Beyond the false narrative of creators achieving sexual liberation through OnlyFans lies a darker reality in which women, as well as gender minorities and minors, remain particularly vulnerable to abuse. As a subscription-based platform allowing creators to monetize content directly, OnlyFans has attracted many women seeking greater “autonomy,” personal safety, and income than the traditional commercial sex trade provides. As the platform rose in popularity, so too has the emergence of male “managers,” who essentially act as modern pimps under the guise of professional support. These structures expose the inescapable commodification of women’s bodies within a patriarchal society, wherein women are persistently susceptible to exploitation, even when framed as an opportunity for empowerment.
The “manosphere,” a network of online communities promoting misogynistic ideologies, has increasingly circulated content instructing men on how to profit from OnlyFans creators. A notable example is Hustler’s University, run by self-claimed misogynist Andrew Tate. Courses such as Hustler’s University teach men how to create and market “management agencies” that promise to increase creators’ subscriber counts and earnings. These so-called managers are encouraged to target not only established creators on OnlyFans, but prospective creators on Instagram and dating apps in order to leverage their inexperience. Managers are instructed to then secure exploitative contracts granting inflated revenue shares and control over creators’ bank accounts, thus allowing “agencies” to extract profits before distributing any remainder.
Content-creator Kyle Plummer explicitly states that this financial control operates as a tool of psychological manipulation, arguing that routing earnings through management inhibits creators’ scrutiny of profit extraction. Even experienced OnlyFans creators are not immune to this economic abuse. In fact, multiple successful creators have reported that the appeal of having some of the administrative workload, such as answering messages from Subscribers, handled for them was what drew them to these fraudulent agencies. Thus, the relative status of a creator offers little protection against such exploitation, as structural inequalities and the imbalance between high demand and limited supply leave all women in the commercial sex trade inherently vulnerable to coercion.
Furthermore, through the widespread practice of trading OnlyFans accounts, managers have effectively created a modernized and normalized digital form of human trafficking. Creators in countries of the Global South are specifically targeted, as many face barriers to legal guidance and alternative means of financial support. Accordingly, the “listings” include details about the model’s location and English proficiency to signal such vulnerability to exploitation. This system of dehumanization acts as a means for men to profit from the subjugation of women; or, as Tate put it, “slave these b*tches.” Presenting these predatory tactics as legitimate business practices normalizes coercive recruitment, financial exploitation, and psychological manipulation, each of which are hallmarks of traditional pimping and trafficking.
Additionally, minors are often preyed upon, lured by recruiters selling the glamorized image of becoming a successful OnlyFans model. Consequently, OnlyFans’ inadequate age-verification system, which fails to reliably detect falsified identification, creates conditions that enable the dissemination of child sexual abuse material. Without effective internal regulation, such harms will persist and escalate.
As digital platforms and technologies evolve, regulatory frameworks must keep pace, and educational initiatives must address the pervasive influence of the “manosphere.” Although OnlyFans claims a commitment to combating sex trafficking through its Anti-Slavery and Anti-Trafficking Statement and company policies, persistent violations continue to evade detection, highlighting deficiencies in platform governance alone. Given the United States’ current lack of regulations addressing online sexual content, policymakers should look to Sweden’s efforts in this area as a model for potential reform. Sweden’s law to ban such live-streamed or custom-made sexual content expands their 1999 Sex Purchase Ban, adopted in the United States as the Equality Model, which protects victims from criminal penalties while targeting the buyers of sexual services.
Ultimately, despite presenting a narrative of empowerment, platforms like OnlyFans contribute to the oppression of women. True female sexual liberation cannot be fully realized within the constraints of a patriarchal society. This notion is best captured through the words of prolific feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The patriarchy and the subjugation of women through sexual violence are inextricably intertwined; the patriarchy created and continues to sustain the sex trade, so sexual exploitation cannot possibly be evaded without completely dismantling the patriarchal structures that uphold it. Genuine empowerment requires challenging and restructuring this imbalance of power itself, not disguising exploitation as choice. As long as women’s bodies remain commodified for profit within an inherently oppressive system, any participation in the system cannot be mistaken for liberation.
This piece is part of our first-year law student blog series. Congratulations to author Gia Angiolillo on being chosen!
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.