The #MeToo movement was built on the courage to confront unhealed wounds and the nurturing blanket of sisterhood to ease the pain. Comedian Chelsea Handler is one of the movements’ biggest supporters, stepping away from her Netflix talk show to pursue political activism and fight for social justice. Handler claims it was seeing Donald Trump elected to the highest office in the land that inspired her to take action.
Handler kicked off her activism by organizing and leading a satellite Women’s March during the 2017 Sundance Festival, calling on her fellow Hollywoodites to join her in protesting the inauguration of Trump, a man accused of sexual harassment or assault by at least 19 women. Less than a month later, on February 1, 2017, Handler took to Instagram, where she acknowledged her privilege as a wealthy white woman and issued a mission statement of sorts:
“I’m not Muslim. I’m not Mexican. I’m not black. I’m not gay. I’m not transgender,” she proclaimed. “But I know this country is based on inclusiveness, on welcoming people, on loving people that are not like you, on not worrying about how something impacts your life personally, but how it impacts all the people around you and all the people that aren’t around you. It’s compassion and it’s empathy. And I will fight for it.”
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One marginalized group left out of her do-goodery: sex workers. And in case you think that was an accident, well, think again. This past week, Handler decided to lump porn stars into the same category as “wife beaters” and “child molestors” [sic] on social media, tweeting, “There is an entire generation of children who’s first memory of their President is a man who supports child molestors [sic], wife beaters, Russian hacking, and porn stars. It is our responsibility to make that a memory and not a consistency. We all have a moral obligation. Keep going.”
A moral obligation to do what, exactly? Spread ignorance? Child molesters, wife-beaters, Russian hackers, and porn stars. One of these things is not like the others.
Porn is not a crime. It is entertainment. It is the only mainstream form of entertainment where performers, rather than be appreciated, have to hide their real names. They are rewarded by being marginalized, ridiculed and often hounded in their private lives.
Sex workers fight a constant battle to have the same voice other workers do, to have the same rights, to be taken seriously, and to not be degraded because of their line of work. Handler’s conflation of sex workers with criminals perpetuates the ugliest stereotypes concerning the character of sex workers.
So that is how Handler is using her platform and voice: to put down the women working in the less safe, less remunerative and less “respectable” end of the movie business. She is punching down. How heroic is that?
“She claims to support female empowerment and all that shit. Well as a strong woman, porn helps me feel confident and I love it. She’s shaming other women that take their jobs very seriously and pay taxes just as she does. Really shitty thing to say,” wrote porn star Tana Lea.
“Chelsea Handler’s remark was particularly annoying since she’s always posting topless photos on Instagram. Feels pretty hypocritical,” adds adult actress Sydney Leathers.
The hypocrisy is particularly galling when you consider the fact that Handler once starred in her very own sex tape of sorts that she claimed to have used to “audition” for an unspecified “comedy club” gig.
Handler wasn’t the only “liberal” Hollywood celebrity publicly turning an anti-Trump stance into an anti-porn star one—A-list filmmaker Judd Apatow did it, too. Known for his breezy comedies about sex and drugs, and his online crusades against alleged abusers like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, it came as quite a shock to the adult industry when Apatow tweeted:
“Trump is pro sexual assault, anti environmentalist, anti banking regulations, pro debt, anti immigrant, pro porn star, anti women’s rights, anti health care for all, pro KFC, anti reading, anti exercise, pro domestic abusers, pro Gitmo, anti gun safety, pro P grabbing.”
When celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Judd Apatow lash out at the Trump administration, I’d presumed it was to bring attention to perceived injustices and hate, not simply pointing at others to hate instead. Perhaps they are so blinded by their Trump hatred that Stormy Daniels’ mere association with Trump has exposed an entire industry to their scorn. That’s often what happens when a member of a marginalized group gets caught up in a public controversy—the group is collectively punished.
Stormy Daniels is more than porn. And like Handler, Apatow is in a position to know better. Before she became (in)famous as Trump’s alleged mistress, Stormy was known for her cameo in the movie that put Apatow on the map: The 40-Year-Old Virgin. She is intelligent, hard-working and has handled a high-profile career both in front of and behind the camera for over a decade. She even flirted with a Senate run in her home state of Louisiana—as a Republican—in 2010.
Daniels, ever the shrewd businesswoman, has taken advantage of the ongoing presidential scandal. She’s recently launched a feature stripping tour, dubbed “Make America Horny Again,” as well as a live cam show. Her alleged affair with Trump, meanwhile, was between consenting adults, though she admitted in an interview with InTouch, “I actually don’t even know why I did it.” Daniels also claimed that Trump borrowed a page from the Harvey Weinstein playbook, enticing her with the (false?) prospect of being on his reality-TV series The Celebrity Apprentice, admitting “it was sort of what he tried to bait me with for an entire year.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about the alleged affair in the months before the presidential election. The financial arrangement, which Cohen has since said came out of his own pocket, also came shortly after porn star Jessica Drake held a press conference wherein she accused Trump of kissing her without consent and offering her $10,000 for sex at a Lake Takoe golf tourney in 2006—the same event where Trump met Stormy Daniels.
None of that necessarily makes Trump “pro-porn star.” He’s as hypocritical as they come, having signed an anti-porn pledge as a candidate, branding it a “menace” and “public health crisis.” As male porn star Ryan Driller pointed out to Apatow, “I think you may need to look harder in on trump being Pro-PornStar. Molesting them, and attempting to outlaw and threaten civil rights isn’t exactly ‘Supportive’. But thanks for diminishing my friends and I who have supported and helped you for years.”
Unlike Chelsea Handler, who has yet to respond to comment or apologize, Apatow acknowledged Driller’s comments and posted an apology of sorts: “I should have said pro cheating on his wife who just had a baby with porn stars. I see how it came across wrong. Sorry.”
Nonetheless, adult actress Carmen Valentina feels both celebrities were acting like hypocrites. “They pretend to be the people who will stand up and defend others and not judge people like the president does, then they do the exact opposite. I expect them to look in the mirror before speaking,” says Valentina. “They need to stop treating porn stars as if they are criminals…both of them have used porn to attract an audience for their work.”
While Handler and Apatow were belittling porn stars on social media, stand-up comedian Chris Rock was throwing some major shade of his own: blaming porn for his shortcomings.
On his new Netflix stand-up special Tamborine, for which he was paid a reported $20 million, the comedian pushes an anti-porn agenda. “I was not a good husband. I was fucked up. I was addicted to porn,” says Rock. “When you watch too much porn, you know what happens? Here’s what happens: You become sexually autistic. You develop sexual autism. You have a hard time with eye contact and verbal cues.”
Whether or not you blame porn for your personal failings (Rock also confessed to cheating on his wife with three women), the fact remains that “porn addiction” is scientifically unsubstantiated. So, maybe Chris Rock just was just a shitty spouse.
The point of all this, of course, isn’t to be accurate. That’s not why you find yourself a scapegoat. You use a scapegoat when you don’t want to face facts, and porn is a notoriously easy target.
Porn is entertainment. It’s fantasy. And if anyone should understand that, it’s the actors and comedians who work in the other movie industry.
