Porn stars vs. PayPal

I am not a criminal, though it’s likely that at some point I’ll be asked to have sex on a prison cell set. That’s because I’m a successful pornographic adult film actress. I’m also a model, a soon-to-be graduate from UCLA, a sister, daughter, girlfriend, business owner and cat lover. My career is legal in America, and I pay taxes on all my income. However, financial corporations such as PayPal, and more recently JPMorgan Chase, are hiding behind protective “morality clauses” in order to reject my business. It’s as though my money is stained by something worse than blood: the bodily fluids of the sex industry.

Sex aside, I am just like every other small-business owner. More than a year ago, I spent a lot of money creating an online store for my fans to buy movies, signed photos, clothing from scenes, personal Skype shows, magazines and adult-entertainment-related paraphernalia. I chose PayPal to process my payments based on its reputation as a universal, mainstream brand that people trust. PayPal was already servicing large multimillion-dollar sites selling X-rated products, such as eBay, so I figured it was the ideal choice.

I was finally beginning to see revenue come in from my e-store when I received a notice from PayPal informing me that it was terminating my account. I asked some of my fellow porn stars if they’d been told the same thing, and received several different responses. Some of my colleagues said they’d had funds frozen for three months until PayPal gave them permission to finally access the money. My own notice said PayPal could refund money to any clients who complained about my product without telling me (to my knowledge, no one has complained). My access to the account was immediately limited, but later I was able to transfer the money out into my bank account. It took numerous phone calls to find someone who gave me a “straight” answer as to why this was happening. A male representative of PayPal told me the business I was involved with — meaning sex and porn — could not use their financial services. When I asked why, I was directed to PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. Despite my complaints about discriminatory practices, the representative said the company would never allow porn to be sold or purchased through its site.

After writing countless emails petitioning the decision for over a month, I finally received a firm ruling: “You are in violation of the User Agreement, the Commercial Entity Agreement, the Acceptable Use Policy, or another agreement you have with PayPal.” I then took it upon myself to sift through PayPal’s vague outlines of acceptable transactions, where I found a nondescriptive phrase lumped in with details of illegal and violent crimes — PayPal would not allow the sale of “certain sexually oriented materials or services.”

So I did what any reasonable businessperson would do, and immediately opened another account under my legal name, Rachel Swimmer. PayPal quickly made the association between Rachel and Tasha Reign (I’ve been pretty open about my personal life for the past few years), and shut the new account down before I could accept or send money. I appealed, saying the new account was solely for personal uses such as shopping on websites Etsy.com and GrubHub.com, which only use PayPal, but to no avail. After a month of appeals, I received the final decision — a refusal of service, without any specifics about the illegal or unsafe nature of my business. They only noted it was a security risk, though the only thing at risk was the delicate moral consciousness of PayPal. The irony of a financial institution inflicting its own notions of morals upon the rest of us is not lost on me.

Two months ago, I began reaching out to my fellow porn stars about their own experiences with PayPal — women including Bonnie Rotten, Spencer Scott and Teal Conrad, all well-known performers in the industry. They all sent me copies of their rejection letters, but only one of them had received a clear-cut reason as to why she was turned down. The following are portions from PayPal’s email to Teal Conrad, used with her permission:

We have recently reviewed your PayPal account activity, and determined that you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales / offers of cam shows … As a result, your account has been permanently limited and this cannot be appealed.

Per the PayPal User Agreement, which you read and accepted when you created your account, we reserve the right to permanently limit an account due to an Acceptable Use Policy violation. We may hold any available balance in your PayPal account for up to 180 days. In addition, you may be liable for any amount of damages PayPal incurs for each violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.

Please remove all references to PayPal from your website/s and/or auction/s. This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but also the PayPal logo and PayPal shopping cart.

Under the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene.

Apparently PayPal presumes to define what is obscene, rather than yielding to accepted social standards, in this case as defined by American law in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. California, also referred to as the Miller test. My movies are legally sold all over the United States, making PayPal’s presumptions as to what qualifies as obscene preposterous. I am a gender studies major at a top university, a human rights activist and someone who tries to always stand up for my chosen industry. As intimidating as it is to speak out against a massive corporation, I am not opposed to filing a class action lawsuit in order to try and perpetuate change from this oppressive practice. The company’s views on pornography enforce a belief that pornography is wrong and not socially accepted, though the law states otherwise. It’s also not PayPal’s place to decide.

The Internet has been a blessing and a curse for the porn industry.  While the easier access and autonomy has greatly increased the number of consumers, especially women, it has also led to piracy. In order to supplement lost wages from piracy, many in the industry have expanded beyond simply performing in movies for a paycheck to participating in or running e-commerce sites, production, DVD sales and web-cam work.  That’s what my online business sells, and I now rely on these alternate methods of income to pay my bills and school tuition, as well as reinvest in my company, Reign Productions.

Payment processing services such as PayPal are extremely important to those of us in the adult entertainment industry. In addition to allowing for privacy protections on both sides of the transaction (for the performer as well as the consumer/fan), it allows for expedient payment processing where funds are guaranteed. For large financial institutions and payment processing services, refusing our industry means also rejecting a large profit: Despite the impact of piracy, the adult entertainment industry is still a multibillion dollar business. Rejecting banking fees, interest rates and payment-processing fees from an industry that makes more than $3,000 a second does not make any financial sense. Is our industry so “dirty” that they would shun these sorts of profits?

Most people reading this article are probably not sex workers, and may not see why this affects them. But hear me out: The slut-shaming by PayPal, Chase and other financial institutions directly affects anyone who may not fit into a narrow, corporate idea of what constitutes an acceptable business. It wasn’t so long ago when race and gender determined whether you could open a bank account; now those of us who choose a job where we have sex with other consenting adults are being discriminated against with impunity. Tomorrow, it could very easily be those who watch pornography in the privacy of their home who find themselves without access to an account. It’s a slippery slope, so it’s up to us to publicize these terrible business practices and stand up for ourselves before another misguided corporation’s interpretation of the law makes it impossible for more people to do business.