Winona Ryder & Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted (1999)
#NoRacistCostumes2k15
To SWERFs who claim to be sex workers or former sex workers:
There seem to be more of you around lately, conveniently disclosing your status (or having it disclosed for you) as a gotcha in arguments about the trade of sex.
Plenty of people assert that you’re lying, that you’ve never traded sex, or perhaps that you’ve only done so in incidental, not survival-dependent ways (that you’re not…representative). I think that that is likely true, in many cases, but I have a more important point to make: it doesn’t really matter to me whether or not you’re lying (although it does make you a douche of monstrous proportions).
Let’s give you all the benefit of the doubt : every one of you is just as massive a prozzie as I am (which is saying something). Now I need you to explain something to me. However you felt about your experience, however horrible it was, however little you wanted to do it, explain to me how it would have been made *better* by being evicted? By being arrested? By being forced into a reeducation program that amounts to a jail sentence without a trial or conviction? How would you have been safer or happier unable to work in groups or screen your clients? For those of you who describe yourself as economically coerced, how would your situation have improved without the option to get money the way you did?
It doesn’t matter what you think an ideal world would look like – how would the things you advocate for (the end of “demand”, the dangerous, ludicrous policies meant to bring us there) have made your situation better, less dangerous, less impoverished?
The fact that you’ve traded sex does not magically mean you can’t be whorephobic, any more than being a woman makes Sarah Palin not a terrifying misogynist. If what you want to happen makes shit more dangerous for your colleagues, then your opinion blows.
I’ve said it before and i need to say it again
I am not comfortable with the very clear lines people are currently drawing between sex work and trafficking. I understand the impulse to do it, I think it stems from the same defensive impulse that led to the “empowerment!” conversation–we are fully realized people and we have meaningful consent and we want to emphasize that!
However, sex work and trafficking DO overlap. Inevitably, at this point, since federal and state definitions have been broadened so far that one can simultaneously traffick oneself and be a victim of trafficking, a legal situation which helps no one but the law enforcement who get funded from arrests and profit from confiscation.
So to be clear and to maintain a nuanced and constructive dialogue, I, personally, am throwing “trafficking” out the window unless specifically referring to the illegal movement over borders of coerced workers.
In its place we have several categories:
consensual adult sex workers
survival sex workers
underage survival sex workers leaving violence at home, often sexual exploitation or abuse
sexual abuse (most likely to happen within the home)
consensual adult sex workers who are also in DV relationships
commercial sexual exploitation (of minors or adults, also AS LIKELY within the home as on the street) like:
sex workers who migrated knowingly to do sex work but then found themselves in exploitative situations on arrival (very real)
sex workers who work in shitty situations but because of laws, lack of economic opportunity, and unsafe circumstances created by laws, &c have no better financial option
and totally unwilling people who are being held captive and raped. This situation, even law enforcement agrees, is by far the least frequently seen. But it does happen, we know this because of Jill Brenneman (who remained a sex worker and sex worker rights activist after) and because of that recent case of SSI fraud where a woman was keeping multiple people imprisoned in her basement to collect their checks, torturing and abusing them, and also apparently selling sexual access to at least one of them.
Please stop saying that sex work and trafficking are opposites. It’s not furthering the conversation around our rights and safety and it’s ignoring certain realities: many sex workers WOULD quit sex work if they had a better way to make money: if the world and employers were kinder to people with PTSD, trans people, people with mental illness or chronic pain that makes other work impossible.
We ARE fully realized people and we are consenting–and our consent has MEANING!–but the global situation is also complex and it’s acceptable and okay to acknowledge that many of us operate within constrained circumstances where no, we aren’t THRILLED or empowered but we are still fully cognizant of our best options and are choosing this while others have fewer options and some DID choose this but now work in situations in which their consent has been ignored or invalidated–I mean that’s happened to me.
we lose NOTHING by continuing to add nuance and our full lived realities to this discussion and people WILL try to turn it against us but we can’t let their shitty ethics and agendas keep us from having an honest and open conversation about our realities and the realities of the sexual economy, as well as sexual abuse and exploitation.
Which is not to say that the prohibitionists’ time would nt be better spent in helping to destroy rape culture and misogyny rather than… Us.
For how long does Europe’s racist right need to “rise” before it is acknowledged that Europe is racist and this is not the by product of recent social discontent?
Europe’s racist far right is not on the rise. It’s always been there. – Medium
I dug into the archives of the past 20 years of European media to highlight the nonsensical nature of the claim that “the European far right is on the rise”. Not only has the far right always had a prominent place in Europe but time and time again, the media acts like the whole thing is new and came out of thin air.
(via redlightpolitics)
I do agree that since the dawn of capitalism white elties have divvied and conquered people in order to preserve capitalism. This is usually done by always scapegoating immigration for the economic ills white elites cause for their own benefit. However, I am skeptical about believing all this far right sentiment is simply because of neoliberalism. Poland and Slovekia managed to not get effected by the recession. However, both of these countries have reactionary conservative parties in power. The vast majority of the right wing nationalist parties that are in power in Europe have been around as early as 1924 (Lithuania being the earliest) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_nationalist_parties_in_Europe
I am getting bored of the “fascism is on the rise” rhetoric. Most of this anti immigration sentiment doesn’t seem to only be about austerity (even though I do acknowledge immigration is being used to deflect the fact public services are going to shit and our wages are stagnating) It is also to do with the fact a lot of white Europeans believe immigration to be a threat to their nation and ultimately a threat to white supremacy. Calls to end immigration is really calls to retain white dominance. Let’s not forget the European Union policies are responsible for more than 22,000 refugee deaths since 2000. In April 2016 the EU purposely cutting rescue missions also led to 1,500 refugees deaths. Plus we all know how free trade starves Africans at the expense of wealth. As I have always stated white supremacy and capitalism do intersect. So yeah Europe is pretty racist, after all it did colonial continent and created fascism.
(via blackfeministkilljoy)
junglestrike