While progressive activists from coast-to-coast are calling for the defunding of law enforcement, actor Terry Crews wants the world’s largest pornography website stripped of the millions of dollars it attracts.
In an all-caps tweet posted this week, the “America’s Got Talent” host published the two-word message and tagged the anti-pornography group Fight the New Drug.
With that tweet, Crews seemingly endorsed the fast-growing petition to have Pornhub shuttered. The appeal, which has garnered north of 1.5 million signatures from 192 different countries, was started by activist Laila Mickelwait, director of abolition for Exodus Cry, in response to the fact the MindGeek-owned website is profiting from sex trafficking as well as the rape and abuse of women and children.
“Dude, no,” responded one Twitter user. “Masturbation is healthy, self love is healthy. Pornhub gives safe platforms to sex workers — to say nothing of the artists who got kicked off Tumblr — and generates revenue for them. Are there issues with the industry? Absolutely. Is going after Pornhub the answer? No.”
The problem, though, is he’s wrong. Mickelwait told Faithwire she’s heard from multiple pornographic actors and producers pulling content from Pornhub because the outlet is “profiting from the rape and trafficking of women and children.” It’s far from a “safe” platform.
And just to be clear, pornographers weren’t “kicked off” Tumblr just because the site didn’t want to publish explicit content. Rather, much like Pornhub, the microblogging site had become a cesspool of child pornography.
Even Jenna Jameson, a former prolific porn actor, has sided with Crews’ call to “defund” Pornhub, which she said this month is “profiting off rape and torture.”
It’s hardly difficult to prove just how problematic Pornhub is. Last year, law enforcement officers found just shy of 60 explicit videos on the site of a missing, underage teenage girl. And according to a federal indictment, “Girls Do Porn” producer Michael Pratt coerced 22 young women into performing sexual acts for videos they never knew would ultimately be uploaded to the smut site. Pratt, still a wanted fugitive who fled the U.S. to New Zealand, is also guilty of producing child pornography and sexually trafficking a minor. Many of his videos can still, to this day, be found on Pornhub.
Though he has detractors, there have been other Twitter users voicing support for Crews’ broadside against Pornhub. One respondent wrote, “Amen, brother. I’m with you,” adding, “Pornography sites are dangerous [because] they keep people in serious bondage to sin.”
As for why this petition in particular has garnered so much attention, Mickelwait believes it’s in part due to the fact that people “are finally really realizing what trafficking is and the way that people are being exploited.”
She went on to say the reason people like the “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star have spoken out against Pornhub’s extensive library of illicit content is because, when they learn about the horrors of what’s happening on the MindGeek site, they feel “compelled to do something” about it.
“So I think what’s happening is the message is getting out far enough that it’s reaching all these people of influence, and once they hear about it, they’re really compelled to use their platforms to tell others,” Mickelwait explained. “I think that’s what’s taking place, and hopefully, as time goes on, we’re gonna reach more and more influencers and average citizens, because it’s really both of these groups of people together that are gonna make a difference.”
As protests and riots have continued in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer, Pornhub has jumped on the bandwagon, issuing a declaration in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The pornography site released a statement, claiming it “stands in solidarity against racism and social injustice,” urging visitors to donate to “civil rights organizations.”
The smut outlet was, of course, then roundly rebuked by anti-pornography groups because the site has published a nearly endless stream of disgustingly racist content. Here are a few title examples:
“If you go on Pornhub, they’re not just profiting off of the exploitation, the rape and trafficking of women and children, they’re also profiting off of extreme racism — and I mean extreme,” said Mickelwait, noting there are so many examples of videos “eroticizing” the brutalization of people of color.
Nevertheless, the grotesque website continues to rake in millions upon millions of dollars. According to Mickelwait, Pornhub hosts around six million videos every year that, counted together, generate more than 40 million visitors, bringing in mammoth revenue.
Crews, who is Christian, has become something of a pariah on social media, drawing the ire of CNN’s Don Lemon as well as countless Black Lives Matter activists who have repeatedly called him “worthless” — among other things — for warning against the campaign morphing into a push for racial supremacy.
The actor and reality TV host has been ridiculed for his warning, though it seems to have come true. This week, entertainer Nick Cannon said white people, who have less melanin in their skin than black people, are “closer to animals” and are “the true savages” who are “acting out of a deficiency so the only way they can act is evil.”
ViacomCBS has since fired Cannon for his racist comments. You can read more about that issue here and here.