How Faika El-Nagashi went from Sex Work is Work to abolitionist

[Mermoose]

What started as an attempt to name and confront the exploitation of migrant women had become something else entirely: a celebration of the system itself. A cover-up of its brutality, complicit with a structure it has no intention of disrupting—rebranded in the language of autonomy, choice, and pride. For over a decade, I was one of the most prominent voices in Austria arguing for the “sex work is work” framework. I no longer believe that rights language can compensate for the inherent risks at the core of this system—especially when everyone has become so skilled at explaining the violence away. But it’s not incidental. It’s structural. And we have to stop protecting the systems that make it inevitable.

https://open.substack.com/pub/faikaelnagashi/p/what-i-want-to-say-about-sex-work

I always find it really interesting when people recount a complete change of view on an emotive topic. I never thought prostitution was anything but exploitation but I was once involved with the SocDems in Ireland, who at the time (and probably now) were vehemently SWIW. What I noticed was that the position that SWIW was protected by an epistemic firewall - anything that might undermine it was immediately discredited as coming from an unacceptable source.

I stopped listening to the Feminists when they started saying prostitution is work and women can enjoy porn too.
I'm not impressed with this person's about face, she's got miles to go before she can absolve herself of the damage she helped do.

The gap between that brutal reality and the sanitized ideology they were promoting had become impossible to bridge. Why keep pretending this industry can be made safe? That women can somehow not be exploited? That migrant women, of all people, could ever find true autonomy in a system designed—by its very nature—to degrade and violate them? But how do you challenge any of it when you’ve already sacrificed conceptual clarity to dogmatic relativism?

I’m glad that she’s had her damascene moment, but why did it take 24 years to reach it? Meanwhile for a quarter century she advocated for the dangerous and disingenuous narrative that SWIW lulling impressionable and naive young women into thinking being used and exploited by men was okay? That’s really quite depressing.

I share the disquiet.

Muted huzzah for the belated realisation of the harms to the exploited women and society in general.

It takes a lot of guts in the current climate to change your opinion publicly like that; I have respect for this, though I agree that it took too long time.

The argumentation and explanation of why she thought it was a good idea is very helpful in understanding her former view and other people who share this.

You have to see that a lot of people grow up with the slogan hammered into everyone, that doing to yourself what others did or would do to you is "empowering". Basically, do it "voluntarily" and take control of your narrative. That does not change the actual problematic and horrible situation, of course, which is what everyone in her circle ignored.

On the other hand, El Nagashi published some articles against Self-ID and women's spaces, where she supports pro-women discourses.
https://faikaelnagashi.substack.com/p/it-was-never-about-the-butch-lesbians

So overall, it's still good news for women. It's also possible that the Self-ID discussion helped her see the other points about "sex work", too.

I love the phrase “epistemic firewall”. So on the money.

I was impressed by what she said. She had a Damascus moment and realised that violence is part and parcel of the prostitution of women, and confessed she had been wrong in promoting SWIS and has now changed her mind. Yes, she has a long way to go to undo what she had done - so did Saul. It doesn't mean we should not welcome her conversion.

She wrote her master's thesis about the topic - presumably about SWIW and went on to work in support networks and agencies (as she wrote in the text from the OP).
https://utheses.univie.ac.at/detail/3225#

So she basically now changed opinion on one of her life's works; I think that's a big deal.
From the abstract (available in English, too), the focus was on "racist and colonial power structures within feminist contexts". So it could have made sense to say they can be free of that through SWIW, without seeing the glaring discrepancy that self-exploitation is still exploitation.
But now she saw it and that's very good, especially as such a turnaround can inspire others who might not have dared to change their mind because the house of cards then will fall.
Also SWIW activists might rather listen to her than to feminists who always thought the concept was full of loopholes, because she used to support their arguments. This could be very helpful.

In the end the goal is not academic point-scoring but to support women to be free of exploitation, though I think without debate the legislation won't change, so both practical and theoretical help is necessary.

What started as an attempt to name and confront the exploitation of migrant women had become something else entirely: a celebration of the system itself. A cover-up of its brutality, complicit with a structure it has no intention of disrupting—rebranded in the language of autonomy, choice, and pride.

This is so true. There is no true feminist analysis anymore. It's all just covering up female exploitation with sloganeering and thought terminating cliches.