“My body, my choice.”
For decades, this has been the unwavering heartbeat of the feminist movement. It’s a declaration of sovereignty and a defiant roar against patriarchal control. It’s the phrase we’ve chanted in the streets for reproductive rights, for the freedom to dress how we want, to love who we want, and to define our own destinies. At its core, it champions a woman’s absolute authority over her own physical self.
But then, the conversation takes a turn into a more complex, and often uncomfortable, territory. What happens when the choice being made is to sell one’s body? Whether through OnlyFans, escorting, stripping, or other forms of sex work, this choice throws the very definition of feminist empowerment into a contentious debate.
If feminism is about liberating women from being seen as objects for male consumption, how can commodifying one’s own body be a feminist act? Conversely, if feminism is fundamentally about a woman’s right to choose, who are we to judge or invalidate a choice made with full consent and agency, especially if it leads to financial independence?
This isn’t a simple question with a clean answer. It’s a tangled, emotionally charged dialogue with valid, powerful arguments on all sides. For the 21st-century feminist, navigating this means sitting with the discomfort and exploring the paradox.
The Argument for Agency: Choice Feminism and Bodily Autonomy
For a significant and growing number of feminists, the answer is clear: a woman’s right to choose is absolute. This perspective, often called “choice feminism“, posits that if a woman consciously and willingly decides to enter sex work, it is an exercise of her bodily autonomy—the very principle feminists fight for.
Proponents of this view argue that to deny a woman this choice is, in itself, a form of patriarchal control. It suggests that others—be it the state or other feminists—know what’s best for her body and her life.
This perspective champions several key ideas:
- Economic Empowerment: In a capitalist system, financial independence is a powerful form of liberation. For many, sex work offers a path to economic security that is otherwise inaccessible, providing flexibility and higher earning potential than many traditional jobs available to them.
- Destigmatization: The shame associated with sex work is a product of patriarchal and puritanical social constructs. The work itself isn’t inherently degrading, its the stigma that is. By embracing sex work as a valid choice, we challenge the very systems that seek to control female sexuality.
- Harm Reduction through Decriminalization: The real danger, this argument goes, isn’t the work itself but its criminalization. Pushing sex workers to the margins makes them vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and trafficking, and prevents them from accessing police protection, healthcare, and labour rights. A truly feminist stance is to advocate for full decriminalization, granting sex workers the same rights and protections as any other labourer.
From this viewpoint, judging a woman for selling her body is not only anti-feminist but also a betrayal of our most fundamental principle.
The Critique of Complicity: Radical Feminism and Systemic Harm
On the other side of the debate is a perspective rooted in radical feminist theory, which argues that individual “choice” cannot be separated from the oppressive system in which it is made. Can a choice be truly free when it’s made within the confines of patriarchy, a system that has objectified and commodified women’s bodies for centuries?
This viewpoint argues that sex work is not a job like any other. It is an industry built on systemic inequality, where (most often) men with power and money purchase sexual access to the bodies of (most often) women with less power and money.
The core arguments here are:
- The Illusion of Choice: Is it a genuine choice if the alternatives are poverty, debt, or unlivable wages? Abolitionist feminists argue that economic coercion is not consent. They point to staggering statistics linking sex work to histories of childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and poverty, suggesting that for many, it’s a choice born of desperation, not empowerment.
- Inherent Harm and Objectification: This perspective maintains that the act of selling sex is inherently harmful. It requires a dissociation from one’s body and reinforces the patriarchal notion that women’s bodies are public property, available for consumption. This doesn’t just harm the individual worker; it harms all women by upholding a culture where female bodies are seen as commodities.
- The Normalization of Male Entitlement: Legalizing or celebrating sex work, they argue, legitimizes the idea that men are entitled to purchase sexual access to women’s bodies. It frames male sexual demand as an uncontrollable need that must be serviced, rather than something that should be interrogated and deconstructed.
From this perspective, while the individual woman making the choice should not be shamed or criminalized, the institution of sex work must be dismantled. The goal isn’t to punish the women, but to create a world where no woman needs to sell her body to survive.
Finding Nuance in the 21st Century
Perhaps the biggest flaw in this debate is its tendency towards a rigid binary. The reality is that “sex work” is not a monolith. The experience of a high-end, independent escort choosing her clients is vastly different from that of a trafficked teenager on the street. The digital creator on OnlyFans has a different set of risks and rewards than a dancer in a club.
To have a productive conversation, we must introduce nuance:
- The Digital Revolution: Platforms like OnlyFans have undeniably changed the landscape, offering a degree of safety and autonomy that didn’t exist before. Creators control their content, set their prices, and interact with clients from behind a screen. However, this has also created new issues, from content leaks and digital stalking to immense pressure to constantly produce and escalate content.
- Focus on the Common Ground: While the ideological divide is vast, there is common ground. Both sides can and should agree on fighting against human trafficking, violence, and exploitation. Both can agree that poverty and lack of opportunity are drivers that need to be addressed. And crucially, both must agree that the stigma and criminalization that endanger sex workers’ lives must end.
The Final Choice Is to Listen
So, what happens when I choose to sell my body? The answer is, feminism itself fractures a little, unsure of how to respond. It holds up a mirror to our own biases, privileges, and deeply held beliefs about what female empowerment truly looks like.
There may never be a single, unified feminist position on sex work. But maybe that isn’t the point. Maybe the most feminist response isn’t to have the “right” answer, but to ask the right questions. To move away from judging individual women for their choices and instead focus our collective energy on dismantling the systems that limit those choices in the first place.
Whether you see sex work as a symbol of entrepreneurial empowerment or as a symptom of patriarchal oppression, the woman at the center of that choice deserves to be safe, to be respected, and to be heard.
Perhaps the most radical feminist act of all is not to dictate what a woman should do with her body, but to fight for a world where her choice, whatever it may be, is made not from a place of desperation or coercion, but from a place of true, unencumbered freedom. And that is a cause we can all stand behind.
