In the name of combating “sex trafficking,” banks and other financial institutions, including the online payments giant PayPal, continue to freeze out sexually oriented businesses, even some that have been recommended by therapists to patients struggling with sexual identity issues, a lengthy report published by Vice.com on Thursday reveals.
The Vice report focuses on Genevieve LeJeune, founder of Skirt Club, a women-only “private members network for the curious kind; both intellectually and sexually. We exist to embolden women at a time when sexual fluidity is embraced.”
Skirt Club has been labeled an “orgy club” due to its signature private parties at which members meet at secret locations to “watch burlesque, listen to presentations on topics such as Japanese rope bondage, and, if they so choose, have sex with one another.”
Soliciting or paying for sex is prohibited by Skirt Club’s rules, and LeJeune says that “therapists have pointed their clients in our direction because they view us as a safe space for women who are unsure of, or want to experience more of their sexuality.”
Nonetheless, LeJeune has seen her Skirt Club account with HSBC frozen twice by the United Kingdom-based multinational bank twice already this year, cutting off her access to about nearly $25,000 in cash reserves crucial to operating her business, she told Vice.
In addition, she said, the bank offered no information about how she would be able to retrieve her money. “As a small business, that’s crushing,” she told Vice reporter Diana Hubbell.
After repeated protests, HSBC simply sent her a check for the money—and summarily closed her account.
In addition, PayPal froze the 12,000-member Skirt Club’s assets for six months just as LeJeune was attempting to launch the business. And in June of this year, the credit card processing service Stripe sent her a letter out of the blue informing her that it would no longer process her transactions, according to Hubbell’s report.
Adding a condescending insult to injury, the payment processor told LeJeune, “What you're doing is extremely important for the [LGBTQ] community, and I hope you find a payment processor that is perfectly suited for your business.”
But the issues are far from unique to Skirt Club. According to Lorrae Jo Bradbury, who founded the women’s sex-positive blog Slutty Girl Problems, incidents of financial institutions cutting off or freezing the assets of sexually oriented businesses have spiked since last year’s passage of the FOSTA/SESTA anti-“sex trafficking” law, as AVN.com has covered.
In fact, bipartisan legislation passed by the United States House last year—but still awaiting a vote in the Senate—would take aim at “money laundering” by “sex traffickers,” as AVN.com reported, but critics perhaps justifiably fear that it would only further push banks and other financial institutions to push out sex-related businesses.
“If women who are exploring their sexuality can’t find Skirt Club or any empowering content about sex on major platforms,” Bradbury told Vice, “we’re going to be living in an internet age straight out of some puritanical Handmaid’s Tale society.”
Photo By Raysonho / Wikimedia Commons
