A question relating to the trans*/feminism debate

[traviata]

I have been reading the threads and the links, and am learning a lot.

This is my question, and I'm sorry if it's in any way offensive, it may well be foolish.

How does the topic of sex work and sex workers connect with this debate?

It seems to be an arena where the disagreements and the ideological 'land-mines' become especially severe.

Hi traviata

I am not very well versed in it, but I don't think there's a direct connection.

Some people call various feminists who speak out against to sex work "whore phobic"

Some people call various feminists who speak out against penises in spaces such as DV refuges or rape counselling sessions "trans phobic"

The letter that's kicked off the latest objects to both of these positions. It should be possible to discuss these matters without being called "phobic"

It's because the slurs acronyms SWERF and TERF make such a pleasing sound as they leave the minds of idiots.

They might be slightly connected in that in some instances trans people have resorted to prostitution or porn in order to fund their surgeries. However, as we know that only a small % of trans people have any surgeries, it seems to be a bit of a red herring.

"Whore phobic" is also an incorrect representation of the position.

The majority of feminists who speak out against sex work focus more on the punter and whether or not he should be criminalised, or on anyone benefitting from the sex worker's receipts, than they do on the sex worker. But I guess "punterphobic" or "pimp phobic" don't sound so good.

Hi traviata - yep, plenty of land mines! It is confusing.

Generally, feminists who are opposed to prostitution also tend to oppose some of the claims made by the trans community and their allies = Radical Feminists. Much of the feminist chat on Mn is in this camp.

In contrast, feminists who think sex work should be viewed as work and decriminalised also tend to support the idea that trans women are definitely women = Liberal Feminists. This view is more dominant in the mainstream media.

In other words, there's a reason SWERF and TERF rhyme - they're used (aggressively) by members of one group of people (libfems) to describe another (radfems).
This is very simplistic I'm afraid, but on the whole this binary division gives a fairly good picture of the current state of contemporary feminism.

This video is quite long, but it is an excellent intro to the differences between radical and liberal feminisms if you're interested -

Basically they're based on very different analyses of what gender is and therefore what feminists should do about sexism and oppression. There are lots of things that all feminists are united on (rape and domestic violence, for instance), but trans issues and prostitution are hugely divisive.

I obviously have my own opinions on all of this, but I'll save that for another post! (SPOILER ALERT, I'm 100% pimp phobic, thanks for that excellent term aKnickerful )

Also I should add - TERF and SWERF are also used by people who are most certainly not feminists and are just hostile to radical feminists

Yy Rosie - I'm sure that libfems aren't the main users of SWERF and TERF. In the same way, I'm sure that feminists aren't the main perpetrators of assaults, insults, exclusions etc against trans people.

Hi, I'm butting in a bit here, but I am radfem and my oldest friend is very much lib fem and I am avoiding her nowadays :-(. Have others similar experience? I actually resent her more than friends who don't identify as feminist at all.

Incidentally, I describe myself, if pushed, as libfem, because I believe it's best to target change within the existing system not rip the system up, but I don't think sex work is just work or that penises in certain spaces are a non-issue.

And I would never use SWERF or TERF.

Smartleatherbag I know what you mean... I find libfems very frustrating sometimes. In my experience, though, almost all radfems go through a liberal feminist phase on their way to a more radical variety. I certainly did! Hence why I prefer to think of liberal feminism as "half-arsed feminism" . Maybe your friend will come round with time?

AKnickerful oh yeah I agree about working with the existing system for pragmatic reasons, and I'm all for reforming laws and so on.
I mean when it comes down to it, all feminists want the same thing - happiness and safety for women. It's just a matter of debating the methods.

"Wwhorephobia" as an insult pisses me off - the reason I am against the sex industry is because all the women working in prostitution I've known haven't been particularly keen on the sex industry either. (But they aren't doctoral students writing books, so what do they know....)

I like "pimpphobic" - thanks, whoever came up with that.

The working definition of radfem to me is one wanting to work from the root ie deconstruct the existing system.

But I don't know if that's right any more.

Riveting, yes that's very true! I was definitely a fun feminist in my youth, so probably passed through lib on the way to my current hardliner stance ;-)!

I guess to the extent that liberal feminists generally want women to be more 'manly' - earn more, have higher status jobs, employ nannies, wear trousers - and often reject more 'womanly' things like childcare, cooking etc.
My OH cheekily calls this 'Mulan feminism' (after the disney film where Mulan wants to be a man and go and join the army... remember that one?!)

Radfems want to get rid of the 'manly'/'womanly' division altogether, since it's inherently oppressive. In the radfem utopia, being a CEO would be no more masculine than being a SAHM, since the word 'masculine' would be meaningless. I suppose that would be a total deconstruction of the existing system .

If you are identifed as a "TERF" then at some point, someone will identify you as a "SWERF", a "white supremacist" (because all the nice white middle class armchair revolutionaries who use this as an insult are happy to erase WoC who are gender-critical) and almost anything else you can think of.

The surprise one came today, when a lovely academic, who had written very movingly in the New Statesman about her rape at Oxford, and how female-only spaces had helped her deal with it, was accused of "thinking like a rapist". A woman who had written about her own rape, accused of "thinking like a rapist". I will never not boggle at that.

It's all topsy-turvey bullshit. One of the weird results is that I am no longer as bothered by really extreme insults as I once was. When I can be called so many really vile things which I patently am not, it's difficult to take them as seriously.

A woman who had written about her own rape, accused of "thinking like a rapist". I will never not boggle at that.

The tactic is to accuse us of being like the oppressor, being what we are against.

So "TERFs" are hateful and violent (when we want safe spaces for women) "SWERFs" hate prostituted women (when we want to end the male violence and use of women)
Feminists are called "man haters" when we react to male hatred of women.
And so on.

I'm a former underage runaway prostitute who speaks out against the legalization of prostitution and against the term "sex work" fairly frequently (rape is not work, my friends). For this, I am called SWERF. Apparently, I am just a prude who longs to exclude women, rather than someone who experienced some of the worst of what humanity had to offer in my teen years.

AbortionFairy

That's horrendous. So much love and support to you.

Effing hell AFG.

Yup, pimp phobic or punter phobic is a pretty good description, it doesn't have a lovely acronym though, so can't be used, I'm afraid. If we feminists could come up with a super acronym, that could go along with TERF to sound like a meal at a Berni Inn, I'm sure they'd all go for that.

Or not, because any discussion of the leeches who make money from prostituted women's pain, or the men who cause that pain ALWAYS gets turned around to statements like "Pentameter" "Women enjoy it, you just want them to be poor" "If they can't do this, then what can they do?" all said without any trace of irony about how these people actually view prostituted women, or how they are invisibilising the pain and the people who live off that pain.

AFG, you're not alone in that. I suspect that they also constantly try and prove you were never there and it never happened as well?

AFG I'm sorry you have to go through that now after everything you've already been through.

Funny, I was thinking about this earlier while reading the trans* and gender thread. It struck me that the entryist methodology extreme trans activists are using (taking over liberal feminist groups on campuses, monopolising access to the political decision making process) is exactly the same as that practised by the pimp lobby when they set up organisations like the English Collective of Prostitutes, most of whose members are in fact pimps, then get their voice taken seriously by parliamentary committees and skew the agenda away from serious consideration of the Swedish model.

"Pimp-phobic" and "punter-phobic" - great terms. (I still haven't got over the occasion on which a punter came on a thread to assure us he was a nice guy because he'd let the terrified student trying to escape from going through with her first experience as a prostitute pet his labrador to calm her down - then fucking her... instead of giving her 20 quid, paying a taxi home and googling the number of the student hardship office on her campus. He seemed convinced this made him a nice guy.)

AFG - more

I would always describe myself as "feminist" - for female equality. Not well informed enough to adopt a more specific label.

But I am clear that 50% of the world's population suffer all to some extent, and a lot of women an inconceivable amount, due to their biology. I therefore will not accept that there is no different between born women and trans women, particularly those who still have male bodies. To me that makes me "sane" and "normal"

And again to deny the hideous abuse of women who are prostitutes boggles me. Just because some women might freely choose it, doesn't exclude the possibility that many, many women are effectively sex slaves. You don't have to be feminist to see and understand that, surely?

I don't understand how anyone who calls themselves "feminist" could insist that it's reasonable to have male bodied people in rape crisis centres, or that there is no problem with abuse of women in the sex industry.

I sometimes think I've fallen through the rabbit hole.