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.

Well we seem to be broadly in agreement on here, Princess. That's a start of sorts. But yes there has been a high-profile silencing lately.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PENIS, in our species. Ahem. As you were.

PrincessSmartipants - tbh it doesn't help if you ARE articulate and well-read - they're not interested in listening to arguments, just in shouting 'Die TERF scum die!'

Because every single feminist I know on FB seems to be going along with this die TERF die mentality.

That's terrible. Death threats towards other feminists?
I don't know any people like this. If I did I would like to ask them why they're basically yelling "she is a witch, burn the witch!!" about other feminist women.

Well a year ago I wouldn't have thought I knew any people like this. These are old friends (from uni in fact) who move in similar circles to me though geographically far away. They clearly have some very different ideas to me that only came to my attention when the whole trans* issue came to to the fore in the last couple of years. Before that I would NEVER have expected to see these women speak like that about other women.

I am genuinely bewildered by the stuff they are saying. I can't reconcile it with what I know/knew of them and I can't understand how they reconcile it with being a feminist.

This is the 21st century backlash against feminism.

There's an apocryphal Churchill quote that says "the fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists." Some of the most woman-erasing, misogynistic expression in society now comes from so-called feminists.

Princess, I think some people are so desperate to be seen as progressive and right-on and inclusive that they go along with the current trans-centric mob-think. It doesn't occur to them that they are helping to erase the rights that feminists fought for in the first place, and eroding the places which women have traditionally claimed as their own.

Up until recently, I was in the live-and-let-live category. I had no issue with transpeople as individuals. But having been subjected personally to the vile resentment that some transwomen have towards biological women and their barely-veiled hatred of gay women like myself (that's when they're not trying to coerce us into bed), I have done a complete 180 degree shift on the subject.

I will not let these activists redefine my experience as a woman, nor will I allow them to trample on my rights in the process.

Have you tried talking to them about it Princess?

This behaviour is both wtfbbq, and harmful.

omg Abortionfairy that Churchill quote is bang on.

My new rule of thumb (which I came up with about 5 mins ago, but I think it has legs) = what would a misogynist man want feminists to do, if we asked him?

Well he would definitely want prostitution to be legalised so that he could purchase sexual access to women's bodies at his convenience.

He would probably also want man/woman to be redefined based on identity not biology, so that he could maliciously enter women's spaces without obstacle, and so that any female solidarity that feminists had painstakingly managed to form would be destroyed. Feminist campaigns on abortion rights, FGM, maternity leave etc. would be nicely undermined by the derailing battles that would inevitably take place over inclusion of trans people.

I don't think we should do what misogynists want us to do. Just as a rule of thumb.

Yup. As soon as we decide prostitution is just fine as soon as a woman wants to do it, men will decide that the only problem is that not enough of us want to do it, and ensure that our choices are restrictive enough that it becomes the best "choice" of several. The legalized prostitution hotbeds of Asia are not places where conditions are good for women, just like the places with officially recognized "third sex" roles for men who are effeminate aren't usually good places for women.

FairyGodmother I'm so sorry you have to deal with this shit after what you've already been through.

It makes a lot of sense, that pro-prostitution arguments are the same ones pimps use when they recruit girls. They're using what they know works, and try to use the same tactics to make the average non-involved person feel ok with prostitution.

PrincessSmartipants I'm sorry that has happened to you - and that is a very familiar story here. I, too, am boggled at how we got to this point, and it's only after a long time that I have snapped and started talking about it in namespace social media - I was frightened that women I liked and whose good opinion I wanted would dismiss and unfriend me as a "TERF".

But - after a lifetime of standing up for trans rights, and seeing them as political siblings - I'm another one who has done a 180 degree turn and feel like we are fighting to hang onto any women's movement at all. Fuck that woman-hating ideology.

I still think this piece by Sarah Ditum is so useful: sarahditum.com/2014/07/28/how-terf-works/

This, too: www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-terf

'As soon as we decide prostitution is just fine as soon as a woman wants to do it, men will decide that the only problem is that not enough of us want to do it, and ensure that our choices are restrictive enough that it becomes the best "choice" of several.'

That's very thought-provoking. Yes. It really underlines the way in which an economy which is bad for women overlaps with an economy in which the sex trade is legal.
On the face of it it doesn't work because there are countries like Germany where it's legal but women probably don't do badly economically. But the economy we're talking about is globalised - and there are women from other countries with fewer opportunities who staff the brothels.

I'm in a similar boat, princess, although I do have like-minded friends too, and some good fb groups I hang about in.
I defriended someone (am not fb-clever enough to mute) for saying all terfs were deeply damaged people.
I feel like this comes from the issue of women speaking up in favour of women-only groups where women can support each other's recovery after rape.
It's very similar to MRA slurs about women who are feminists just being one of the teeny tiny minority of women who were raped.