Kink.com’s Cam Models Resist a Wage Cut
But now, as a labor dispute heats up at the company’s cam site, KinkLive, some people are taking a second look at that reputation. Maxine Holloway, a local artist, activist, and adult performer, is alleging that she was fired from KinkLive last month when she tried to organize her fellow performers in opposition to changes in the payment policy that would eliminate minimum payments for each shift in favor of a commission-only plan. The new plan, according to Holloway and her supporters, would amount to a drastic reduction in wages for most of KinkLive’s performers.
According to Holloway, she was fired from Kink.com immediately after she started trying to get KinkLive models to sign a letter protesting the new system of payment. Peter Acworth, CEO of Kink.com, denies that she was fired at all, instead saying that she was asked to take a temporary leave. “It was only a temporary thing,” Acworth says. “We asked her to take a break because her shows had turned nonprofitable. If she’s no longer on the site for a while, then she comes back, maybe it’ll be a different story.” According to Acworth, Holloway has already been invited to perform on KinkLive at the end of June. She acknowledges the invitation, but says she received it only last week, after the situation had gone public.
“I really enjoyed my job working there,” she says. “But I’ve seen things and heard a lot of things that make me really uncomfortable. And then, having this whole payment policy thing go down and then being let go … illustrates the fact that they consider us to be disposable. I think it is unfortunate that they are going to publicly say that they don’t treat their models that way at Kink.com, but in actuality, they do.”
If Kink.com was, in fact, trying to shut Holloway up by giving her the boot, they failed miserably. The letter was ultimately delivered via the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) without individual names. It was then posted and re-posted online via Twitter, Tumblr, and sex blogs. For a few days, the headline “New Kink.com Policy Disrespects Models” seemed to have become a mantra of every pervy Twitter feed in the country. The news of Holloway’s firing just gave the letter an extra signal boost.