Moonlighting in the Margins: Protecting the Rights of Workers Engaged in Lawful Off-Duty Online Sex Work
While prostitution is often dubbed the world’s oldest profession, it remains one of the most surveilled, criminalized, and culturally diminished. Footnote #1 content: See Kenneth Shuster, On the Oldest Profession: A Proposal in Favor of Legalized but Regulated Prostitution, 5 U. FLA. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 1, 3–6 (1992). Sex workers have long been excluded from the legal protections afforded to other laborers, rendered invisible in employment law yet hyper-visible in moral discourse. Footnote #2 content: See, e.g., Monica R. Moukalif, See No Evil: Applying a Labor Lens to Prostitute Organizing, 20 HASTINGS WOMEN’S L.J. 253, 256–57 (2009) (describing how sex workers are placed outside of traditional labor protections); Toni Daniel, Jessica Lamb & Christine Campbell, Avoidance and Empowerment: How Do Sex Workers Navigate Stigma?, 28 SEXUALITIES 470, 471–73 (2025)(discussing stigma perpetrated against sex workers). In the digital age, online sex work has emerged as a rapidly expanding labor sector. Footnote #3 content: See, e.g., KURT FOWLER, THE RISE OF DIGITAL SEX WORK 48 (2023) (“[T]he Internet is being used at ever-growing rates to access and advertise all varieties of sexual services.”); Eram Shaikh, OnlyFans Statistics 2025, SIMPLEBEEN (Oct. 22, 2025), https://www.simplebeen.com/onlyfans-statistics [https://perma.cc/ZW36-G72F] (reporting that the United States, with 1.1 million creators, has the most OnlyFans creators of any country); Ultimate Guide to OnlyFans, INFLUENCER MARKETING HUB, https://influencermarketinghub.com/glossary/onlyfans [https://perma.cc/4VCV-ALME] (last visited May 10, 2026) (estimating 210 million registered users and rapid year-over-year growth). Platforms like OnlyFans, Footnote #4 content: OnlyFans is a subscription-based platform widely used for adult erotic content. See Jacob Bernstein, OnlyFans Reverses Its Decision to Ban Explicit Content, N.Y. TIMES (Sep. 14, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/style/onlyfans-ban-reversed.html (noting the centrality of OnlyFans to online sex work). as well as erotic webcamming, Footnote #5 content: Erotic webcamming, or “camming,” involves performers creating live, interactive sexual or erotic content for viewers, often responding in real time to audience messages or requests. See ANGELA JONES, CAMMING: MONEY, POWER, AND PLEASURE IN THE SEX WORK INDUSTRY 2–7 (2020). offer low barriers to entry, creative autonomy, creator-controlled monetization, and relative safety compared to many forms of gig work Footnote #6 content: This Article uses “gig work” and “gig economy” to describe contingent, freelance, or platform-based labor performed outside traditional employment relationships, including work mediated through digital platforms such as app-based services, streaming or subscription content sites, and other online marketplaces. This usage includes online sex work and other forms of digitally mediated creative labor that operate through direct consumer engagement rather than formal employment. See Veena Dubal, Wage Slave or Entrepreneur?: Contesting the Dualism of Legal Worker Identities, 105 CALIF. L. REV. 65, 67 (2017) (describing the emergence of “non-legally cognizable employee labor”); see also Josie Rachel West, Online Sex Workers’ Absence from Gig Economy Discourse: The Politics of Seeing in the Neoliberal Sexual Agenda, 28 EUR. J. CULTURAL STUD. 699, 700 (2024) (“Online sex work is increasingly recognised as gig economy labour.”). that require physical proximity. Footnote #7 content: See Shaikh, supra note 3 (noting 1.1 million U.S. creators); JONES, supra note 5, at 236–37 (noting that online sex work provides “physical safety” compared to in-person sex work because it provides physical separation from clients who could be hostile). For some, online sex work is a full-time livelihood. Footnote #8 content: See, e.g., ROBBIE WARIN, POLLY BLAKE, MARK GRAHAM & ALESSIO BERTOLINI, PLATFORM SEX WORK: WORKING CONDITIONS IN THE ONLINE SEX WORK INDUSTRY 29 (2025), https://fair.work/en/fw/publications/sex-work-report/ [https://perma.cc/GV9W-9NVG] (describing one OnlyFans creator who earned between $80,000 and $90,000 a year). Yet many others rely on it as a side hustle to offset inflation, fund education, subsidize dream careers, or otherwise make ends meet. Footnote #9 content: See RAVEN BOWEN, WORK, MONEY AND DUALITY: TRADING SEX AS A SIDE HUSTLE 1–5 (2021) (discussing sex work as a supplemental income stream within precarious labor markets); see also ARNE L. KALLEBERG, PRECARIOUS LIVES: JOB INSECURITY AND WELL-BEING IN RICH DEMOCRACIES 31–33 (2018) (discussing the rise of precarious work amidst stagnating wages and financial insecurity). It can also be an art form, a mode of sexual expression, or a form of community care. Footnote #10 content: See Marquitta Dorsey, Jaih Craddock & Tyriesa Howard-Howell, “I Don’t Really Need You. I Got a Body That’s Going to Get Me What I Need”: A Case Study on Sexual Autonomy and Agency Through Camming and Social Media Engagement Among Black Young Adult Females, 15 J. SOC’Y FOR SOC. WORK & RES. 303, 312 (2024) (reporting that “[r]espondents appeared empowered and energized when discussing their decisions to engage in work related to their sexual expression”); Danielle Blunt & Ariel Wolf, Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the Removal of Backpage on Sex Workers, 14 ANTI-TRAFFICKING REV. 117, 119–20 (2020) (documenting how digital sex work spaces provide harm-reduction information, emotional support, and community care infrastructures). However, even legal online sex work remains tethered to the same moralistic stigma that has historically punished sex workers and branded them with a scarlet mark of unworthiness for other employment. Footnote #11 content: See, e.g., Laurel Rogers, The Platformisation of Sex Work: Affordances, Challenges, Precarities, AUTONOMY INST. (Feb. 14, 2024), https://autonomy.work/portfolio/the-platformisation-of-sex-work-affordances-challenges-precarities/ [https://perma.cc/6HNY-XU4F] (discussing stigma around online sex work). Hiring entities and coworkers in other employment settings police workers’ off-duty expression, often treating lawful online sex work as if it were misconduct. Footnote #12 content: See, e.g., EJ Dickson, Fired for Doing Porn: The New Employment Discrimination, SALON (Sep. 30, 2013), https://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/fired_for_doing_porn_the_new_employment_discrimination [https://perma.cc/8JRZ-SCAZ]. The resulting termination or other adverse work consequences are devastating. Footnote #13 content: Id. Protecting the rights of workers who engage in lawful online sex work is therefore not a niche concern but a central labor and civil rights question. It tests whether modern employment law will adapt to new forms of gig work or continue to police morality at the expense of worker autonomy.
Continue reading Moonlighting in the Margins: Protecting the Rights of Workers Engaged in Lawful Off-Duty Online Sex Work.