Which I think gets at another source of both the comedy and the scandal. She foolishly hooked up with the man who is now president of the United Stormy Daniels March 15, 2018Ĭomes from the fact that the only thing you can hold against Clifford is that When a critic tweeted at her, “Pretty sure dumb whores go to hell,” she Isn’t putting up with such attacks and is more than able to brush them off withĪplomb. What’s novel about this story is that Clifford Usually in a sex scandal, as with Lewinsky, the woman is targeted forĭerision-tarnished, if you will. Quips being made, is based on the inversion of expectations in this story. Heer: I would also argue that the humor of my comment, and many other Insisting on it pushes it into the center of her being, at the But as far as the political discussion isĬoncerned, the fact that men fantasize about having sex with her is theirīusiness. Of “sex work” doesn’t quite fit Clifford’s significance in the publicĭiscourse, because her role in mainstream pornographic movies has already made Livingstone: I think I see what you’re driving at. Money, but is a celebrity in her industry and has a job that makes many menįantasize about having sex with her-including, of course, Trump himself. One thing I’ll say on behalf of “porn star” is that it doesĬapture something distinct about Clifford: It’s not just that she has sex for Lumping them together, as Trump himself did when he tried to pay Karen McDougalįor sex (acting on the assumption that since she was a Playboy model she was also ipso facto a prostitute). These jobs are all types of sex work but there are problems with But the termĪlso runs the risk of being too broadly used, since it covers a range ofĭifferent jobs running from exotic dancer to prostitution to performing in anĪdult movie. That Clifford’s profession is a job, not a totalizing identity. Worker” has the benefit of avoiding fraught moralistic judgements and reminds us Reductive since Clifford is much more than that-she’s also a director and,Īlthough she might not describe herself in these terms, a sex work activist whoĪlmost ran to represent Louisiana in the U.S. “Porn star” does have a retro ring to it. The right language to talk about the Clifford/Trump scandal has been a Magazine and others have used to describe Clifford’s occupation. Star” work is somehow tarnishing or dirty. She’s done as a porn star.” This joke relies on the implication that “porn In one post, youĭaniels is rightly worried that her connection with Trump will tarnish the work I’ll admit, Jeet, that I’ve been occasionally cross when reading To use when we write about political actors who are involved in sex work or
Important question that I think has been under-examined: What is the right language But when we sit down to write about Clifford, we come up against an
As writers, our jobs demand that we address In the exchange below, staff writers Josephine Livingstone and Jeet Heer talk through their own thoughts and misgivings about terms like “porn star,” the intertwined history of satire and sex, and finding the right words.Īffair with Trump.
And as a veteran of the adult film industry-both as an actress and director- she makes different demands on our language than traditional political actors. Some of her stories about the president are funny, some are lewd, some are frightening. If you know one thing about Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, it is that she is a “porn star.” It is how she is described in many newspaper headlines (“Stormy Daniels, Porn Star Suing Trump, Is Known for Her Ambition: ‘She’s the Boss’”) and it is often presented as the most salient aspect of both her identity and her relationship to Donald Trump.
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