COLUMBIA CITY, Ind. – Conservative activists in Indiana have launched a campaign to remove an elected official after a right-wing Midwest news blog labeled her an OnlyFans model and published several screenshots of her members-only premium content account.
The campaign to destroy the political career of Etna Troy Township Trustee Elaine Western stemmed from reporting by local news site Real News Michiana, which first out her as a sex worker in April and is now strengthening the attempts to remove her from her chosen position.
The moralistic witch hunt, which seeks to tarnish Western’s professional activities by stigmatizing its sex work, has resulted in “a petition to have her censored, investigated and removed from her position,” Real News Michiana informed this week.
“Earlier this month, the petition received enough signatures to be sent to the Whitley County GOP for consideration,” the right-wing blog added, noting that “it is unclear whether there are truly legal remedies to have her removed without dismissal. .”
In April, Western told the site: “I didn’t try to keep it a secret. I don’t do anything illegal. I have no comment.”
Western’s lawyer wrote to the activists, saying: ‘Your letter is intended to intimidate Ms Western into resigning from office to avoid a public media circus. Therefore, I believe that your letter and any continued effort in this direction could constitute a criminal offense of harassment.”
Nationwide right-wing campaigns to remove ‘scarlet-letter’ sex workers from non-SW jobs
Republican and conservative activists and operators, aided by right-wing news media and journalists, have targeted the livelihoods of a diverse number of individuals from different walks of life because of their unrelated sex work. The smear campaigns sometimes include the non-consensual distribution of material otherwise available only on members-only paywall sites.
As XBIZ reported, during the 2023 election cycle, the Republican Party of Virginia sent a mass mailing to voters with explicit screenshots of a chaturbate cam show featuring Democratic candidate Susanna Gibson, two weeks before a highly contested election for the 57th District House seat .
The envelopes sent by the GOP outrageously warned: “Do not open if under 18 years of age” and “Warning: Explicit material enclosed.” Gibson was originally outed as a chaturbate cam performer by a Washington Post reporter, who fawningly wrote about Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, in a salacious expose that political observers believed was a smear operation engineered by Gibson’s Republican opponents.
More recently, a campaign by conservative academic authorities, spurred by Rupert Murdoch’s publications, resulted in disciplinary action and a debarment process against veteran University of Wisconsin-La Crosse communications professor Joe Gow, who, with his wife, engaged in erotic created content for OnlyFans. and occasionally also with adult performers.