Adult film stars speak out on the possibility of porn being taxed to raise money for Trump’s border wall
Last week republican lawmaker Gail Griffin proposed taxing pornography to raise funds to build President Donald Trump’s border wall. Griffin proposed charging $20 for each time viewers want to watch porn online, according to Arizona Republic. It comes as no surprise that adult film stars themselves are less than thrilled with this idea, especially since much of their content is already heavily pirated and the money from their own work would not be going into their own pockets.
MEAWW spoke with Ela Darling, adult film performer and CMO of PVR and Sofia Rose who is the Ultimate BBW Porn Star and International Fetish model, who are both adamantly against what they both call a ridiculous idea. First of all, the porn industry has gone through many changes in the past two decades with almost all of the content being online instead of on DVDs. Many porn stars have adapted to this new model by creating their own content and being subscription based. That said, the industry has taken a massive hit with all of the pirating going on and they not getting paid for much of their online content. Darling spoke on how this would not only affect their industry in a negative way, but the idea is also detrimental to the performers themselves.
“People not paying for content is already such a problem in our industry, but with the rate people are pirating porn there’s a decent amount of the industry that has adapted to it. But with this specific idea, all it’s gonna do is make people distance themselves even more from paying for the content. It would be a little less awful if the people proposing this ridiculous initiative ever treated us with any humanity, which they don’t with sex workers in general. Overall, it’s upsetting. They are trying to use my genitals to pay for what is essentially a hate structure, which has no basis in reality in the first place.”
While Rose agrees with Darling in that she hates the idea, she has a bit of a different opinion in that she believes there should be a way to stop people from coming illegally into this country, but Trump’s wall is certainly not the answer to the problem. In fact, Rose is Mexican American herself and most of her family immigrated to the US from Mexico in the 1940s, so her opinion isn’t necessarily a biased one, she sees both sides.
“Bottom line, it’s a waste of money. You could put a wall up and border patrol, but it’s not going to stop people. I’m fifth generation Mexican, my family has been here a long time and if people want to be here they are going to get here…that’s just the culture, they will find a way. And it’s not just Mexicans, it’s all of Latin cultures. They are very aggressive, stubborn and persistent and we see that constantly and I don’t see it changing anything. If we build a wall, we will have more cost and more crime.”
Both women agree, however, that the government targeting the adult film industry is no coincidence, especially given Trump’s animosity towards sex workers after the Stormy Daniels incident. In fact, Darling sees it as an all-out attack on her industry.
“In a way I see this as kind of punishing the porn industry, because one of our own had the audacity to take a very public and damning stance against the president. It’s hard not to see this as them striking back on a very strong industry with very strong people who they have vilified forever. And despite that we had a very brilliant strong person do something that was unparalleled and the rest of us for the most part stand behind her….it’s hard not to feel like they are striking back against us. I don’t really see how this is ever going to work, but also, if you are going to start taxing porn why not put that towards caring for performers and sex workers and providing resources that we actually need?”
Rose expanded on this sentiment, and talked about how this idea likely comes from a lot of hate towards the adult film industry itself. Why porn? Why not other industries that are far more harmful to this country?
“Porn and the adult community is absolutely targeted by Trump because of his own faults and weaknesses when it comes to adult content and performers. So I definitely think that it was something targeted towards a demographic that he hates because he thinks we made him look bad, but really, he made himself look bad. I feel like there are so many other things that could be taxed that are vices that actually hurt people like taxing more on cigarettes, alcohol, gambling….legalized prostitution, tax that, don’t just target adult film. I still don’t want any of those things going to a border wall because I don’t think that it is going to stop anything.”
