“One thing I kept hearing over and over again was how feminists have made sex workers’ work so much more difficult.”

The following is a guest post from Sarah van Brussel.

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I’m a regular reader of your blog and a big fan of your work. I’m a feminist and an atheist and I really appreciate what you contribute to both movements. I’m not much of a commenter, but after reading your post giving the floor to sex workers, I wanted to say thank you and share the context in which I read your post.

I work at a international women’s fund called Mama Cash, a fund with a long history of funding sex worker led organisations. To say I was horrified by Taslima Nasreen’s post about sex work would be an understatement. Your post came at a particularly poignant time for me. I just attended the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) Forum in Istanbul, Turkey.

During the conference I had the opportunity to talk to sex worker activists who work on human rights issues from all over the world. One thing I kept hearing over and over again was how feminists have made sex workers’ work so much more difficult. I usually wear my ‘feminist badge’ with pride, but this shocked and shamed me. An activists from the Turkish organisation Kadin Kapisi said that when she became a sex worker activist she expected to be fighting with fundamentalists, traditionalists, bigots and other conservative people, but instead she spends most of her time fighting feminists and socialists. An activist from the English Collective of Prostitutes said it even more succinctly: “we live in fear of raids and ‘rescue'”. The experience of speaking directly with sex workers has made me even more determined to be the best ally I can be.

I know these activists women and men as incredibly passionate, smart and above all brave people, and it fills me with rage when people like Taslima Nasreen dismiss them as victims and deny them their agency.

One of the highlights of the AWID Forum for me was the launch of the first fund led by and for sex workers, the Red Umbrella Fund (Mama Cash is administratively hosting the Fund). The mission of this new fund is to “strengthen and ensure the sustainability of the sex worker rights movement by catalyzing new funding specifically for sex worker-led organisations and national, regional and global networks.”

The Fund was launched in the presence of at least 40 sex worker activists from all over the world, and it was a truly joyous occasion. Many veterans of the sex worker rights movement never expected to see this moment and they are thrilled to finally have a say in the kind funding that is available to them. The Fund embraces a philosophy of “nothing for us without us” and commits itself to putting sex workers at the heart of the Fund’s governance and of programs.

Sex worker rights organisations have a lot of trouble accessing funding, particularly if they don’t focus on rescuing sex workers. And a lot of the money that is available is donor driven, meaning driven by a donor’s agenda that doesn’t necessarily match their own priorities and needs. General support and capacity building grants are even more scarce. I hope the Red Umbrella Fund will make a difference and will help improve the sustainability of the movement.

So, thank you for your posts — all of them really, but especially this one. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

PS: If you’re interested you can read more about the Red Umbrella Fund here.

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And now, Greta again.

I want to pull out this excerpt, and call special attention to it.

During the conference I had the opportunity to talk to sex worker activists who work on human rights issues from all over the world. One thing I kept hearing over and over again was how feminists have made sex workers’ work so much more difficult. I usually wear my ‘feminist badge’ with pride, but this shocked and shamed me. An activists from the Turkish organisation Kadin Kapisi said that when she became a sex worker activist she expected to be fighting with fundamentalists, traditionalists, bigots and other conservative people, but instead she spends most of her time fighting feminists and socialists. An activist from the English Collective of Prostitutes said it even more succinctly: “we live in fear of raids and ‘rescue'”.

I want every anti- sex- work feminist to read this.

I want every anti- sex- work feminist who thinks they’re “helping” sex workers to read this.

And I then want them to ask themselves: What kind of feminist “helps” other women without listening to what kind of help they actually want? What kind of feminist “helps” other women by treating them as if they aren’t capable of deciding for themselves what’s best for them? What kind of feminist “helps” other women in ways that those women actually find harmful?

When I was writing yesterday’s post, asking current and former sex workers to talk about their experiences in the industry and describing my own, I stumbled across an interesting Catch-22… one that I realized makes it harder to talk about my experiences in the industry. This particular Catch-22 has to do with my motivations for getting into sex work: did I do it out of economic necessity, or for personal and sexual pleasure, or for some combination of the two?

The Catch-22 is this: If I say that I became a nude dancer primarily for the money, then I feed into the stereotype of sex workers as victims. I feed into the stereotype that nobody really wants to do sex work, that sex work is always horribly unpleasant at best and abusive or exploitative at worst, and that there is no reason anyone would ever do it other than coercion or desperation.

But if I say that I became a nude dancer primarily for reasons other than money, I get targeted as a dilettante. My experiences in the business gets dismissed as trivial or fake, not the “real” experience of “real,” in-the-trenches sex workers. It’s basically a No True Scotsman fallacy. If you got into the business for any reason other than economic pressure, and/or if you enjoy working as a sex worker, then you’re not a “real” sex worker — since nobody could possibly enjoy anything about working as a sex worker. And if I didn’t feel great economic pressure to get into the business, and felt like I had other choices, then speaking about my own experiences is somehow seen as diminishing the experiences of people who did get into the business out of necessity.

Plus, of course, if I say that sexual pleasure was my primary motivation for getting into the industry, or even a significant part of it, I get dismissed as a slut.

The reality, for me, is that economic pressure and sexual pleasure were both motivating factors. Like I wrote yesterday: For reasons of sexual curiosity and pleasure, I was already interested in working as a nude dancer, and was already seriously considering trying it out. But I didn’t actually do it until I was hit with a biggish debt that I had to pay off. I don’t know if I would have gone through with it if it hadn’t been for that debt. And I don’t know if I would have stuck with it for more than a few weeks. And I know this is true for at least some other sex workers as well. Economic pressure was a factor — just like it is for most jobs, that’s what makes them jobs and not hobbies — but the sex itself was also a factor. If they/we hadn’t had a certain openness and adventuress-ness about sex, many of us wouldn’t have even considered sex work as a solution to our financial problems. As Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden said in her comment on yesterday’s post, “Although I made my choice within constraints, I definitely made a choice.”

But there’s no way to talk about either of these motivations without coming across as either a desperate victim or a selfish, trifling slut.

Realizing this immediately made me think of Natalie Reed’s excellent post on Catches-22, and how every marginalized group has one or more Catches-22 working against them, one or more ways in which nothing they can possibly do will be right. Women are either sluts or prudes; bimbos or ball-busters. Black people are either lazy criminals or “trying to act white.” Trans people are either caricatures of gender stereotypes, or aren’t feminine/ masculine enough and aren’t “really” trans. Atheists are either a hive mind/ echo chamber or are succumbing to divisive rifts and schisms. Poor people are either leeching off the system or “taking our jobs.” Etc. Reed argues — correctly, I think — that these sorts of no-win situations are a hallmark of discrimination, “the most direct and immediately recognizable way of knowing that a given group has been predetermined to be in the wrong regardless of what they do.”

And I would argue that the particulars of any given Catch-22 can reveal a lot about the nature of the marginalization. The “lazy criminal/acting white” Catch-22, for instance, shows that “lazy criminal” is considered the default for black people. The “slut/prude” Catch-22 for women marginalizes any sort of female sexual agency: we get slammed for saying “Yes” to sex to often, and for saying “No” to sex too often, and basically for taking our sexuality into our own hands. Etc.

So back to the topic at hand; This particular Catch-22, I think, serves largely to make sex workers invisible, to make it easy to ignore sex workers and dismiss what we say about our own experience. The myth that nobody would ever do sex work unless they had to is a neat little self-fulfilling circle. “All sex workers are forced into it, either literally or out of economic necessity… and if you didn’t get into it out of economic necessity, you don’t count as a real sex worker, and we can ignore and dismiss your experience… because all sex workers are forced into it, either literally or out of economic necessity.” And, of course, if economic pressure is a factor in getting into the work, then you either don’t have the intelligence or discipline to find another line of work, or you’re a poor helpless victim who needs to be rescued. And again, your experiences can therefore be ignored or dismissed.

Sigh.

If you work, or have ever worked, in the sex industry — as a prostitute, a stripper, a pro dominant, a pro submissive, a phone sex worker, a porn actor or model, or any other area of the industry — what was your experience?

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: The comment policy for this post is different from my usual one. It’s at the end of the post. Pay careful attention to it. Violators will have their comment disemvoweled, and may even be banned.

As regular readers of this blog know, my fellow blogger in the Freethought Blogs, Taslima Nasreen, wrote a post a few weeks ago positing that all prostitution is always patriarchal oppression, always sexual exploitation, always sexual violence, that women are always forced into it, that it is never a vocation choice, that it is always human rights abuse, that all of it harms women.. I wrote a post in response, saying that I understood that there were often terrible abuses in the sex industry and that many prostitutes are forced into the work, and that of course I fervently opposed this — but also saying that there are many sex workers who freely choose the work, and like it, and do not find it abusive or exploitative.

Nasreen and I had a private email conversation about this. I’m not at liberty to disclose her side of that conversation. But I will tell you that I asked her, repeatedly, to put up a post on her blog asking sex workers what their actual experience was working in the sex industry — so she could hear for herself the tremendous variety of experiences that prostitutes and other sex workers have, and so she could take those experiences into account when she considers the questions of how abuses in the industry should be handled.

As of this writing, she has yet to do this.

So I’m going to do it myself.

If you work, or have worked, in the sex industry — as a prostitute, a stripper, a pro dominant, a pro submissive, a phone sex worker, a porn actor or model, or any other area of the industry… what was your experience?

This query is for women, men, and trans people who don’t identify as one gender or the other. Please feel free to answer any or all of the following questions, as well as any others:

Why did you get into the sex industry?

Did you freely choose this work? Were you in any way forced or coerced into it? Were you pressured into it by economic or other pressure?

Why did you go into the particular line(s) of sex work that you did?

What, if anything, did/do you like about the work?

What, if anything, did/do you not like about the work?

On the whole, did/do you like the work, dislike it, or feel neutral about it?

What are your feelings about your customers?

Have your feelings about the work changed with time? If you no longer work in the sex industry, did your feelings about the work change after you left it?

If you still work in the sex industry, do you feel free to leave it? If you no longer work in the sex industry, did you feel free to leave it? If not, what restraints did/do you have?

Is there anything else you want people to know about your experience of sex work?

I’ll start things off, with my own answers.

Continue reading “Sex Workers – An Invitation to Tell Your Stories” →

Dammit to hell. I really, really didn’t want my first reply to something by Taslima Nasreen to be an argument. I have tremendous respect for the woman and her work, and I would have loved for my first piece on her work to be gushing and adoring.

But I can’t let this go by without opposition.

Nasreen has written a post titled “Sex Slavery must be abolished.” Hard to argue with. Except that throughout the piece, she equates all forms of prostitution with sexual slavery. She says prostitution is always patriarchal oppression, always sexual exploitation, always sexual violence, that women are always forced into it, that it is never a vocation choice, that it is always human rights abuse, that all of it harms women.

Now. It’s certainly the case that prostitution is sometimes sexual slavery, patriarchal oppression, violent, not freely chosen, abusive, and harmful. In fact, if Nasreen wanted to claim that it often is all these things, I probably wouldn’t argue with that. It’s hard to get accurate statistics on how widespread the abusive versions of prostitution are compared to the non-abusive versions — it’s illegal, and it’s a charged issue, so it’s hard to get accurate, non-biased data about it. But I won’t deny that the abusive and exploitative versions of prostitute are a serious problem around the world. And of course, I stand in passionate opposition to abusive and exploitative sexual slavery. Of course I am eager to find solutions that reduce these harms as much as is humanly possible, and if possible that eliminate them entirely.

My problem is with the idea that, because prostitution is sometimes or often abusive and exploitative, it therefore always is — and that it is by its very nature.

My problem is this: What do you say to women — and men, there are plenty of male prostitutes — who say that this is not their experience?

What do you say to the women and men who currently work as prostitutes, or who once worked as prostitutes, who say that they freely chose the work, and are happy with that choice? Continue reading “Prostitution Is Not Sex Slavery” →