In September, we published an article by an anonymous jobcentre work coach explaining that it appears that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) regards OnlyFans as a legitimate source of self-employment and that as a result young female job seekers are being encouraged to develop their income through it.
A bit of history
We had a number of responses to the article, including some telling us that the government had announced in around 2010 that it was banning jobcentres from advertising sex industry jobs and surely this applied to OnlyFans? I then remembered being part of a campaign organised by the now defunct ‘Object: Women not sex objects’ group in around 2008. A few of us would go to a busy tube station after work with clipboards to ask commuters if they thought it was right that job centres were advertising lap dancing jobs to unemployed women. Most people were aghast and signed our petition.
The Government followed their announcement with legislation in 2012. Section 144 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 inserted ‘Section 2A: Restriction on section 2 arrangements: sex industry’ into the Employment and Training Act 1973. Section 2A is as follows:
2A Restriction on section 2 arrangements: sex industry
(1) Arrangements made by the Secretary of State under section 2 may not include arrangements in respect of employment for sexual purposes.
(2) For the purposes of this section employment is for sexual purposes if—
(a) it involves the employee engaging in an activity, and
(b) the employee’s activity, or the way in which it is performed, may reasonably be assumed to be intended solely or principally to stimulate one or more other persons sexually (by whatever means).
(3) The Secretary of State may by order specify exceptions to subsection (1).
(4) A statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (3) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
As far as we are aware, there is no statutory instrument altering Section 2A.
While we understand that the key aim was to ban sex industry businesses from placing adverts on the DWP job boards, it appears to us that the drafting is broad enough to cover most content on OnlyFans – although whether it applies to self-employment is a moot point.
However, as the anonymous work coach makes clear, it seems that this legislation has fallen out of use, that it is not included in standard DWP training, and few, if any, work coaches are even aware of it.
How could this happen?
But… But, you may be wondering, how could this be? How could the British Government fail to implement its own legislation – or at least the spirit of its own legislation?
Very easily is the answer where the sexploitation of women and girls is concerned. As we have documented, laws against pimping, brothel keeping, kerb crawling, and paying for sex with someone who’s been coerced have almost completely fallen out of use, so that now these offences have more or less been decriminalised in practice in England and Wales, and the Government appears to have no appetite for changing this.
We have written about how the UK Government has been captured by sex industry lobbyists. But it seems that other sinister forces are now at play. We are in the middle of a financial crisis so severe there is a real possibility that Britain will go bankrupt.
The prostitution industry now contributes more than £6 billion annually to Britain’s GDP. To put this in perspective, the annual turnover of the UK fishing fleet was £1.08 billion in 2023 and the UK steel industry contributes £2.4 billion to UK GDP. Added to this, OnlyFans, a company registered in the UK, reported gross revenue of $7.22 billion in 2024.
There is now a whole ecosystem around OnlyFans also reaping profits from the sexual exploitation of mostly young women on the platform. This mirrors how a multitude of third parties profit from lap dancing and prostitution, profit that is extracted from the sexual exploitation of (mostly) women and girls. In 2016 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that the net annual income women involved in prostitution receive is 24% of their gross income, with third parties taking the rest. As the ecosystem around OnlyFans develops, it is likely that creators will similarly receive a diminishing proportion of the money fans pay.
The Labour Government, like the previous Conservative and coalition governments is strongly wedded to neoliberalism – a political and economic ideology that Gail Dines has described as “capitalism on steroids”. Neoliberalism prioritises private profit over social good and is based on extreme individualism.
Given all this, and that we are in the midst of an economic crisis and that the sexploitation industry is one of the few industries that is booming in the UK, it is hardly surprising that the DWP is encouraging young women into OnlyFans. However, it is a total abdication of responsibility to the young women concerned, to society, and to binding obligations under international law to crack down on pimping and the normalisation of men paying for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, which fuels sex trafficking.
The sexploitation industry has many negative social effects, not least how it changes how we view each other and specifically how we view women, leading us all to see women, not as full human beings, but as objects, commodities, things, that are there to be bought and sold, used and discarded. That the Government can quietly rejoice in the booming of the sexploitation industry and not declare it a national emergency is evidence that this view of women as second class, subhuman, not worthy of protection, is very deeply embedded in our society.
What’s the big deal about OnlyFans? Isn’t it a great way for young women to earn money?
The short answer is no. OnlyFans is not an easy way for young women to make lots of money. While a few superstars make millions, the vast majority of women on OnlyFans make a pittance – the average monthly income is about £135 ($180). This, and competition from the other four million plus women ‘creators’ on the platform, is such that there is colossal pressure to create ever more explicit and degrading content, including content that would be illegal if presented on DVD but which the UK’s archaic laws allow freely online.
To attract paying fans, women have to promote themselves on social media. This typically involves posting stills and short clips from the longer videos that fans can pay to view. As a result, social media platforms that children use are now awash with porn, much of it misogynistic, depraved, and brutal. This is accelerating children’s exposure to porn and grooming girls and young women to be fodder for this insatiable industry and boys to be its unquestioning users and pimps.
The OnlyFans platform attracts large numbers of predators – individuals who are looking for an unsuspecting woman to provide a free lunch and companies that similarly freeload off the sexual exploitation of (mostly) young women.
The difficulty of actually making meaningful amounts of money and the tendency of male fans to offer women significant sums of money for sex in person means that OnlyFans is well known to be a major conduit into ‘full service’ prostitution.
For more about how OnlyFans works and its many risks, see OnlyFans: What you need to know.
What form does jobcentre encouragement of OnlyFans take?
This is how our jobcentre mole describes what she sees happening:
“Typically work coaches do not suggest that claimants set themselves up on OnlyFans – although work coaches have the freedom and discretion to do so if they wish. To my knowledge, there is no guidance to prohibit this, although the use of OnlyFans as an example of self-employment in training sessions would suggest that the DWP condones and approves it.
However, if claimants approach the DWP for universal credit while already involved with OnlyFans, under the rules, they must declare that involvement as self-employment and build their hours and income to justify claiming the benefit. This is how all self-employed claimants are treated. The DWP would then provide dedicated self-employment support to build their OnlyFans fan base and income.”
That might all sound great, until you consider that the main way a woman can increase her OnlyFans fan base and income is through posting ever more explicit, brutal and degrading pornography and/or turning to ‘full service’ prostitution.
It also does not take into account the reality that many women who are on OnlyFans are being coerced by a partner, husband or other individual – so any increase in her income is going into his pocket – while she herself may be trapped in an inhumane situation.
It would therefore appear that by pressuring her to increase her hours and income in order to reduce the amount of universal credit she might otherwise be entitled to, the British Government and the DWP are also acting as pimps – or sex traffickers as they are considered under international law.
Here’s what our anonymous work coach says:
“I don’t think the DWP is pushing people into exploitative work in general – unless that work is in the sex industry. If someone was earning less than the minimum wage in a different sector, they’d be encouraged to leave and their rights would be explained. If the work coach was sharp enough, he would report the employer to the authorities and would also flag the claimant for safeguarding and refer her to an appropriate support service.
But all this goes out the window when the work is in the sex industry. I don’t know whether this is because those who run the DWP misunderstand the fundamental business model of sites such as OnlyFans. I mean, once you understand how they work, the risks and exploitation involved immediately become obvious. But that is not an excuse because surely the DWP has an obligation to understand how the sex industry works and the individual and social harms it causes?
But if the DWP does understand the risks and harms and continues to encourage young women in it and does not use its power to stop this, surely it could reasonably be interpreted to be because the DWP knows full well that it and the UK Government is profiting from the sexual exploitation of women?”
Conduct expectations
Under DWP and general civil service rules, jobcentre staff are prohibited from having intimate relationships with claimants and/or using their official position or information gained through their duties for their own private interests or the interests of others.
Breaching these rules is considered a serious disciplinary offence. Consequences can include formal disciplinary action, and in the most serious cases, dismissal or even criminal prosecution under anti-corruption and data protection legislation.
In the previous article, our anonymous work coach described incidents of (male) work coaches gaining access to claimants’ OnlyFans content through their connections at work. I don’t think there is any doubt that this would contravene the DWP and civil service rules but it would appear that they are immune to disciplinary action.
This is hardly surprising given that the entire government appears to be deep in the pockets of the sex industry lobbyists and in complete denial about the risks that men paying for sexual acts (whether online on OnlyFans and similar or in “real life”) creates and sustains a toxic atmosphere for women and girls and attitudes that trivialise the harms it causes.
Conclusion
After two decades of relentless promotion of the idea that prostitution and pornography are regular jobs by lobbyists for the sex industry, it is perhaps not surprising that the UK government (through the DWP and its employees) appears to be pressuring young women to develop self-employed incomes on OnlyFans in order that it can pay them less in benefits such as universal credit.
But it is a catastrophe for women, for girls, for boys, for men, and for the whole of society. When women, their bodies, intimacy and sexuality are on sale in the capitalist markets, it sets male dominance and female subordination in stone, and rearranges society along the lines of a teenage boy’s wet dream. It is a violation of everything that the Labour Party has traditionally stood for and its long-standing commitment to equality between women and men. It will inevitably lead to more male violence against women and children, the corrosion of community cohesion and, we believe, ultimately to the breakdown of the civilised social order.
We demand that the Government address this urgently and undertakes all its commitments under international law to crack down on all pimping and sex trafficking, and on the normalisation and legitimisation of men’s demand for freedom to pay to sexually use and abuse women and children.
Nordic Model Now! is working on a plan for a campaign around this issue. If you would like to help us with it and/or if you work for the DWP (for example) and have any further information about it, please get in touch.
“as a result young female job seekers are being encouraged to develop their income through it”
contradicts
“one of the facilitators alluded to the fact she’d been in trouble for encouraging OnlyFans engagement”
I.e. the first statement is not made by any work coach, but by NordicModelNow.
The work coach is quoted in this article saying:
“[I]f claimants approach the DWP for universal credit while already involved with OnlyFans, under the rules, they must declare that involvement as self-employment and build their hours and income to justify claiming the benefit. This is how all self-employed claimants are treated. The DWP would then provide dedicated self-employment support to build their OnlyFans fan base and income.”
We then go on to explain that building her OnlyFans fan base and income invariably involves “posting ever more explicit, brutal and degrading pornography and/or turning to ‘full service’ prostitution”. As this is what she has to do to qualify for benefits, we think it’s reasonable to describe it as “encouragement” – although perhaps “coercion” would be more accurate.