“Scratch a Communist, and find a Philistine. Of course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women.” - V. I. Lenin
In this I will be clarifying the essential nature of solidarity with sex workers to any serious leftist movement, especially in regards to migrant rights, women’s rights, queer rights and anti-racism.
I am not interested in any discussions about personal feelings in regards to the sex trade, nor do I care about any utopian conversations about a society in which sex work does not exist. The fact is that sex work does exist, and any discussion therefor must focus on ways to protect the lives, rights and dignity of sex workers right now.
I acknowledge that there are cis men who engage in prostitution, and I have no desire to erase or ignore their experiences and marginalisation. However, statistically speaking the overwhelming number of sex workers are women, particularly migrants and people of colour, and queer people, especially trans people, are over-represented. This is due to the economic marginalisation and enforced precarity of women, racialised people, and trans people who are excluded from employment, education and institutional access to social services, especially for migrants in a border regime that creates a tiered system of access to rights and criminalises entire populations based upon their location of birth.
Firstly I will address the term “sex work” itself. There is an oft propagated notion that defining sex work as work is somehow indicative of a glamorization of the sex trade, apologia for sexual violence and exploitation, or a desire to expand and increase the amount of sex work that happens. There is, at the same time, an argument that all sex work is inherently assault, and as such to term it work is to ignore the reality of the sex trade’s exploitative nature.
"Part of believing me when I say I have been raped is believing me when I say I haven’t been." - Nikita, 2017 Annual General Meeting of Amnesty International UK.
I’m willing to respond to you because this is an important topic to me, but I want to make it very clear that as moderator of the trans community, if I ever see a user call another user a “moron” they will be banned, no questions asked. This is not an acceptable way to talk to people here.
From what I gather, you agree with my conclusions, but you seem to have taken umbrage only with the fact that I stated that current street sex workers should be centred in conversations about street sex work, as they are the ones who will be materially impacted by any movements/legislation regarding street sex work. Is that fair to say?
You admit yourself that you are a former sex worker, and that you never did street sex work, thus proving the very point I made (and that is a point that is well-repeated in sex worker organising, and is taken directly from the book Revolting Prostitutes written by street sex workers, Molly Smith and Juno Mac. You are allowed to disagree, but that disagreement will be irreconcilable for us, because I will always maintain that the people currently selling sex on the street, who will be directly materially impacted by any legislation and organisation about sex work, should lead that conversation). As someone who does not sell sex on the street, you will not be materially impacted by legislation and organising regarding street sex work, so you should not lead the conversation or take precedence over current street sex workers. That isn’t to say that your voice should be ignored or dismissed or that you should have no place in any such organising, it is simply to say that you cannot apply your thoughts and experiences as a broad metric by which to evaluate the thoughts and experiences of other sex workers, nor should you be given the space to speak over them.
You also seem to disagree with my assertion that not all sex work is sexual assault. Maybe my examples didn’t strike a chord with you (that’s fine, though several of the examples I used were also taken from Smith and Mac), but I won’t change my stance on this. As someone intimately familiar with both sex work and sexual assault, I am firmly committed to an understanding that to equate sex work and sexual assault is to deny sex workers the agency to distinguish when they have been assaulted and when they haven’t.
Sex work, like all work under capitalism, is exploitation. I don’t deny that. Nor do I wish to grow or expand the sex trade, as can be seen in my argument that we must ultimately empower people to leave the sex trade by eliminating the socio-economic factors that lead into sex work.
However to say that sex work is always sexual assault is to rob sex workers of the right to point to specific instances of sexual assault.
Let me explain it this way: sex work is exploitative, but to call every instance of sex work sexual assault would be akin to saying that non sex work is exploitative and therefor every instance of non sex work is assault. That eliminates the worker’s ability to point to the real sources of the exploitation (capitalism) and to real instances of assault.
Finally, you have doubled down on assuming that as a former sex worker (one admittedly who did not engage in street work) that you are more intimately familiar with this topic than me, thus continuing to assume that you have any insight into my life, my experiences, or my material conditions. The overwhelming majority of the information and arguments provided in this essay are not my own, they are sourced from other academics and street sex workers, however that doesn’t change that I am in fact intimately familiar with this topic, and don’t appreciate your assumptions, nor your insults, over a topic that ultimately it seems we agree on the conclusions to.
Bullshit! Sex crimes can have varying levels of severity, they can also overlap. You don’t think in a straight line. Plus, you talk too much. I just got off work. I’m not even going to bother to the rest rn, except with “lol”
I really don’t understand why you’re so hostile to me, but it’s quite simple: there are sex workers who do the work and don’t consider it sexual assault. End of story.
As long as a single instance of sex work isn’t sexual assault to the sex worker, then it is wrong to say that all sex work is sexual assault, because no individual can decide for another what is and is not sexual assault. At no point is it acceptable for someone to tell another person that what they experienced as consensual was in fact sexual assault.
That is what is at the heart of respecting people’s boundaries of consent and believing survivors of assault. No one can determine for someone else what constitutes rape. If a sex worker considers all the sex work they did to be assault, then that is because their consent was violated. However that can not be applied to everyone else because not everyone has the same experiences. I can guarantee from personal experience and also discussions with sex workers that not every instance of sex work is sexual assault.
As far as “I talk too much,” no one is making you participate in this conversation, and frankly, you’ve done nothing but angrily yell at me over something you’ve personally never experienced by your admission, so kindly contribute a meaningful dialogue or fuck off.
Great news: it smelled so nice outside that I am doing a nightwalk. Was just dehydrated.
I am hostile to you because you are downplaying rape using classic shit like “no penetration” & “it wasn’t that bad” & “maybe they enjoyed it 😉😉” while using a sanctimonious, long-winded manner.
Lunacy! All the time we have to educate people to help them understand they were violated in social work. People who can’t even see what’s happening to them is a violation until long after the fact are common in a rape culture that allows them to get away with it and punished victims. People cope however they can.
I am fully aware that people cope however they can, as I’ve mentioned before I am personally and intimately familiar with sex work and sexual violence, as are Mac and Smith, the people whose book I referenced for most of my discussion. I know many sex workers who do not consider the work they do to be assault in every instance.
However, the fact that there are people who cope by downplaying their assaults does not in fact mean that you can extend to all people that their experiences were sexual assault. It is not your place to tell me or anyone else when something we do not consider assault was actually assault, that we’re wrong and do not have the right to differentiate our experiences.
And this is such an incredibly specific and contentious bone for you to pick about a conversation about how essential it is to work in solidarity with sex workers, a thread I wrote specifically because people use the “all sex work is rape” argument to dismiss sex worker unions and to promote criminalisation, a thing which directly leads to an increase in danger, violence, and precarity of sex workers.
It seems to me that your moral crusade against people thinking differently than you is more important than engaging with the ideas of people who are currently and immediately affected by this conversation. In any case I’ve made my point, and you’ve made yours, so unless there’s something new to discuss, we’ll disengage here.
Your axiomatic approach to this is the problem. Your inability to separate this argument from criminalization of being a prostitute.
Being a John is a sex crime, so is getting reluctant consent for nudes or sex, so is physically attacking someone and forcing them to have sex with you. Not saying these are the same crimes with the same severity. Those would be separate charges.
In the same way that people once were not even allowed to recognize date rape as being a crime, sex workers with a positive mindset about it are deceiving themselves.
It’s truly incredible that people can recognize that pestering someone for sex or nudes is a violation, that situations where someone has too much power over another in the workplace etc makes it inappropriate, but when it comes to actual money, it’s suddenly alright.