserving of their past was staring back at me from the glare of a blank screen.
Not that it’s all so shocking. Sex workers have been pushed into the shadows since we evolved to two legs, had wages to blow and could grunt out an agreement in the corner of some cave, and probably even before. Cast into dark places, these sexually promiscuous things of the night were pulled out from the shadows in the alleyways for a good man’s secret. Something he might regret or repent later but that wasn’t his problem. It was the sex worker who would be thrown away and forgotten, at best, and punished, abused, and even murdered at worst. The discarding of a used-up corpse was punctuation on his repentance. And while we in civilized society (most times) don’t kill sex workers, we still feel a need to hide them away.
But is that really how society feels anymore? Or is that just the line that we all keep being fed so the “good man’s” cycle can continue? It’s becoming more and more clear to me that it isn’t the majority of the public that has a problem with sex work—it’s these fundamentalist fearmongering groups, sex haters, and closeted deviants that are raising millions and gazillions to influence powerhouse brands and banks and companies to do their bidding, pushing the propaganda that sex workers are responsible, and should be punished for, the moral decline of a public that isn’t apologetic for liking and wanting sex.
When the OnlyFans porn ban hit last week there was panic throughout the sex-worker community, and rightfully so. It appeared that anti-sex worker groups like Exodus Cry and NCOSE had succeeded in forcing the banks and creditors to take a hard-lined anti-porn stance, much like they had with Pornhub months earlier, by continuously pushing the narrative that legitimate pornography and sex trafficking are in the same universe. They’re not.
We as sex workers are wholeheartedly for verifying accounts and kicking off anyone doing this type of criminal activity. We don’t want anything to do with it. But these sex hate groups and their open pocketbooks have the ear of the banks and big platforms. OnlyFans, playing their little finger violin, said they were forced to self-censor in order to continue business with the banks, which was seen as a coward’s move by everyone from sex workers and their fans to, most strikingly, the media. This was the real story. The anti-porn crusaders were mostly dismissed because the press plowed over them to talk to sex workers first. When has this happened before in such an overwhelming way? And who, at the end of the day, would ever have expected OnlyFans to come cowering back with their tail between their legs and say they had been wrong about it all and nothing was going to change? This is something that should make us all pause and celebrate. Not the decision being reversed, or the words of a gaslighting CEO, but the fact that sex workers were given a voice, they were listened to, and a decision against them was reversed because of it. What had changed in that span of days between decisions, except business as usual?
I was warned early on in my porn career that I would face harsh backlash when I announced this move to the press. As a former Disney star, you’ll be torn apart was the line—but I wasn’t. In fact, I received so much positive coverage that it helped build not only my brand, but it was also instrumental in building Deeper’s—the site I’m contracted to—fanbase exponentially. I found quickly that the world was ready to listen to a story about the world of porn (and for once, not a negative one). The world is curious and they’re ready to hear something new that really isn’t that new at all. We’re just all finally ready to accept that porn is healthy and necessary and normal. And so are the people in it.
And that’s how we as sex workers must go forward. Normalizing pornography is the only way to win this fight. Yes, of course, we should stand up to our oppressors and speak up and protest and do everything humanly possible to right the wrongs against us in this world—this just happened in a real way and we were heard—but the only way to forever end the stigmas and plant a flag into the ground is to have light shined on us and to have people see us for who we are. Though the voices and actions of those trying to keep us in the shadows are loud and monied, they’re being listened to and believed less and less. Nobody cared what the bad-faith actors at Exodus Cry had to say. They were more interested in listening to real people who were losing their incomes and struggling to maintain their lives. These archaic fire-and-brimstone voices don’t have the power anymore to rile up a hoard of bystanders when a witch is tied to her stake. They aren’t trying so hard to put us in the shadows, or shut us down on these platforms, or erase our histories because we’re losing—no, it’s quite the contrary. They’re fighting so hard to seal us away, with everything they possibly have, because we’re so damn close. At no other time in history would it be possible for sex workers to be the ones listened to in the pages of the news. At no other time would we be in a position to fight back and win.
No matter what eventually happens with OnlyFans, it must never be forgotten how much of an impact it has had not just on the lives of creators who finally had a platform that felt their own to build their brands, but how society accepted and really celebrated this. It was the first. It will not be the last. We have bigger and bigger places to go.
I never came to OnlyFans or porn as a mainstream celebrity, contrary to the belief that I was just looking to get attention and then move on. I came as a sex worker who also happened to have a mainstream celebrity history, so I think I have a unique perspective on both sides of the fence. While I see the mainstream element, who want to use porn for their gains and then dismiss it once they’ve had enough, I also see old friends and colleagues from another point in my life congratulating me on my successes and wanting to talk and to know more. The oppressive powers don’t want that conversation to happen. They know that as soon as all walls are down, and light is shining on us and reflecting back in the faces of those listening, they no longer have any power.
At the end of that meeting with the executive, I told him all about sex workers being shaddowbanned. He was aghast. “Why would that even happen?” he asked, and you could tell he genuinely had never thought about it before. He never had to. “Because you’ve seen my tits and I haven’t apologized for it,” I said, and he apologized as he nearly cut in front of me exiting the door.
“What will you do to make sure people can find you?” he asked as we walked out. I looked him dead in the eye and said, “I’ll make sure to write them all down, deliver it straight to their door, and make them read it.” But then, after I secured an oversized pair of Chanel aviators onto my face to shield my eyes from the sun, I added, “I don’t need to, though. They’ve already read all about it in the news.”
