Because I think it’s important, and dammit, that’s a good enough reason.

So yeah…people wonder why I bother with shit like this. Nope, this isn’t the first time they’ve wondered why, probably won’t be the last. And yeah, I hear it a lot…why concern myself with/get angry about/ draw attention to the words of some ‘obscure’ anti-sex worker bloggers…

Tell me something…how about this?

(Emphasis mine)

“Please pass this on asap to feminists who are web activists against sexual violence. Friday March 21, Diane Sawyer did an excellent job in a 2-hour 20/20 special on prostitution in the US. She laid bare the emotional damage that prostitution causes.

As of noon on Saturday, the pro-pimp lobby is flocking to the Comments section of the ABC News site online.

Anyone who can post will help ABC News staff and others in the mainstream get a better understanding of what prostitution is.”

-Melissa Farley

"The many different women who engage in sex in front of a camera make that choice to be used in pornography under a wide range of psychological, social and economic conditions. The choices women make to reduce themselves to sexual objects for men’s masturbation are complex, and we should be cautious about generalizations and judgments."

-Robert Jensen

Now, the “pro-pimp” lobby Farley speaks of? Sex Workers who wrote ABC about their outrage over Sawyers report. Not pimps, not johns, actual sex workers. Jensen says we shouldn’t judge; yet goes ahead and does so anyway.

Are Farley and Jensen obscure? No. They are paid academics who make a living doing anti sex industry research, speeches and seminars. They are authors, and often regarded as specialists on the sex industry by the media, academia, and the government. No matter the attention drawn to their sketchy tactics, the fact that they exploit sex workers for their own ends, and do not bother to even attempt inclusive research, or seemingly care what actual sex workers who do not bolster their agenda have to say: They Are the Experts. They are the ones on the news, quoted, interviewed, and allowed space in the media, they are the ones invited to speak at universities, they are the ones with book deals. Dines, Hughes, McKinnon, Jeffries, Jensen, Farley, Craft…the “experts” on sex work courted and celebrated and adored by everyone from the media to the government…

So no, don’t tell me how obscure they are and how no one listens to them. And no, don’t tell me how much they care about sex workers…I mean, their ability to see sex workers as humans capable of making choices and their respect for such people is so apparent, isn’t it?

Now, as for this gem:

“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."

Yep, it’s from a blogger. Who runs not only a blog, but a massive anti-sex industry web site, who has been quoted and praised all over the RFAP blogsphere, who is a student, and could very well be the next Farley, or Jensen or Dines, who like those people, ignores, mocks, dismisses, lies about and utterly distorts the motivations, concerns and real work of countless sex worker advocates.

So yes, tell me I shouldn’t care, or be angry, or point this out again. Has the media or the government called on the head of ISWFACE, UBUNTU, SWOP, AIM, COYOTE, HIPS or any other person working in sex worker outreach- possibly as a current or former sex worker, to hear their thoughts on the matter? To consult their expert opinions or experiences? No, they haven’t. The media only wants to talk to sex workers to find out all the salacious details about the business when politicians get busted. Has the media or the government bothered to talk to Swedish sex workers, to hear their stories about how the adored and vaunted Swedish model has actually affected the industry? No, they haven’t.

Have they looked into anything, anyone, any organization, which does not give them information other than that they want to hear? No, much like their darlings Hughes, Farley, so on, they haven’t.

So don’t tell me I shouldn’t be concerned, that I shouldn’t care or be angry. And when these peoples work is used in any and every debate, applied and universalized erroneously, to shut down and shut out the voices of actual sex workers and actual sex workers advocates don’t you fucking dare tell me that I shouldn’t be upset or concerned or that I should ignore them and not care.

Don’t tell me how I should feel when a bunch of academic hired guns with gut reaction, knee jerk, emotional heart strings language and flawed and possibly stolen research and imagery who have careers built on the backs of sex workers and a vested interest in seeing their words and work stay on the top of the heap and their fan clubs and worshippers trash, belittle, lie about, ignore, use, exploit, and utterly discount sex workers, their advocates, their voices and the real work that they do.

And since I’m on the subject anyway…

The abolitionist stance? It won’t fucking work. There is no proof whatsoever that it will work. Prostitution being illegal has done nothing to stop it now, has it? Other wars on vice? Ha!

Prohibition, that was a real success wasn’t it? It sure ended the violence and death caused by booze, didn’t it? Hell, it least for us gear heads, it did facilitate the birth of stock car racing.

The war on drugs? WOW, that’s been a smashing success, yes? It’s done so much it the elimination of the millionaire drug lords and their cartels and so helped out the addicts, right? And the poor human who gets a massive sentence for being a pot smoker? Yeah, that’s just a great kick to the global drug trade, isn’t it?

You think trying to take out the sex industry, all of it, is gonna be any more successful? You think making it illegal; that what isn’t already illegal anyway, is going to stop it? Ha. Hahaha fucking ha. No, it won’t, just like it hasn’t worked on booze, or drugs. It will just make it more dangerous and less regulated.

A world where the only porn made is made illegally? Where there are no consent forms, no proof of age, no STD/STI testing, no 2257 type laws, no self-regulating or pressure from within the industry itself, no recourse for those abused in it? A world where the only stripping is done illegally? Where there are no liquor laws, age laws, proof of age required, security, so on?

Let me ask this real, real slow and simple so some folk can understand…

Are you fucking stupid?

Those underage trafficked women who are raped daily, beaten, tortured, abused and discarded? Those women, girls, and boys who are enslaved and start facing sexual abuse from the time they are very small children? Those victims you’re always talking about? Do really want there to be more of a demand for them because the option of hiring willing people who have made a choice, adults who’ve taken the available legal option to be in the sex industry has been eliminated? Do you really want any and every person like me, no matter how rare you think we are, to potentially be replaced by someone who really, really does not want to be there or has no other real choice or is literally forced into it?

Do you? Well, that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you get your wish, people…cause prohibition or abolition or whatever else? Gee, I bet it will stop porn and sex work just like it stopped booze and drugs! Or like it has stopped prostitution in places where prostitution is illegal right now! And the folk getting all the attention on these matters? The one’s that are working precisely for that turn of events.

So no, don’t tell me I shouldn’t get so worked up about these things. And don’t tell me I don’t care about women and prostituted people.

Oh, wait, wait…the demand, right? These noble folk are also working on the demand! What about the men and all? Right, right…how could I forget? Jensen speaks too and for men, after all (pssh, right). Okay, great. What about the men and the demand? Well, hey, chicks watch porn too, but yeah…

What about it? Reframe theory all you want. Challenge. Attempt to re-educate men. See if you can get them to give up being clients and consumers of the sex biz. Have at it. Knock yourselves out. Maybe in a couple hundred years or so, you might have some success. In the mean time, bodies pile up, STD’s are spread, women can get raped and have it labeled a theft of services. Strippers and prostitutes can be abused and murdered by law enforcement at will. Even feminists can tell any and every woman in the sex biz, hey, she deserved it! They can have their choices denied, agency disregarded, and they can literally and figuratively, get fucked by everyone! Oh, and if you bring up these issues, the lack of legal recourse and rights sex workers have, or other such things…you are the pro-pimp lobby who doesn’t care about women and only thinks the happy hookers should be heard!

Heard by whom again? Well, certainly not the government, or 20/20, or academia, or the so called “experts” (who I bet have never done the job!)

So yeah, really, what could I possibly ever have to be upset about or concerned with?

These fucking people say they care? Clue here…if you are against sex workers rights, you are by default against them ever being seen or treated as human beings with the same rights, protections, and recourse offered other humans. You are not helping shit. Your dream of abolition with not help shit, and in the mean time??? You’re actually hurting the people you claim to care about. You bitch about the normalization of the sex trade? Pfft. If the sex trade being normalized means sex workers get some rights, a voice, some actual say in or about their own goddamn business, rather than being rolled over by the fucking ‘experts’, with their own vested interests and utterly shit tactics? Bring it on…after all, normalization beats this goddamn bullshit.

So yeah, why shouldn’t this upset me again?

And as a final, and very important note, I’d like to add this:

When anyone, be they an obscure blogger or an academic, a paid writer or media gun, a politician or just citizen x goes out and makes blanket, erroneous statements, tells lies, discounts, dismisses or mocks PoC’s, or PWD’s, or gays and lesbians, or transpeople, or kinky people, or any other marginalized group, or the people who support those groups (and are often made up of those groups) do you tell them “Why bother, it’s no big deal, why get upset about it?” Do you go to their spaces and say “no one takes them seriously” if they are selling books, influencing government policy, and all over the media and celebrated for their writings which are full of these untruths and slanderous accusations? Do you tell them it’s no thing and they shouldn’t get so “worked up and angry about it?”

Do you? Then why the fuck would you do it to a member of and advocate of another marginalized group- that being sex workers? Which, you know, I am after all.

So yeah, if you want to tell me how harmless all their bullshit is and how no one is listening to them and how it means nothing and how I shouldn’t get upset about it…I have this to say in reply:

Fuck off, and fuck you.