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.

Yes, Lurcio, I remember him. He really, really didn't get why we were utterly incredulous about it either, did he?

I remember that pearl of humanity, Lurcio.

Hermione yes yes yes and yes - couldn't agree more

AbortionFairyGodmother more from me too. We believe you, is all I can say. We believe you. xx

The most awful thing is, the lines being trumpeted by pro "sex work" forces are the literal SAME lines pimps use to recruit girls.

"Sex work is very safe when it's done in the right conditions/with the right people, you'll see!"

"Prostitution is really just like another service, you're helping people."

"Other people sell their bodies to do construction work or garden labor, you sell your body for sex, what's the difference?"

"Other people are giving sex away, you're getting paid, how awesome!"

"It's empowering to see men throwing money at you."

These are the lies pimps tell girls to make them accept their lives as prostitutes ... and now they're accepted "feminist" thought.

Here's a feminist thought: under capitalism, by definition, being paid does not mean you are in power. Being the one payinghaving actual capital that returns dividends and using it to compensate labormeans you have power.

The idea of empowerment in getting paid is ridiculous as soon as you turn it to any other profession. Are janitors and housemaids empowered because people clean their own homes for free and they're getting paid to clean? It's laughable. Being the person whose payroll the janitor is on, now, that person has actual power.

I'm bemused by the idea that there is no difference between a biological women and a trans women.

I remember years ago thinking Germaine Greer was being terribly intolerant in her stance of opposing trans students' entry to her college but I see where she was coming from now.

I don't agree with the statement that 50% of the world's population suffer all to some extent due to their biology but I'm quite clear that I am not the same as a trans women with a penis (or even without one)

It is not discrimination or phobic behaviour to suggest that penises should not be on display in a female gym changing room.

I've never cared whether I'm seen by a male or female doctor but many do, presumably that is "transphobic"?

Depressing but necessary thread. AFG, I'm so sorry for what you went through, and thanks for coming on here and talking about it. It can't be easy.

NC for this.

LurcioAgain you have hit the nail on the head. I knew members of the ECP in the very early days, and it really distresses me to see how much traction they now have as "the voice of sex workers". They are an offshoot of the cult-like WfH, whose "up is down and down is up" gaslighting tactics are very familiar from the current debates, and at least in the early days, plenty of the women who were members of the ECP had never worked in prostitution at all. Even their most celebrated action of those early days, the occupation of the church in Kings Cross, was done to further their own political profile, and they didn't care that it shat all over local working women. The local women had an arrangement with the police, who would warn them when they were going to be nicked, then they could arrange for the kids to be collected, and that kind of thing, and from the police point of view, it meant they got no trouble from the women. When ECP occupied the church, the police thought the local women were taking the piss, and the arrangement ended, meaning local working women were immediately plunged into an even more hostile relationship with the police, which made their already difficult lives even more difficult.

Nowadays, they seem to be entirely with the school of thinking that says a fucking pimp is a sex worker, whose work we should respect and whose needs we should all bow before. Fuck that.

I knew ECP members personally, and I knew women whose already shitty lives in prostitution had been made more difficult, without their consent, by ECP posturing. They haven't changed a bit. The statements the ECP make sound really plausible as defences of sex workers, if you know nothing about the subject except what you read on tumblr, but I don't trust a single fucking word.

Thanks for this thread. Some very good stuff here. And also some tragic stuff. I am so sorry.

I like the term punterphobic. I am very punterphobic.

Thanks to everyone who posted for your very interesting comments. I have such a long way to go to clarify my thoughts but these posts are really helpful.

oh god AFG: A total lightbulb moment for me.

Thank you for your honesty

I do think there is a gas-lighting/rabbit hole aspect.

I used to work in a shelter where the women kept a 'bad date' file to protect themselves and make sure the other women knew which cars/men to avoid. I am pretty hardened after years of working in addictions and homelessness but I had to stop reading the file (we read it to inform the Police if there were rapists/violent punters around - the women knew this). I couldn't read it because it was so violent, dreadful and repulsive. The men were raping, threatening, robbing, abusing, hurting these women and the descriptions were not of a few men, it was lots and lots of men. All the women I knew who were having sex for money had experiences that were terrifying. We also had a serial killer in the same province and the Police just ignored the women and their workers who were telling them.

I have never met anyone who conformed to the 'happy hooker' myth. And I have met a lot of people having sex for money. Including one that died of an overdose. Very soon after she started. She spoke to me the first night and was crying but went out anyway because she needed a fix. Anyone that has sex with someone in addictions for money is coercive, knows that person is out of choices and has sex anyway. I cannot understand why that isn't rape.

God I hope this name change works.
I'm in tears after reading AFG's post.
I grew up in a city with "liberal" prostitution. A path of drugs and low self esteem led me into "safe' prostitution. I can only confirm that those pimp lines were used on me too. I thought at the time it would fun and daring, wild and exciting. I was running with a pretty bad group at the time, we where playing at being gansters I guess. But it's not being a prostitute isn't wild and exciting, it's not empowering, it takes a little bit of you and if your super lucky you get to hold onto the rest of you. The emotional consequences of my actions still effect me daily. there is literally not a day I don;t wish I hadn't stepped inside that brothel, not a fucking day. My life choices are limited because of it. I can't for example work in a high profile area because I do not want it discovered and be outed.
And even in a "safe" legal brothel, I picked a fellow prostitute off the floor of a toilet where she was ODing. Not fucking safe.

not - sorry you had such awful experiences.

i would suggest the people that use those terms have accepted wholesale the right of male born people to access female bodies, in one way or another.

Notwhat I am really grateful to you, and to other women who have been through what you have endured, for being willing to talk to us about it, when you can bear to. It can't be easy at all for you, but it has been so valuable in countering the "empowered escort" bullshit. Thank you.

Would the answer to this to be to have Trans only spaces? But it would be very challenging given all the emotions involved.

The use of TERF as an insult - that's just a fancy way of calling someone a "man-hating lesbian". It's not surprising to me that transactivists and their allies have adopted it so wholeheartedly. After all, how dare biological women reject the notion that biological women and transwomen are the same. How dare we object to the presence of male bodies in female spaces. How dare we have our own opinions and not bow down to male voices.

Same for SWERF - just a fancy way of calling us "frigid lesbians".

Choochi, I think a number of transactivists wouldn't accept that solution.

Same for SWERF - just a fancy way of calling us "frigid lesbians".

Council, exactly. the number of times I have seen people who label themselves as "progressive" and "queer" laugh about someone being a "prude" or "rubbish in bed" because they don't agree that sex work is empowering is ...a lot. Same old woman-hating in new shoes, is all.

Yeah a knickerful, its like theres no solution ...either waysomeone will be offended.

Archery, I have heard the same, usually from oh-so-trendy "genderqueer" people who pride themselves on being so post-modern.

They have unwittingly co-opted anti-women insults from the patriarchy they claim to protest against, and are using the same kind of insults that MRAs use, just with bigger words.

Funny thing is, I don't see them protesting against the patriarchy with nearly as much vitriol and vehemence as they do with rad-fems. How many rad-fems have killed transactivists or sex workers? How many men have killed transactivists or sex workers? Yet we're the ones bearing the brunt of their attacks. Strange, that.

Someone posted recently about the irony of the fact that individuals in her local feminist group who didn't feel able to protest against Ched Evans because they felt it would be too risky, were all enthusiastic about taking part in an anti Julie Bindel protest. In other word: don't attack the patriarchy because you might get hurt, make yourself feel better by attacking other feminists you don't like, because you know they and their supporters are not going to hurt you.

I'm not a very clever or well read feminist but this is starting to make me really fucking angry.

I've just had to hide 2 FB friends because they were ranting and raving on about TERFs and SWERFs and saying they wish they would all fuck off and die (yes, those actual words, thank God they don't know much about what I think because I'm too scared of the backlash to voice most of my thoughts online, oh the irony). This was following some sort of online spat they'd been involved in about womens' toilets and who can/should use them. The 'penis can be female' line was trotted out alongside a whole load of other shit about using whatever public toilet you feel most comfortable in shame if that fucks it up for women but hey they can just hold on til they get home

And all I can think is, what utter fucking BOLLOCKS. All over the world, day in day out, penis is used as a WEAPON against women and girls. Rape is a tactic of WAR used by male bodied people to oppress/threaten/terrify/subjugate/forcibly impregnate women. Where the fuck does gender identity come into that? Are women going to be safe from that if they say, oh but hang on a tic, I'm really a man inside? Will a child being forcibly held down so her genitalia can be mutilated be suddenly left alone if she protests that actually, she is really a boy and so her genitalia are male not female?

I don't get it. I just don't. And I'm sorry for the long and sweary rant but I genuinely have NOWHERE else to say any of that. I don't dare raise the subject even with my friends because it turns out I am that most reviled creature, a TERF, and I am not articulate or well read enough to defend myself.

So what kind of 'feminist' does this make me? Where do I fit now? Because every single feminist I know on FB seems to be going along with this die TERF die mentality. Or are there others who are silenced (like I feel I am) by the very threat of that sort of abuse?