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.

Of course being pissed on by a man while you lie in a bath is work, just a job like any other. How could it be anything else?

Seriously, if you can get the Belle du Jour book from a charity shop or something, give it a read. Every so often, the facade slips and she lets out details that make you sit up and say "WTF?", like her regular shopping list at the chemist that has thrush cream and cystitis powders on it. Because actual jobs hurt your vulva to that extent... oh wait.

Or the time that she's bruised on her thighs and buttocks from an aggressive punter and the next punter a couple of days later notices. Because actual jobs leave you bruised... oh wait.

I've had thrush once in my entire life and would leave any job which made it a regular occurrence. It is sort of fascinating to try to peer into the minds of people like Magnati and see the ways in which they try to con themselves into believing that what they're doing is empowering and other women are just too weak and prudish to understand.

I've seen blokes writing about sex claiming to think that women like having our cervixes forcefully rammed into.

My vagina clamped shut again. Seriously, any woman with endometriosis is going to find that agonisingly painful. Source: personal experience.

I've had thrush once in my entire life and would leave any job which made it a regular occurrence.

I haven't had sex in over a year because of recurrent post-coital cystitis and I don't plan to resume having sex. My bacteria becoming resistant to one of the antibiotics used to treat it was the last straw. And TBH why would I want to do something that makes me ill like that?

Note: anyone who suggests peeing after sex etc will be summarily sworn at. I did all that and it still kept happening. It got to a point of insisting that sex finished before 6pm so I could pee many times before sleep and it still kept happening.

skql you’re right — for girls.

Because in the coming collapse in jobs economists are predicting, women are going to be pushed out of the labour market.

It’s what always happens in times of severe jobs crisis.

Men are prepping us for this in various ways: training us to sex work, or to domesticity, eliminating our public spaces and set-asides, getting us accustomed to not being able to meet publicly free of their presence, increasing our care work responsibilities by removing state supports, removing our ability to name ourselves as a coherent economic class when they remind us that that we have always been only a reserve pool of paid labour, now unneeded.

It’s a unified effort by men on the left and right, supports by elite Pick Me women who imagine they’ll be granted reprieve. They won’t be.

If you want to read beyond this article may I recommend three excellent sources that are very commonly cited by many feminists?

Rachel Moran: "Not for Sale"

Caitlyn Spencer: "Please Let Me Go"

Julie Bindel: "The Pimping of Prostitution"

I have noticed a few tentative steps in a different direction from the Guardian recently. I can't help but think some of their proper female journalists have got so fed up with its 'liberal feminist' and anti-women stance they've threatened a mutiny.

Hadley Freeman deserves a medal for being one of the few Graun journos who's refused to go full faux feminist.

I've been a Hadders fan for years - she is fab. Despite being a frump who lives in jeans and shapeless jumpers, I even loved her fashion column - because she writes so well and is always witty.

She's such a good writer that I love her fashion column even when I think her taste is terrible.

It’s so weird how the almost exclusively white middle class libfems would never do that work themselves.
No, it’s not like other work where I use my body because I don’t face being raped or beaten or murdered in other jobs. Not because I’m in a fucking union but because it’s illegal. If we apply normal work standards to sex work, prostitution would never pass the test because it would be deemed too dangerous and in breach of every single health and safety law. So there’s that. If we treat it as work, we have to outlaw it full stop.

Seeing as my views must make me hate sex workers, by analogy I also must hate those working zero hours contracts, those harassed or bullied at work, illegal workers controlled by gangs etc. I am such a hateful person. For instance, I really loathe cockle pickers who drown while working for a pittance in lethal conditions. I must do because I don’t think that sort of work should be permitted and that those controlling it should be punished.

That's the thing, if it's just a job like any other job then there must be a way to make it compliant with health and safety standards, right? Great, now explain how you plan to do that, sex industry advocates.

If the 'sex positive' lobbyists really wanted to put in place proper protection for 'sex workers', then surely they would advocate for all the relevant health and safety requirements that would be needed to make the job safe. As a bare minimum it is surely necessary to have the following:

• full health screening for both parties to ensure that neither is placed at an unknown risk of suffering ill health.

• the right of the service provider to carry out a background check and to insist on verifiable references before taking on a new client.

• properly enforceable contracts between service provider and client - including an agreed schedule of services to be provided prior to performance of the contract.

• appropriate monitoring of the performance of the contract either by a neutral third party or by video monitoring.

• proper access to an Employment Tribunal to adjudicate on breaches of the contract.

Can anyone else think of other provisions that would be necessary- and come up with any ideas as to why these protections seem to be missing from the proposals that the lobbyists are making?

I haven't had sex in over a year because of recurrent post-coital cystitis and I don't plan to resume having sex.

OT, but there are some new treatment protocols, involving longer courses of antibiotics, that are being used for this now and seem to be more effective for this kind of thing. It might be something to keep in mind, especially if it starts being a problem even without sex involved.

So long as it includes the requisite "not all hookers", and of course it did, the men at the Guardian will permit the article to be printed.

Detailing the degradation of women in prostitution only serves men's erections, johns can read this article and plausibly convince themselves their prostitutes are totally among the .01% who swears she loves it and chooses it freely.

Nordic model all the way. Criminalise the punters, not the sex workers.

Back in the annals of time, there used to be long, fascinating, and raging threads on the sex industry - often invaded by users of Punternet and the like, telling us we were all jealous dried up old prunes and the like.

Punters all assume the women are happy, and some even kid themselves that the women would do it with them anyway, despite astounding evidence to the contrary, from women who have exited the industry. They kid themselves that they get Belle de Jour - when in fact, a perusal of the punternet type reviews (such as the Invisible Man project the-invisible-men.tumblr.com/ ) demonstrates an awful of very vulnerable, possibly trafficked women.

The sex industry is rarely good for the women who work in it - there are always a few stars, a few Belle de Jours - and then the women like the ones mentioned in the article are forgotten - they have no voice. It's interesting how TERF and SWERF are often used together now- as a pejorative against feminists who stand up for the rights of women.

Half of women in prison are there for committing a crime to support someone else’s drug habit – almost always a man’s. - Is shocking

There isn't another job where you can get pregnant with your customer's baby as an unintended consequence of the transaction.

Shop assistants and lawyers don't have to deal with that issue in the course of their employment.

The complete erasure of the women's bodies in the sex positive position is quite breathtaking.

There also isn't another job (outside the sex industry, including the porn industry) where sexual harassment is part of the job description.

Or where you are expected to endure potentially lethal biological agents to come into contact with your face, especially eyes and mouth as well as other areas of your body without protection from, prevention of or prohibition on this happening by the state.

Biohazards are of course also an issue in other jobs. My mum's staff for instance who are doing personal care regularly come into contact with body fluids (obviously). However, the very moment one of them discloses that she is pregnant, she is by law* immediately banned from this part of the job. She can still do many other aspects of the job, such as dressing, feeding, tidying up or shopping for the client but not that one. This is to protect both the woman and her unborn during pregnancy from both biohazards and the cleaning agents used in dealing with all aspects of this part of care.

*This is in Germany, where full decriminalisation of prostitution has led to horrifying practices.

Health & Safety regulations would certainly have a bit of problem regulating this.

So would the Equality Act. Right now, a prostitute who is free to choose her punters can turn down entire groups of clients for whatever reasons she pleases (no Catholics, no married men, no French dudes, no blokes over 50, no deaf or blind guys). If sex work was work like any other, our hypothetical woman is illegally discriminating against these groups! But is she to be forced to offer her services indiscriminately?

But is she to be forced to offer her services indiscriminately?

The "genital preferences are transphobic and bigoted" trancel logic is to soften lawmakers and society up to accept women being forced to shag allcomers for money.

As is the "disabled people men should have access to sex workers women to rape" logic.

Sorry for not posting coherently, this has only just hit me:

• "right to sex" being upheld in court for that guy with autism who is a massive sex pest
• "genital preferences are transphobic" claims from TPAs, resulting in lesbians who refuse penis owners being made unwelcome at Pride
• the argument that disabled men should be allowed to rape prostituted women
• Warwickshire LEA teaching teen girls about anal sex
• Lib Dem elected officials suggesting that careers advisors should encourage kids girls into prostitution
• Incels suggesting that the State should issue brothel vouchers to poor men
• Holbeck
• Mermaids and co getting into schools to teach children that sexuality is about gender and pushing the "genital preferences are transphobic" lie

It's all about commoditising women's bodies and removing our rights to have boundaries, in order to eventually de facto legalise rape completely[1]. If the misogynists openly campaigned for the legalisation of rape, there'd be an outcry. But they can achieve it through the back door and be cheered on by so-called progressives if they use trans and disabled as their mascots.

[1]: As Holbeck residents have found: he rapes you, he chucks £20 at you as you lie broken on the floor, you go to the police, he claims he thought you were a prostitute.