WALSH: There Is Nothing Noble Or Empowering About ‘Sex Work’

This week, the New York Post has come in for intense criticism after publishing an article about a paramedic in the city who was working a side job selling pornographic images of herself on the website OnlyFans. The EMT worker apparently did not want to be profiled by the paper but they published the story anyway. It’s not true that the Post “doxxed” her, as they have been accused. Doxxing is the malicious publication of private information. The story may have been malicious, but they were publishing what the woman herself had already revealed publicly. Anything you put on the internet for public consumption is no longer private. The New York Post did not force the woman, or any other woman, to make public what should be private. With that said, the story was inappropriate and rather baffling, as she is not a public figure and nothing about her life is newsworthy. Lots of people put embarrassing material on the internet on purpose. A news organization should have a clear and ethical reason for publishing it. I can’t imagine what that reason would be in this case. 

But the national conversation has gone beyond merely criticizing the Post for running a needless story about a woman on OnlyFans. Quickly, the controversy became an opportunity for prominent voices on the Left to promote sex work itself as a legitimate pursuit. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, along with the ACLU, declared that “sex work is work.” Lengthy think pieces were written defending cyber prostitution, and old fashioned prostitution, as noble professions. While the wagons are circled around OnlyFans, other publications like the Daily Beast have worried that the recent criticism of PornHub may be driven by anti-sex-work bias. It has long been a goal of the left to normalize prostitution. Companies like PornHub, and especially OnlyFans — porn sites that “empower” women by providing them a platform to sell their bodies — have essentially achieved that long sought goal, even while prostitution remains technically illegal in most states.