Sex work is work

[IamSarah]

It’s telling that this has become a mantra chanted by trans activists. Couldn’t really get more patriarchal.

It got me wondering about captured organisations, in particular rape crisis services.

As some of you know my local rape crisis org is very much ‘trans women are women’ and includes TW in all female group work. Therefore I imagine they also support the ‘sex work is work’ position.

Surely this means they are excluding sex workers from the service? If women are simply ‘working’ then why would anything they experience as sex workers be classed as sexual violence?

This seems very dangerous to me. Quite sinister in fact.

Anyone else see where I’m coming from?

That is a concerning thought.

Just from lurking and reading your previous thread I would assume that the services you worked with aren't particularly women friendly nor helpful to victims of abuse in any shape or form, whatever their circumstances.
The gaslighting going on overtly is a massive red flag- if that's what they're willing to admit to what do they hide.

I see exactly what you are saying OP. It’s work hazard and I don’t think they get hazard pay. Reading a menu of what’s on offer from a German bordell and it’s absolutely grim.

It benefits men for women to look as selling sex just like any other profession. Add in the slow erosion of boundaries then they will have a captured population of very weak boundaried women eager to validate them all the time and ripe for abuse.

I’m pretty sure that’s what this is about. They (tra) are just the other side of the men’s right activist coin.

I never understood the " sex work is work" thing as it seems to go ha d in hand wotg the happy hooker myth. If someone's chosen to work as a prostitute then they are doing them a favour giving them work.

Even if it were true ( which it isn't) bow would the men buying sex even know if they were having sex with someone forced into the work by addiction/abuse. Or one that's seemingly happy to do it. They'd be no way of telling.

And yes the last thing a prostitute needs is a service that's also used by males and who believes that sex work is a legit choice.

As usual the very women who need the space are the ones excluded

It was seeing this from my local centre that got me thinking.

We seem to be living in a world where medical examinations are seen as sexual violence but a life of prostitution is fine and dandy.

I know they're not pleasant but imagine if all women needed rape crisis support following smear tests, vaginal ultrasounds and colposcopies.

"Surely this means they are excluding sex workers from the service? If women are simply ‘working’ then why would anything they experience as sex workers be classed as sexual violence"

I'd like to reassure you it doesn't. Countries which acknowledge sex work as work make a clear distinction between consenting adults and between eg trafficked victims or victims of rape. Sex workers can be raped just like anyone else and it is a very harmful attitude to claim they can't be "because they are sex workers". Rape, sexual assault, trafficking etc against anyone are all crimes in Britain.

In countries with criminalisation(or partial criminalisation) there is no distinction made and all sex workers are classed as victims. One of the reasons why some people and orgs oppose criminalisation is it becomes harder to identify who really is a victim and who really does need help if you call every sex worker a victim and put them all in just one category.

MargaritaPie I would have thought you would be familiar with the much quoted TW murder statistics from Brazil which applies almost entirely to those in the prostitution industry.

Yes I think I heard somewhere that Brazil was a particularly dangerous place for transwomen, but it's not something I've read much into.

I do see where you are coming from OP, and agree it is concerning at best, very sinister at worst.

The more and more I read and hear about trans ideology/gender identity theory and queer theory the more I see they overlap and the more I see a sinister side behind them all.

I really hope you are male Marg

There are so many layers of problems to unpick with the "sex work is work" mantra.

Firstly, what exactly is defined as sex work?
Seeing as it can range from web camming in your own bedroom, doing nothing more than stripping, or using a vibe for ££ on OnlyFans, to being gang banged and forcibly penetrated in all orifices for less £ than a McDonald's, and having your passport confiscated so you can't go home, and having your likelihood of being murdered increase by 1000%...
Even being a pimp falls under "sex work'.

Then to say, "it is work"... Sure, it's hard, money exchanges hands, it's certainly exploitation.

You may as well say "sweat shop work is work" or "slavery is work". It's just completely thoughtless.
It's basically brain dead to repeat "sex work is work" in the same way it's brain dead to repeat "twaw".

Both mantras benefit people with a penis, and are vehemently anti-women so it's not surprising they go hand in hand.

As I read somewhere else today - the mantra is never “housework is work” is it….just coincidentally it always happens to coincide with something that men benefit from….

In countries with criminalisation(or partial criminalisation) there is no distinction made and all sex workers are classed as victims. One of the reasons why some people and orgs oppose criminalisation is it becomes harder to identify who really is a victim and who really does need help if you call every sex worker a victim and put them all in just one category..

just as in a country where it is not criminalised all prostitutes are seen as the happy hooker kind and trafficked women and girls are never identified as victims because 'sex work is work'.

Add in the fact that men see prostitutes as easy because 'sex work is work' and all they are doing is buying labour, the demand outstrips supply (because women still don't see sex work as their kind of work) and to get more supply, women and girls are trafficked into the country and forced. But who knows that, because 'sex work is work', amiright?

Hello OP

For a long time 'SWERF AND TERF' was all over the place.

Standing for

Sex worker exclusionary radical feminists and trans exclusionary radical feminists.

What the two things have to do with each other was never made clear. But apparently they're closely linked...

It's a men's rights movement. It's always been. So so many totally obvious things practically advertise it in neon lights.

So there you go.

Ah how is sex work defined? And why must any terms specifically meaning money for actual real life sex acts be got rid of?

1. Sex work encompasses loads of things most of which are just not the same risk etc as prostitution.

Thus watering down the less palatable stats.

1. I read on s thread here that sex work including being paid for sex is defined as s consensual transaction.

Anything that occurs that was not agreed to in the transaction eg violence, rape etc. Is therefore NOT anything to do with sex work. That's VAWG. Criminal acts. As such should go into stats about crime. Nothing to do with sex work.

... Hmmmmm...

The second point was put forward by a poster on this thread. I think it's really not s good point at all. Tbh.

I’m just trying to think of a world where prostitution is legitimised.
Trust pilot reviews?
Full refunds if customers unhappy with service?
Apprenticeships and college courses to learn about the “trade”?

Yes I think I heard somewhere that Brazil was a particularly dangerous place for transwomen

It's a particularly dangerous place for everyone.

I think the common thread is support of extreme bodily autonomy.

The ideology behind all this is individuals can do what they want with their own bodies, and it’s the job of the medical profession, markets etc simply to facilitate this. That includes buying and selling access to your body through surrogacy, “sex work” etc. The fact this turns relationships that many people don’t think should be commercial “transactions” into exactly that is overlooked. Meanwhile changing the language around “women” and divorcing it from biology helps to conceal the fact that in practise it is the female sex who are exploited by all this supposed “personal choice”.

Of course, its proponents also tend to claim that if you are against bodily autonomy then you are anti-abortion. But surely most pro-choice people see abortion as the least bad option, rather than something to be celebrated in itself? They would be uncomfortable with women deliberately choosing abortion over contraception, or for sex selection (even though they might not support banning this) and would likely oppose the idea of monetising abortion (e.g. if there was a market for fetal tissue and women were having abortions for that reason, or if there was a market in “abortion porn”.)

I think the challenge for feminism is that so often the fight has been about gaining basic bodily autonomy for women, that it can be easy to be gulled by the idea that an extreme, consumerist version is in their interests too.

@MargaritaPie

Yes I think I heard somewhere that Brazil was a particularly dangerous place for transwomen, but it's not something I've read much into.

Hi Margarita, just to jog your memory as to where you heard this "somewhere" (because this seems rather disingenuous). Practically on every thread you appear on about sex work this point is made to you. HTH, x

'In countries with criminalisation(or partial criminalisation) there is no distinction made and all sex workers are classed as victims'

I understand this to be saying that in countries where selling sex is illegal, anyone working as a prostitute is automatically seen as a victim of sexual violence.

Is that right?

I think the challenge for feminism is that so often the fight has been about gaining basic bodily autonomy for women, that it can be easy to be gulled by the idea that an extreme, consumerist version is in their interests too.

As with so many shibboleths of the current self-identified (not not actually) "progressives", the concept itself is fine if we were starting from a place of equal power between the sexes.

But that is so so very far from the place we are in reality starting from.

In reality, starting from where we actually are, any loosening of sex (the act and the class)- related protections always tends to increase the disempowerment and exploitation of female people by male, because the male people have the cultural power/weight/levers to impose their will on the female.

@MargaritaPie

Yes I think I heard somewhere that Brazil was a particularly dangerous place for transwomen, but it's not something I've read much into.

Brazil is a particularly dangerous place full stop. But you will be relieved to know that transwomen in Brazil are considerable safer than other men (or than women) in terms of risk of murder. There were approximately 50,000 murders in Brazil alone last year compared to a worldwide total of 350 or so transwomen murders. This should reassure transwomen

@CheeseMmmm

'In countries with criminalisation(or partial criminalisation) there is no distinction made and all sex workers are classed as victims'

I understand this to be saying that in countries where selling sex is illegal, anyone working as a prostitute is automatically seen as a victim of sexual violence.

Is that right?

In Sweden sex workers are also seen as unfit to look after their children (based on the fact they choose to sell sexual services and refuse to see themself as a "victim of sexual violence" etc) and may have their children taken off them and given to an abusive ex instead.

Based on the case of Petite Jasmine, Sweden thinks abusive and violent men are better suited to being a parent than a sex worker.

Yes . that was a very sad case dating back to 2013. Could you tell us if things have changed in Sweden after the protests concerning this case?

Also, trans sex workers in Brazil do not seem to be at any more risk of death or violence than female sex workers. It is however a very dangerous occupation in Brasil.
It should also be pointed out that Brasil is a very dangerous place for women with approx 4 women every day being killed in cases classed as femicides.
.

It should also be pointed out that Brasil is a very dangerous place for women with approx 4 women every day being killed in cases classed as femicides.
.
It's approx 13 women killed there a day, Femicide, a narrower definition, only applies where a woman is known to have been killed by a man/men. Women whose killer is unknown don't meet the criteria.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femicide