Experienced experts start consultation hours for creators of sexual content

“You have to be strong to do this work,” says Dominique (27). “Yes, you can earn a lot, but it also takes a lot out of your private life,” says Hugh (38). They only want to be published in NRC under the name under which they work. (The editors know their full names.) This 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 films. With that experience, they have been holding a physical consultation hour since last week for people who are in the same profession, or are considering entering it.

The consultation hour is an initiative of the Amsterdam Center for Sex Workers (ACS), where Heleen Driessen is the coordinator of the confidential support team. She sits next to Hugh on the couch to explain why the consultation hour started this week. Helplines already exist for sex workers in prostitution, but not for those in (online) pornography.

It started with an intern at the ACS, who was investigating the porn industry in the Netherlands. She found indications of abuses but was unable to quantify them. Her conclusion: the government lacks sufficient oversight of this sector. After the Volkskrant newspaper reported last year on incidents of violence and coercion by a Dutch pornographic film producer, the Scientific Research and Data Centre (WODC) of the Ministry of Justice announced its intention to "explore" the porn industry.

'If you do sex work, no one would find it strange if you suddenly lost your income because of a platform's decision'

Hidden terrain

With its new consultation hour, the ACS aims to do the same thing next year: explore the dynamics of this branch of sex work. The focus will be on practical advice, such as how to create and present sexual content online. But by meeting and speaking with many sex workers in these professions, these professionals are suddenly gaining insight into this largely hidden area.

During the consultation, Driessen and the peer support workers guide people who choose this career path, but they're definitely not encouraged. It's intense work, says Dominique over the phone. Hugh: "Your images will always be online. Realize that you can meet people who saw you as a sex worker—even if you've already left that career behind." He says he would have liked to go into politics or education. "But that path has been practically cut off by the work I'm doing now."

"Never use your real name," says Dominique, "because it'll be on the internet forever. My first name is definitely Dominique, but if I could start over, I'd choose a stage name."

E-pimps

The consultation hour is not an investigation into misconduct, Driessen emphasizes, but that doesn't mean she turns a blind eye: "Through conversations, we can gain insight into the misconduct clients are experiencing. By asking and probing, we learn more." If they encounter criminal offenses, they discuss them with the police "always in consultation with the client themselves," says Driessen. "You also have the option of filing a report anonymously."

Hugh and Dominique's experiences will prove useful, Driessen believes. "I think I can help prevent people from falling into the dark corners of this work," says Dominique. Three years ago, she started posting "lingerie photos" on OnlyFans to earn a lot of money quickly. After that, she "continued to take things a step further."

Someone had downloaded all her photos from her OnlyFans platform and offered them elsewhere under her name.

The dark corners she mentions are experiences with so-called "e-pimps," men who pose as managers for the models, whom Dominique calls "simply pimps" who extort money from women. In the intern's thesis, one woman recounts that "more than twenty e-pimps contacted her in the first few days after registering."

Dominique says she was once going to work with a woman who had a pimp. "I wanted to film a video with her. We were in a hotel room. Suddenly, she opens the door and there's this boyfriend. He wanted to have a threesome and film it. When I snapped at him, he got really angry. I left." Such an e-pimp easily takes half the income from the women who work for him, she says.

Dominique only just recovered from a huge setback in her work this year. A year ago, she received messages from her subscribers—people paying for more racy photos and videos on OnlyFans or F2F. "Whether I was on Snapchat or whether I had a Telegram group." It turned out someone had downloaded all her photos from her OnlyFans platform and was offering them elsewhere under her name. It's called catfishing. "All my content was instantly rendered worthless." Theft—"you get it in every creative profession," says Dominique. "Even if you write books."

She hired an American agency specializing in online theft. As a result, all her stolen and published images have been removed from the internet. Some platforms for sexual content now offer these services as well.

Theft

In the porn industry, women are more vulnerable than men, says Hugh. But male actors can also be pressured into performing unplanned and unwanted actions on camera. "Men in such situations are less likely to ask for help, in my experience, and they're also less likely to be offered it than women."

Hugh avoids some clients. "I won't work abroad; I don't trust it. Will I get paid? Will they even cover the airfare?" He's never felt unsafe, he says, except when people used his photo on a porn platform to search for him on Google. "That's how they ended up on my Facebook page. Then they're suddenly in your real life."

The experts continue to emphasize that the work is demanding even without serious abuse. "Girls who tell me they're considering starting on OnlyFans are taking it far too lightly," says Dominique. "I also initially thought I'd upload a few photos and quickly earn 30,000 euros a month. But the competition is so fierce, and it's only gotten fiercer. 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 women: foot photos. That's anonymous and a big niche online. What's very popular right now: breast milk. Women showing their breasts with milk leaking out."

Heleen Driessen: “That's forbidden on OnlyFans, by the way.”

Big booty

Dominique: "My niche is big booty." Before she started creating content, Dominique says, she had already had her buttocks surgically augmented. "My boyfriend said, 'You have such a big butt now, why don't you go on OnlyFans?'"

She hears from sex workers in prostitution or escort services that they're considering switching to OnlyFans and similar platforms for safety reasons and because they see it as less demanding work. "They say: at least I won't be touched online." But the work is much more than just posting videos and photos, says Dominique. "You have to be online constantly" to chat with fans—that's what they pay their subscription fee for.

She had a manager for a while who helped with the chat. "But he spoke to my fans in a completely different way than I did. I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I parted ways with him." Now she works alone. "You don't always get nice reactions. Sometimes clients criticize my appearance. They push me to make my butt bigger. 'When are you going to have your next surgery?' People are much more abrasive online." Fortunately, she says, there are plenty of "fans" who make the work enjoyable. And you can block the truly annoying people.

Hugh and Dominique have carefully considered the end of their careers. "I started as a porn actor ten years ago," says Hugh. "Now I'm 38. I've invested part of my income in crypto. I've made an exit plan."

Dominique says she already had a goal in mind before she started on OnlyFans. "I want to have saved €100,000 to €200,000 that I can then invest in a business I'm passionate about. I don't want to stop until I've gotten the most out of it. But in ten years, I definitely won't be doing this work anymore."