Credit card companies should stop partnering with porn websites
Credit card companies should stop partnering with porn websites
Credit card companies must stop partnering with porn websites
That's right! Stop partnering, supporting, watching, or being complicit with porn period!
#NotOnOurWatch #anticorruption #antihumantrafficking #PornHarms #EndIt N.O.W.
Shawnee Lazore HHD, PhD
Purple Hearts Missions Possible Inc. & Healthy Horizons;
Native American Warriorz Task Force
Heart Line 💜888-383-4838
Credit card companies should stop partnering with porn websites
by Haley McNamara
| February 24, 2020 12:00 AM
How can mainstream credit card companies process payments for an industry that is virtually guaranteed to profit from rape and sex trafficking?
Visa, Mastercard, and Discover partner with the pornography industry. For years, these credit card companies have processed payments for massive pornography websites such as Pornhub, Club Seventeen, Kink, and more (with names too graphic to print). By doing so, they are normalizing and supporting the pornography industry despite its sexually exploitative nature, including harm to performers, sex-trafficking victims, and even large-scale public health.
The reality is that the pornography industry is a sexually exploitative industry. Recently, mainstream pornography websites such as PornHub have even been caught hosting videos of sex-trafficked women and of a child being sexually abused.
Pornhub has claimed that it removes videos shared without all parties' consent, yet it regularly fails to remove videos of sexual assault, including sex-trafficking videos that it left up on its website for months despite a civil lawsuit having been filed on the matter.
One young woman named Rose has spoken out about how videos of her rape at the age of 14 were uploaded to Pornhub and garnered over 40,000 views. The video titles included “passed out teen” and “teen crying and getting slapped around.”
Rose has stated: "I sent Pornhub begging emails. I pleaded with them. I wrote, 'Please, I'm a minor, this was assault, please take it down.’” But the videos remained live until she resorted to impersonating a lawyer. Since speaking out about this experience, Rose says dozens of women have reached out to her with similar experiences of their assault videos being uploaded to Pornhub and the difficulty of getting them taken down.
It is essentially guaranteed that there are more videos of real-life rape and sex trafficking on Pornhub, considering the fact that the website has no age or ID verification requirement to upload a pornographic video to this site. This makes it a magnet for sex traffickers and abusers to upload content in order to control and manipulate victims further.
Further, many major pornography sites, including Pornhub, link to live webcam pornography. It is impossible for the company to verify the consent of such performers in real time. There have been many cases of sex-trafficking victims (including children) being forced to perform live webcam pornography from the Philippines, Australia, and other countries.
Beyond these horrific problems, the day-to-day functioning of the pornography industry is anything but respectable. The mainstream pornography industry is churning out videos with themes of incest, racism, and nearly omnipresent violence against women. Pornhub hosts popular videos featuring themes of homeless teens, assaulting drunk women and girls, and kidnapping. Further, Pornhub hosts several racist channels, including Exploited Black Teens, Exploited African Immigrants, African Sex Slaves, and more.
Research also shows that the pornography industry inflicts both physical and mental trauma on performers. A 2011 study found that “female adult film performers have significantly worse mental health and higher rates of depression than other California women of similar ages.” Another study reported that pornography performers can experience physical trauma on the film set, often leave the industry with financial insecurity and mental health problems, and also experience health risks that aren’t limited to sexually transmitted diseases.
Female pornography performers have even been sex trafficked and sexually abused by high-profile pornography producers and male fellow performers.
Despite all of these concerns, the pornography industry is actively lobbying against reforms to protect performers.
For instance, the industry has lobbied against protections meant to ensure that children and minors are not used in mainstream pornography. It has also lobbied against common-sense protections to performers’ physical and sexual health despite the fact that research has found that pornography performers have a ‘high burden’ of sexually transmitted disease. This burden includes and extends well beyond the risk of HIV infection.
Is this the kind of industry that should be supported by mainstream companies? PayPal didn’t think so, which is why it recently stopped processing payments for the porn industry.
The pornography industry is not “adult entertainment.” It is commercialized sexual exploitation. Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and other credit card companies should follow PayPal's example and exit the pornography industry en masse to make it clear that they stand on the side of survivors and human dignity.
Haley McNamara (@HaleyMcNamara) is Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
Opinion
Credit card companies must stop partnering with porn websites
That's right! Stop partnering, supporting, watching, or being complicit with porn period!
#NotOnOurWatch #anticorruption #antihumantrafficking #PornHarms #EndIt N.O.W.
Shawnee Lazore HHD, PhD
Purple Hearts Missions Possible Inc. & Healthy Horizons;
Native American Warriorz Task Force
Heart Line 💜888-383-4838
Credit card companies should stop partnering with porn websites
by Haley McNamara
| February 24, 2020 12:00 AM
How can mainstream credit card companies process payments for an industry that is virtually guaranteed to profit from rape and sex trafficking?
Visa, Mastercard, and Discover partner with the pornography industry. For years, these credit card companies have processed payments for massive pornography websites such as Pornhub, Club Seventeen, Kink, and more (with names too graphic to print). By doing so, they are normalizing and supporting the pornography industry despite its sexually exploitative nature, including harm to performers, sex-trafficking victims, and even large-scale public health.
The reality is that the pornography industry is a sexually exploitative industry. Recently, mainstream pornography websites such as PornHub have even been caught hosting videos of sex-trafficked women and of a child being sexually abused.
Pornhub has claimed that it removes videos shared without all parties' consent, yet it regularly fails to remove videos of sexual assault, including sex-trafficking videos that it left up on its website for months despite a civil lawsuit having been filed on the matter.
One young woman named Rose has spoken out about how videos of her rape at the age of 14 were uploaded to Pornhub and garnered over 40,000 views. The video titles included “passed out teen” and “teen crying and getting slapped around.”
Rose has stated: "I sent Pornhub begging emails. I pleaded with them. I wrote, 'Please, I'm a minor, this was assault, please take it down.’” But the videos remained live until she resorted to impersonating a lawyer. Since speaking out about this experience, Rose says dozens of women have reached out to her with similar experiences of their assault videos being uploaded to Pornhub and the difficulty of getting them taken down.
It is essentially guaranteed that there are more videos of real-life rape and sex trafficking on Pornhub, considering the fact that the website has no age or ID verification requirement to upload a pornographic video to this site. This makes it a magnet for sex traffickers and abusers to upload content in order to control and manipulate victims further.
Further, many major pornography sites, including Pornhub, link to live webcam pornography. It is impossible for the company to verify the consent of such performers in real time. There have been many cases of sex-trafficking victims (including children) being forced to perform live webcam pornography from the Philippines, Australia, and other countries.
Beyond these horrific problems, the day-to-day functioning of the pornography industry is anything but respectable. The mainstream pornography industry is churning out videos with themes of incest, racism, and nearly omnipresent violence against women. Pornhub hosts popular videos featuring themes of homeless teens, assaulting drunk women and girls, and kidnapping. Further, Pornhub hosts several racist channels, including Exploited Black Teens, Exploited African Immigrants, African Sex Slaves, and more.
Research also shows that the pornography industry inflicts both physical and mental trauma on performers. A 2011 study found that “female adult film performers have significantly worse mental health and higher rates of depression than other California women of similar ages.” Another study reported that pornography performers can experience physical trauma on the film set, often leave the industry with financial insecurity and mental health problems, and also experience health risks that aren’t limited to sexually transmitted diseases.
Female pornography performers have even been sex trafficked and sexually abused by high-profile pornography producers and male fellow performers.
Despite all of these concerns, the pornography industry is actively lobbying against reforms to protect performers.
For instance, the industry has lobbied against protections meant to ensure that children and minors are not used in mainstream pornography. It has also lobbied against common-sense protections to performers’ physical and sexual health despite the fact that research has found that pornography performers have a ‘high burden’ of sexually transmitted disease. This burden includes and extends well beyond the risk of HIV infection.
Is this the kind of industry that should be supported by mainstream companies? PayPal didn’t think so, which is why it recently stopped processing payments for the porn industry.
The pornography industry is not “adult entertainment.” It is commercialized sexual exploitation. Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and other credit card companies should follow PayPal's example and exit the pornography industry en masse to make it clear that they stand on the side of survivors and human dignity.
Haley McNamara (@HaleyMcNamara) is Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
Opinion
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