Stormy Daniels: A Sexologist’s Perspective
By: Dr. Denise Renye
At Whole Person Integration, we’re interested in how society functions and how people respond to situations and events. We also support the well-being of folx who are in the sex work industry. It was interesting to watch the media coverage and individual reactions to former President Donald Trump’s grand jury indictment. Many people seemed more scandalized by his association with a sex worker than by the criminal activity itself.
As a quick recap, at the end of March, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump, making him the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges. The indictment was over Trump’s role in paying adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about the sex they had while he was still married to Melania. He asked his lawyer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election so that she wouldn’t go public with the story and possibly tank his chance of winning the presidency.
Instead of reimbursing Cohen from his own bank account, Trump used his business organization but labeled the payment a “legal expense,” which it wasn’t. It wasn’t the only time he falsified business records – he has 34 felony counts of doing so. Long story short, Trump wasn’t honest in any way, shape, or form in his business or his personal life. He intentionally concealed criminal activity and that is the most salacious part of the indictment – the extensive criminal activity Trump engaged in, not that he slept with Stormy Daniels. However, you wouldn’t know it based on how much titillation there is mentioning Daniels’ line of work.
I have run groups and worked individually with sex workers for over two decades. And while work tends to come up when working with anyone in any profession, it doesn’t always take center stage in therapeutic work, coaching, or during classes. Sex work, like all industries, is a part of someone’s life but it is not the entirety of it.
Society heaps shame onto sex workers. People’s discomfort stems from ingrained and indoctrinated beliefs. They think sex works not a valid profession, which it is…Daniels is an excellent example of that. She has worked in the sex industry for more than two decades as a performer, writer, and director. She’s a self-made woman that doesn’t bow down to shame or let society’s expectations of her put her in a box. She’s a badass who ultimately brought Trump to justice despite great personal risk.
In 2011, she agreed to speak to In Touch magazine about her encounters with Trump but the story never ran because after the magazine called Trump seeking comment, Cohen threatened to sue. Daniels said she wasn’t paid and then a few weeks later an unknown man approached her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas car park. He told her to "leave Trump alone" and threatened her daughter. “That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom,” she recalled the man saying in a 2018 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.
Not only that, Trump himself threatened her with financial ruin saying she had to pay $1 million every time she violated her agreement to stay silent about their sexual relationship. But she didn’t. She told Anderson Cooper in the 60 Minutes interview that she agreed to speak with him “because people are just saying whatever they wanted to say about me. I was perfectly fine saying nothing at all, but I'm not okay with being made out to be a liar, or people thinking that I did this for money and people are like, ‘Oh, you're an opportunist. You're taking advantage of this.’ Yes, I'm getting more job offers now, but tell me one person who would turn down a job offer making more than they've been making, doing the same thing that they've always done?”
Exactly. Stormy Daniels is a professional sex worker still doing what she’s done for years. It’s perhaps the least interesting thing about her. What’s more fascinating is how she ultimately took down a man who has historically lied, cheated, and who is being accused of criminal activity because she refused to be shamed or silenced. She said, “No, I won’t be hushed,” and that sort of thing takes tremendous courage. But we’re not surprised because sex workers are often courageous, resilient, and badass individuals. We’re glad that Stormy Daniels is getting the recognition she deserves. Because at the end of the day, she is a woman who is using her voice. And that is just what the patriarchy feels threatened by…an empoweredwoman who is in a career that has teetered on the edge of very exciting and very scary all at once for men like Trump.
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Journal prompts
· How have I used my voice to speak truth in this lifetime?
· Are there areas of self-improvement that I’m overlooking regarding myself because I’m focusing on the wrong thing? If so, how can I regain focus to delve deeper into my own psychospiritual journey of discovery?
· What is my relationship with my voice?
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References
Cooper, Anderson. “Stormy Daniels describes her alleged affair with Donald Trump.” August 22, 2018.
Freifeld, Karen; Cohen, Luc; Clifford, Tyler. “Trump criminally charged in New York, a first for a US ex-president.” Reuters. March 31, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/urgent-trump-hit-with-criminal-charges-new-york-first-us-ex-president-new-york-2023-03-30/