A liberal feminist encounters reality

[NotTerfNorCis]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/17/feminism-working-womens-prison-inmates-sex-work-marriage

I had engaged with ideological debates on the topic of sex work before, of course I had. I knew that to question whether sex work is really like any other work would make you a dreaded “swerf” (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist) and – like the patriarchy – is an attempt to control what women do with their bodies. People don’t need rescuing, the theory goes, they need rights and unions.

The majority of sex workers I met in prison, who arrived with bruises and track-marks, would rather have been doing anything else. They needed their rights protected, sure, but they also wanted a route out. The reality was not simple. It rarely is.

Ha! You beat me to it. I was going to start a thread saying exactly this, in connection with this article. I was thinking along the lines of "liberal feminism meets the real world" - clearly great minds think alike.

Also wanted to say to the author of the piece: "Connect the dots - you're looking at an argument for the Nordic model. Decriminalise the selling of sex, and criminalise the buying/collusion in buying of sex. Don't send the women to prison, send the pimps and punters to prison."

I thought this was a great article. A good example of what happens when abstract theory and practice collide. I hope it helps other lib fems to think beyond their slogans.

This is why radical feminism is built on grass roots activism and real life experience.
The only people that dread feminists are people who are not feminists.

It's progress that the Guardian would print this. They aren't totally lost to wokeness.

Also illustrates perfectly why the academic discipline of something is not necessarily applicable in real life.
Life is messier.

Sex workers are far mite likely to be beaten up and murdered. You wouldn’t have sex with a sweaty smelly stranger who repulses you unless you had no other option. Many are on drugs. Liberation? Of course not. Desperate women doing what they gave to.

What a great article, thanks for linking

Also illustrates perfectly why the academic discipline of something is not necessarily applicable in real life

Very much this. What relevance does academic feminism have to the women described in that article?

There is a big difference between women who end up doing sex work that have mental health and addiction issues, abuse, working the street, no autonomy or choice, chaotic lives etc and mentally healthy women (or men) who make a rational lifestyle choice to do sex work because they find it ok, convenient and it pays them lots of money.

Interesting article, but also exasperating. She had to spend time in a women's prison, talking to female prisoners, to find out what a lot of us know already. How do we know it? Well, we read books and articles. We listen to debates. If this writer had taken time to read the 2007 Corston report on women's prisons, for example, nothing that she saw in prison would have come as a surprise to her. Or indeed if she'd ever read an article by Julie Bindel - but she probably thought Bindel was a nasty TERF/SWERF and therefore to be shunned at all costs.

Fieldofgreycorn we are not discussing the privileged few, the "happy hooker". We are discussing the vast majority of prostitutes here. Who are trapped often by circumstances beyond their control. Who don't need unions and regulations but help to get out.

Exactly Royal. More proof, not that it is needed, that "terf/swerf" rhetoric serves the patriarchy very very well.

The author is young and the last thing she wants to do is acknowlege that her discoveries were commonplace knowledge in previous generations of women. So she studiously avoids any reference to this in her article. As such, I find myself not wholly trusting how committed she is to this new knowledge. Would she stand by it if denounced as a SWERF, or even worse as a TERF?

What the fuck is: I had previously hosted a lecture by a non-binary Mars astronaut?

£6 quid for a blow job on a stranger

At what point would all them people shouting sex work is work actually get on their knees and give blow jobs to strangers

Very interesting article. The guardian seems to be improving a great deal recently. Thanks for linking.

Sex work is one of those euphemisms which is meant to be inclusive but actually obscures issues.

There is a world of difference between the prostitute working the streets and the student answering a sex texting service while she's in the pub with her mates. However they are both engaged with sex work.

And as ever I am bemused by people who identify as left wing but seemingly have no understanding of class analysis.

I realise it's because in the US which is a more "conservative" society the word liberal has become synonymous with left wing because over there it is the left wing.

non-binary Mars astronaut

No one has ever set foot on Mars. Are people now self-identifying as having travelled to another planet?

More proof, not that it is needed, that "terf/swerf" rhetoric serves the patriarchy very very well.

Yes. It's so obvious to me that the terms Terf and Swerf have been invented by MRAs to keep women in their place. What gets me is that there are women who call themselves feminists who are idiotic enough to go along with it. Don't these women have any critical thinking capacity?

And we are not even one page in when the "Pretty Woman" analogy is trotted out.

actually get on their knees and give blow jobs to strangers

We should issue the pro-prostitution lobbyists with kneepads and condoms[1] and send them out into Holbeck. I think very quickly we would find out whether they put their money where their mouth is mouth where they claim the money is.

[1]: Which is two items more of personal protective equipment than most streetwalkers get.

The Guardian? The Guardian?

What are they up to?

Well, Fekko, I notice the article is a book extract, so it will have been placed there by the book's publisher, which means the graun won't have had to pay the writer for it. So the cynic in me thinks they just seized the opportunity to have some free copy.

At what point would all them people shouting sex work is work actually get on their knees and give blow jobs to strangers

Just, in a nutshell. Thank you.

They won't. Wee 'Lil has said that work is work (but it's not for them).

It's progress that the Guardian would print this.

I swear there is a renegade night editor substituting these in at the last minute and doing Muttley laughs round the back of the printing presses.