Thread by @RGC_BPPA

Now, allow me to preface this with the caveat that I bear no ill will towards Mia Khalifa for her personal decision to walk away from porn. Time and people do change.

Having said that....this is a bad take.

Let's remember that Ms. Khalifa originally made her porn profits and noteriety using the early iternerations of YouTube and Pornhub as free upselling for her paid sites. That's not exactly the prototype of "the porn industry".

Even more than that, both YT and Pornhub tend to attract the more.....shall we say.....visceral type of "porn fan" who is the most aggressive towards women who flash their boobs and booty on free apps, but don't want to actually pay them for the effort.

As nearly any cam girl or porn performer will tell you, if you get slammed with enough dick pics and pestered with enough requests for free tittage and split beaver and close-up butthole shots, that will cool your ardor to do porn very quickly.

However, that is an issue of attracting more of the stupider or the lazier or simply the greedier of "porn fandom".

That'll happen with even the best of performers; thick skin along with nurturing your good paying fans who respect you and your product can overcome the bullshit.

Of course, there's no shame in having a cam girl or performer simply say that she's had it with it, that it's not working out anymore, and that it's time to turn the page to another chapter. Stuff happens, you know.

What's more problematic, though, is how MK is now flipping her notoriety as "Pornhub's original first porn star" on its head to sell a rabidly antiporn message against not only the entire industry, but also restigmatization of all women doing sex work.

Her main complaint that the original owners of her website used her talents and took all her money is legitimate and even typical of what women entering porn who don't get the big name Mindgeek sites' contracts have to face.

But...is that necessarily a porn problem solely?

Getting ripped by your first contract is kind of the standard on most professions where talent sells itself.

That's an issue with actually existing capitalism where workers have no control over their production.

In an industry with collective bargining or where the individual has enough star power, a bad contract can be either renegotiated (like in WR Michael Thomas' deal with the Saints), or the performer can create independent means of income.

Because sex work is still highly stigmatized and still only quasi-legal (and outright illegal in most aspects), however, there is little recourse available for those who don't have the organization or the skills of negotiation.

Also, in a social media world where it is still quite easy to demonize "sluts" and "whores" as less than deserving of equality and dignity and respect, it becomes a battle for those who get caught between the cracks to get recognition.

It's much easier for these women, especially if their initial notoriety has launched them into the vortex of social media, to play the game of "image restitution" by repudiating their "whorish" past by blaming porn and "the porn industry" for "abuse".

Remember Farrah Abraham (aka "Octmom") and her foray into porn?

Remember how she briefly scored a contract to do porn, only to later claim that she was "abused" and "raped" just for more media publicity for her book?

That's the template that Mia Khalifa's playing right now.

Condemning porn users as knuckle-dragging lowlifes and porn producers/webmasters/companies as the equivalent of Big Tobacco mass killers still has real cutting edge for rebranding yourself as a "refined good girl" in today's society.

But...there's something else going on here as well.

There are still huge chunks of the Left that are under the influence of antiporn "feminism" and Left Puritanism, which states that sex irredemable by "intimacy" and "love" is illegitimate and potentially abusive...

...and that porn is merely men advertising their base sexual instincts to degrade, abuse, and ultimately rape women.

In effect, in their eyes, porn is the graphical equivalent of "prostitution" and "men buying and selling women for sex".

Women and young girls who venture in porn, though, are more tagged as "victims being exploited" by "corporations" rather than merely "stupid and vain sluts/whores looking for attention and a quick payday".

The latter attitude does tend to seep just below the surface, though.

Also, the more successful women in sex work who do manage to keep their humanity and get paid reasonably well are then pilloried as "porn lobbyists" and "liars" who put their personal pleasure and profit above "the common women's plight" of degradation and abuse.

It's the same approach that SWERFs take towards advocates of decriminalization....and pretty much the same undercurrent of sex shaming and sex hating.

But at least, the Left Puritans and antiporn Leftists do have some sympathy towards sex workers not to dismiss their struggles....as long as it fits their narrative templates of them being "victims of capitalist exploitation".

In that aspect, sex workers defending their humanity, their right to their profession, their right to use their bodies as they see fit safely and sanely, and their right to fair compensation for their talents, is a bridge too far for Left Puritans.

The rest of us on the Left who aren't into shaming consenting adults for their choices of whom and how they engage sex, and who are far more concerned with actual exploitation and abuse in all aspects of life, need to build that bridge with sex workers.

That doesn't mean denying that performers like Mia Khalifa don't get shafted by bad contracts and idiot 'fans". It means that sex workers should be empowered to organize themselves so that they can better protect and defend themselves from those things.

In any case, this is another instance where the old meme applies:

Don't hate the players....CHANGE the game.

/fini

For the benefit of those in the back....

@threadreaderapp, Unroll, if you please.