A post on the Feminism Reddit proclaims: “Sex Work isn’t feminism”. A commenter on that thread said:
\n“The main reason I think prostitution is bad because
\nhuman trafficking/slavery
\nthe great risk it puts women in
\nmost woman who willingly are prostitutes only do it out of desperation/no other way to support themselves (or their children.)” “How do I know prostitution is bad? What woman who has millions (is very wealthy) prostitutes herself?”
\nTaking each issue one by one:
\nI'm reading \"Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice\" There are books that I get a hold of that I have to read more than once, and this is one of those books.
\n\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"When most people think about migrant sex workers, they think of them not as humans, but as objects of grave moral concern. Not as powerful and capable community members, but as social problems.\"
\n
You can insert the homeless, sex workers, transgender people, or any other oppressed minority there, and it still works. The people at the center of any of these issues aren't the main focus of the saviors. They are seen as objects to save. The debates rarely include real voices of the people involved.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLike other working-class people, migrant sex workers suffer poor working conditions under capitalism. When migrant sex workers face exploitation at work, this is labor exploitation.When they face abuse at work, this is labor abuse or violence against workers. When they are forced to sell sex (or to sell sex in ways that they do not want to), this is forced labor. Their problems are worker problems.
\n
The book explains a lot of the history of anti-trafficking laws in the USA, and it's roots in white supremacy:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChinese migrant women were also some of the first targets of anti-trafficking laws, under which they were subjected to immigration investigations on whether they were being trafficked “for lewd and immoral purposes.” In 1910, the US Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act to target sex-trafficking rings and to protect white girls from forced prostitution that they were lured into by “foreign immigrant traffickers.”
\n
and
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThey face racist immigration restrictions and hostility from white supremacist countries that view them as permanent outsiders and expect them to be servile and impoverished, performing the backbreaking jobs that white people don’t want, without a right to citizenship, labor protections, or full participation in democratic governance. White supremacy frames migrant sex workers as a social problem and as a dangerous threat to Western values, families, and border security.
\n
and explains how the anti-trafficking industry is a tool of the state to enact violence upon migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCriminalization through anti-trafficking policies allows the state to emerge as the great “rescuer,” while leaving migrant sex workers more susceptible to violence and exploitation. Mimicking the “white slave panic” of earlier eras, today’s trafficking discourses are framed in the language of “modern-day slavery.” This white supremacist saviordom is a gross and glaring appropriation of Black liberation struggles to enable the very thing that abolition is opposed to: increased criminalization and violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe premise of anti-trafficking laws is that because vulnerable women and girls are “trafficked” against their will, they must be “sent back.” Like the oxymoron of feminist jails, these are supposedly “feminist deportations.” This state violence is gender-based violence. And ironically, this kind of coerced “rescue” seems a lot like actual trafficking. The purpose of anti-trafficking measures, then, is not to support migrant sex workers but to increase policing and to restrict the free movement and labor of migrant women.
\n
That migrant sex workers suffer under capitalism in the same way that all working class people do.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnder conditions of poverty, limited opportunities, and social inequality, workers make choices about their best options. This includes migrant sex workers. Other labor activists do not need to prove that workers are capable of consenting to their labor, even though capitalism forces everyone to work to survive.
\n
\n\n\n\nIt’s not that sex work is necessarily good, it’s that it can often be better than other work. The jobs available to low-income racialized migrants in other sectors are some of the worst jobs in the world. Work in agricultural, manufacturing, construction, warehouse, and domestic labor sectors is notoriously poorly paid, punitive, relentless, exploitative, and dangerous.
\n
\n\n\n\nWhen the alternative is deportation, arrest, and poverty, millions of migrants are coerced into brutally exploitative labor contracts. Migrant worker activists including, Harsha Walia, have described these conditions as modern indentureship, and in some cases, “systemic slavery.” The conditions of these work permits are deceptive, coercive, and unfree.
\n
And discuss what a danger that \"anti-trafficking\" NGOs are to migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn reality, anti-trafficking nonprofits do not combat human trafficking, violence, exploitation, and coercion in the sex industry; they facilitate, enhance, and expand state violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThey are aligned not with a social justice movement fighting gender-based violence and “modern slavery,” but with right-wing and carceral feminist movements that are opposed to racial, social, and economic justice.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe anti-trafficking industry must be delegitimized, defunded, and abolished. It is designed for social control, and because it is founded on white supremacy, sexism, and state violence, it cannot be reformed.
\n
and how SWERF/TERF feminism is and has always been a right of center operation that has held hands with conservative evangelicals.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFeminist anti-trafficking organizations work with these extremist anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ groups and with anti-trans feminists. One of the larger feminist, anti-trafficking and anti–sex work organizations in the US is World Without Exploitation (WWE), which leads campaigns against the decriminalization of sex work across the country and works in coalition with far-right Christian organizations, including NCOSE and Exodus Cry (whose founder describes Planned Parenthood as “Planned Assassination”).7 WWE is a US-based project of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, the first anti-trafficking NGO of the modern era, which was shaped and formerly led by Janice Raymond, one of the leading architects of both trans-exclusive feminism and sex work–exclusive feminism.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists are not “abolitionists.” They are prohibitionists who advocate for a type of criminalization and law enforcement that they claim is feminist.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists do not join migrant sex workers in their campaigns for fair working conditions or safe migration, but instead organize against those campaigns.
\n
They call for more rights for sex workers
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigrant sex workers must have control over their movement—and that means the power, resources, and information they need to reduce the risks and vulnerability that accompany different stages of migration.
\n
\n\n\n\nNo migrant workers, including sex workers, should be forced into exploitative temporary work visas, nor should they have their mobility tied to any employer.
\n
and call the trafficking non-profit industry for what it is... an arm of the state who perpetuate harm of migrant sex workers, not rescue them.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn a time of escalating fascism, this book urges us to refuse right-wing, fear-mongering moral panics. Lam and Gallant drive home that the issue we should be concerned with is not trafficking or victim narratives (what they say function as “a concealed form of state violence”) but, rather, the control of migration, the criminalization of sex work, the exploitation of labor relations within capitalism, and the circuits of empire that manufacture vulnerability.
\n
It was an eye-opening read from people organizing on the ground, helping, collaborating, and listening to migrant sex workers.
\n\n\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-12-13T04:04:38+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/12/13/understanding-migrant-sex.html", "tags": ["Activism","Racism","Transgender","Feminism","Capitalism","LGBTQ","Religion","Books","TERFs","FarRight","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2024/11/02/debating-sex-work.html", "title": "Debating Sex Work: Centering Real Experiences", "content_html": "\nI see countless videos on TikTok and YouTube saying things like “is sex work, work” or “is sex work empowering?” without platforming sex workers themselves. If sex workers respond in comment sections, content creators often block them. If they make response videos, they often get deplatformed.
\n\n\nI'm not a sex worker myself. But I am not trying to build a platform by speaking over sex workers for clicks and views. They are considered debate topics, rather than human beings with lived experience. This is commonplace on algorithmically driven video social media applications.
\n\n\nAs a transgender woman, I understand the experience of having my life legislated and regulated. These actions are often based on fear and disgust, rather than the people at the center of the debate. Lawmakers should listen to those affected by the legislation and regulation.
\n\n\nIf you're going to debate sex workers and their industry, include them in on the conversation.
\n\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/2357f2e6c4.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2024-11-02T10:56:10+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/11/02/debating-sex-work.html",
"tags": ["Activism","Transgender","SocialMedia","Fediverse","Blogging","SexWork"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2024/03/04/swerfin-and-terfin.html",
"title": "SWERFin' and TERFin'",
"content_html": "\nWhen it comes to the sex work industry commentary on social media, it seems like the critics are big on speaking about the dangers of trafficking (many times conflating trafficking and sex work) but very quiet when it comes to the underlying causes of why the most toxic parts of it exist.
\n\n\nI really can't give much space in my head to those who voice their concerns about coercion in sex work but refuse to acknowledge the primary pillar of that coercion. Capitalism is at the core of the coercion they are constantly concerned about, but they never acknowledge it. Sex work is an industry for a lot of vulnerable people who wouldn't be able to survive without it. The root of that coercion that they're SO concerned about is based on actual material need. The ignorance of the root cause and focus on the people impacted feels like \"I don't want to see you exist because of how I feel\". It's a mixture of privilege and sanctimoniousness without genuine care or sympathy for the people doing it or providing a real alternative.
\n\n\nI'm not a sex worker, but I find a lot of reasons to form solidarity bonds with them. It's a common theme put upon marginalised communities, saying, \"I feel icky about sex work (or trans people, or gay people, or immigrants, etc.), and they should just go away so I don't have to see them.\" Be clear about your intent: you don't want marginalised communities to exist, but if we do, you want us to suffer.
\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/0c4717ebf1.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2024-03-04T12:56:02+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/03/04/swerfin-and-terfin.html",
"tags": ["Transgender","Capitalism","LGBTQ","SocialMedia","SexWork"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2022/12/12/reactionaries-terfs-and.html",
"title": "Reactionaries, TERFs, and Bodily Autonomy",
"content_html": "\nA couple of things have been stewing in my brain for a while, and I can't stop thinking about them.
\n\n\nFirst off is a term that describes people who don't believe in the right of individuals to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Radical feminists (TERF or not) don't think that sex workers have that right, in much the same way that US Republican conservatives. Whether drug use, transition care, sex work, assisted suicide or abortion, the resistance to it being allowed in society is that the person doing it cannot or should not consent. They want to impose their values on the lives of people they don't know or care about. Reactionary kind of fits, but not really.
\n\n\nThe other thing is that the resistors of bodily autonomy are rarely honest in their assessments/debates. They will use a rhetorical trick of treating a systemic issue as an individual issue and vice versa. A good example is the issue of mass shootings. The fact that cis white men commit the majority of mass shootings routinely gets treated as a \"lone wolf\" or as a \"mentally ill\" rather than it being a systemic, societally based issue.
\n\n\nOn the other side of this trick, TERFs use individual trans people being awful that have no systemic/institutional/societal base at the root. TERFs will claim that self-identification of gender will cause harm, say this is a \"valid question\", and repeat it ad nauseam. But they never respond when the question is answered and that their \"valid question\" hasn't resulted in the systemic harm they claim in the 18 countries where it's the law (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Switzerland and Uruguay).
\n\n\nAnd that's just it; the people at the centre of the question never want to answer it. Like Young Earth Creationists, they have a belief that is centred and anything that agrees with it is true; anything that counters it is false. It isn't a debate, as it is a propaganda campaign that tries to get more people to try and command other people's bodily autonomy.
\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/fd97e875df.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2022-12-12T14:11:46+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2022/12/12/reactionaries-terfs-and.html",
"tags": ["Transgender","Feminism","MentalHealth","USPolitics","Blogging","TERFs","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2014/10/22/renee-zellweger-abortion.html",
"title": "Renee Zellweger, Abortion, and Trans Bodies",
"content_html": "Wading through all the comments on Facebook about Renee Zellweger’s “new look” have made me think a lot about a common thread between abortion rights, trans bodies, and body modification through surgery. The common issue is between them all is bodily autonomy, the right to make choices about what happens to you your own body.
\n\"But she looked good/better/different before the surgery!\"\n\nAccording to who? I’m kind of dumbfounded when someone agrees a woman should have the right to choose what do concerning an unplanned pregnancy, but will comment on a person’s choice for elective body modifications. Why is that ok? It seems to me that it’s Feminism 101 to say that women should have the right of bodily autonomy.\n“She looks ok, but I think she was more attractive as a guy!"
I find celebrity culture to be a tad bit creepy. People will comment freely about a woman’s body as if it’s something of theirs to critique? It’s objectification at its highest level. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the same level of critique of their mother, sister, or partner’s bodies, but they seem to feel they have a right to comment on the body of someone they’ve never met and don’t know? How far is this from the religious fundamentalist (or TERF) who will say:
\n\"The writers of Scripture viewed any attempts at overriding one's birth-sex as abhorrent, a sacrilege against the structures of maleness or femaleness created by God, and ultimately a rebellion against the Creator who made our bodies,\"\nThe underlying theme is the same, regardless of who it's coming from. It's an assertion of ownership, outside of one's own body. It's an assertion that bodily autonomy is harmful, and that any change to the \"natural body\" is mutilation:\n
\"Now one of the things I find puzzling about it is that, when I look at the House of Lords debate on this legislation, those I agree with most are the radical right. Particularly the person I find that I agree with most, in here, and I’m not sure he will be pleased to find this, is Norman Tebbitt… Tebbitt also says that the savage mutilation of transgenderism, we would say if it was taking place in other cultures apart from the culture of Britain, was a harmful cultural practice, and how come we’re not recognising that in the British Isles. So he makes all of these arguments from the radical right, which is quite embarrassing to me, but I have to say, so called progressive and left people are not recognising the human rights violations of transgenderism or how crazy the legislation is. – Sheila Jeffreys\nMy belief (regardless of if we're talking about trans people, sex workers, Renee Zellweger, or someone who is pregnant) that it is \"my body, my choice.\" The right to make choices about your body is a basic, fundamental human right.\n
![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/970fa13b23.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2014-10-22T11:49:28+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2014/10/22/renee-zellweger-abortion.html",
"tags": ["Activism","Transgender","Feminism","SocialMedia","Religion","TERFs","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"]
}
]
}