The credit card company, Visa, is partnering with the pornography industry by processing payments for pornography with themes of sexual violence, racism, incest, and the fetishization of minors.
By doing so, Visa is supporting and normalizing the pornography industry, despite its sexually exploitive nature including harm to performers, sex trafficking victims, and even large scale public health.
The pornography industry is not “just another industry.”
The pornography industry has actively lobbied against protections meant to ensure 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.
Mainstream pornography websites like PornHub, which Visa partners with, have even been caught hosting videos of sex-trafficked women and of a child being sexually abused. Is this the kind of content Visa is willing to endorse?
Research is also clear that the pornography industry inflicts both physical and mental trauma on performers.
A 2011 study found, “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 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.
Some high-profile pornography producers have even been accused of sex trafficking performers.
