Since OnlyFans announced—and then quickly reversed—a porn ban, fellow porn stars and I have asked each other the same question: “Where is our Larry Flynt?”
If you don’t spend all day on sex worker Twitter, let me give you the CliffsNotes version of the assault on porn. A few years ago, Exodus Cry, an offshoot of Missouri’s International House of Prayer (or IHOP), which at one time supported the Uganda law that made gay sex a crime punishable by death, began pushing the narrative that the porn industry is involved in a vast sex-trafficking conspiracy. Feminist actresses like Melissa McCarthy supported their claims (she later apologized), but they mostly remained a fringe organization. That is until The New York Times published a story late last year accusing Pornhub of allowing users to upload child pornography and revenge porn. Many details were tragic, accurate, and disgusting, but victims’ rights advocates swiftly pointed out that Facebook distributes way more child porn than any other site on earth, with 20.3 million cases compared to Pornhub’s 13,229.
If Exodus Cry and the Times really wanted to protect children, why didn’t they target Facebook?
The truth was that they wanted to eradicate the adult industry—in 2018, Exodus Cry’s tax filings revealed that the company had amended their mission statement to include “abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry.”
And their plan is working.
In 2021, Mastercard and Visa stopped processing purchases of legal, adult content on Pornhub. OnlyFans briefly banned porn because of pressure from banks. The stress on sex workers is unbearable, and it won’t ease up anytime soon. Right after last week’s OnlyFans announcement, Exodus Cry’s spokeswoman, Laila Mickelwait, tweeted that Twitter is her next target. Evangelicals won’t rest until the legal porn industry is eradicated.
But most porn stars are nervous, unwilling or don’t know how to fight back—other than by firing off some angry tweets. Sure, Twitter has helped stop younger reporters from following the lead of the old bags at the Times, but I doubt the CEO of Mastercard checks in on sex worker Twitter. Over the past few days, I’ve told other porn stars we need more than Twitter, but most say they want to avoid the controversy because sticking their heads out could make them targets. Who can blame them? In the war on porn, anyone publicly associated with adult performers can be smeared and harassed. But if sex workers don’t strategize, seek assistance, and take the fight off our computer screens and into the streets, we won’t even be worth targeting. Our businesses will be gone. Or worse, sex work will only exist illegally in alleyways and the dark web, where women (which performers or sex workers are more likely to be) will be abused.
History shows us a path forward. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan launched a similar war on porn. He instructed Attorney General Edwin Meese to investigate the adult industry, scouring the San Fernando Valley for allegations of violence against children and women. Just like today, conservatives united with feminists, like Andrea Dworkin, to pass porn bans. Up until the mid-’80s, it looked like these censorious villains would triumph—and also, like today, most of the adult world hid in their homes in Sherman Oaks instead of fighting back. Everyone believed silence would silence their critics—everyone except Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. While his colleagues called him nuts, Flynt hired a militia’s worth of lawyers and lobbyists. He defended himself against Reverend Jerry Falwell’s lawsuit, eventually winning in the Supreme Court, and fought against numerous proposed porn bans. Over and over, Flynt paid to support the industry, and he protected our rights to sell footage of ourselves fucking on camera. And most importantly, Flynt won.
To defeat Exodus Cry and our other opponents, we need to study Flynt and sex work history, then deploy a multi-pronged defense to combat our enemies. I have some ideas on where we can start.
Donate to Our Lobbyists
Sex work is far from the only controversial billion-dollar industry in America. (Have you ever heard of weapons companies and oil conglomerates?) But unlike other despised businesses, we spend little defending ourselves. Many porn stars claim we can’t afford to fight back, but that’s bullshit. According to an NBC interview with Kassia Wosick, assistant professor of sociology at El Camino College, American porn was a $10-12 billion industry in 2015. With the increase in porn purchases, it’s likely even higher today. If we spent 1 percent of porn’s annual gross on lobbyists and political donations, we could spend $100 million on lobbyists. The amount would be more than a fourth of what the oil and gas sector spent in the 2017-2018 political cycle.
The problem is porn is an industry comprised of hundreds, if not thousands, of independent contractors. We sell our porn on OnlyFans and numerous other online platforms, making more than many household-name porn stars made in the ’80s and ’90s, but we also compete with all our colleagues. When you ask a porn star to donate to a porn group, you get rebuffed. We need to stop thinking like hustlers and start thinking like the tycoons running the oil biz.
Oil companies donate millions annually to the American Petroleum Institute. (According to The Guardian, Shell forked over $10 million in a single year.) I propose sex workers start contributing to the Free Speech Coalition. The group has lobbied on behalf of the porn industry for years. On the FSC’s website, pornographers can donate directly to their lobbying efforts or pay $10 a month as a member.
To defeat our enemies, who are lobbying Congress for bills that would push us out of business, we must agree to donate a percentage of our income to the group to defend us. If we don’t spend some money, we won’t earn any money at all.
Stop Yelling at Journalists and Start Talking to Them
Right now, we have a bad cop approach to the press. Porn stars spend hours yelling at reporters on Twitter. It’s done a tremendous job frightening younger reporters out of smearing us because they fear sex worker Twitter’s backlash. But older journalists have no clue who we are; elderly BBC producers don’t go on Twitter. Some sex workers need to start kissing up to the media. We need to DM reporters, invite them to dinner, show up at the restaurant in a business suit, pay for their wine, and convince them to trust us as sources. Many reporters go to Laila Mickelwait because she’s networked with them, and she’s presented herself as a credible source. If journalists knew a sex worker they viewed as trustworthy, they would likely quote us. They’re not going to come to us if we scream at them all day. Nobody in history has ever won over an opponent by yelling at them. To win the media, we need good cops and bad cops. Right now, we mostly have bad cops, so we’re losing.
Go Out and Network
Sex workers know how to market on a budget. Many of us are more famous than mainstream stars, even though we lack social media managers and publicists. We can sell the hell out of our bodies to the people who will buy our content, but we do a terrible job promoting ourselves to people who don’t consider us jack-off material. We need to organize and brainstorm strategies to change public sentiment.
A great historical example of what works comes from Exodus Cry’s previous target, deceased pimp Dennis Hof. He owned the Bunny Ranch, probably the most famous legal brothel in the world. Aware his enemies might one day falsely smear him as a sex trafficker, Hof campaigned against sex trafficking, arguing that prostitution bans could never stop males’ demand for prostitutes. Legal brothels curbed sex trafficking because brothels offer men a regulated space to fuck sex workers, and men would always prefer to go to a legal business. After all, the criminal charges for illegally paying for sex aren’t worth it if you can seek out a legal alternative. Hof took his campaign so far as to donate to the local Evangelical church near his brothel and eat breakfast every weekend at the ultra-socially conservative veterans’ hangout.
We need to start meeting with the churches, community groups, and other organizations in our communities to show that sex workers are good people too.
Play Offense
The master of playing offense was none other than the late, great Larry Flynt. At the height of the Monica Lewinsky saga, Flynt offered a bounty for anyone who could prove a socially conservative Republican politician was carrying out sexual affairs. Flynt received evidence of House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston cheating on his wife multiple times and published the material. Livingston was forced to resign.
Today, sex workers need to go on the offensive. We need to target our opponents and shame them, so companies fear us. When companies fear us, they don’t fuck with us. Right now, they push us around because they believe we will stay quiet. We need to fight back, so they know it’s bad for business to cross us.
To put my money where my mouth is, I will be organizing a protest against our enemies in the war on porn. If you are a sex worker or sex work ally who would like to join us at a future rally, please fill out this form, and I will be in touch soon.
It’s fundamental we unite to combat the forces that want to bring us down. It’s cheesy, but there’s more of us than them. Together, we can win—but only if we start fighting now.
We can’t wait for a new Flynt to come around. We must be our own Larry Flynt.
