As a major porn site, Pornhub faces backlash over its enabling of sex trafficking, it’s timely that the story of Mia Khalifa is once again making headlines.
There’s been a lot of drama of late surrounding porn giant Pornhub, with over one million people calling for the site to be shut down. Not to mention the video exposing the site’s profiting and enabling of sex trafficking going viral, which all lies under the growing global movement #TraffickingHub. There is yet another name that has been making headlines in relation to the site, and whilst her story isn’t strictly related to #TraffickingHub, the experience of former pornstar Mia Khalifa points to similar problems which linger beneath the surface of the world’s largest porn site.
Where is Mia Khalifa from originally? Born in Lebanon, Khalifa moved to the U.S. when she was seven. In 2014, a 21-year-old Khalifa, now a sports commentator and social media personality, was approached by a man who asked if she’d ever considered filming porn. Despite only spending three months in the industry and creating 11 videos, Khalifa became the number 1 searched pornstar on the site, attracting a wild amount of attention.
This was partly because one of the videos she’d made for porn studio BangBros featured the Lebanese-born Khalifa wearing a hijab. Khalifa herself is a Christian, and despite expressing concern about wearing the garment, the directors maintained that it would be fine, yet Khalifa claimed she felt “pressured” into doing the scene. It wasn’t fine.
Only a week later Khalifa started receiving death threats from ISIS. The terrorist group even hacked her Instagram and sent her a digitally altered video of herself being beheaded.
“We weren’t trying to exploit [Khalifa’s ethnicity]. We wanted to embrace it. No one could have anticipated the negativity surrounding it,” Alex Hawkins, Vice President of Marketing for xHamster has described. “The outrage it caused in the Arab world ended up being a bit of a ‘Streisand effect’. Suddenly, everyone was searching for her. The effort to censor her only made her more ubiquitous.”
Mia Khalifa porn is still a highly searched term. So is Mia K porn and Mia Khalifa ph evidently.
Thinking of the time Islamic extremists threatened Mia Khalifa with eternal damnation in hell and she just said "I have been meaning to get a little tan recently."
— Fullmetal Alka Yagnik ☭ (@donkhotte) June 24, 2020
In 2015, Khalifa signed a long-term contract with BangBros’ parent company, WGCZ Holding. However, only two weeks after signing she decided to resign. Yet due to her contract, the company continued to have control over a website and domain name attached to her stage name. Despite never having paid for the rights to use her likeness, they continue to use a website with her name to this day. This is a common occurrence in the porn industry, with Pornhub being a particularly notable offender.
Khalifa posted on TikTok revealing that she experiences hourly dissociative attacks from “remembering hundreds of millions of people’s only impression of you is solely based on the lowest, most toxic, most uncharacteristic 3 months of your life when you were 21.”
@miakhalifaIt is what it was♬ original sound – weebkiller
Does Mia Khalifa still do porn at all? While Mia Khalifa facts are all over the internet now, people are still constantly looking for Mia Khalifa new porn. Despite not being active in the porn industry for five years, Khalifa’s videos have remained as popular as ever, and she is still the number 7 ranked pornstar on Pornhub. Unfortunately, the death threats have never stopped. Khalifa has blamed BangBros for “promoting [her] 6-year-old videos like they’re new making millions of ppl [sic] think I’m still active,” revealing that she hasn’t felt safe going to the grocery store alone in years. Despite her efforts, Khalifa has been unable to get her videos taken down.
I just want B*angbros to stop actively putting me in harm’s way by promoting my 6-year-old videos like they’re new, making millions of ppl think I’m still active. The death threats are emotionally crippling, I haven’t felt safe even going to the grocery store alone in years.
I just want B*angbros to stop actively putting me in harm's way by promoting my 6-year-old videos like they're new, making millions of ppl think I'm still active. The death threats are emotionally crippling, I haven't felt safe even going to the grocery store alone in years.
— Mia K. (@miakhalifa) June 26, 2020
Whilst Khalifa herself may not directly blame Pornhub, the fact that the website both allows and profits from videos which are hosted against the subject’s will points to a blatant need for change. It’s an issue also at the heart of the #TraffickingHub campaign, which cites that in the last two years alone, 118 cases of child rape and trafficking were discovered on the site. These cases hark to the systemic problems of PornHub, including parent company MindGeek’s monopoly over the porn world, lack of industry regulation, and predatory business practices.
Despite everything, Khalifa has faced backlash from many on social media who criticise her for painting the sex work industry in a bad light:
I’m not sure who’s more naive: Me for signing my life away to exploiters, or you for thinking I own any of the rights to the content? I have zero control over it and have been fighting for years to figure out a way to get it taken down. https://t.co/KL2LIh9r97
— Mia K. (@miakhalifa) June 24, 2020
Extraordinarily, Khalifa claims that she only made $12,000 from the videos, despite the fact that they have garnered more than 1,331,691 views in total, and Khalifa has remained one of the most searched pornstars on the site.
However, BangBros hit back in response shortly after Khalifa sent the Tweet, asserting that Khalifa’s “false, deceptive, and misleading statements have to be called out.” BangBros sent out another explosive tweet along with a link to a website that appears to debunk several statements made by the former porn star, backed up by a video they claim features her espousing contradictory information. This same video has racked up over a million views on BangBros’ Instagram.
At some point, @MiaKhalifa’s false, deceptive, and misleading statements have to be called out. https://t.co/MSvulOOSo7 #factsbeatfiction
— BANGBROSOFFICIAL (@BangBrosDotCom1) July 8, 2020
BangBros also asserted that Khalifa actually “received in excess of $178,000.00 from BangBros and its affiliated entities alone.” The company have also sent Mia Khalifa a cease and desist over defamatory statements.
View this post on Instagram
So who is Mia Khalifa now? Historically, Khalifa has been upfront about the fact that following her resignation, she continued to do social media for the company and work as a cam girl as she tried to move out of the industry.
Speaking on Philip DeFranco’s podcast series A Conversation With back in 2019, Khalifa described: “The company that I worked for because I was still doing social media for them, they were doing anything they could to keep me in the industry. Throwing numbers at me to keep me in somehow, so they offered me a deal where they paid me a salary every month to log a certain amount of hours on the cam site because it was their cam site.”
“So what I would do is literally just mute it, turn it on, and watch Netflix,” she continued. “I was the worst cam girl in f*cking history. I was really bad but I got the paycheck. They started to catch on too. It was near the end when I stopped caring. It was near the eight-month mark when I knew I was getting close to never having to do this again. They were like, ‘We’re going to take this away because you need to be doing this.’”
It seems as though the $12,000 detailed by Khalifa may strictly be referring to the 11 adult films she made with BangBros, during the three months she has referenced as working in the industry.
Elsewhere BangBros took issue with Khalifa’s alleged claim that she only ever worked for BangBros, however, a quick google of her IMDB shows that there is a very public record of the fact that she did work for other studios, including performing in a series titled Scoreland.
Today we sent @MiaKhalifa a legal C&D demand which lists some of her defamatory, false statements about Bangbros over the years and a list stating the actual facts. We encourage her to share the fact check list with her audience. We doubt she will though.#FactsBeatFiction
— BANG BROS (@BangBrosStudios) June 30, 2020
In turn, Khalifa responded to the website and BangBros claims, stating “they have made this very dirty,” slamming the porn industry for “predatory practices.”
Now, Khalifa, who has amassed a large social media following and even been hailed as a feminist hero, is the subject of a petition, which has over 1.8 million signatures, calling for the removal of her videos, and a hashtag #JusticeForMia has begun trending on TikTok.
“Mia and her team have provided countless financial offers to the current owners of her domain name and pornographic videos to no avail,” the petition describes. “Mia attends therapy on a consistent basis for trauma, emotional distress, and consequences of bullying [related to her hijab video].”
The petition calls for her domain names to be returned and her videos removed and fairly disputed in court without putting Mia Khalifa in “deep financial ruin”.
Whilst some have criticised Khalifa’s decision to get involved in the industry in the first place, the reality is that nothing justifies such a blatant breach of consent that potentially endangers someone’s life. The Mia Khalifa story and the fact that PornHub continues to host and earn profits off her videos even though Mia Khalifa leave industry only further illuminates the deep-seated injustices inherent in the system.
To sign the petition, head here.
