Two alternatives:

1) Respect sex workers as valued members of the human species and treat their perceptions and beliefs about their own lives as valid.

2) Blame sex workers for the horrors perpetrated by kyriarchal systems, deny their autonomy and beliefs about their own lives and reinforce the stigma created by the same kyriarchal system.

I’m afraid that is an either/or situation.

You’ve never seen people from the anti side talk down to the women involved in the sex industry? I have. So has just about every other sex worker here. First hand.

And yes, there is an argument to be made about how the sex industry affects all women globally. It is an argument that has been had many times and I do not discount it is a valid one. However, right now, in this very really real world, there is no end to the sex industry in sight. So, right now, I am very concerned with seeing that sex workers have the same rights and basic human consideration a whole lot of other people take for granted.

We all pick our battles, right?”

It is not an either/or situation at all. This is the definition of a false dichotomy.

Most of my experiences have been from overhearing sex workers talk about their experiences on the bus (there is a certain bus that for some reason has many street workers around 11 pm). And I guess listening to their experiences just traumatized me. And listening to them not be bothered by them was even scarier. When I hear people describing obvious, commonplace, horrific violations of their rights, and not seem to think that’s abnormal….I just can’t understand why they would keep doing it unless they had to.

I’ve had a similar response listening to members of the police and armed forces talk. I’ve had to acknowledge that I simply cannot understand their perspective as I have never seen the world from it.

Also, when I said ignorant, in my mind, I was not saying ‘dumb’. A person may be ignorant of their legal rights, or other options available, for instance, but still be a genius at solving math problems or be able to think perceptively about their situation(Given the information available to them.)

It’s still unacceptable to me to decide based on nothing that a sex worker (or any other woman) has made the choices she has because the poor dear just doesn’t know any better. Women have been copping that patronising shit for a very long time.

I think crimes against sex workers should should involve women having a way to alert police to dangerous johns without having to expose themselves to arrest.

And that right there will only be achieved by decriminalising sex work, and destroying the stigma surrounding sex workers.

kvs:

But, hey, I’m on your side. I just don’t understand why all the posts on sex work, that’s all. It’s just another job.

Because sex workers are talking, and we tend to talk about our work as part of our lives?

Reframe the argument so that mostly young, white educated call girls have a voice, as they comprise the majority of sex workers.

Nice assumption that these “recent” posts on Feministe about sex workers were written by white women. Thanks for the erasure, I dig it.

That’s like saying that being raped is different than getting punched in the face – there’s only a difference if one has puritanical attitudes about sex.

Oh, piss off.

Georgia:

I once read an article about a GRANNY though, in Netherlands(?) who is still doing sex work, because *grasp*, there are lonely older men who are interested in sex with women who are their age.

I’ve encountered a fair few women who are in their 50s, 60s or older who are still working.

Kate S:

I never said sex workers are insane or deluded or even implied anything close to that. I did, say, however, that not all sex workers are sex-workers by choice (even here in the first-world!) and any conversation about sex work should include a multitude of perspectives. i dont see how asking for a larger perspective equals implying that sex workers are deluded. i didnt even imply that sex-workers by choice were deluded!

No. Just no.

The conversation about sex work and the sex industry needs the perspectives of sex workers from throughout the industry, I will give you that. There will be enough perspectives in that for a fucking Escher painting. But it is not ok to demand that sex workers talking about our own lives are under any obligation to incorporate the views of women who are not us, who do not share our perspectives, and who often frame us as being the bad guys. We, like any other women, have the right to talk about our own lived experiences without being told we’re doin it rong by some well meaning non-worker who wants to replace our part of the conversation with “analysis”.

are you…..freaking serious? The majority of sex workers are SLAVES.

uhh I don’t have institutional/social power to really do anything to anyone outside of voicing my opinion? What I advocate actually opposes the people in power who can legislate and economically/socially dominate women are for. Is that enough difference for you? This is like when white people think they are pointing out the hypocrisy of a racial situation by reversing the race roles (if a white dude said what sotomayor did blah blah blah). Who has the power in society is a huge consideration when discussing these things.

I never ‘dumped’ on anyone and I don’t intend to. I don’t blame women for shitty unequal situations that they were born into and cannot reasonably escape, that would be awful. I voice my opinion of the shitty situation and how participation helps things continue on at the same pace, but of course people can choose to do whatever they want. The argument that prescribing behavior is wrong because the patriarchy does it would need a damn lot of explanation behind it, mainly showing how prescribing behavior is always wrong or some other way to demonstrate that the actual context and content of the advice is irrelevant.

as far as choices go- the choice between housewife and working mom or sex worker or not isn’t something that happens in a vaccuum, and there isn’t any choice she can make that gives her the degree of freedom that men enjoy by default. Choices are not automatically profeminism just because women make them, it smacks of when dudes dismiss my feminist wrath by saying ‘well so and so is a woman, and they don’t mind it, so its not sexism” so often. It is either oppressive/patriarchy assisting or it isn’t.
There were women WHO PROTESTED WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE for fucks sake.

And I think that that is one of the things that makes having productive conversations about the status of sex-workers so difficult, there really is no comparison.

There are miners who get up every day and go risk their lives in some of the worst conditions that are possible. There are astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts and etc. who blast off into space and spend months in environments that, with a single equipment malfunction, can turn 100% hostile to human life, while the world below discusses the state of their bathrooms, and no one pretends it’s a walk in the park either. There are people who are paid to dive to recover bodies from shipwrecks and plane crashes, and the kind of things they see would make someone else in their position have a complete breakdown. There are migrants who’ll work for 12 hours straight in scorching weather. All of these people have one thing in common – their jobs are difficult. Some are valued more than others, some, like migrants, are barely valued at all (even though various corporations depend on their cheap labour to survive), but the bottom line is, no one quite assumes that we can’t have “productive conversations” about their status.

If you trust any of these people’s individual experiences, why not trust the individual experiences of sex workers? Why are sex workers always the pariahs, always relegated to the status of “not-quite-normal” and “not-like-those-other-folks,” always pigeonholed, and apparently “for their own good” too?

I know a miner who is very proud of what he does. Does he represent all miners everywhere? Well, no, he’s an individual. Yet I somehow don’t think that you’d jump all over him like you did all over Ren here.

The dignity we allow a man like him is curiously denied to people like Ren. And that sucks.

And sorry for engaging the de-rail.

I also just feel like I keep to myself more. I don’t know many sex workers (and they are all off-the-street doing stuff like stripping/fetish stuff), but even with them I wouldn’t bring their work up unless they seemed to want to talk about it.

But don’t you think that asking would be less intrusive than assuming? Of course, the people you’re making assumptions about may never know it, so you don’t have to face the discomfort. But, I personally feel much more threatened by the idea of someone hearing part of my conversation, then going on to reference it in a conversation with OTHER people about what kind of person *I* am. This is indeed dehumanizing, though I’m not trying to say that is your intention.

By forming an opinion about issues that affect real women’s lives, particularly forming opinions ABOUT THOSE WOMEN, without ever having one conversation with a member of that group, you aren’t helping anyone. My general rule is that if I don’t have any real experience with something, I don’t form an opinion about it. And on those occasions where I catch myself breaking this rule, I question my own motives.

To stay on the i-banker analogy, you pointed out that you know a lot of i-bankers personally and have dated one. I’m still not sure that we can categorize a whole group of people based on this; however, that sounds like a lot more first hand experience than overhearing a few conversations on the bus. Do you know any lumber jacks? Do you have a strong opinion about what kind of people are lumber jacks [or, insert group of people here ... I'm sure you get what I'm saying?] The point isn’t that all sex workers have it great. Or that ALL sex workers are like ANYTHING. The point is that by sticking your own description on THEIR experiences, you are treating them as LESS THAN HUMAN, and THAT is what perpetuates violence and hatred.

Then I read a thread like this, you know, where Ren sez that we’re a diverse group of people and not a social problem. Tho’ it would be nice if people *did* listen to our voices, detailing what we cared about. It did sorta start off rationally.

And then comment after comment after comment filled with people exploring (and imposing!!) their own ideas (and resentments!!) about sex work with little regard to what Ren said or even the point of what she said…

It just makes me feel that I just don’t understand people, and I don’t want to understand people because it seems like being genuine is pathological to certain people. That this must be punished, because otherwise the world is too confusing and people can’t be manipulated easily if they are multidimensional beings worthy of interacting with and changing mutual goals.