Adult film star Eden Alexander needed money to pay her medical bills, so her friends set up a fundraiser through crowdsourcing site GiveForward. It's a WePay platform site that's sort of like the Kickstarter of medical treatment.
Just a few days later, her campaign was suspended by WePay for reasons stemming from her work in the sex industry.
Here's what happened:
According to reporting by The Rumpus, Alexander had an allergic reaction to a prescription medication, which Alexander says was exacerbated by negligent doctors who blamed her condition on hard drug use. Meanwhile, she's been unable to work and earn money due to severe pain and breathing problems, according to her Tweets.
The fundraising campaign, which made absolutely no mention of sex or the adult industry, was going just fine, with more than $1,000 in donations.
That's when Alexander Received this message from WePay:
Got this email from @wepay saying they CANCELLED my medical fundraiser bc ill use the money for porn. LITERALLY. pic.twitter.com/Sa8tohWaDe
After a deluge of outrage on Twitter with many of Alexander's supporters tweeting under the #whorephobia hashtag, WePay responded with a blog post explaining that the campaign violated its terms of service because the company's "back-end processor" doesn't permit offers of adult material in exchange for donations.
Again, the fundraising campaign didn't mention anything about adult material, or even what Alexander does for a living. The problem, apparently, were two tweets from adult film companies offering free subscriptions or clips to donors, which Alexander re-tweeted from her personal account.
Policy or not, the entire ordeal begs the question, Is it okay for a financial service like WePay to refuse service to sex workers to begin with? The cornerstone of crowdfunding is perks, and even though Alexander wasn't offering any herself, the perks offered by those companies she re-tweeted were perfectly legal.
Does that mean that this is a moral stance on the part of WePay's back-end processor (and in turn, WePay)?
For their part, WePay did offer to allow Alexander to start a new campaign on GiveForward, but she didn't take them up on it.
Her new campaign at Crowdtilt has already raised more than $6,000.
[Via The Rumpus]
