The Democratic National Convention (DNC) unveiled a Law & Order parody video last week outlining some of former President Donald Trump’s most well-known offenses—outrageous lies, sexual abuse, and financial fraud. The final misdeed mentioned? “He cheated on his wife with a porn star.”

The “porn star” in question is, of course, Stormy Daniels. In 2016, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in hush money to conceal a previous sexual encounter with Trump. Daniels played a pivotal role in securing Trump’s conviction earlier this year, putting her privacy, safety, and family at risk.

As adult content creator and founder of the BIPOC Adult Industry Collective Sinnamon Love succinctly put it in a recent tweet, “If it wasn’t for @StormyDaniels y’all wouldn’t be able to call him a felon.”

By denying Daniels her name and her humanity, the Democratic party is failing Daniels and all who work in the sex industry. For a campaign claiming to be pro-woman, pro-worker, and pro-bodily autonomy, it’s a bad look.

The parody video was not the only time Daniels—or rather, a “porn star”—was mentioned on the DNC stage. In another instance, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett doubled down on the DNC’s out-of-touch “prosecutor vs. felon” narrative stating, “[Kamala Harris] became a career prosecutor, while [Trump] became a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments, and one porn star to prove it.”

If Daniels were in a less contentious industry, these politicians would not see her work as her identity. But since Daniels has built a successful career as an adult film performer, her profession is Democrats’ favorite “gotcha.” Democrats’ framing suggests that infidelity with a porn star is somehow more deplorable than cheating with a teacher or an engineer—and that Trump’s infidelity with Daniels is somehow more corrupt than, say, going after Daniels’ livelihood, mocking her mercilessly for years, and emboldening his followers to threaten her life. Democrats’ comments are especially insulting to Daniels, considering she was the MVP of Trump’s legal takedown, a demise that DNC speakers hammered home over and over again.

So why did the DNC turn Daniels, arguably Democrats’ greatest ally, into a punchline? America’s stubbornly sex-negative culture certainly isn’t on Daniels’ side. Plus, given Harris’ history of disenfranchising sex workers—particularly those doing work that is higher risk than Daniels’—the disrespect should come as no surprise.

When Harris served as California Attorney General, she helped shutter Backpage.com, a classified advertising website many sex workers relied on to vet clients. Then, during her Senate career, Harris co-sponsored and voted for the Stop Enabling Child Traffickers Act (SESTA), which was signed into law along with the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in 2018. These bills were intended to prevent sex trafficking. Instead, the legislation has done little to help those who’ve been trafficked and has deprived sex workers of advertising platforms, as well as tools like client e-verification services and “bad date” lists that allow them to do their work safely.

Under FOSTA/SESTA, porn industry workers and others in the sex industry have lost access to social media accounts, bank accounts, and payment platforms. People who rely on sex work to support themselves and their families have been robbed of their financial security and exposed to more violence. These laws also allow websites and social media platforms to censor a wide range of erotic content, even if it’s educational or unrelated to sex work.

In a 2019 interview with The Root, Harris claimed she supported the decriminalization of sex work—a far cry from her 2008 statement that decriminalization would be “completely ridiculous.” However, Harris’ definition of “decriminalization” didn’t align with what sex worker advocacy groups have fought for. She described a version of asymmetrical criminalization that would target sex workers’ clients rather than the workers themselves. This approach—often called the Nordic model or “End Demand” model—forces many sex workers underground due to police surveillance, making it dangerous, if not impossible, for them to do their work.

Harris’ nomination has brought hope to those who are hungry for a woman of color in the Oval Office, those who believe Harris will turn back the clock on diminishing abortion rights, and those who feared Biden would be no match against Trump. But her history of bulldozing sex workers’ livelihoods—along with her pledge to continue sending weapons to Israel, the DNC’s refusal to let Palestinians speak, and her promise to deliver the “most lethal fighting force in the world”—has brought skepticism and outrage to her campaign from many would-be supporters.

In an open letter updated on Aug. 8, the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) Behind Bars—which supports currently and formerly incarcerated “sex workers, victims of trafficking, and their communities”—outlined how a Harris administration could undo the “unintended consequences” of FOSTA/SESTA and address the dangers and stigma that sex workers face. The authors of the letter asked for legal reform that decriminalizes consensual adult sex work and distinguishes it from trafficking, along with access to health care and social services, protection from violence and exploitation, labor rights, and education campaigns to shift harmful narratives about sex work. The Harris campaign has not acknowledged the group’s pleas.

Adding insult to injury, the DNC’s recently updated platform doesn’t mention sex workers among those the party aims to protect. This marks a stark change from the 2020 DNC platform, which included the text, “We recognize that sex workers, who are disproportionately women of color and transgender women, face especially high rates of sexual assault and violence, and we will work with states and localities to protect the lives of sex workers.”

Daniels hasn’t put out a statement regarding the DNC’s comments, but she did respond to a recent tweet asking how she felt about the term “porn star.”

“It’s not incorrect and I’m not ashamed of my work in the industry,” Daniels wrote. “It’s the tone that’s sometimes offensive because the person implies that I’m ‘just a porn star’ which I am not.” Her statement echoes what she said in the documentary Stormy: “At first when I spoke out, you never saw my name that didn’t say ‘porn star’ in front of it because we’re not considered human.”

The DNC missed a critical opportunity to show respect for Daniels, who, in addition to being a porn star, is also an award-winning director, dancer, paranormal investigator, and author of a New York Times bestselling memoir—and those are just her job titles. Daniels is also running a voter registration campaign with a website that states, “If a certain someone is able to get back into the Oval Office, we will all be in danger.”

But Democrats’ transgressions paint a grim future for sex workers under any administration—whether it’s led by Harris or by the so-called “orange turd” that Daniels tried to flush. Grassroots organizations like the SWOP-USA, SWOP Behind Bars, and Red Canary Song will have to continue filling the gaps with mutual aid and legal advocacy where government persistently fails.

Should Harris win November’s presidential race, some supporters may be tempted to claim victory and sit on their hands. Hopefully, others will hold Harris accountable for her past and demand that her policies embody the values espoused in her DNC speech: that everyone “has a right to safety, to dignity, and to justice.”