Elaine Western’s trials and tribulations are nothing new.
Teachers, nurses, and actors…oh my
With the gig economy growing even pre-pandemic, and then COVID drawing many to look for work without leaving the house, plenty of folks, of all ages, all genders, all ethnicities, and from all over took to establishing a creator's account. But plenty of amateur adult content creators have been lambasted, and in some cases, have lost their full-time jobs because of their posting for money.
Well-known celebrities also have come under moralistic fire.
When an actress of note, like Soprano’s cast member, Drea de Matteo takes to OnlyFans, the mainstream notices. As she says here of her setting up her page and giving fans peaks into bikini pics and the like saved her “from financial ruin." de Matteo sees this next step in her public journey as “A new version of me, I’m kind of proud of and I don’t feel that I need to apologize for.”
Still, there were lots of comments over de Matteo’s next step, as there are often, when someone who was once seen working in the ‘legitimate’ acting world, takes matters into their own hands posting salacious materials.
Well known or not, the self-appointed pornography police are looking out.
The law
The questions for someone like Elaine Western is… can she be indeed fired for operating an OnlyFans page? Where does the law end and the subjective big brush of morality slip in? And should adult site content creators suffer under both?
This breakdown from a year ago reveals that lawsuits have been filed against teachers, nurses, judges, and police, over this issue, with definition of the law murky at best. Considerations are challenges come by a case-by-case basis. They can include:
- The question over if postings are lawfully pornographic.
- Whether posting NSFW pictures on a site set behind a paywall violates the rules of employee conduct listed in one's job description
- If a worker is still responsible to their job for actions they engage in ‘off-hours.’
- If the posting of NFSW pictures and video causes damage to one's employer.
As Conor Friedersdorf said here in The Atlantic “Instead of our value-diverse, negatively polarized nation of more than 333,000,000 souls constantly contesting which off-the-clock behaviors are bad enough to justify termination, wouldn’t it be simpler to agree that, at least if no laws are broken, one is judged at work only for what one does at work?”
It seems many people feel many different ways about that question.
R
Written by
Ralph Greco
Ralph Greco, Jr. is an ASCAP licensed songwriter, professional playwright, the senior east coast correspondent/reviewer/interviewer for vintagerock.com, press liaison for The Erotic Heritage Museum, blogger for latex designer Dawnamatrix Designs, co-host of the podcast Licking Non-Vanilla and a professional copywriter for adult as well as mainstream clients around the world. Ralph is now the resident Staff Writer for Kinkly as well.
Ralph’s short fiction (erotic and ‘straight’) poetry and essays have been published in eight...
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