ST. LOUIS (First Alert 4/Gray News) – A former teacher at a high school in St. Louis who resigned after her OnlyFans page was reported to district officials has been fired after just days on a new job. Brianna Coppage was a teacher for five years, spending two at St. Clair High School. She was ... Read more
Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Jobs shouldn’t be able to fire you because you get naked on the Internet, which requires you to pay to even see in the first place.
Edit:
@[email protected] made a great point about teacher/student dynamics and I can agree with that in most circumstances (e.g. the students are underage). I still think it’s ridiculous for her second, non-teaching job to fire her.
I’m a teacher and they specifically have guidelines on what you’re behavior online should be. Keeping your socials clean. Making sure my interactions with students are kept professional.
The fact is that kids these days are nosey and great researchers. Having an only fans as an educator has a huge risk of students discovering it, and will ultimately change the relationship between student and teacher from a student/ teacher relationship to a viewer/ pornstar one.
This is the most sane, rational summation of this debacle I’ve read yet.
This thread seems to fall into the “people who have no idea about the realities of teaching being confidently incorrect”.
As someone somewhere said; if you want to lose faith in comment sections, go to a discussion on a topic that you are an expert on.
Thanks for adding some sanity and nuance to this conversation. I agree with the general sentiment here that stuff that a person does on the side of their career should not affect their employment for most careers, but when it is a teacher, especially one that works with minors, it’s a bit of a different dynamic.
That being said, we should absolutely pay teachers enough so that they don’t have to get side gigs to survive. It is disgusting how little teachers are paid for the amount of work they do, and their importance to society as a whole.
This whole ordeal sounds like a classic reddit moment.
And depending on their age, they might even have sex. People want one easy solution to all problems, but being a teacher and a regular office worker is not the same, hence the standards are different too.
Here’s a wild idea that seems to never catch on in 'murica - have the parents actually educate their children about how socially unacceptable that’d be.
Eh I disagree with some jobs. Teachers are supposed to be role models to students and keep certain things private.
The problem is we aren’t paying teachers adequately for that. It reminds me of essential workers during the pandemic. If we need these people so badly, or we’re asking them to be role models and be private about certain things, then we should be paying them much, much more.
Even if teachers are supposed to be role models for students which I think is debatable it certainly is not applied outside the classroom. They will never be paid enough in any world to warrant them crafting their entire being as if they are some K-pop idols.
I’d take it a step further and say that nude modeling doesn’t make a bad role model. People don’t generally get into a line of work unless they want to or are pressured into it (directly or indirectly). Someone who doesn’t want anyone to see their body won’t start a nude OF just because their favorite teacher did it. They’ll start one because they want to sell nudes or because they want to pay bills and have exhausted other options.
That last bit is more evil than any kind of voluntary sex work. People sell their bodies for worse things than sex work. Like mining, the farming work that depends on illegal immigrants (or legal ones whose bosses assume they won’t raise a stink if labour laws aren’t followed), or a bunch of factory or construction work that exposes people to fumes and dust they probably shouldn’t be inhaling. Shit that leaves them broken, or with cancer or some other disease that shortens their life. If someone can sell pictures of their bodies to avoid that kind of work, IMO that’s a good role model.
Is it, in your eyes, morally wrong to sell naked photos of yourself?
The porn industry has many, many problems, and OnlyFans has just recently been targeted by an investigative piece by Reuters journalists for doing little about people using their platform to sell non-consensual nude pictures, or even videos of rape, but as long as you yourself are doing it of your own free will, I don’t see the problem, even if you are a teacher.
How is doing sex work being a bad role model?
I want you to know that I don’t have an answer for this and that you’ve made me think about this from a different angle, which I very much appreciate. It’s a very good point.
Thank you for saying so! I have to admit that my comment is almost adressed to myself as much as to you. I was raised with all the sexual hang ups of conservative Christianity. The idea of my daughter growing up and choosing to do sex work certainly makes me uncomfortable. But I also would like my daughter to be unashamed of her sexuality when she grows up, and I wouldn’t want her to be judged no matter how she chooses to express herself. I also believe sex work can be an incredibly compassionate form of labor, providing human connection to people starved of affection.
On the other hand, I do have some reservations about sex work, particularly when it comes to outright prostitution. Can someone have sex with so many people and still maintain the ability to have a full, healthy relationship with a partner? What are the consequences for social stability of making it so easy for men to cheat on their partners?
I think I’m in the exact same position as you. Generally speaking I tend to be personally conservative about sex and relationships – not really into hook up culture, thinking sex should be with someone you deeply love, etc.
That said, as a single, nearly 30 year old dude, I do watch porn, and it’s usually by independent content creators, not studios. I find the idea of maligning those women for what they do to be utterly reprehensible, and peak hypocrisy. If I were in their shoes, there’s a decent chance I’d also post nudes and try to monetize it.
Yet, at the same time, I don’t like subscribing to only fans, because it just feels wrong, like on a core level personally. On some level, I’m wary of getting overly invested in someone and having a weird parasocial thing. I’m glad that I’ve given them money in the short term though.
Human sexuality is really weird, and the way society plays into it makes it nigh incomprehensible sometimes how we feel and act about it.
I couldn’t agree more
Gonna get roasted for this, but why?
I think it’s pretty reasonable for an employer to fire someone for posting racist things on the Internet. I think we can all agree on that. Actions outside of work can have an effect on work and so I think it’s reasonable to make employment decisions based on how the employer acts outside of work. I would argue racism is morally wrong and sex work is not, but I don’t think it’s possible to define employment laws in a way that fits a universal moral code.
I love the protected classes we have for employment now: age, gender, color, religion, etc. I think these protections are valuable to employees everyone, and I think they make sense because they don’t affect your ability to do the job. I having “does sex work on the side” on this list makes much less sense.
I think many, maybe even most, jobs wouldn’t be affected by an employee having an onlyfans, and so in my opinion someone shouldn’t get fired for it most of the time. But I think there’s a clear line between the protected classes and people who post on onlyfans.
Simple answer. Most of us (and most of the world) thinks At-Will employment is barbaric.
It is entirely reasonable to require some substantive effect to warrent termination, even if that substantive effect is not directly the teacher’s fault. Her having an onlyfans account, not grounds for firing. Her onlyfans account passed around by students? Grounds for termination.
There’s a (not so new) trend in the US for companies to crack down on side gigs. Yes, sex work is a politically charged side-gig, but we shouldn’t ever be supporting a company’s right to fire people having side-gigs without a very good reason. So long as your side-gig never encroaches into your day job in any real (not hypothetical) way, there really isn’t a good reason.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond so thoughtfully.
I hear what you’re saying about not firing someone until an actual effect on the business is felt. I think that makes sense in this situation but there’s certainly situations where you could find something out about an employee and should be able to fire them before it’s affecting the business. Maybe my accountant committed tax fraud when they filed their taxes. That’s totally in their personal life and if no one finds out about it, then it doesn’t affect the bussiness. I still think it would be totally reasonable to fire that person.
I’ve worked my whole career in salary positions where side gigs are against my contract/need special approval so I think I’m just used to that way of thinking.
It makes me all warm and fuzzy to see people have respectful disagreements!
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