We knew this ban was not going to work,” he said. “The first email we received from OnlyFans was already quite vague.
For instance, content that can be “justified as being for the public good” can be exempted from the ambit of Section 292, but what is “public good” is highly subjective.ĭespite the sketchy legality of it all, Charak believes that “if the government wants to get you, it will.” With the slew of controversial arrests of Indian activists and academics over the past few years under dubious interpretations of Indian security laws, his fears perhaps aren’t all that unfounded.ĭespite the U-turn on the porn ban by OnlyFans, the future still looks uncertain for Charak. Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, its vague language notwithstanding, says as much. After the clean fitness shoot was over, we would remove our clothes and get into action,” he added.įor sex workers in India, there is always a looming threat of arrest as the production, advertisement in any form, and distribution of pornography or adult material is a criminal offence. “Modelling was still going on, but we’d all found a way to combine both. When the second COVID wave hit India more aggressively than the first, his earnings went up by almost ten times compared to his pre-pandemic average. The first wave of the pandemic, not surprisingly, helped Charak’s income swell by almost five times. “Even those in America or Dubai are originally from India, and Indians will never pay progressively more for porn.” “I will never increase the fee because I know most of my subscriber base comes from India,” he said. According to OnlyFans’ payment model, 80 percent of it goes to the creator and the rest, to the platform. The monthly fee to subscribe to Charak’s channel is $10. “We were so surprised to see that just within a few days, we had over a hundred subscribers.” “We were the first ones in the gay scene to join OnlyFans in India,” he said. And that’s when he told me that nudes of muscular men like me had a huge demand on OnlyFans,” he said. “On my third day, after the usual photoshoot, one of the photographers asked if I would pose nude for him. It bothered Charak: Why would these photographers shoot fitness models when they were getting paid handsomely by fashion magazines and celebrities? His quandary was soon put to rest. Some even photographed celebrities for covers of influential lifestyle and fashion magazines with an international reach. It took him a little over a week to know that these photographers also worked for A-listers in Bollywood. The fitness modelling gig then opened new doors for him. Our pictures were then used as creatives for muscle enhancement supplements, immunity boosters, and protein shakes.” It entailed him bronzing his body, flexing his muscles with special emphasis on his abs, and posing for the camera. Then one day, Charak’s clients at the gym prodded him to branch into fitness modelling. “But income was dwindling by the day, medical bills kept soaring, and the prospects of gainful employment were also dimming by the day.” “Around five years back, I started as a gym trainer, in part to pay for my mother’s medical expenses,” he told VICE. Like other sex workers on the platform, Charak too feels insecure about the precarity of having to rely on a platform that can ban them one day and walk it back the next.
Though some sex workers have welcomed the backtracking, the yo-yoing caused needless harm to an already marginalised community. No other details were provided, nor were these assurances made public. In an email to users, the company said this decision was based on “assurances” from banking partners. The acceptable use policy (AUP) threatened to prohibit content creators from showing “actual or simulated sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, between persons of any sex actual or simulated masturbation any exhibition of the anus or genitals of any person which is extreme or offensive actual or simulated material depicting bodily fluids commonly secreted during sexual conduct,” reportedly because of pressure from credit card companies, payment processors, and potential investors.Īfter many sex workers had already begun deleting and migrating content to other sites, OnlyFans did a stunning U-turn and announced on social media Wednesday morning that it would no longer be banning porn.