I didn’t have the energy to answer in depth or night (so i just scheduled it for a time i knew I would be more alert) but now that I do, I have a few questions for you, @lesbiansugar
first and most important:
as feminists, one of our values is to believe women and other marginalised people when they express their their lived experiences, correct?
so why don’t you believe me when I say that there are feminists blowing up the my inbox and the inboxes of my fellow whores with death threats, “fuck meat”, &c? do you want screen shots? because we have them. surely you don’t think we’re sending these to ourselves?
why don’t you ask me what I mean when I say feminists support laws that hurt us?
if you did, I could tell you about the statistics of the nordic model; about the way it turns out mothers and children and roommates into our traffickers just because we may financially support them; the way it makes our safety calls too afraid to call the police when they don’t hear from us, so that they aren’t surprised later to get a call about our dead bodies in the hotel stairs; i could tell you about official police policies supported by local feminists here, policies that are deliberately designed to pick up as many people as possible and so focus on racial profiling, targeting poor women of colour for maximum arrests rather than focusing on the men who rape and murder us.
I could tell you (and give you proof) of feminists lobbying for an end to the funding of condoms, safer sex materials, and other reproductive health tools to sex worker unions in india because, white feminists say, these aren’t unions, they’re the pimp lobby, and giving poor women condoms will feed the pimp lobby.
Not: giving poor women money for rent and healthcare and child care and education will give them options outside the sex industry!
but: giving women women already in the sex industry CONDOMS and reproductive health info will give more power to the pimp lobby.
I don’t know why you can’t be bothered to google these things. I mean, I do actually know why, because you don’t want to be confronted with information that runs counter to your beliefs.
but the info is out there.
poor women in southeast asia DO have internet access.
there are sex worker unions composed entirely of hundreds of thousands of brown women who know that no white woman is going to offer them a financial alternative to the sex industry, so they’re working together to better their lives so they can someday leave it.
there are women (including myself) who have searing critiques of the sex industry and the sexual, physical, and financial abuses it allows, and who are still in it because there’s no other way to afford to live where we live and we can’t afford to move (that takes money too believe it or not).
hmu if you would like studies and statistics about the higher prevalence of rape, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, &c by police and within foster care than outside it; about the way that the govt won’t allocate funding to fighting this but will allocate funding for arresting poor brown women, and hmu if you’re ever interested in an honest conversation about how to truly fight misogyny.
hint: it starts with fighting poverty, income disparities, barriers to affordable housing and childcare.
it doesn’t start with getting defensive over the fact that you know some truly shitty people who send strangers hate mail calling them fuckmeat.
http://news.trust.org/item/20170811102840-4kewt/
https://www.google.com/amp/reason.com/blog/2015/10/17/sex-traffickers-in-blue/amp
and currently in the news is the strenuous resistance of police departments up and down the west coast, to policies that would make it illegal to rape sex workers before arresting them, despite the involvement of most of the Oakland PD in the sexual exploitation of a minor.
the thing is, @lesbiansugar, you think that you and your friends are being righteous by calling for an end to prostitution for people who don’t want to be in it, and you’re picturing sex slaves chained to beds, but absolutely no peer reviewed, reputable research (melissa farley has been censured for her manipulation and fabrication of data) supports the idea that this is reality on any scale. it just isn’t.
the people who are being sexually abused and exploited on a massive scale aren’t in the sex industry. they’re vulnerable children in foster care or in their birth homes; they’re developmentally disabled adults in foster care; they’re kids whose parents are making homemade porn of them who have no one to tell.
there’s also a massive issue of women migrating to continue working in aspects of the sex industry and being lied to about what conditions they will be working under;
and there’s an even more massive issue of the sexual assault and abuse of migrant women who find work as domestic labour (something feminists are oddly silent about);
and the problem of garment companies using arrested sex workers to work in their garment factories, paying them less than they made as sex workers, the women running away so now factories lock them in, there being fires in the factories, people dying, &c.
having listed some of the major current trends in sexual assault and labour exploitation, I hope it’s a little clearer why feminist insistence on ending prostitution as a uniquely exploitative practise rings a little false to those of us who wish we had better options than the sex industry, try to protect ourselves, and are continually bearing the brunt of laws and policies you promote
(the nordic model, the denial of sexual and reproductive health tools, not supporting laws that would make it illegal for cops to rape us, supporting laws that are excuses for racial profiling, not vocally supporting the funding of youth shelters or better oversight into care homes, a higher minimum wage, &c)
–why it rings a little false to us when you say you only want to help the people who are in it unwillingly and you apparently don’t care about sexual assault or abuse in any other context, AND don’t seem fussed to be lobbying for anything that actually helps people get out of the industry or protects vulnerable people.
