I sit here, at this exact moment, dumbfounded.
Enraged, stunned, livid, sick and sickened. Shocked. Feeling what I normally don't, really. Even an icy sliver of hurt in there, maybe. Odd that, after all the things that have been intimated, assumed, tossed out as accustations. After the threats and attacks and lies, the names and pot shots and drive by kidney punches...
This did it. This is one straw too many, even for a gal who these days is very hard to surprise.
"While some “sex work” advocates pretend to care about women who want out of prostitution, they claim there are not many who want out (which is false), they do nothing to help women and they would have us believe that the “happy hookers” stories matter more."
No, I am not fucking linking. You know who you are. And you could not be any more wrong even if you tried and were being paid for it. You display a lot of fucking nerve there, a whole hell of a lot, to make such a slanderous and flat out wrong statement. Seriously, who the fuck do you think you are to marginalize...no wait, fuck marginalize...utterly and completely discount the real, everyday, constant work that sex work advocates do? You have no fucking idea.
Nothing to help women? Show me your fucking creds for a change. What have you actually done lately, heroine of the female tribe?
You make me fucking sick.
Friday, April 04, 2008
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23 comments:
I just have one question. Why do you still listen to these people? It's clear these jerks are never going to listen to you. Whenever I hear some tv person or internet blogger who says something I don't like I change the channel or go to new site. I mean when I hear a lot of these anti-porn tell me that because I like to go to clubs and watch beautiful women dance on stage naked or that my favorite adult videos involve a pretty girl getting spanked, that I am the moral equivalent of rapist; I just write them off as 'crazy people' and go about my day.
jp- because they are not actively trying to put you out of business or endangering a cause you believe in.
same shit, different day. i understand why you fight 'em, ren, but I'm beginnign to think maybe jp and the like are right: basic decency eludes these people.
Maybe this will help...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_76PSn8iFVs
Sorry Trin, just can't do it.
"And when they come to ethnically cleanse me-
Will you speak out?
Will you defend me?
Or laugh through a glass eye as they rape our lives-
Trampled underfoot by the right on the rise
'You owe us...'...
Ich Bin Ein Auslander
'You owe us everything'...
Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Welcome to a state where the politics of hate
Shout loud in the crowd 'Watch them beat us all down'
There's a rising tide in the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence"
I can't know what you're going through. I think I am going through something different and similar. So maybe I understand a bit.
I think some of the people that are trying to endanger your cause are trying to endanger mine. Trying to put you out of business and trying to take my children away from me.
When I try to discuss this, I am called the most vile and most incorrect names. And I am accused of acts I would never do and have nothing to do with me. And I am accused of thoughts I have never had. And I am told my position is my own fault and I am told I am worthless. And when I try to explain, my words are purposefully twisted, and often, I am just banned from the discussion.
And I hate these people for what they say and do and for their hypocrisy and cruelty, and yet, I respect some of what they respect, and so, I need to argue with them. And it doesn't do me any good. And it doesn't get me any closer to what I want most from life. And it sure doesn't do me good at work.
But they are so wrong and so evil that I just cannot ignore them. Though clearly, the best thing for me would be to ignore them and concentrate for awhile on what I can do.
So best wishes to you, and I hope you get to see your cause strengthen and you get to thrive.
Peace.
God, I'm so sick of the resurrected-from-thirty-years-ago slur "happy hookers," which I'm suddenly seeing all over the Web again. So dates the users, and their politics, does it not?
Anyway, what they want is for us to shut up, which is a very good reason not to do so. If we shut up, they get the soapbox unchallenged. As it is, they've made frightening gains with both right and left MSM types in recent months and the only thing now standing between their ultimate ascendency and the rest of our freedoms is the willingness of a noisy few to take them on.
I say let's rumble them right back. I'm sick of being called names by these bought-and-paid-for-pimps of the anti-sex-work industry. When they talk that shit about not caring for or helping women in the sex business, they dismiss three decades of hard, thankless and frequently dispiriting labor on my part, and it makes me furious.
I'll tell you this much. I've spent more than half my life in sex work and I have never seen a single act of kindness or decency toward any female sex worker from any anti-sex-work feminist political hack and I'm not holding my breath waiting to witness this miracle.
They need for women in the sex industry to suffer in order to keep getting those book deals and government grants and speaking gigs and tenured academic positions. They need for working conditions to remain as adverse as possible to justify their bullshit while they pocket the cash for peddling it.
They want a fight, I'm all for giving them one.
I want to know where you got it from. Email me? See, I don't get all this lying - I have never come across such a batch of idiots as the 'rad' fems - it would suit them very well if we DID say all sex workers are happy hookers, but the fact is we didn't so they deliberately misunderstand anything presented to them in an attempt to demonise the philosohpy. It's a lot easier for them - I'm not referring to all rad fems when I say this, but the 'rad' fems (and you know who I mean) are simply not that bright, you know. We're not dealing with very intelligent women at all, this subject is so complex and they just can't stick it. Belle and I briefly talked about this, she said they're just not worth getting wound up about. Not many people listen to them - fuck, Debs is so fucking afraid she talks in abstract half the time about those who "attack her" but never quotes and never tells her readers who she means - she's too afraid that they'll go have a look at some intelligent discourse and change their mind!
Hope you're feeling more chilled. xx
Except, while basic decency eludes them, they're the ones who manage to get the ears of the head honchos when it comes to glorifying the swedish (pro-pimp :p ) model and resurrecting victorian decency laws in the name of protecting us from ourselves. Much of the time, they have been very willing to actively stab many (many) other groups in the back just to happily shack up with the conservative lobbies on these issues.
They ARE wrapped up in their own world. Unfortunately, they are striving mightily to wrap other people up in that world too. They also like to pull a Reilly and cut off the mic of those who disagree with them.
I'll try to add my voice to yours, when possible, but the quality won't be as good.
jp -
It's not about "listening to them." We *know* what they're saying is total bullshit and completely false. The problem is? Nevertheless, it has real-world implications. Sex workers are among the most marginalized groups of people in society and these "feminists" are working hard to make it much worse for sex workers.
I'd just like to say that I think this most definitely does not apply to you.
I enjoy reading your blog because whilst you are proud to do what you do and happy in it - which is an amazing thing to find in any person in any industry - you absolutely don't diminish the negative experiences of those in your industry. There are a few people I've read who do that and it makes me feel a bit ill.
And I believe you do more to help the disadvantaged in your industry than your critics do?
It's as if these critics do not actually care about the women, really. The archetypal victim is a great rallying point, until she speaks.
I guess whether I come down with JP and Trin or not depends on whether folks like the quoted person actually have a shot at putting you out of business or endangering the cause. My feeling is they probably don't, but you have more background on the matter.
"Except, while basic decency eludes them, they're the ones who manage to get the ears of the head honchos when it comes to glorifying the swedish (pro-pimp :p ) model and resurrecting victorian decency laws in the name of protecting us from ourselves."
Well, yes and no. If it's Farley who said this, then yeah, she has cred. Newspaper articles get written about her "research," etc. despite it not being peer reviewed and being methodologically flawed.
But if it's, y'know, witchy-woo or someone: whose ear does she have? Yeah, those folks do sometimes protest (see charliegrrl, etc), but... well, even there, I *rarely* see anything on their blogs about activism. I don't see "the date of the next protest is," much less "Here are the letters we wrote to our legislators, and here is who is on our side in the government" or "Here is the high-profile interview with one of us in a major media publication" or "I was on the news" or...
...and all that makes me think that, well, a LOT of these people don't have power. Farley does, Catharine Mackinnon probably still does, some others do, but Heart or Witchy or Debs or whomever doesn't seem to to me. Which is why I said what I did.
Now if they do get power, or if I'm wrong and they have it, then yeah. I'll not ignore THAT.
You know, there will be a big post on this whole thing soon enough.
I've had it, really.
lina said:
"It's a lot easier for them - I'm not referring to all rad fems when I say this, but the 'rad' fems (and you know who I mean) are simply not that bright, you know. We're not dealing with very intelligent women at all, this subject is so complex and they just can't stick it. Belle and I briefly talked about this, she said they're just not worth getting wound up about."
It depends on which radfems you're talking about. Like it or not, even if very few people would buy the whole package of their ideology, there are many radical feminists who are very influential on wedge issues like prostitution and porn.
Melissa Farley is the prime example – there are some very influential media figures – for example Diane Sawyer, Bob Herbert, and Nicholas Kristoff – who consider her (and a few other anti-prostitution radfems) to be the first and last word on prostitution. (Did anybody else catch the part of the last 20/20 anti-sex work piece where the woman from GEMS (forget her name) was quoting Dworkin?) And that's not to mention the political influence that Farley, Donna Hughes, CATW, and the like have among both Republicans and Dems.
Sheila Jeffreys, who in any equivalent movement would be considered the lunatic fringe, occasionally gets guest editorials in the mainstream media. Julie Bindel and her ilk are regular columnists in The Guardian, which is very influential in the UK and with the political left more broadly. And Robert Jensen is a total darling of the left/liberal media at this point.
In the blogosphere, Twisty is definitely a "big blogger", read and name-checked by a lot of people, and if I'm not mistaken, somebody who gets MSM plugs. And then there's Amanda Marcotte, who while not quite a radfem, is definitely leaning more and more that way – she's definitely an influential blogger and somebody who gets MSM attention.
So, yeah, I wish I could just write off Debs and Delphyne and the like as the extent of the APRF phenomenon – they'd be pretty easy to write off as just some vocal-but-ignorant brats if that was the case. But APRF is much more influential than that, and I tend to agree with Ernest that it dominates feminist and even liberal discourse these days.
You know what gets me about all this crap??
Every time they quote these supposedly "happy hookers"....and the only example they can give is....well, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
You know...an ACTRESS playing a Hollywood portrayal of a prostitute.
An ACTRESS who probably shares their view about sex work and prostitution.
Not to mention, a movie which had as its main theme getting such "happy hooker" AWAY from the business through falling in love with THE right rich man who sweeps her off her feet....in other words, exactly what they would like to see with sex workers. (Well, either that or to find them near death so that they can be converted.)
I guess that they need such caricatures because if confronted with REAL sex workers who don't fit their own fairy tale stories, then their whole ideology would dissolve like so many sand castles in the surf.
It wouldn't be so maddening ecept for the fact that these people do have real power and have used it to smear, silence, and destroy anyone daring to challenge them on their bullshit....all the while playing the "You're shutting us up, you cumdumpster for the Patriarchy!!" card for their cult followers.
I say bust their asses, Ren....in this case, silence simply feeds their campaign. You have more than earned the right to defend yourself.
Anthony
Oh...and the main point of not only Ren's blog and the roots of pro-sex work activism, is NOT that all sex workers are innately "happy hookers"; it is that the experiences of such "happy hookers" and other empowered (and yes, I WILL use that word deliberately) sex workers count just as much as those with less "happy" experiences.
Anthony
Plus, it's infuriating. You work with HIPS, for fuckssake; they're not about "happy hookers," they're about harm reduction, actually helping women, not throwing their ass out on the street because the director decided a stripper would be a bad influence on the "good" women.
and they've made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in "dialogue," just bouncing off you for talking points.
and that they're dumb as rocks, by and large, for all that they do have the public ear.
and you -know- what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's time for that one, I'd say.
Even when the anti's don't do the kind of activism that trinity was talking about or have power in the sense of influencing politicians or media people, they still do a type of activism in that their blogs and personal conversations influence the people who read or listen to them. And, educating or, in this case, miseducating, the public is an important part of activism. For example, think about how the religious right has chipped away at abortion rights, not only with legislation, but by influencing how the public thinks and talks about the issue.
Re: Happy Hookers.
The first time I encountered the phrase was in a light hearted, yet still helpful, publication put out by our local SWOP: How to be a happy hooker.
It focussed on burn out, safe sex practices, where to get help, maintaining boundaries in the workplace, ensuring your workplace is running ethically, making time for youself, and taking a break or getting out if you need to.
You know, the things, actual sex workers say to actual sex worker orgs that they want.
(i keep forgetting the ticky box :( )
yeah. right up there with The Gay Agenda, that. SRS BZNZ
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