Sex Negativity

Over the past three days, 3,996 people have donated to the GoFundMe campaign of Darren Wilson, the officer who fatally shot Michael Brown. Among his supporters is the KKK, which is raising money for what they term the officer’s “reward/fund.” GoFundMe works with WePay, a money transfer company finicky about its image. WePay has cancelled the campaigns of a number of sex workers across crowdfunding platforms for the flimsiest reasons. But from the looks of this, they’re okay with murderous racism.

On Valentine’s Day, the Duke Chronicle ran a piece about a Duke freshman who spent her breaks in Los Angeles shooting porn. The student, who was given the pseudonym “Lauren”, told reporter Katie Fernelius that the idea to go into the adult industry first came to her while grappling with the question of paying for her education. This is the story of what happened next.

Silicon Valley has to get smarter about the fact that adult content has a place in society. To continue to exploit it for traffic while making it impossible for creators to equally profit is an outrage. But the worst part is what the heavy-handed treatment of all things related to sex signals, whether these things are imagery or educational materials: that sex is something that has no place in our lives. Sex does have a place in our lives.