What Will You Do for Your Wings?

Online sex worker raises red flags about the lack of protection for women in the industry, and Tana Mongeau's latest scheme to exploit vulnerable girls under the guise of 'female empowerment'.

Some key terms for today’:

Purple washing

“Purplewashing is a compound word modelled on the term whitewash. The prefix "purple" is associated with feminism while the verb "wash" refers to the co-opting strategies that use minority rights to maintain or enhance structural forms of discrimination.”

Source: Wikipedia

Dry trafficking

"dry trafficking" could refer to the exploitation of sex workers without the direct involvement of physical movement or transportation of the individuals. In the context of sex work, dry trafficking often involves subtler, more insidious forms of control and exploitation. Involves coercion, deceptive recruitment practices, economic exploitation and control, legal manipulation, and psychological coercion.

Let’s Talk About S*X (Work)

I recently came across a user on TikTok, Missgingersnapqueen, whilst committed to my daily scroll. Somewhere sandwiched in between political musings and fashion content, I came across a woman who happens to engage in sex work (but I promise you this isn’t going where your mind may have guessed).

She wasn’t performing sex work on TikTok, having severed that part of her life from her main account, but decided to discuss her occupation for the sake of drawing attention to an issue she was qualified to speak on. She noted that she did not typically speak about her ‘spicy content’ on her main account, which was understandable given the stigma associated with sex work, even in an age where people have claimed they’re committed to allowing women to do what they want with their bodies. It dawned on me that since she had taken this risk, and shared her rage with a wide and potentially critical audience, her words must be of the utmost importance.

The video began as a clear message to Tana Mongeau, an internet star/influencer I’m sure most of you reading this are familiar with. Having once been extremely popular on YouTube for her storytimes mostly, she has propelled herself onto the digital red carpet, alongside other stars of the time like David Dobrik and Cody Ko. Nevertheless, she quickly became prolific for various scandals of which she was the centre, ranging from a resurfaced racist past (as has become the norm for white content creators), to an instance of fraud committed against her fans, to engaging in a fake marriage, and the list (rap sheet) goes on and on and on and on.

Anyway, Missgingersnapqueen (MGS) would begin to reveal this latest scandal, where the word scandal severely downplays the severity of its implications for vulnerable girls. The word ‘crime’ would be more apt, because Tana’s involvement here appears far from legal, according to MGS, other sex workers, the legal system, and most importantly of course… YouTube crime analysts.

‘Tana’s Angels’

**(What is known currently as the name of Tana’s collective ‘supporting female empowerment’, soon to be the title of a documentary telling the stories of the girls damaged by her ‘business’).**

MGS revealed Tana’s "Tana's Angels Agency", formed under Unruly Agency, is currently facing multiple lawsuits from influencers for alleged exploitation, non-consensual posting of nude content, and pressuring them to create more explicit content. There are also allegations that Tana may still be working with Unruly behind the scenes.

In addition to non-consensual content use and exploitative pressure, there have been numerous claims of financial misconduct and wage theft, where influencers have claimed they were not paid what they were owed or that the agency withheld earnings.

The chances are this activity breaches multiple contracts as well as violating labour laws, potentially leading to civil lawsuits or regulatory fines.

Source: Business Insider

MSG also revealed that girls managed under ‘Tana’s Angels’ were facing restrictive contract terms and threats of litigation. Influencers who wanted to terminate their contracts were allegedly threatened with lawsuits, which constitutes a clear abuse of the legal ‘contracts’. She notes that the agency is clearly a cover for Tana’s role as a pimp, where most of the online sex workers making upwards of 50k a month have management companies, because they’re really a front for exploitation and coercion alongside ‘dry trafficking’. “Management companies don’t go to girls with not a lot of followers or money who have great potential”, she says, in that they tend to target the girls already making money to maximise their own profit.

As pimps, these companies own all of the rights to explicit content allowing them to post it wherever, and employ men from other countries (middlemen) to take care of what’s known as ‘chatting’.

"chatting" refers to the process of engaging in private or direct messaging with clients or subscribers, typically on platforms like OnlyFans, Fansly, Chaturbate, or other adult content sites. It’s a key component of many online sex work operations, where content creators or models communicate directly with their audience to build relationships, increase engagement, and drive revenue. Some people get others to do it because the chatting can be traumatising.

There is also the lack of ‘Transparency’ within contracts drawn, leading to situations where influencers do not fully understand what they are signing up for. A lot of the girls are essentially promised the fame that is truly only afforded to a very select few, most of whom were already famous prior to signing up for online sex work.

MGS shared how she worked with a management company for just a few weeks, before realising it wasn’t for her.

Originally, sites like OnlyFans were created with certain regulations so women could have a bit of autonomy in an industry inherently exploitative. We used to associate pimping and exploitative behaviour with men, as chances are they still make up the majority of perpetrators, but now we have Tana Mongeau, a woman who has branded herself the representative of sexual empowerment for a niche audience, comprised mostly of young, white women, she enacts same schemes. ‘Purple washing pimphood’, seems like a phrase that could only be said in today’s context, but there it is. Where a minority of women who don’t rely on sex work as being their main stream of income, in comparison to those forced into it are pushed to the front of its representation, white wealthy women, i.e. Tana can camouflage their intentions under the guise of collective female empowerment and increased agency, whilst perpetuating cycles of abuse that will further marginalise those most mistreated within this industry.

• Proportionally, more ethnically or racially minoritized sex workers reported experiencing emotional violence in the last 6 months (83.1 vs 62.4%).

J Urban Health 2022, The National Library of Medicine

Besides Tana, other influencer and lower-level celebs are heavily involved in this industry. Stars on reality TV shows like Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle, have been reported DM’ing sex workers online in order to set them up under management contracts; Austin McBroom, Little Pump, Harry Jowsey.

“But Tana has her own Only Fans so she gets it.” Some might say in defence of her business strategy. MGS warns an impressionable audience;

 “This is sex work, it sticks with you forever, it stays on your name forever. Your family will see it, your friends will see it,  you are changed for the rest of your life (…) and then people think it’s cute (…) Why do you think I don’t talk about it?”

She remembered the story of a friend, who having been interested in getting into sex work, was reportedly drugged and trafficked her to a house full of women where they were forced to make content. She wonders what the difference is about these management companies when you’re locked in a contract through which they’ll threaten to sue you should you ever wish to walk out of it.

“There are no laws to protect us”

Tana tells other women to get in their bag by doing sex work because she’ll make money from it too. Then there is the comfort of collective ostracization, where ‘they’re all in it together’ helping to mitigate some feelings of shame or embarrassment she might feel. When you already have an account on OF and you give someone your referral code, you also make 5% profit.

The problem will only likely increase, but whilst we’re protesting in support of sex workers in their battles against their ‘management companies’, it would be disingenuous not to consider the elephant in the room here. What if legalising sex work might help to protect women against these kinds of schemes? Or is it just that we only support sex workers when they hide behind screens, where they’ll get abused (silently).in the ways that ‘good victims’ do?

I find that laws that aim to police women when it comes to sexuality and bodily autonomy always fall flat in the same way. In the same way that we understand banning abortions doesn’t prevent them from occurring, stigmatising sex work doesn’t eliminate it, but merely ensures it’s practised in unsafe and unregulated ways. But this isn’t news at all. Those government officials, pastors and policemen are fully aware that legalising sex work would provide more protection for its employees, (and less protection for their interests), we would have a record of their nighttime activities.

I can be honest and admit what Tana wouldn’t even if she knew it, as it speaks to the degree of autonomy within a community, sex work isn’t inherently empowering for women…Though this doesn’t mean that the women who end up in SW should remain unprotected.

There are unions for a myriad of other industries, those teaching and healthcare. But in the same way there have been protections for other jobs, is the same way women in sex work need to be protected. Of course, as MGS said, there are emotional and mental drawbacks that are typically life-lasting, but these partially come from existing within an unsafe and typically underground practice.

In the way that Tana’s angels operates, in an almost initiative way, the girls vying to become angels feel as though they must perform past the limitations of natural output, with wings dangled in front of their eyes the means to reach their wildest ‘hopes’ and ‘dreams’.

That is until they are plucked from among the clouds

Asisa

Sources

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9727011/ The Effect of Systemic Racism and Homophobia on Police Enforcement and Sexual and Emotional Violence among Sex Workers in East London: Findings from a Cohort Study

https://www.reddit.com/r/canceledpod/comments/1bv4zko/tana_the_unruly_agency/ Tana & the Unruly Agency