Liberal Feminism

The sex-pos funfem is not feminism at all.
Yes, agree.
It's bad for my blood pressure. Seems to be all about being nice and not judging men people. I'm waiting for criticism of paedophilia to be translated into kink shaming and a new -ERF to be born

I guess that must be it, Mrsfrumble, although feminists don't exclude women who are happy being highly paid sex workers from anything. We just don't think there are many of them.

I think it's more than that. It boils down to the failure of feminists to concur with key tropes. We don't believe TW are women. We don't believe that sex work is a job just like any other. Our dissension from these "progressive" stances is unforgivable because we are women.

Men who don't think TW are women get clean away because the trans lobby know they can't force men to do - or believe - anything. But despite their claims most TRAs think like particularly arrogant, entitled men, and consider that they have the right to demand what they want from women. When women turn round and tell them "no" they go batshit. That's where TERF comes in.

As for SWERF, men who like to think they're "progressive" don't want to hear that porn and prostitution are damaging. They much prefer the narrative of the happy cam girl and get very aggressive when anyone tries to confront them with the harm done. In this case there are very few male voices raised against porn or prostitution. It's nearly all women. And men need to get us to STFU. How dare we argue against our lords and masters?

Liberal feminism is popular with men because it endorses their use of porn and prostitutes. It does nothing to inconvenience them, indeed it makes no demands from them at all. The sex-pos funfem is not feminism at all. It's light years away from the analysis and logic of mature feminist thought and those who lead the movement should be ashamed of the harm it is doing to young women.

Yes, I've been wondering exactly how feminists have been "excluding" sex workers, and I can only think what excluding really means is not accepting the narrative that sex work is only ever a positive and empowering choice.

SWERF is a nonsense because feminism has been supportive of women exploited by the sex trade for more than 40 years: creating resources to help women who want to leave prostitution and working to make it safer for those who continue in it.

Men and mainstream organizations have very seldom expressed concern for the well-being of prostitutes. Feminists, otoh, have been involved in all sorts of ways since the 1970s.
Accusations of SWERF and whorephobe are typically directed at women working to improve things for women and children exploited by the global sex trade. Julie Bindel is slurred as a SWERF for her many years of dedicated work in this field, as are many exited women who share their experiences to help others. I find it hard to credit the sheer audacity of describing women who have broken free as SWERFs, which means that sex workers are being accused of excluding themselves, ffs!

SWERF and TERF are both slurs. In a world in which identity politics have destroyed class analysis there is one thing that is forbidden, and that is naming or labelling anyone against their will. Everyone has the right to self define, however crazy that definition may be. Except, that is, feminists. Feminists are expected to go along with labels created for us by those who hate us. I wonder why that might be.

This is all very depressing. One is told that progress is a linear thing, and the intuitive assumption would be that the ideas of liberal feminism become universally accepted and the ideas once considered radical feminist would be considered just normal feminism.

But it seems the opposite happened; mainstream got awarded the title of liberal feminism, and what would once have been ordinary feminism is now called "radical".

As for SWERF, it makes as much sense as saying that people trying to get safety precautions put in place for African mineworkers are doing so because they must hate the mineworkers.

Quite. The attempts to convince workers that unions are against their best interests were never as successful, though.

There is another element of absurdity to it - it quite obviously came after TERF and was modelled after that.

No woman ever excluded "Sex workers" from feminism. There are no "sex workers are not allowed here" signs on the doors of feminist clubs, or something. (While, yes, trans are indeed excluded from women-only things, because those are women-only)

I think this shows quite obviously that those words were invented by men.

If women want to accuse others of doing nasty things ... well, I can imagine a lot worse things than being excluded from something I do not at all need for survival.

But men apparently can't. To men, being excluded from women's spaces is the worst thing that ever happened to them. (Well, white men, though I suppose for MoC, excluding them is also the worst thing that women ever did to them.)

lass huh. So we get called SWERFs and aspersions for sharing views with fundamental Christians but their views aligning with an anti-feminist MRA is just fine

For those of you upthread who like Ariel Levy, this was an interesting brief interview with her on R4 the other week. It's part of a series on how American writers will tackle Trump's USA. Unsurprisingly, she's not overly optimistic about how things will pan out for women...

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bl2kp

Devi If you scroll down this link from the Whorephobia site you will see it's been endorsed by a well known kent face - the unlovely Mike Buchanan.

Passing Comment? | everyday whorephobia
everydaywhorephobia.wordpress.com/passing-comment/

That Upworthy article is like a list of bad argument styles all in one glorious mess. Guilt by association, false science, straw men...

That up worthy article is terrible. Especially the "one scientist says porn is great and if you disagree with her you are disagreeing with SCIENCE and therefore likely to be a climate change denier and antivaxxer".

I stupidly just read this too www.everydaywhorephobia.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/swerfsterfs-the-westboro-baptist-church-of-feminism

The argument goes, people who don't whole heartedly embrace porn must hate sex and you don't want to be perceived as frigid so love porn!
Fucking hell. It's all so vacuous but yet preachy. And then we get told we don't understand things (by "we" I mean feminists that actually analyse things). So depressing.

prawn I made that point about the traffic light to my six year old son on our walk to school (I sneak bits of feminism into my casual chats with the kids) and he pointed out "But who says that's a man? It could be a woman in trousers!". Had to admit he had a point

Anyway, nodding at all this, the goalposts have moved, as well as me getting older and seeing things I didn't see as a young woman. I still can't see "intersectionality" as anything but watered down to nothing feminism, weighing it down with qualifiers and get-out clauses. There's nothing new about analysing class, race, sexuality in conjunction with feminist politics but the trend seems to be to put women second to every other designated favourite group. It's not easy to question the "bathroom bill" in case people lump you in with homophobic fundamentalist Christians. It's not easy to express concern about the growing influence of Islam, an ideology which treats women appallingly, in case you get labelled a racist. I don't see too many young women prepared to grasp those nettles, or to see the contradiction in marching against Trump while remaining silent about so much other shit.

Yes Helen

I liked this one too

A lot of the same people who want to ban porn also want to ban abortion and outlaw same-sex marriage.

Aside from stylistically reading as if written by a 10 year old - "a lot of the same people who want to ban porn" are strongly pro-choice and same sex marriage.

Is that from the Upworthy, lass? Yes, stupid!

Sorry, link fail. here it is.

I Googled "camming liberating" and came up with a bunch of depressing looking stuff including [[http://www.thestranger.com/features/feature/2015/06/10/22360297/camming-is-not-like-any-other-kind-of-sex-work this article] which strongly recommends it as a career choice for young women. By the time I'd read it I was wondering why I'm not doing it. Then I looked down.

We have a long way to go yet in that area, and while porn isn't perfect, it's at least a place for LGBTQ young people to see that there's nothing wrong with their sexual desires

That's so stupid I don't know where to start.

That's a good way of putting it Prawn. Filing it away!

As for SWERF, it makes as much sense as saying that people trying to get safety precautions put in place for African mineworkers are doing so because they must hate the mineworkers. Of course, it's quite the opposite. They seek to protect them from danger and immoral employers, just as those who work to combat the sex trade do.

"This libfem idea that camming is liberating "

Is this a libfem idea?

I'm with OP; I feel definitions have moved.

Thank you for the green woman link, Teiterua. Spent a little while reading about it, and the guerrilla artist who one night swapped a lot of green men for people doing other things.

This safe spaces stuff is ludicrous. If universities are not going to be places where wide ranging discussion can take place then what are they for? I know when I was a student my friends and I thought we knew best about everything but we didn't try to make it official policy.

Of course the other thing about the young is that they think they invented sex. This libfem idea that camming is liberating glorifies making yourself into an object, playing along with the pornification of women, which is the very opposite of what feminism hopes for.

And without any class analysis, they do not perceive that TW display male privilege. They see that transracial is offensive but don't get that transgender is just as appropriative. They angrily defend TW as the most oppressed of all women, and shut down debate if you ask why they are centring men in their feminism.

They will grow up, of course, and feel as silly about some of this as I do over some of my wrong headed beliefs. We live and learn. That's one of the best things about life.

Thank you all for great posts on this.

My response to anyone who accuses me of being a SWERF is to explain that no, I'm a PPERF (pimp and punter exclusionary radical feminist). And then point them at the invisible men project.

Yes, they don't have a problem not being inclusive of us!