From Buzzfeed:
“We’re In Hard Times Right Now.” Meet The Nursing Students Turning To OnlyFans To Get By.
Yesterday I covered how the lockdowns that effectively shut down hospitals for all but COVID have harmed or killed countless cancer patients by delaying diagnosis or treatment.
All the way back in April, I wrote a post about the budget shortfalls that were hitting hospitals because of these lockdown measures. Medical staff were being furloughed or laid off because to make room for the tidal wave of COVID patients who were going to be dying in the hallways from a ventilator shortage (which never materialized outside of a couple of hospitals in NYC), oncology, orthopedics, cardiology, and other departments were deemed less essential than liquor stores.
Buzzfeed decided to track down some of these nurses.
When Clara thinks about balancing her business as a sex worker and her life as a nursing student, she tries to channel the Disney character Hannah Montana.
In the show, the main character Miley Stewart seems like a normal teenager, but she has a double life as pop star Hannah Montana, and Clara said keeping her own identities separate is the key.
“Hannah Montana,” said Clara, 20, who asked to keep her last name private over concerns about discrimination. “Best of both worlds, but you keep them separate. You don’t mix business with pleasure.”
Clara, who goes to college in Florida, was working in the university hospital as a patient care assistant until she said at least a dozen nurses caught the coronavirus, and the hospital changed staffing, leaving Clara without a job. Without a paycheck and bills to pay, she decided to open an account on OnlyFans, a site known for homemade pornography. It’s been a hectic couple of months for Clara, and even with the TV character in the back of her head, she said it’s still been a challenge to manage it all.
Once something is out on the internet you can’t take it back. I know she says that she tries to separate her internet peepshow life separate from her nursing career, but I don’t think that is as possible as she thinks it is.
Stories of young women paying their way through school with sex work are nothing new, but in the seven months since the WHO declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic, online sex work — often left out of discussions of ride-hailing and food delivery apps — has become an increasingly mainstream facet of the gig economy, and people like Clara say the risks are worth it to keep themselves afloat.
The Left is out to destroy society and normalizing sex work, even using the phrase “sex work,” the way they do is a massive leap in that direction.
There is a substantial difference between serving someone coffee as a barista and masturbating on command on a webcam.
Commoditizing sex strips turns one of the deepest and most important of emotional human connections into a meaningless and superficial business transaction. It actually makes the ugly attitude of incels mainstream, that women are a commodity and sex is something transactional. Where I disagree with the Left is that this also hurts women, who come to see men as just a source of cash for sex.
In the spring, when cities across the country were cheering each night to celebrate healthcare workers as heroes, Michelle Bleimeyer was fired from her job as a home-care nurse.
Bleimeyer got her nursing degree in 2009, and said it was hard to find a job in the aftermath of the Great Recession. “I was panicking because my student loans were coming due, and I wound up really liking [home care],” she said.
She knew about OnlyFans from Twitter and decided to open an account when she realized the money she was getting from unemployment wasn’t enough to live on.
In many ways, this is how sex work has always functioned. “People who were not sex workers started using OnlyFans and became sex workers due to losing their other jobs during COVID-19. So, again you see sex work, as it often is, as a sort of gig of last resort for people,” said sex worker rights advocate Kate Zen. “This is the way it’s always been. Not just during this pandemic. For a lot of the people … sex work is not necessarily their only occupation, or the main occupation even, it’s this emergency source of informal income that they can get when they’re in a bind.”
Sex isn’t just another part of the gig economy. A vagina isn’t like a car, where you just sign up for Uber and share it with anyone willing to pay for a ride. That is the soulless destruction of human intimacy.
I really can’t imagine the emotional transformation that happens in a person when they go from helping a child with a chromosomal disorder to making fetish porn for tips.
While the notion of sex work itself may be new to many users, Clara and others said posting on the site didn’t feel like a huge leap because the content is not that different from what they’re already posting on Twitter or Instagram.
That is a major problem right there. I have never taken a selfie and I am proud of that. Social media only started when I was in college and I missed the Twitter craze because I had already cut the Facebook cord before that came along. The idea of posting images of myself, especially risque ones, online is very alien to me. I actually work hard to avoid pictures of myself online. If you knew my real name, you’d find exactly one picture of me, it’s my LinkedIn profile.
These women are clearly of a younger generation than myself, where posting bikini pics is such a regular occurrence, they have been desensitized to the point where showing their tits is just a small step.
The internet has made us a society of voyeurs and exhibitionists.
Nikki, another nursing student who is based in Detroit and also asked to go by the name she uses on her OnlyFans account for privacy reasons, had a similar perspective.
Nikki decided to go back to school for a nursing program in May, after dropping out of college a few years ago when she got injured in a lacrosse game. She said she’s always wanted to be a nurse, but the tuition fees are based on her father’s salary even though he’s not paying for school.
“I’ve heard nothing but bad things about student loans… I just don’t do the payments. I never have, I never really want to,” she said. “I think it’s stupid to pay extra for something I could just pay for now and pay less. Interest is crazy on school loans especially.”
If you see nothing wrong with “I wanted to be a nurse so I’m going to pay for that by showing men my crotch online,” I can’t help you. I don’t know how that woman could ever expect to have a normal, healthy relationship after that. Not to mention the risk that a patient will know of her from her OnlyFans fame.
Nikki — who was working as an Uber driver before she started on OnlyFans — said making money from online sex work has made her life easier.
What did I say about sex and Uber above?
Mia decided to pursue work as a certified nursing assistant after caring for her grandfather, who had Alzheimer’s disease, and she had been doing the work for nine years before she was laid off in April.
“I used to care for my grandad back in 2011. When he passed away, my boyfriend at the time was saying, ‘You know you could go to school for this type of stuff,’” she said. “I [was] basically trying to fill that void because I had spent almost two years every day taking care of him because he lived next door to me.”
She said she’s always wanted to pursue a nursing degree, but between work and family obligations there had never been enough time. Since she’s only working about two hours a day on OnlyFans right now, she’s using the extra time to enroll in a nursing program.
“I want to help people with Alzheimer’s, but I’m going to get there through pornography.”
Clara has gone back to work in the hospital again and was doing sex work alongside her work as a patient care assistant, but she tested positive for COVID-19 after working with a patient who had it last week and is stuck at home again while she and her boyfriend recover.
She said the experience of working both jobs has been eye-opening.
“Just because I’m someone who’s basically a cam girl doesn’t mean that I deserve less than anybody else. People have to stop being so judgmental. We’re in hard times right now. The way people choose to support themselves is their own business,” she said.
“If it’s not hurting you, then why is it such a big deal?”
Because it harms society.
Because it decreases the quality of human interaction.
Because it accelerates the alienation of human beings who only see one another as transactional sex objects.
Because how are you supposed to have a husband and children and a happy life when there are webcam videos of you selling yourself for tips?
The long term damage is not worth the short term payoff.
How long until “doing OnlyFans to get through the Lockdown and pay for school” turns into “don’t bother with a career, just do OnlyFans.”
Not a lot to add, you pretty much nailed it.
Only thing I would add is that it doesn’t just damage the women doing it, but all of them by association. When times get tough, rather than seek out a relationship that’d be beneficial to everyone, women turn to selling themselves? Yeah, that notion will stick with every man alive. Even if they find the sweetest gal ever, that question will always knaw at the back of their minds. I know it does to me, and I’m an average Joe.
Ultimately, I blame feminism and the have-it-all attitude it entails. If this is where it leads… then it wasn’t worth it.
This sort of thing is as old as time, but as you mentioned, once you put something on the internet you can’t take it back. That’s the most troubling thing for these girls. If I met a nurse and we tried to date and I found out she had a small army of internet masturbators paying her money, would I still pursue her? I don’t think so.
Interestingly, it doesn’t seem that these women got the idea for the boyfriend to wife them up. I guess that’s a fish-bicycle thing.
They do this because it’s easy. I see help wanted signs all over. I’m sure one could find a job. But they’d have to work.
I have a couple relatives that are nurses. You could do a 2 year community college program to get yourself in the door. It’s been my experience that a hospital will pay for continuing education for you to progress.
“Soon, you will have to choose between what is right, and what is easy” – Albus Dumbledore.
The idea of normalizing “sex work” whether to pay the bills or due personal preference, tends to trivialize those who are trafficked involuntarily. I am sympathetic to the plight of these women. I think turning to “sex work” especially as a first option is a poor choice, however, the state and local governments should be held accountable for their actions. I still haven’t figured out why, when there was a fear that heal care facilities would be overwhelmed, the response was to fire trained healthcare workers.
Funny how the left screams toxic men when they har the Trump tape but online whoring is “just a job”. No wonder they always mad…. they are confused
NRW: trained, experienced, and up-to-speed with a particular agency’s idiosyncrasies.
Naw, let’s hire new, younger (cheaper) new grads to do this stuff! How can that end other than well?
There have already been several stories of female ’empowerment’ where women have dropped out of college or whose job plan after high school have been to be social media influencers and onlyfans models.
The men, and some women, encouraging women to get into Onlyfans or some flavor or another of sex work tend to overwhelmingly end up being arrested or accused of being predatory creeps. Almost every single time to the point of making it a house rule.
As was said above ya smacked the nail squarely on the head.
Sadly liquor stores are necessary businesses because if every alcoholic and addict dried out simultaneously itd be way worse then any wave of covid patients could ever be.
So at least of what you quoted 3/4 of these people arent nurses they are students 2/4 were actually currently employed in the field working as ccnas or pcas you know the lowest people on the totem pole that would get cut first anyways.
Im not saying its right but they weren’t nurses and it should never have been the case that important procedures were put on hold.
I also know many employers have used covid as an oppurtunity and excuse to force out or fire or layoff problem workers or reduce their workforce for other reasons. So there is that possibility and also not saying that is right.
Sex work I personally view as the sane as drugs. Shouldbt be illegal and it is incredible the stones a governement has to think it can stop people from doing anything least of which is the oldest profession. Just cause its legal doesn’t mean you need to partake or anyone elsec should either. And while im not a to the level you are, I do agree it cheapens the intimacy but that isnt anything new there, no way to put ths to cat back in the bag.
Don’t think of it as moral decrepitude. Think of it as their imitation of our elected officials.
I will admit to enjoying my pornography. It is sometimes the case that you can track a female from video to video and see what happens to them. I’ve noticed too many females start of with “I’m just going to masturbate as a cam girl and make a few dollars.” and then in videos four or five years later you can see them with a blank look in their eyes as they “masturbate” but now require artificial lubricant because they can’t make it themselves or are no long getting anything enjoyable. They’ve gone from cute to a set of stretched out holes trying to get one more tip as they shove something bigger and bigger into themselves. They are damaged both mentally and physically. Where the younger version can be heard talking about paying for collage, the older version just seems to be dead inside.
(a) yep, it’s kinda sad
(B) it may be more sad (than the sort of arm’s-length- pseudo-prostitition), to consider the death of dreams and ambition.
Not exactly news…. l mean, as a young private I remember seeing plenty of “nursing students” at the strip club.
Porn, prostitution, etc. involves two principles: Sex and free enterprise. I am not opposed to either one.
If someone wishes to run a business by providing a product to a willing buyer, I am not opposed to that.
“Don’t mix business and pleasure”? I’m confused, which one is the “pleasure” and which is “business”? I thought you were just forced into doing it to pay the bills, in which case it’s not “pleasure”. If you enjoy it and consider it your hobby, then you have no business complaining that you were tragically forced into it, you probably would have done it anyway. And most people wouldn’t call nursing school “pleasure”. I’ve known a number of people who have gone through nursing school, and they are by no means more noble or superior than the average person. I’ve known a number of recovering addicts and people that I considered at best average lower middle class or the more decent lower class types who became nurses. It’s really just a step above a blue collar job, it doesn’t take any amazing intelligence or virtue to do it.
Not quite as as confusing as the left’s schizophrenic split over whether “sex work” is noble, empowering feminism or cruel patriarchal slavery and abuse of women. It all depends on which particular article you happen to be reading (and no doubt whichever angle is the most advantageous at the time). Not only can they not make up their minds, but no one even seems to question the fact that they appear to be taking totally contradictory stances on the subject.
Personally I don’t think prostitution should be illegal, but I don’t think if should be normalized, let alone celebrated either. Just my 2¢.
Being paid to have sex with a stranger or another “actor” is one of the places where I see a huge conflict in my values as wanting to protect the vulnerable and wanting free enterprise.
The question becomes one of safety. When you look at NV which I believe has legalized prostitution, you end up the with “gypsy whores”. The same as you have “gypsy cabs” in NYC. The government puts some sort of limit/license on something, and there are those that will provide that service without getting the license.
At issue for me, is the exploitation. I am not speaking of the John that pays the whore $50 for services rendered. I’m talking about the guy that “helps” a girl get into the business in exchange for taking most of the money she earns. The same exploitation we saw in “company towns” that grew up around coal mines. Once you entered the mine, you owed the company and never earned your way out of that debt.
The other parts of exploitation, “sex slaves” and under aged are covered by other laws and should be prosecuted under those laws.
So it comes down to: I don’t want anybody to be “forced” into selling sex, but I can’t currently define, to myself, what constitutes the boundary conditions on “force”. Take for example Marilyn Monroe posing nude because she needed money to pay her car payment/rent. Was she forced?
How about needing the money to repay the guy that bought you all those pretty clothes and gives you a place to live and food?
My sister-in-law was(is?) a crack addict. We know damn well she was whoring herself out to get high during that time. Was she forced into prostitution?
I don’t have the answers to this one.