Since the 1970s, many feminists have argued against marriage as a form of cashing out erotic capital. Trading attractiveness and sexuality for opportunities and resources, they argue, reinforces patriarchal dependence. Yet today, a new feminist perspective champions sex work. OnlyFans, for example, is seen as a site of empowerment, self-determination, and financial agency. Cashing out erotic capital is now, for some, celebrated as entrepreneurial control over one’s erotic power.

Should we see sex work as a modern alternative to marriage—a different institutional pathway for converting erotic capital into security and mobility? If so, is it a more honest, flexible, and egalitarian form of exchange, or does it replicate the very hierarchies feminism sought to dismantle? Should cashing out erotic capital be recognised as a legitimate feminist tool in an unequal world, or does it inevitably diminish those who rely on it, eroding intimacy, agency, and love?

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