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Porn Stars on Celebrities Comparing Them to Child Molesters, Wife Beaters and Russian Hackers

Chelsea Handler and Judd Apatow pissed off a bunch of porn performers on Sunday when they lumped them into their latest tweets about Trump:

This being Twitter, though, the porn community was quick to fire back — including its favorite radical philosopher Conner Habib:

Nor did the clapbacks stop with Habib:

“Judd Apatow should’ve said ‘pro-infidelity’ and left it at that,” queer porn performer Jiz Lee tells me yesterday. “Too often, Hollywood cashes in on the easy punchline about sex workers for its shock value. Here we know ‘porn star’ references the recent reports of Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels. Had Stormy worked in the medical field, Apatow probably wouldn’t have said, “Pro-nurses.” More importantly, the story wouldn’t have made the news, as surely Stormy isn’t alone. In this case, the ‘novelty’ of her profession is likely what caused the story to surface, something progressive women like Handler might as well be a little grateful for.”

“Speaking of Handler,” Lee continues, “she’s being hypocritical because she enjoys liberated nude bodily expressions (i.e., the ‘freedom of speech’ that pornography helps to protect), and celebrities like herself often ‘get away’ with nudity while sex worker’s social media accounts are suspended indefinitely for similar posts, or nude images are presented in court as evidence of how we’re unfit parents in child custody battles. Therefore, the movement to decriminalize sex work is something any feminist-identified celebrity should rally behind.”

For his part, Apatow did sorta apologize later in the day:

“These days, I know that when people are hung up on what I do, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them,” says veteran performer Tasha Reign. “Porn actors get a lot projected onto us. It comes from all sorts of people, too. Democrats, Republicans, liberal media people and conservative politicians all hate on us. Even though I’m super sensitive when it comes to people talking about us like this, I’ve never been so comfortable living my life as an adult performer as I am right now, so being hated on like this acts as a harsh reminder of how a lot of people really feel about our industry.”

In reality, as Habib explains, we could all probably learn a thing or two from the professionals:

Tierney Finster

Tierney Finster is a journalist, screenwriter, actor and model from Los Angeles, California. She is a contributing writer at MEL, specializing in love, sex, mental health, drugs, queer culture and the cannabis industry. She has written for publications such as Playboy, Purple, Dazed and Confused, Jezebel and Broadly and was the key researcher behind Sex On, HBO’s revival of its iconoclastic docu-series Real Sex.

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