Quote of the Day:

"The First Ammendment is not negotiable, and the Second Ammendment is there to make damn sure you remember the other 9 in the Bill of Rights."

-Roberts

Put Down That Pencil, You're Under Arrest (part 2!)

Okay, here it is…the toon porn post.

As some of you may or may not have figured out, I draw cartoons. I also, ahem, draw pornographic cartoons. I am a reader of comix (aka, pornographic comics), everything from Phil & Kaja Folgio’s XXXenophile to, yep, Taboo Illustrated. I watch hentai anime, have glanced at more than a few Yaoi manga books in my time, over all, why yes, I like the drawn smut.

This, however, could mean that I am a criminal. Both for drawing and looking at it. Why, one might ask? Well, because you see, even though the characters in these works are completely, utterly, and 100% fictional, if they appear to be under the age of consent, or are clearly under the age of consent…well, we’ve just crossed into the realm of virtual child porn here, folks. There is law going on. And people are in fact getting dragged into court over it and facing jail time. I want to stress the words “drawn” & “virtual” here, as there are no real people, let alone children, in any of these works. None, nadda, zip.

Now, art wise, as far as the whole virtual child porn thing goes? I don’t worry much. The people I draw? They (to me anyway) look like adults. Might (because I do not draw pubic hair) they look like children to other people? I guess if one really stretches their imagination, they might…but I think they’d really have to be grasping at straws. The people I draw have the bodies of adults. The women usually have large breasts, hips, all that, the men have musculature that indicates they are, in fact, men…so on, so forth. But you know, adult fictional people or not, the way obscenity laws are going these days, I still get a little nervous…after all, what these fictional adults are doing? It would so be illegal in the UK via their extreme porn law, and why yes, some of the acts are the same (if not more violent) than what you would see in a Max Hardcore movie…

So yeah, not for everyone. No question about that. Many people would find my cartoons disturbing, unsavory, and otherwise icky…but the thing is…they are not real people. There is nothing “real” about them. They are pen to paper, paper to scanner, scanner to photoshop, sketched to inked, 100% fictional characters having fictional sex or engaging in fictional extreme BDSM or whatever else. Their consent, feelings, whatever? Hello? Fictional drawn people doing fictional drawn things. These characters do not have real anything, let alone real feelings. They are not, in anyway, real. No one is actually being abused, exploited or harmed in any pornographic cartoon. Same goes for all other pornographic cartoon characters…no matter what age they are.

Now, do I personally find drawn or virtually rendered child (obviously child) porn disturbing and offensive? Yes, I absolutely do. I have no desire to look at it whatsoever. I don’t really want to know anyone who does. Yet at the same time, there are undoubtedly people out there who feel the same way about what I like to look at and draw, and as there are no real people involved…who am I to judge? Many people the world over like things other people find disturbing or unsettling, and there are laws out there to punish people who do criminal things to real people…



…but have we gone overboard when we are making and using laws to punish people for drawing or looking at disturbing things that happen to…completely fictional people? Nod nod, yeah, I sure as hell think we have.

And in the wild world of Hentai and Yaoi, wow, do lines get blurred. Many films or books state clearly that the characters are over the age of consent…but they appear to be attending high school. Often times the male characters are slim of body and almost androgynous, while the females-despite the plaid skirts- are…stacked. Yet, I start to wonder, how is what happens with them, the sex they have, any different than the sex depicted in the latest stupid teen Hollywood movie out there in theatres now? Or any television show where underage characters fornicate? The actors portraying high school cheerleader X and football stud Y are over age, but the characters they are playing are not, yet no one is screaming for blood when they get naked and have sex. I can turn on CSI or Law & Order and see an underage character- portrayed by an underage actor no less- relaying a graphic account of sexual abuse…on any given night, in prime time.

And lest we forget, I can turn on the television, pick up a mainstream comic or book, play a video game, go to the movies and see countless other harmful, questionable, or sexual acts: murder, war, drug abuse, stripping, prostitution, swinging, bdsm, embezzlement, speeding, drinking and driving, unprotected sex, torture, extortion, rape, fist fights- the list goes on and on- committed by and on people of all ages at any time of day, all day, every day, 365 days a year. I can even see in some cases how these things are based on reality, yet…that is all fine. People get Emmy’s for that. I don’t know about you, but I have some issues with that. I can shoot a television show where a supposedly underage person gets kidnapped, raped, abused, tortured…and perhaps even dies…and it is vaunted prime time entertainment. I can design a video game where you play a sniper who goes around blowing other people’s heads off in full and graphic color and make millions. But someone draws something even far less shocking, but the sex and nudity is actually depicted and it’s criminal?

Do you see a slight double standard here, at all? Do I really need to draw it all out?

We, you see, have gone too damn far in policing both artists and those who look at what they draw. I, myself, am not a fan of Robert Mapplethorpe. So guess what, I don’t look at or own any of his photography. However, I absolutely think other people have the right to like and own it. I think he had the right to display it. And I do not think there was anything criminal about any of it…and his photos depicted, in many instances, real people.

You cannot harm someone, adult or child, who does not exist. Criminalizing, arresting, and imprisoning people for doing anything to fictional people, or looking at depictions there of, is absolutely asinine. We’ve gone over the edge of artistic and sexual policing and right down the rabbit hole.

I think its time we backed the fuck up.

Okay, perhaps I was wrong, maybe my vacation is over...

And yeah, I am all about Zuko these days…dude likes fire, has rage issues, and has burn scars…how do I not like this character?

In any event. Soon, shortly, whatever, I will be following Caroline’s lead and ranting on about the stupidity of Ms. Smith and what she’s trying to do to sex workers in the UK. In fact, I plan to tear apart the Swedish Model simply because it fucking sucks…yet again another of those lovely efforts to help a marginalized group that does not take the opinions, needs, or feelings of the actual marginalized group into account when attempting to save them. Fucking bullshit is what it is, but we’ll get there later this week, perhaps after the holiday. (Well, okay, Christmas…my holiday runs a bit longer and all).

I’m also likely to write a lengthy defense of pornographic anime/comix soon too, because yeah, the idea of getting busted for owning “Legend of the Overfiend” (which yeah, I do) annoys the shit out of me. The whole thing is fucking stupid as hell. You know what, they keep this shit up, I want to see someone arrested for watching an episode of Law & Order SVU where the sexualized victim is underage or a mainstream movie where the supposedly high school aged kid flashes skin and has sex. Yep, arrest some fuckers for owning “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” or “American Pie” already…sure the actors in those films were of age, but they were portraying people under the age of 18, so surely, bad bad bad, right? Fucking idiot humans, I swear.

But yeah, looks like I’m back.

Put down that pencil, you're under arrest...

Daisy's right, she did blog about something near and dear to my heart today....

Can comics be porn?

The answer there is yes, they can be. Thank the gods, because I dig me some comic porn. I even draw some! Wooo. Bad me. And sure, I tend to think all the people I draw...well, most folk are going to assume they could be over 18. I could be very wrong though. Who knows? Either way...

They are not real people. I also draw/write about people getting killed, doing drugs, exceeding the speed limit, starting wars, burning shit to the ground and countless other illegal and dangerous activities.

And?

NOT REAL PEOPLE, no REAL crime. So why, once again, if they are fucking, and might not look 18 to someone (these fictional people and all) is it suddenly....criminal?

CHRIST what the FUCK IS WRONG with people? For Real?

Man humans piss me off.

WHAT the HELL????

Right then. This is one of my more, ahem, tame works of erotic cartoonage. Some of you have seen less…tame…doodles. And why YES, I did ask this very question not so long ago…

Looks like we have an answer (t/p, Amber). Now granted, my toons –comic or pin up or manga style- look like adults and all, but….

See, this shit pisses me off. I make actual porn with me in it (ahem, consenting adult) and people bitch and moan and figure smut like that should be illegal and the industry should be destroyed. Folk in the UK can be fined, arrested, and jailed for having shit like what I do in their homes. Ah ha, but we can’t stop there! If you write smut people find objectionable, you too can be arrested, fined, so on, so forth! And now, if you draw and or own drawings that people find objectionable, you can also get in on the prison time fun!

What the fuck people? For real? I can fucking watch people get blown up, gutted, decapitated, so on, for real or via Hollywood fictional magic, and I can write and draw about that shit all I want, yet if I own, or draw a cartoon of a person fucking, that other people think might look under the age of 18…oh shit, I must be stopped?

Or wait, we can arrest two teenagers for being idiot teenagers too, check that shit.

Ahem, attention morality police and smut patrol: fuck off, for real. The first amendment is not a goddamn suggestion…

Sincerely-
A maker of smut, filmed, photographed, written & drawn.

Can you Handle the TRUTH??? Uncensored & Uncut.

Right then. See those women over there? That’s the PMRC. Remember them? They were the ones who made it real hard for me to buy records by folks like Ministry, Salt &Pepa, Jane’s Addiction and Queensryche back in the day, because I wasn’t 18, and those women there decided that folk like me shouldn’t hear the word “fuck” in music, or music that might deal with adult themes. Never mind that I had been hearing the word “fuck” and dealing with adult themes on the goddamn playground since I was seven or so, but yes, those ladies decided it was up to them to decide what I could and what I could not hear.

Funny how some ladies feel they have the right to decide that, isn’t it?

Well, now, we flip the switch on the time machine and travel on to present day: September 3, 2008, where another woman has decided what you should and should not hear. Now, the Irony on This Is Rich and Thick, seeing as the thread was about prostituted women, sex workers, language, so on, and the voices most moderated out? Those of sex workers! Hexy has already been here, but yep, here we go…the rest of the story, at least my part, unmoderated, and unedited.

And yeah, this is a long one, but no cuts, no edits. Commentary from time to time, but here it is, the whole story. Grab a drink and smoke if you got ‘em… -RE

Here is the post and thread as it appears on Heart’s Blog. Which you know, wasn’t about me (solely) and what I was blogging about at Feministe, and, oh, my repetitive use of the word “gal”…

Here’s the “full monty”. I apologize for the appearance (spacing and such) but I am too annoyed and it is too long for me to “clean up”:

Responses to “Voices of Survivors of the Sex Trade: Prostitution Is Sexual Slavery, Gang Rape, Sexual Abuse”
on 25 Aug 2008 at 6:08 pm1sam

Last week a man tried to register at my anti-prostitution forum saying how awful child prostitution is and how something simply must be done about such terrible crimes against humanity. He went on to say pornography is not prostitution and that a conniving 15-year-old Traci Lords tricked pornographers with fake ID and cost pornographers MILLIONS [sic], ending with (direct quote) “I can see how she benefited.”

I don’t remember where I read the following sentiment about how men see rape, but it has been my frustrating experience that it is true:
”Men believe forced sex is a terrible, violent crime against women, so they believe it’s good that sex is very rarely forced.”
Men believe forced prostitution is a terrible, violent crime against women, so it’s good that prostitution is very rarely forced.

on 25 Aug 2008 at 6:37 pm2Peridot (former escort, current pro domme)

I assume this is in answer to Ren’s series of posts over at Feministe aimed at educating the feminists about all about sex work this week? I do agree on the niggling over “terminology” but also didn’t see anything in what she’d written about ignoring segments of prostitution that suck more than others. I guess I’m a “priviledged” sex worker (educated, career experience, choosing this for the money and free time it affords) but even I think prostitution sucks. It goes against so much that I believe in but I’ve come to terms with feeling like a sell-out. Keeping a blog about it helps keep things in perspective for me. I don’t exactly have a “healthy,” “sex positive” attitude about sex work. Also, the stories you posted here make me very sad.

on 25 Aug 2008 at 6:39 pm3whatsername

What I’ve seen is sex worker activists saying it’s inaccurate to say all female prostitutes are “prostituted women” because it erases those who aren’t. Renegade Evolution was talking about this on Feministe just a few days ago, there are both prostituted women and sex workers by choice. It does sex workers no good, and it does feminism no good to try and erase either one of these. But sadly I see this done on both sides of the prositution/pornography debate.

on 25 Aug 2008 at 8:02 pm4 helzeph
That’s a great piece of writing by Andrea showing so clearly that prostitution and child abuse are political systems, and not a series of unfortunate circumstance or personal choices.The awful nonsense people will listen to in order to abandon one another is one of the saddest things about humanity.It all starts with children of both genders being handed around among the fathers and ends with unequal representation in parliament; unequal representation in ruling bodies (that does not reflect population) is coercion.The unfortunate purpose of all this is I think, to maintain reproductive access to young females by males over forty, this is seldom seen in other species (males sperm degrades with age) and must take a lot of false cultural manoeuvring to enforce. Including mentally damaging the opposition before it gets old enough to put up much of a fight. Child abuse is essential to the patriarchy, if young men reached adulthood able to contend with their fathers, if women reached adulthood with a healthy sense of self, the whole thing would collapse.

on 25 Aug 2008 at 9:23 pm5Maggie Hays

Thanks for this wonderful post, Heart. Excellent resource! All those stories are very compelling.

Only some women in the sex trade are trafficked we are told, and only some are prostituted, not all. That’s just the thing though– prostituted and trafficked women get fairly short shrift in these circles. They tend to be the footnote, the afterthought, something like, well, yes, there are those women and girls and we care about them, but we are more interested in establishing that we are not them. We are the women who “chose” prostitution. And as feminists, we are not supposed to interrogate the nature of that choice, or even question it, or analyze or critique it, even though the fact that women are prostituted and trafficked and raped as prostitutes shapes and constructs the lives and realities of all women, including our own. We are told we should listen only to sex workers themselves, the subtext being that we should accept what they say at face value.
Exactly… agenda… agenda… The purpose of the pro-”sex work” lobby is to try to conceal the reality of prostitution being inherently a form of sexual slavery and violence against women. Some women in the radical feminist movement are survivors of the sex trade.I have been listening to them and I believe them.
So have I. So do I.
I have to reject words and language which intend to bracket these women’s lives off from the lives of… the ones who “made choices”.
Exactly, I hate when the stories of survivors are footnoted or bracketed and portrayed as “forced prostitution” or “not the usual kind of sex work” by pro-pornstitution folks.
As the saying goes, who defines has the power, and even those who have never heard that language understand on some level that this is true. Struggles around the framing of discourse, the defining of terms, the use of words, naming — these are always deeply political and are always about power.
Well-said, Heart. Patriarchists have the power of naming, it’s unfair.
Patriarchists: do not ever try to control my language!
the sex trade, prostitution, stripping
You might wanna add pornography too, Heart? Have you ever heard of the stories of Jersey Jaxin, Belladonna, etc? See these pornography stories here: http://www.againstpornography.org/womeninsexindustry.html
Thanks a lot for this great post, Heart. The voices of sex trade survivors have to be heard, as most women & girls who enter prostitution do so with choices that are NOT free.

on 25 Aug 2008 at 9:28 pm6Maggie Hays

Sorry, I meant to say:

Patriarchists: do not ever try to control my language!
(wrong html tags)

on 25 Aug 2008 at 10:02 pm7 julia
I think men do force sex: if a man is inside of a woman, getting close to orgasm, and she’s uncomfortable or just isn’t into it and tells him to pull out, how many men will do it?Without her having to cry?
I think men beleive this is their right under patriarchy. Men’s orgasm comes first, and if she doesn’t like it then ‘don’t have sex’.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 1:35 am8 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Right then Heart, let’s speak on context… I lived out west, where gal is far less demeaning than girl, or ma;am or lady, or Miss. The stories I posted, well, gee, Mariko and Amanda’s Nevada Brothel tales would be right up your ally. They are horrible in their own right, in every way. If you think decrim is so horrible, then you nod in compliance to the dehumanization of sex workers. I am not stunned in the least. I mention both sex workers AND prostituted women, but as usual, you omit to suit yourself. Even I have had shit times in my business, which you said you were oh so sorry for…yet… Reading this shit and this altering of what I’ve said…it’s worse. And gee, color me surprised if I don’t see the comment published, too bad I believe in making both sides known… Frankly, woman to woman, I’d take a rape to this kind of distortion…and I mean that full heartedly. Don’t get how THAT feels? I wouldn’t be surprised.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 3:45 am9hexy

Those are powerful, important stories that deserve to be told. I draw a firm line between coerced or unwilling prostitution and more positive experiences of sex work not because I disagree with that, but because I think it weakens the impact of the experiences of prostituted women to be conflated with those of sex workers.

The two groups have different needs and should be allowed to define their own language seperately and unsilenced. To apply the language needed by one group to the other is not only inaccurate and insulting, but counter-productive. The women in question rarely seem confused about which category to file their experiences under.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 6:32 am10 v
whatsername said- “What I’ve seen is sex worker activists saying it’s inaccurate to say all female prostitutes are “prostituted women” because it erases those who aren’t. ”
What ive seen, over and over, are those activists try to stop these definitions being used in ANY context. They can use whatever terms they want to describe their reality - they have no right to demand what terms i am allowed to use for mine.
If I write about my own experiences, and what i have seen, among the women i have been close to, and i refer to us as prostituted, or as abused, raped, used, forced - because those are the words that are appropriate for us - then i dont see what business it is of any “i do it cos i want to” activist to claim my language is wrong, that it doesnt work for them. Its not about them!
If they want to spend 24/7 talking about the merits of ’sex work’ for them on their blogs, whatever. What i dont like is the way that they set themselves up as the “go to” people on all issues related to it, and try to push out dissenters and people with alternative views on the subject using slander, rumour, and fake ‘civility’. I think its crap the way they claim to be all ‘anti censorship’ while at the same time trying desperately to clamp down on other peoples language, about their own realities.
I dont like the way, also, that some ’sex worker activist’ groups have set themselves up to speak-for, without any transparency of who makes the decisions and how their agenda is decided. I wonder how they can be so unrepresentative and yet claim to represent, and that that is allowed and even called feminist, and that those who offer opposing views are squashed as soon as possible.
Ive not seen any self identified as prostituted woman be asked to write for Feministe. I could be wrong, i may have missed that. But i wonder how come they do invite, more than once, a self identified pro capitalist libertarian non-feminist (who is a founding and posting member on another blog full of MRAs and anti feminists!) to do so.
I dont understand where the disconnect comes. I think that the title “sanctimonious womens studies set” is not as much of a joke as they like to think.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 7:16 am11 admin
A few people have attempted to comment working from the premise that I oppose decriminalization. I don’t and never have. I am in favor of decriminalization and support the Swedish model, as I have written many times: decriminalize prostitution, criminalize the buying of sex. If your comment was premised on an inaccurate understanding of my views, please rework it. I don’t want to have to straighten stuff out here that is based on an ongoing mischaracterization of my and other radical feminists’ views.
Hi, Peridot, thanks for your comment. The problem is, or one problem, is the experiences of women like those I’ve quoted simply are ignored by those who hold the perspective I’ve described there, or worse than ignored. I’ve sometimes seen a survivor attempt to join a discussion with pro-prostitution people and be treated horribly– told the rough equivalent of, “Well, it sucks to be you but that’s not my experience,” as though that is all that really matters. And then the person attempts again to participate in the discussion and keeps repeatedly being being blown off, often by men who prostitute women themselves. Having said that, I appreciate your acknowledgement of what has been posted here by survivors.
whatsername, I approved your comment but it bothers me because here again, you have ignored these horrific statements of survivors, blown them off. I also dealt at length in my post with the issue you raise around choice but you’ve commented as though the issue wasn’t addressed at all. If you’ll go back, you’ll see that it was, in some depth. In these threads, care has to be taken to carefully read what is said and not to misrepresent or mischaracterize what has been said.
As to this: What I’ve seen is sex worker activists saying it’s inaccurate to say all female prostitutes are “prostituted women” because it erases those who aren’t. It does sex workers no good, and it does feminism no good to try and erase either one of these.
This isn’t really true. In many ways it certainly does benefit those who promote and advocate for prostitution and pornography to erase the realities of the women I’ve quoted here because those realities are gut wrenching and horrifying and the telling of the truth gets in the way of promoting prostitution as all about women’s “choices” (under capitalism). I spam comments every day from people who, for example, insist that women who are clearly choking, gagged, throwing up, who are being hurt in extreme porn like what Max Hardcore made before he got slapped are not an issue because the women “agreed”, they “chose”, they consented, they made bank. People say it’s no big deal what happened to LInda Boreman because she got paid money, a whopping $1,800 bucks for a film that has grossed millions of dollars and still is though Boreman died years ago. These women’s lived experiences which everybody can watch on video are trivialized and made to be meaningless on the basis, again, that they earned the almighty buck. That being what women’s “choices” amount to is addressed so, so well in the excerpt from Andrea Dworkin that I posted up there that begins like this:
It is always extraordinary, when looking at this money exchange, to understand that in most people’s minds the money is worth more than the woman is. The ten dollars, the thirty dollars, the fifty dollars, is worth much more than her whole life. The money is real, more real than she is. With the money he can buy a human life and erase its importance from every aspect of civil and social consciousness and conscience and society, from the protections of law, from any right of citizenship, from any concept of human dignity and human sovereignty. For fifty fucking dollars any man can do that.
Helzeph, so true about the connections of incest and child abuse to pornography and prostitution. I actually ended up writing this post because of something I read on the DIGNITY listserv about a survivor of the sex trade who has an organization that focuses specifically on the connections between incest and child sexual abuse and prostitution and pornography. In her work with survivors, she uses the step program/recovery model where women who have gone through what Dworkin calls “boot camp,” i.e., they were groomed via incest and sexual abuse for prostitution, support one another in overcoming and recovering from the incredible harm that has been done to them that results in their remaining in the sex trade even when they want out. The “boot camp” of child abuse has got to end for the sex trade to end. That is also a focus of Norma Hotaling’s work.
Thanks for your comment, Maggie– I agree that pornography is a form of prostitution of women, though I haven’t read about the women you link to there (and will).
Julia, so sadly true. This is something all heterosexual women know about, isn’t it. There’s a “Family Guy” episode I’m thinking about where Lois starts to have a heart attack while she and Peter are having sex. She tells him, “Peter, I’m having a heart attack, I have to go to the doctor,” and he says, “Okay, just a minute, just a minute, just a minute, okay, let’s go,” i.e., he gets his orgasm before he takes her to the hospital. Of course, the message is, no doesn’t mean no, stop doesn’t mean stop, even if your partner is having a heart attack, and this scenario is so common and easily recognizable that it is made part of a cartoon that millions of people laugh at it, thinking nothing of it.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 7:59 am12 admin
hexy, I am more interested in getting underneath these issues around choosing to be a sex worker or being prostituted to talking about the whole notion of exchanging money for sex, what that means, and in particular, what it means that overwhelmingly men pay money for sex with/from women. It’s as though this is some sort of given, as though there’s nothing to say about it, when it is and always has been of central importance to feminists. We live under male supremacy. We can all see this if we look around ourselves– men own the land, the corporations, the churches, overwhelmingly they are the governors and kings and priests, and of course, this has been true for millennia. Right now we live under basically not even capitalism but a burgeoning neofascism where more and more corporations and megacorporations run the world. I’ve been thinking about this in the context of the post I wrote a couple of days ago about the revolt of indigenous persons in Peru against the plan of the Peruvian president to sell or lease indigenous lands to corporate interests (for oil drilling and timber) in the wake of the signing of the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. I quoted Judy Barrie in that article who makes the very fine point that capitalists, socialists, communists, Marxists all neglect something very important when they advance their economic theories. For capitalists (and neofascists) it’s all about individual profit margins, and the greater the profit margins, the better. For socialists and communists and Marxists it’s about distribution of whatever profits are made amongst workers or citizens of the country, depending what theory we are talking about. What none of them get to, though, is the costs to the biosphere, the earth, the land, creatures, the environment. And where they leave off is where Andrea Dworkin and feminists in general have historically begun. It is not enough to begin and end discussions of issues around buying and selling of sex with “choice” and the fact that money is exchanged for it. We have to also calculate in what has been *taken* from the women from whom men buy sex, the cost in terms of their lives and bodies. Just as we have to calculate in the costs of what is done to the earth, trees, waters, the lands in the quest to use them to make money. This isn’t only true, of course, so far as prostitution goes. Women’s bodies really are harvested in much the same way crops are harvested, animals are harvested, the earth is harvested. We don’t only have the sexual brothel, for example, we also have the reproductive brothel where women’s bodies are mined for eggs, for babies, all the way up to hired out as surrogates. If we say that we value life — human, animal, the earth — then I think we have to think about what exchanging money for lives and for what is harvested from what and who is alive means, and whether this kind of harvesting can or should be tenably supported, or can be supported with integrity, by feminists attempting to envision and build a new world. When we begin to think in these terms it becomes more clear that the differences around whether prostitution is or is not “chosen” might not be what it is most important to consider.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 8:05 am13Sarah J

I notice you don’t care about the word “slut.”

Why, of course not. Because you’re full of thinly veiled slut-shaming.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 8:18 am14 admin
Sarah, my list of sexist words wasn’t comprehensive. There are thousands of hateful words used against women and I want a world where none of them can be used ever to hurt any woman. That certainly would include the word “slut.” As to slut shaming, there is nothing like that here. If anyone is to be shamed — not, in my opinion, a very useful tool or strategy for change — it is those who have built empires for themselves by way of the prostituted bodies of women.
I’ve had some posts working in my mind around this for a while now. (I’m not addressing you right now, Sarah, but talking generally.) Just recent Frank Colacurcio Sr. was sent to jail. The guy is approaching 90 and I have heard his name all my life since I was a little girl and there were rumors he was in cahoots somehow with Gov. Albert Rosellini in Washington where I grew up. This guy has made a multimillion dollar empire running strip joints. Along the way he’s been criminally charged several times for sexual assault, including of a minor, there is a lot of evidence he murdered several people, not long ago he paid off some members of the city council in Seattle trying to get a rezone for one of his clubs. The women who work in his clubs describe horrific stuff that goes on. He doesn’t care what kind of sex the dancers have with customers as long as they get paid for it. He charges them a certain amount of money per day to dance in his clubs and if they don’t earn that amount, they owe him. Those charges can rack up and rack up for various reasons until there is no way they can think of leaving the business and he is a dangerous and violent man and they sure are not going to be able to skip out. He has an open invitation to the dancers that anyone who wants to come to his house at night gets $1K. Of course, I am sure they can all hardly wait to hop in bed with this guy who is a felon many times over in part because of his ongoing pattern of assaulting dancers. This is a very very rich man, a millionnaire many times over with his empire now passed down to his son. If shaming were a good tactic to use or accomplished anything (I don’t think it does, but whatever), these are the guys who are to be shamed. They have caused untold, untold, untold amounts of harm to women, to men, to children, to all of us.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 8:38 am15 admin
Here’s a link to Ann Bissell’s sex trade survivors website:
http://www.annebissell.com/newsroom.htm
Here’s a link about Colacurio:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-07-09/news/woodfellas-frank-colacurcio-and-his-million-dollar-empire-of-flesh/

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:13 am16 Renegade Evolution
Right then Heart, let’s speak on context…and I’ll try this again and amend a few things to be accurate and less openly hostile…yes, I do realize you support the Swedish Model, oversight on my part. Noted. I lived out west, where gal is far less demeaning than girl, or ma;am or lady, or Miss. Just as men are called guys or dudes, women, often, are refered to as “gals” and in my experiece it is not meant to be demeaning. It’s a term other than woman or girl. The stories I posted, well, gee, Mariko and Amanda’s Nevada Brothel tales would be right up your alley. They are horrible in their own right, in every way. Tricked by a female brothel owner and subjected to very shady conditions in a place they felt unsafe and could not wait to get out of, Mariko went there because she literally needed the money. Not exactly shiny, happy stories. And Robyn Few, as much as she is hated by many, mentions flat out entering the sex industry at the age of 13 to survive. I’ve not in my posts ignored the unpleasant aspects of the business, and to assume (when I still have five or so days left of blogging there) that I would not post MORE on the less pleasant aspects and horrible parts of sex work/prostitution for various people involved in it is somewhat putting the cart before the horse. I mention both sex workers AND prostituted women, but that has been omitted by various folks throughout this conversation. Why? There are both: sex workers and prostituted people. Denying one group or the other does no good, because both kinds are out there and have different needs/wants. I don’t see the horror in recognizing that. Even I have had shit times in my business, which you said you were oh so sorry for…yet…when I make an effort to discuss sex work/ prostitution in a place where people might learn something they don’t already know, I get slammed for it. Why hasn’t Feministe invited others to blog there? I don’t know. That question has to be asked of them, not me. I have no say in who they invite to guest blog. I’d be happy to suggest a woman like R.Mott or V be invited to guest blog there, hell, I will. Would they do it? I don’t know. Would those women accept the invite? I don’t know that either. And V- listen, yes, I am a libertarian, people do not have to like it- and sure enough- they don’t. Not even many of my allies. No, I am not anti-capitalist, but is more in depth than that. I’ve never said capitalism is fantastic and great and we should never look at other systems or modify the ones currently in place. For instance, would I support a more socialist form of medical care? Yes, I would….because all people should be able to see doctors and not go around injured or sick because they can’t afford medical care. And why yes, I’ve said such things before.
As for the feminist critics blog, no, I was not a founding member. I became disillusioned with a lot of feminism and feminists and was then, after the blog have been around for awhile, invited to blog there. Some months ago, I quit that blog and have not posted there in quite some time. A self-identified radical feminist has also blogged there once or twice as well. I found conversations there to be useless and frusterating, so I quit.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:48 am17 admin
Ren, I’m going to approve your comment in a minute, but without the last sentence. My post here wasn’t addressed to you specifically. Your and others’ recent writings about the language around sex work are among a couple of things that got me blogging about this. Another was the arrest of Frank Colacurcio and another was having spent some time on the Sex Trade Survivors site after reading about it on the DIGNITY listserv. Another is e-mail conversations I’ve been having with survivors of the sex trade. And another is, I have a difficult piece of writing I’ve been working on about the arrest of Radovan Karadzic that is kicking my butt so I’m writing something different because I’m procrastinating. :-p
Another thing that factors in for me: how can I stand for sustainability, for life, the earth, forests, skies, oceans, how can I embrace Deep Green iow, which is where my life and my feminism have taken me, without being as concerned about sustainability and life so far as women’s lives and bodies are concerned? I have to stand politically with the indigenous tribes all over the world for many reasons, one of which is, once the megacorporations have used up all of the trees in the rainforest and all of the oil in the Arctic, once the profits have been realized and spent, all of us will suffer for it, most of all everything and everyone who is gone and dead and devastated because of what the corporations have taken and sold. How much more is this true with respect to the bodies of women?

on 26 Aug 2008 at 11:11 am18 admin
Ren, quickly, I don’t have much problem with women calling gals, “gals,” that’s not the same thing, I don’t think, as businessmen calling their secretaries “gals”. It’s all about “gals” this and “gals” that in the Michfest community, for example, and I have no problem at all with that– we are all women and nobody is using that term to diminish someone else. I also am not particularly one to get all fired up because someone says “gal” randomly and sure don’t feel offended if you say it! I am also from “out west.” I’ve lived in the Pacific NW all my life, was born here.
Why? There are both: sex workers and prostituted people
There is a whole world of issues around this statement, many are named in this thread. It’s not this simple and should not be made to be this simple. This is where the power struggle is, right here. It’s not so much a power struggle between you, Ren, and I, or the pro-prostitution people and the anti-prostitution people. It is a power struggle, when you get right down to it, between men and women, and the words we use to describe it will either benefit men or they will benefit women, overall.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 11:39 am19 Renegade Evolution
Heart, when a good section of your own readers assume this was about my series at Feministe, what the hell am I supposed to assume? And you are well within your rights as the blog owner here not to post my last statement, but it’s true. However, when I am being called out for never talking about Prostituted People when I have…well, flat out lies right there, that can easily be disproven by merely reading what I’ve written at Feministe. And people can talk about simplification as much as they want, but you well know there are actual people involved in this whole ordeal…some are sex workers, some are prostituted people, and to them, there is a difference. That, to me, is important.
And I am very, very sick of seeing sexworker outreach/advocate organizations demonized. It’s a travesty, considering they actually DO a lot of work to HELP sex workers and prostituted people of all kinds. I mean, I’d actually encourage you and whomever else to attend an event like the one in Chicago, I have no doubt it would be educational. I don’t think it would change your mind on anything with the sex industry itself, but it might at least make folk think about what it is we do.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 12:04 pm20Maggie Hays

Thanks for your comment, Maggie– I agree that pornography is a form of prostitution of women, though I haven’t read about the women you link to there (and will).

You’re welcome. Thanks, Heart, for your interest in the link I posted. Yes, pornography is prostitution too.If they want to spend 24/7 talking about the merits of ’sex work’ for them on their blogs, whatever. What i dont like is the way that they set themselves up as the “go to” people on all issues related to it, and try to push out dissenters and people with alternative views on the subject using slander, rumour, and fake ‘civility’. I think its crap the way they claim to be all ‘anti censorship’ while at the same time trying desperately to clamp down on other peoples language, about their own realities.
Resisterance (V), what you said here above is nail bang on the head! So damn right.
There is a whole world of issues around this statement, many are named in this thread. It’s not this simple and should not be made to be this simple. This is where the power struggle is, right here. It’s not so much a power struggle between you, Ren, and I, or the pro-prostitution people and the anti-prostitution people. It is a power struggle, when you get right down to it, between men and women, and the words we use to describe it will either benefit men or they will benefit women, overall.
True, Heart. The term ‘prostituted women’ is accurate because most women who enter prostitution do so with choices that are NOT free. Patriarchy limits choices. And so does porno-iarchy! As I said: Patriarchists (that includes the few women patriarchists too), do not ever try to control my language! I use terms I want to use, terms that recognize women & girls’ oppression under patriarchy, sometimes even new terms I invent if I want to.
That’s a great piece of writing by Andrea showing so clearly that prostitution and child abuse are political systems, and not a series of unfortunate circumstance or personal choices.
Yeah, I agree, Helzeph.I don’t exactly have a “healthy,” “sex positive” attitude about sex work. Also, the stories you posted here make me very sad.Yeah, Peridot, I also appreciate your acknowledgement of what has been posted here by survivors.There are thousands of hateful words used against women and I want a world where none of them can be used ever to hurt any woman. That certainly would include the word “slut.” As to slut shaming, there is nothing like that here. If anyone is to be shamed — not, in my opinion, a very useful tool or strategy for change — it is those who have built empires for themselves by way of the prostituted bodies of women.
Same here, I agree. And it’s the johns who (almost) always have the power and the 100% full agency in all of this!
I spam comments every day from people who, for example, insist that women who are clearly choking, gagged, throwing up, who are being hurt in extreme porn like what Max Hardcore made before he got slapped are not an issue because the women “agreed”, they “chose”, they consented, they made bank.
Sorry to hear you had to deal with horrible and sad comments like these, Heart.
I am more interested in getting underneath these issues around choosing to be a sex worker or being prostituted to talking about the whole notion of exchanging money for sex, what that means, and in particular, what it means that overwhelmingly men pay money for sex with/from women. It’s as though this is some sort of given, as though there’s nothing to say about it, when it is and always has been of central importance to feminists. We live under male supremacy. We can all see this if we look around ourselves– men own the land, the corporations, the churches, overwhelmingly they are the governors and kings and priests, and of course, this has been true for millennia.
Yep.
I think men do force sex: if a man is inside of a woman, getting close to orgasm, and she’s uncomfortable or just isn’t into it and tells him to pull out, how many men will do it?Without her having to cry?I think men beleive this is their right under patriarchy. Men’s orgasm comes first, and if she doesn’t like it then ‘don’t have sex’.
Powerful statement you’ve made here. Yeah, Julia, you’re right. So sad, distressing and true. :( And I have been there… just like so many other women have been there…

on 26 Aug 2008 at 12:16 pm21Maggie Hays

I do realize you support the Swedish Model, oversight on my part. Noted.

I also do support the Swedish model like Heart does. I want prostitutes to be decriminalized, but not johns & pimps. I want johns and pimps to be criminalized. Thanks for noting that…
I’d be happy to suggest a woman like R.Mott or V be invited to guest blog there, hell, I will. Would they do it? I don’t know. Would those women accept the invite? I don’t know that either.
Cannot speak for Rebecca or V, so I can’t say nothing about that… They would have to let’em know what they think (if they want to) about this themselves…

on 26 Aug 2008 at 12:31 pm22Maggie Hays

Even I have had shit times in my business, which you said you were oh so sorry for…

Yes, we did say that. yet…when I make an effort to discuss sex work/ prostitution in a place where people might learn something they don’t already know, I get slammed for it.
Who’s really getting slammed here? Well, what V said:
If they want to spend 24/7 talking about the merits of ’sex work’ for them on their blogs, whatever. What i dont like is the way that they set themselves up as the “go to” people on all issues related to it, and try to push out dissenters and people with alternative views on the subject using slander, rumour, and fake ‘civility’. I think its crap the way they claim to be all ‘anti censorship’ while at the same time trying desperately to clamp down on other peoples language, about their own realities.
What Julia said in her above comment is so terribly true, distressing and sad… :( It is about rape and forced sex under patriarchy… It brought tears to my eyes…

on 26 Aug 2008 at 2:08 pm23 admin
Ren, the people who assumed my post was a response to yours aren’t my regular readers (I don’t think? They don’t usually post.) I didn’t say you never talk about prostituted people, I said I think prostituted people are often given short shrift by those who advocate for and endorse prostitution and pornography. I have appreciated your frankness around the difficulties you have faced yourself and have felt sincerely alarmed and disturbed by your descriptions of the crap you’ve had to deal with.
Nobody here demonizes sex worker outreach programs, that I have seen. The comments I pasted up there were in several instances written by women who lead sex worker outreach programs. Norma Hotaling’s SAGE was the first, or one of the first, outreach programs to prostitutes begun at the grass roots level by women who had survived the sex trade. ”Monique” began an outreach to strippers that has been highly successful. The woman I linked to a couple comments up, Ann Bissell, also heads an organization for survivors of the sex trade. Andrea Dworkin spent years working with and on behalf of prostituted woman. Hotaling, Bissell, Dworkin, Monique — all are or were survivers of the sex trade who began outreaches to survivors of the sex trade. They are supported here.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 2:20 pm24 Renegade Evolution
heart:
Nobody here demonizes sex worker outreach programs, that I have seen
Look no further than Maggie Hayes.
Maggie:
“Who’s really getting slammed here? Well, what V said:If they want to spend 24/7 talking about the merits of ’sex work’ for them on their blogs, whatever. What i dont like is the way that they set themselves up as the “go to” people on all issues related to it, and try to push out dissenters and people with alternative views on the subject using slander, rumour, and fake ‘civility’. I think its crap the way they claim to be all ‘anti censorship’ while at the same time trying desperately to clamp down on other peoples language, about their own realities.”
As I said, I do not choose who guest blogs at Feministe. And, apparently, at least to several people…gee, I have some idea of what I’m talking about. I’ve not tried to push anyone out of any conversations occuring at Feministe, and I’ve stated REPEATEDLY that all kinds of voices and stories need to be listened to. Including the not nice ones and those of prostituted women. Prove otherwise, or stop with the accusations. Wooo, I have issue with term “selling yourself/selling your body” because I find it dehumanizing? Hang me for it. And oddly enough, I’ve never censored anything any woman has said to me at my blog or any place I’m blogging at…so yeah, I can claim to be anti-censorship.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 2:35 pm25 admin
I don’t see how that statement is demonizing. I think that groups like SWOP do attempt to set themselves up as the go-to people. As I’ve already also said, a couple of times by now, there are organizations formed at the grass roots level by survivors of the sex trade besides SWOP and similar groups and some of them have been around for a long time. What they have to say is valuable and SWOP should not set itself up as the go to guy.
I think there are many, many ways to silence women. One way is to allow the ongoing posting of misinformation, mischaracterization and lies about them. Series of attack posts against women also serves to silence them. Gangpiling silences women. Not speaking up when a woman is being attacked or lied about publicly silences women. I don’t believe that moderating blogs is censorship and I don’t believe not moderating them equals not censoring them. There’s nothing keeping anyone from starting her own blog, after all to end the “censorship”. I don’t care who blogs at Feministe and I don’t think V does either. I think her point was, there is one point of view only that is allowed in the circles I was referring to in my blog post here and that isn’t V’s point of view.
I don’t know what accusations you’re talking about and will just refer you back to my post and comments. My issue isn’t and wasn’t with your having said selling yourself/your body is dehumanizing. My issue is with this ongoing attempt to regulate feminist discourse and with the policing of terms going on, especially by those who don’t identify as feminists. Words are, again, political. They aren’t just words. They don’t just describe reality, they also create it,
Heart

on 26 Aug 2008 at 2:54 pm26 Renegade Evolution
Heart- I’m sure, SWOP or not, I was asked because they know who I am. I didn’t ask to blog there, I didn’t set myself up for anything. They asked. And the impression that SWOP is the only org out there and is trying to define itself as such, is…well…wrong? It’s a large organization, sure, but no one from SWOP has ever said they are the Only One, nor acted as if there are not others out there. There are tons of them out there, world wide, and many are linked off of all kinds of blogs, including SWOP member ones. I’ll be posting a massive list of such organizations at Feministe, and no, they won’t all be SWOP related. And I’m not trying to regulate anyone’s discourse…I stated a term bothered me, actual discourse ensued, with no regulation whatsoever.
And it’s not what Maggie said here that I’m refering to. She spends plenty of time mocking sex worker outreach orgs on her own blog. The way she set up her tag for them shows that plainly enough.
“One way is to allow the ongoing posting of misinformation, mischaracterization and lies about them. Series of attack posts against women also serves to silence them. Gangpiling silences women. Not speaking up when a woman is being attacked or lied about publicly silences women. ”
And there has been plenty of that all around…you’ve faced it, as have I, as have countless others, no doubt.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 3:22 pm27 v
I don’t care who blogs at Feministe and I don’t think V does either. I think her point was, there is one point of view only that is allowed in the circles I was referring to in my blog post here and that isn’t V’s point of view.
Yeh, thats it, in a nutshell. I don’t relate to almost anything on feministe - its US, for a start. I certainly wouldnt be interested in doing anything there, and im not asking to be asked, at all. Altho i think our home grown “big feminist blog” suffers from similar problems. Class-wise, and ren i think youre aware thats an issue for me, its just that side of middle class, academic, liberal feminism that doesnt really speak to me much at all.
And thats part of the problem. The big feminist blogs, the ones with the ginormous readerships that like to pretend theyre representative of feminists across the board, well they just dont, really.
And so it is with the sex workers rights advocates. Ren, you said:
“I am very, very sick of seeing sexworker outreach/advocate organizations demonized. It’s a travesty, considering they actually DO a lot of work to HELP sex workers and prostituted people of all kinds”
Demonised by who?? I dont trust them, ive said that many times. The one thats always doing the speaking-for over here, gets invited onto the radio/tv/papers to give their views above anyone else, is the ECP. That organisation has no transparency, and I find that worrying, very much so. We’re talking about representing, speaking for, a whole group of people who are among the most ignored, the most unheard. I think its important to know who exactly is making the decisions about what is best for that group. I appreciate the difficulties, problems with anonymity, etc. I get that. But we could know, for example, what proportion of the membership of these so called sex worker advocate groups, are comprised of actual sex workers, and how that membership is spread (how many exotic dancers vs prostitutes vs phone workers, etc). I dont know how these groups are being demonised when they are the only ones apparently allowed to define the language and the direction that we take on this stuff. If you listen to mass media, including most of the big fem blogs, anyway.
And I think those of us who have at some point in the past been involved in that industry, in many and various ways, shouldnt be discarded as if now we’re out of it we cant have a view on it or our time in it. I think thats dangerous. Its like, we used you up, and now youre struggling with mental health issues and god knows what else, we dont care what you think about it. Bring on the new young things, who can be put through much the same, until theyre too messed up for us to bother with either.
And I still dont understand why orgs that tend towards the “pro” side, are acknowledged as sex worker advocates, whereas orgs that focus very much on providing ways out, are not necessarily defined as such. I think that is also a problem.
So the problem - as heart put it and i agree - is that i can turn in any direction and hear a pro pov. For you, ren, the way you write, you seem to see yourself as you say - a renegade, a rebel maybe, in that you are pro. For me - well i dont feel that way, i feel that its a casually accepted and excused part of society - when i was very very young i idolised sam fox ffs (not that i dont like her as a person now, but ykwim). To me, the yay its porn time! thing is everywhere - i get porn channels advertising on my cable, several of the other channels have porny programs late at night anyway, we have page 3, nuts and zoo, i cant even use the free browser on my phone without adverts for porn being right there on the front page, including other phone users amateur videos. Its hard to find torrent and download sites that dont have sex phone and site ads all over the page. Every night the tv ads on all commercial channels here have ads for hook-up phone lines with extremely young looking women posing and to me, filtered through my own experiences, it looks very exploitative. And whats the answer, dont use my phone, never watch tv, dont look at ads on billboards, and close my eyes when im walking into petrol stations so i cant see the upskirt pics on todays ‘news’paper covers?
Basically - there is almost nowhere i can turn without seeing a yay porn/prostitution pov. I have to hunt around for anything else. And those of us who talk about it negatively, in terms of our own experiences, find we are squished, threatened, accused of all sorts, and generally shut out of every discussion on the subject, even on mainstream feminist blogs, because people who see it as a choice dont like our terminology.
Sorry for the long post, that probably doesnt cast much light.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 5:17 pm28 Satsuma
Thanks for posting the words of women who actually escaped prostitution. I think this idea that women actively “choose” gang rape (serial johns doing what they want to with women’s bodies) is highly relevant.
When I see plentiful very well paid ordinary jobs out there for women, I’ll believe this false “choice” argument.
I’ve heard all kinds of garbage my whole life about things I knew damn well were terrible for any human being. I’ve always thought degraded the women in it, dehumanized the men who read it. I’ve always hated drugs and the growing drug culture that I watched take over the country, because boomers ten years older than I was thought it was “cool.” I’ve seen how sex addiction has destroyed the gay male community, killed hundreds of thousands of gay men, and pornified their entire identities. And they are walking cesspools of pornification believe me! Cesspools.
What’s so hard to get that women get “seasoned” and “trained” into low self-esteem thus making them ripe for incest, abuse within families, only to be the ideal candidates for pimps? There are woman hating radio shows that coach men into how to make women have low self-esteem and how to pump em and dump em, and these are mainstream radio shows that men call ins support and cheer. Women call in to AGREE with these animals, go figure.
Who lies in wait at the Greyhound bus stations with “free” lodging and food, for the girls who run away from home? The pimps, the porn hounds, the dirty old men of any age, that’s who.
I think it is awfully hard to face up to your life if you are demonized for being you, but I don’t see many people in America who actually have read Dworkin in detail or have followed the evil trail of sex tourism around the world. Heck, a lot of people equate female genital mutilation with male circumcision! Yes, many men think it’s the same.
Just what are the motives of the pro-porn gang? Well follow the money. I don’t think any woman out there chooses this mess; I think they are conned, charmed and forced into it by abusive male family members and by a bad job market for women. This bad job market is designed to make women compliant and available to men. Remember the days when women were frozen out of all high paying jobs and into heterosexual marriage? The only real choice exists when there is one!
The only real freedom of speech is when women get their fair share of it. The pro-porn people the pro-prostitution people are all for this garbage, just as the sex, drugs and rock and roll people thought recreational drugs were cool. Now we have crystal addiction everywhere, women strung out on the streets, and major drug lords worldwide involved in the trafficking of women as well.
Remember that old fashioned word vice? Well it’s all about the “selling of women” that is the ultimate vice, and we need to support all the women who have escaped hell, and like bodisatvas, returned to that hell to rescue more of their sisters. That’s the compassion of Dworkin– read her memoir if you want to see a real secular saint of feminism. All women can be victimized by a porn atmosphere, and the fools who promote or defend this stuff are just lying. They could care less about the lives of women and children; they’re in it for profit, their in it to degrade all those who stand up to them, they are up to their neck in some of the most evil vice the world has ever known, and the hide behind the first amendment waiting their next victims.
This stuff is so evil that I won’t ever go to those creepy sites. I thank goddess Heart has the courage to go into darkness and report back to us. I won’t read those people, I won’t fall victim to the very evil of their words, which contaminate the heck out of me. I freak out seeing pole dancers advertised in lesbian magazines and bars! I had to walk out of a bar feeling sick when I discovered that that was the “entertainment.” I was unaware how bad things had gotten. The women who run Girl Bar in Los Angeles promote this stuff, just as they show lesbian porn in slick video screnes lining the bar. The cover charges are $15 or more on a Saturday night, and the gym size dance floor is crowded to the max. Add up all that money, the women who own this place are lionized and fawned over in the lesbian community. They donate a lot of money to lesbian and gay causes and the community protects them. The owner of Lesbian News is an apolitical profiteer–it’s about money and big ad bucks not about community support. That’s the lesbian end of it, and that is chicken feed compared to the sleazy gay male world here.
Until I see all those high paying jobs chasing after women– eaily gotten with minimal education, I’m going to question the “myth” of choice.
Having been a victim of constant hetero-tyranny and a lesbian hating world, I know the hetero-patriarchy brainwashes women, cons them into marrying men, makes women feel they are crazy for knowing deep down inside that they are lesbians. I know all the women of the 50s who married men, who took 40 years to realize their true selves. I’ve seen the hetero brainwashing machine night and day, and I’ve watched from the sidelines as the male porn/prostitution con game victimizes yet another generation of women and girls.
Everytime I hear some woman justify this sexualizing pornified world, I think to myself “There stands an unaided incest survivor, an abuse victim, a child rape survivor.” Everytime I hear women supporting this stuff, I know that underneath this is a survivor of some attrocity that might be a suppressed memory. I see very mentally ill lesbians out there into S & M because no one gives a damn about them, or cares to foot the therapy and hospital bills. I’ve seen this first hand, I’ve heard the S &M crowd with my own ears, and I know what these women have been through.
Just remember Cardinal Abuse Enabler Mahoney of Los Angeles still has his job. His catholic church paid over $600,000,000 to child rape survivors and he is up to his eyeballs in complicity and aiding and abetting the monsters who did this. Not one of those monster priests was ever excommunicated, not one. He sits on his high cathedral throne in L.A., and people still support him and attend his masses. And still there is no outrage over this.
All I can say is pro-porn people, show us your financial interest in all of this, because we know your are profiting and selling women too. You don’t want to lose out on your womanhating selling gravey train, you don’t want to admit that you are aiding and abetting child rape and seasoning either, no you support free speech only for the abusers and profiteers and you know it. Shame on you!! Shame and more shame!
Goddess I hate these sleaze bag and their internet lies! This is the very heart of darkness.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 6:12 pm29Rebecca

Thanks for very important post. I always moved and stirred back into action by Suki Falconberg’s writings. She reaches into my soul, and remind me how it was to be prostituted.
I feel it is important to place many voices and words of prostituted women and girls in the public sphere. It is too easy to dismiss their words if it is always just individual “stories”.There are too many women and girls suffering now, for that dismissal to be allow to happen,I will always acknowledge that some women are not unhappy in prostitution, but they are not the majority.
There can be a downgrading of prostituted women by making out that they were just “unlucky” to have so much violence. There can be an implied suggestion that their experiences have caused long-term mental damage, so their words should be taken with a pinch of salt.This was done to Andrea Dworkin and Linda Boreman.It is damned hard saying the realities of being prostituted, for all too often the words are translated into whatever stereotype the reader has of prostituted women or sex workers.
I find it quite confusing and offensive how the damage done to prostituted women and girls is made invisible, by creating loads of boxes to fit them.Women mass raped by the armed forces are separated from men who rape in other brothels. Men who may be tourists, locals, sports fans, rich men and on an on. All these men are choosing buy a class of women and girls, and can rape and torture behind closed doors.
I get angry that child prostitution is separated out from adult prostitiutes. As if hitting the age of 16 upwards, suddenly makes you safe in the sex trade. And if the majority of women enter prostitution when they were underaged, then do they gain control just by reaching adulthood, or is the damage too deep.
Trafficking is a common practice in most forms of prostitution. I am saddened that internal trafficking is dismissed or made invisible by the language of the managers saying it is the women’s choice. Choice to be move from one city to another city. Choice to pass round different aspects of the sex trade - lap-dancing to escorting, street prostituton to working in a brothel etc.But all too often internal trafficking is consider unharmful when compare to “real” trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation from country to country.
I find all this separating out is used lessen the reality of the damage that being prostitued does to the body and mind.It is hope that if prostituted women are taught to be divided then they will never speak out about that men feel entitled to tortured, raped and murdered them. Just coz they have paid cash.
Sorry this is very incoherent, but I am very ill at the moment.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 6:17 pm30Maggie Hays
Hey, my name spells “Hays”, btw, Ren. No “e” in it.
Ren, the people who assumed my post was a response to yours aren’t my regular readers (I don’t think? They don’t usually post.) I didn’t say you never talk about prostituted people, I said I think prostituted people are often given short shrift by those who advocate for and endorse prostitution and pornography. Yes, because when we say “pro-porners”, it is not always about you (as if the whole issue revolved around you), but about all pro-porners, who are patriarchists who maintain the male-supremacist system by defending prostitution and pornography- that also includes people who defend pornstitution that we meet in everyday life. Pro-porn views are mainstream, not margin. We, radical feminists are in the margin and are too often misrepresented and demonized.Nobody here demonizes sex worker outreach programs, that I have seen. The comments I pasted up there were in several instances written by women who lead sex worker outreach programs. Norma Hotaling’s SAGE was the first, or one of the first, outreach programs to prostitutes begun at the grass roots level by women who had survived the sex trade.
Exactly, I already knew about that and I wasn’t demonizing, just pointing out who is really being demonized.
I don’t see how that statement is demonizing. I think that groups like SWOP do attempt to set themselves up as the go-to people. As I’ve already also said, a couple of times by now, there are organizations formed at the grass roots level by survivors of the sex trade besides SWOP and similar groups and some of them have been around for a long time. What they have to say is valuable and SWOP should not set itself up as the go to guy.I think there are many, many ways to silence women. One way is to allow the ongoing posting of misinformation, mischaracterization and lies about them. Series of attack posts against women also serves to silence them. Gangpiling silences women. Not speaking up when a woman is being attacked or lied about publicly silences women. I don’t believe that moderating blogs is censorship and I don’t believe not moderating them equals not censoring them. There’s nothing keeping anyone from starting her own blog, after all to end the “censorship”.
Exactly, Heart, thank you. These were the points I was trying to make.I don’t know what accusations you’re talking about and will just refer you back to my post and comments. My issue isn’t and wasn’t with your having said selling yourself/your body is dehumanizing. My issue is with this ongoing attempt to regulate feminist discourse and with the policing of terms going on, especially by those who don’t identify as feminists. Words are, again, political. They aren’t just words. They don’t just describe reality, they also create it
I agree, Heart.
And Ren, we do acknowledge what you went through that was bad. As I said above:“Even I have had shit times in my business, which you said you were oh so sorry for…
Yes, we did say that. ”
Sorry to hear you had shit times in your business. No woman deserves that.The issue isn’t about that however. The issue is about the repeated online attacks on us, posts and posts and posts and posts after posts, when we’ve not done nothing to you whatsoever apart from disagreeing with you and wanting to have our own Radical feminist views expressed freely on our blogs without having to be targeted as a person for the politics we believe in. Why won’t you leave us alone?
As V said: If they want to spend 24/7 talking about the merits of ’sex work’ for them on their blogs, whatever. I wouldn’t mind that either.
What I mind, however, is this:
I think there are many, many ways to silence women. One way is to allow the ongoing posting of misinformation, mischaracterization and lies about them. Series of attack posts against women also serves to silence them. Gangpiling silences women. Not speaking up when a woman is being attacked or lied about publicly silences women.
And this:
What i dont like is the way that they set themselves up as the “go to” people on all issues related to it, and try to push out dissenters and people with alternative views on the subject using slander, rumour, and fake ‘civility’. I think its crap the way they claim to be all ‘anti censorship’ while at the same time trying desperately to clamp down on other peoples language, about their own realities.
Great points, Heart & V. Never will I demonize a woman for prostituting, that’s a total misrepresentation of my views. What I do not condone, however, is constant attacking, targeting and bullying by Kennerson et al.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 6:54 pm31 julia
All I can think of reading this thread is “ownership”. Men think it is OK to buy women, to limit our choices, to limit the space we are allowed in, to limit our lives.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 9:39 pm32Maggie Hays
And it’s not what Maggie said here that I’m refering to. She spends plenty of time mocking sex worker outreach orgs on her own blog. The way she set up her tag for them shows that plainly enough.
All I can say is that I am very angry at “sex work” advocates, i.e. pro-prostitution organizations, for (1) defending this widespread crime against women that is called prostitution and (2) for denying major research findings that have proven that prostitution is intrinsically an abusive form of sexual slavery and sexual abuse for most women who are in it. Which is why I set up my tags this way, because I do not believe in “sex work”.
As I said above: agenda… agenda… The purpose of the pro-”sex work” lobby is to try to conceal the reality of prostitution being inherently a form of sexual slavery and violence against women. Some women in the radical feminist movement are survivors of the sex trade.
The pro-”sex work” lobby advocates legalization of the whole ’sex’ industry, that makes me really angry because advocating the decriminalization of johns buying their “right” to (ab)use prostitutes & advocating the decriminalization of pimps making profits of prostituted women’s suffering is just like advocating the legalization of rape or domestic violence to me. Which is why I set up a tag ‘”sex work” advocates’.
Research has proven that outright legalization does NOT work.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:11 pm33Maggie Hays
Demonised by who?? I dont trust them, ive said that many times. The one thats always doing the speaking-for over here, gets invited onto the radio/tv/papers to give their views above anyone else, is the ECP. That organisation has no transparency, and I find that worrying, very much so. We’re talking about representing, speaking for, a whole group of people who are among the most ignored, the most unheard. I think its important to know who exactly is making the decisions about what is best for that group. I appreciate the difficulties, problems with anonymity, etc. I get that. But we could know, for example, what proportion of the membership of these so called sex worker advocate groups, are comprised of actual sex workers, and how that membership is spread (how many exotic dancers vs prostitutes vs phone workers, etc). I dont know how these groups are being demonised when they are the only ones apparently allowed to define the language and the direction that we take on this stuff. If you listen to mass media, including most of the big fem blogs, anyway.And I think those of us who have at some point in the past been involved in that industry, in many and various ways, shouldnt be discarded as if now we’re out of it we cant have a view on it or our time in it. I think thats dangerous. Its like, we used you up, and now youre struggling with mental health issues and god knows what else, we dont care what you think about it. Bring on the new young things, who can be put through much the same, until theyre too messed up for us to bother with either.And I still dont understand why orgs that tend towards the “pro” side, are acknowledged as sex worker advocates, whereas orgs that focus very much on providing ways out, are not necessarily defined as such. I think that is also a problem.
Exactly, V. Same here! I’ve been in touch with an organization that help women out of prostitution. I’ve also met members of CATW (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women). And they would never argue prostitution is “sex work” because they’ve seen what prostitution is really about, which is why these anti-sexploitation organizations help women out with exit programs. I believe that “sex work” advocates are full of fallacies, or deluded.
Just what are the motives of the pro-porn gang? Well follow the money. I don’t think any woman out there chooses this mess; I think they are conned, charmed and forced into it by abusive male family members and by a bad job market for women. This bad job market is designed to make women compliant and available to men.
That’s right, Satsuma. Pretty much. Thanks for noticing the patriarchal & capitalist agenda here!
Trafficking is a common practice in most forms of prostitution. I am saddened that internal trafficking is dismissed or made invisible by the language of the managers saying it is the women’s choice.
True, Rebecca. It is very distressing. All I can think of reading this thread is “ownership”. Men think it is OK to buy women, to limit our choices, to limit the space we are allowed in, to limit our lives.
Exactly, Julia, the johns (almost) always have 100% choice in the prostitution matter, while most women & girls who enter prostitution do so with choices that are NOT free.
Patriarchy limits women’s choices, that’s a fact!
The johns believe it is their “male right” to use and abuse women. Johns choose buying women for sex because prostitution is inherently about the degradation and torture of women.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:17 pm34 anuna
What’s so hard to get that women get seasoned and trained into low self-esteem thus making them ripe for incest, for abuse within families, only to be the ideal candidates for pimps?
YES, Satsuma. Thank you. I was trying to figure out how to say that succinctly. And follow the money. Look who stands to profit.
I’m not an expert on libertarianism, but as I understand it, a fair exchange involves value freely given for value. How does libertarianism deal with pre-established inequality, in that context? What I see is the owners and the oppressors taking what they want by force. They don’t offer a fair deal. They say, “I’m going to take your land and your livelihood away from you. I’m going to give myself the lion’s share of the food and resources, and deny you education, opportunity and freedom of movement. Now, go ahead and try to barter with me to get some crumbs to live on, if you think you have anything left I might want.” What does this have to do with freedom of choice?
What Satsuma said about S/M reminded me of this passage from Sonia Johnson’s “Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation.” She quotes Cheri Lesh:
It is time to stop pointing fingers and making accusations. Time to look at something very hard and real. We are all crazy and weird about sex. Heirs to thousands of years of degradation and torture, of man as S and woman as M, of white as S and non-white as M, of God as S and human as M, of civilization as S and nature as M–who among us can claim immunity, who among us has not tasted the whip sting of poison in the honey, has not confused the slap with the caress? Sadomasochism is the basic sexual perversion of patriarchy.
Then Johnson continues:
So in arguments for sadomasochism as a way of relating to others sexually, we must be aware that we each bear responsibility for creating an alternative to patriarchy that is an alternative. Hurting others/asking to be hurt, dominating others/asking to be dominated, humiliating others/asking to be humiliated–feeding the basic patriarchal addiction–is not finding an alternative. Instead, it is rationalizing and succumbing to the patriarchal imperatives most deeply imprinted on our psyches. It is fiercely seductive–as all addictions are–and it is lethal.
I don’t mean to speak for anyone else here. But I do know that this passage really struck me as relevant to my experience and to what I’ve allowed and excused before I saw it for what it was.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:21 pm35 anuna
I’m sorry–I carefully put those quotes in italics, but the formatting disappeared. The first sentence is Satsuma. The Cheri Lesh quote runs from “It is time . . .” to ” . . . patriarchy.” The Sonia Johnson quote is the second to last paragraph. The rest is me.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 1:12 am36hexy
Oh, and I read your post on the Indigenous uprising in Peru. I’ve been following that on other sources, but it’s always good to see non-Indigenous bloggers giving space to Indigenous voices!

on 27 Aug 2008 at 1:13 am37hexy
(I’m not sure if this posted the first time around, apologies if it appears twice)
Heart:
I am more interested in getting underneath these issues around choosing to be a sex worker or being prostituted to talking about the whole notion of exchanging money for sex, what that means, and in particular, what it means that overwhelmingly men pay money for sex with/from women. … It is not enough to begin and end discussions of issues around buying and selling of sex with “choice” and the fact that money is exchanged for it. We have to also calculate in what has been *taken* from the women from whom men buy sex, the cost in terms of their lives and bodies.
Personally, I think the big debate about choice and such is a complete waste of time! As I said in my first comment, women who are or have been in the sex industry generally have a pretty good idea whether their experience has been voluntary or not and whether or not it was a positive one. These arguments by other people going on around us about who choose what and how they can do so under patriarchy and blah blah blah… they take energy away from the conversations that need to happen and drown out discussion about what we actually need.
To me, that’s the only point at which this distinction needs to be made: The needs of a sex worker and the needs of a prostituted person are different. Attempting to label us all prostituted people and provide exit services and trauma support to women who want support and recognition of their legitimate work is just as damaging as providing free condoms and industrial rights to women who feel that their entire experience amounted to rape. Haven’t we learned, over and over again, that we can’t stick a “one size fits all” solution on any problem that feminism faces? As women, we are wildly diverse.
I stand by the point I’ve been making for years, that this is one of those topics that needs to be kept segregated. Sex worker rights and support for prostituted people are entirely different issues. It’s flat out DAMAGING to have either conversation interrupted, whether the well-meaning interrupter is chiming into a discussion about exit services and trauma support to insist that some women choose prostitution, or whether they’re jumping into a discussion about how to make decrim work to demand we talk about the women who are forced into it.
Sex worker rights organisations in Australia ARE sex workers. We’d get a lot more done if we didn’t have to keep arguing with anti-sex-work groups, and I’m sure that applies both ways.
And Heart, I hear you on anti-capitalism. I’m not a huge fan of the system we live under either. But hey, I’ve still got to live under it as best I can, and that means earning a living. I’m sick of the hidden assumption in so much anti-capitalist rhetoric that sex workers should be on the front line martyring our incomes for the anti-capitalist cause just because of the nature of our work.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:02 am38 Heart
Many really great thoughts here. Very true, Rebecca– what magically turns a young woman who has been in the sex trade from the time she was 13 into someone who can “choose” it at 16 or 18?
Also so true re the boxes you are talking about, this sort of categorizing of women, parsing them out according to their supposed or theorized levels of “choice” and suffering and cold-hard-cash-earned, and the kind of men who buy them/rape them/abuse them and where the buying/raping/abusing occurs, and then placing them onto a sort of hierarchy of pain where their supposed level of “choice” and cash earned theoretically begin to mitigate their risk and suffering, such that in the end, the pro-porn, pro-prostitution side has what matters: some number of women in the sex trade who, say they, are not harmed by it, chose it, and like what they do, and in the end, that’s all the pro-porn side needs to continue to advocate for and endorse what causes unimaginable, unconscionable suffering, not only to prostitutes but to all women (and men, for that matter).
Also so true re “internal” trafficking, and again, the slimeball Colacurcios come to mind. They run a company that advertises in the newspaper for “dancers and waitresses.” This company has been around for decades. Young women “apply” without realizing that they are entering into the world of prostitution. They are interviewed and become “waitresses” first. Of course, they do not make any money to speak of as “waitresses” because in Washington, the strip joints sell soft drinks, no liquor (which keeps them out of the hands of, and off the radar of, the liquor control board). So, a certain number of them then become dancers. Now the fun begins. They are promised much, especially money, and a lot of these women are, of course, poor, single mothers, students, they need money, they see the other women doing this, they figure they can always quit if they hate it. But now they are “independent contractors,” meaning they aren’t employees getting paychecks like when they were waitresses, they have “contracted” with the club they dance with. They now have to pay a certain amount of money every day as the establishment’s “cut.” This is used to control them because the cut the establishment gets often becomes a tab that can grow like topsy, and the desperation creeps in as they owe more and more if, for example, they have had a bad week, they have to pay the rent or medical bills, they are addicted to something. Now they are in a vulnerable position, and club managers and bouncers can put the screws to them, pressuring them for sex or pressuring them to have sex with certain men, their friends, guys they stand to benefit from having around. If they resist, they get punished, are given bad hours or the worst hours, are reminded how much they owe and pressured to pay it.
Then comes the shipping of the women out of state, as you say, Rebecca, to Alaska to dance in clubs there, to California and Nevada to dance in clubs down there, and the women do not have a choice, because again, they owe and not only do they owe, they owe “management” who in this case are felons convicted of assault and other acts of violence and who are suspected of five murders years ago which remain unsolved and for which they were never tried.
The other thing is, as “independent contractors”, these women receive no benefits of any kind, no medical, dental, no insurance, no sick days, no vacation, and must pay their own federal and state income taxes. When this begins to be calculated in, the amount of money they are actually earning begins to shrink. Many times, the women do not pay their taxes or underpay them which makes them incredibly vulnerable. I assisted with a class action lawsuit some years back brought by three exotic dancers against a strip joint. There were many dancers who wanted to join the class and would have, but that would have meant they would have had to produce whatever financial records they had, including their income tax returns, and so they would have had to state under oath that they had not filed their returns or had understated their income, and of course, they are not going to do this when they are attempting to stand against the kind of men they were standing against who will definitely use this information against them any way they can, report them, you name it. They are also going to have to testify under oath that contrary to the law, they engaged in acts of prostitution while they were dancers (the fact that management told them to, forced them to, or turned a blind eye doesn’t matter– it’s their word against management, and this is their job, how they make their living). In the end, only three women remained in the class, and they each got less than $16,000, which amounted to NOTHING to the club they worked in. Scarily, the woman who was first to begin the lawsuit died shortly after she received her judgment in an “accident” of some sort.
This is a desperate place to be: being forced to have sex with customers because you owe and you need to pay your bills and your taxes and the place you dance, knowing it is illegal and taking all of the risks for that, surrounded by men who will treat you well only if and when they are in a mood to, possibly dealing with addictions and many other obligations and bills. So women deepen their involvement in the sex trade in various ways, trying to make enough money, more money, trying to gather enough money to get out, which rarely happens.
Call this “choice” and “she is an adult” and “she was paid” all you want, it is, in fact, trafficking.
I find all this separating out is used lessen the reality of the damage that being prostitued does to the body and mind.It is hope that if prostituted women are taught to be divided then they will never speak out about that men feel entitled to tortured, raped and murdered them. Just coz they have paid cash
Exactly. This is what the Max Hardcore devotees try to comment here all the time, “She knew what she was doing, she was paid for it.”
anuna: I’m not an expert on libertarianism, but as I understand it, a fair exchange involves value freely given for value. How does libertarianism deal with pre-established inequality, in that context? What I see is the owners and the oppressors taking what they want by force. They don’t offer a fair deal. They say, “I’m going to take your land and your livelihood away from you. I’m going to give myself the lion’s share of the food and resources, and deny you education, opportunity and freedom of movement. Now, go ahead and try to barter with me to get some crumbs to live on, if you think you have anything left I might want.” What does this have to do with freedom of choice?
Exactly, anuna and great point. Libertarianism celebrates deregulation (read: the subprime mortgage meltdown and ensuing world chaos we are all faced with now), megacorporations earning unlimited profits, all pornography all prostitution all the time, whatever makes ya happy as an individual, and don’t worry about, like, the earth, the seas, the animals, the powerless, the marginalized and how what you are doing will affect them, focus on things like the fact that if the megacorporation wasn’t THERE, then those 8-year-old girls wouldn’t be able to EARN a dollar a month or year weaving the rugs you want to buy at Wal-Mart at such a nice low price. Focus on the “choices” of the women in prostitution and porn because, hey, without the sex industry, they wouldn’t be able to earn money at all and aren’t they adults? Focus on the “pragmatic”. I mean, we need those non-renewable resources, we need that oil in the Arctic, we need the trees in the Amazon, we need those diamonds for our pinky fingers, we are humans, we rule the world, the scientists will come up with something, or if they don’t, the politicians will make some kind of deal, in the meantime, all I care about is cutting the very best deal that I can cut for myself right now. It’s a politics devoid of ethics.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:21 am39 Renegade Evolution
V: We don’t really have the proliferation of “lads mags” that you all seem to have over in the UK, but, I see your point wrt to adds and cell phones and such, and I can see where the lads mags would make people angry-I also know they are not, as a general rule- put up or wrapped where only people who are adults can get them…and I have said and agree with the notion that such things are not good. Even as someone who is not against “adult entertainment” I do think it is FOR adults, and should be kept that way. I also get irked when I walk into a clothing store and see the kinds of things they are marketing to mere girls…and yes, I get as sick as anyone of finding adds for viagra and penis enlargement in my e-mail….
Shrug. I actually think your comment was really good, long or not, and yes, it contains things to think on.

(Ren, I’m not going to approve all of the grandstanding you want me to approve here wrt Satsuma or anyone else. You and those you hang out with online appear to lie awake nights strategizing attempts to publicly shame, attack, and demonize any woman who stands up to ya’all. A quick perusal of your blog will reveal many straight up attacks on women– entire posts dedicated to that project. Own and deal with your own crap and then maybe I’ll reconsider. I also won’t be participating in anything remotely likely to even smell like blogwar stuff. You’ll have to do that elsewhere and on your own. – Heart)

WELL, here's what she edited out:
Satsuma:
"Everytime I hear some woman justify this sexualizing pornified world, I think to myself "There stands an unaided incest survivor, an abuse victim, a child rape survivor." Everytime I hear women supporting this stuff, I know that underneath this is a survivor of some attrocity that might be a suppressed memory. I see very mentally ill lesbians out there into S & M because no one gives a damn about them, or cares to foot the therapy and hospital bills. I've seen this first hand, I've heard the S &M crowd with my own ears, and I know what these women have been through."

Well, thank you for assuming to know the lives and history of every single woman involved in any aspect of the sex industry or who does not constantly cry out against the modern world or who happens to like BDSM, and writing them all off as damaged and incapable of rendering decisions due to the vast damage you assume they all have suffered, slapping on a heaping does of ablism and superiority, and making yourself an authority on the lives and experiences of other women. Well done. Your arrogance astounds me.

"All I can say is pro-porn people, show us your financial interest in all of this, because we know your are profiting and selling women too. You don't want to lose out on your womanhating selling gravey train, you don't want to admit that you are aiding and abetting child rape and seasoning either, no you support free speech only for the abusers and profiteers and you know it. Shame on you!! Shame and more shame!"

Woo, look, shaming and demonization ALL at once! You know, between the hate and arrogance I've seen you throw at people like sex workers, heterosexual women, mothers, and well, a bunch of other people who do not follow the Satsuma path, I have to wonder about your agenda. You speak often about money and for strong, smart, warrior women jobs, Satsuma. What do you do? Nice profit margin in that? What makes you think you are so much better than so many other people? What's the trauma that led to this sort of absolutism and megalomania?

Goddess I hate these sleaze bag and their internet lies! This is the very heart of darkness."

Nice….just lovely, really.

Rebecca- I want to do a post at Feministe which links to the blogs of sex workers/prostituted people, current and past, and I'd like to link yours, because I do think what you say is important, but I want to ASK first if that's okay with you. If it isn't, I totally understand. Context would merely be "here are some blogs by people who are now or were formerly involved in the sex industry".

Maggie: No "E", noted. No, actually, most sex work advocates are for decriminalization, not outright full on legalization. And I'm sorry, yes, I am sure that Heart wasn't merely thinking of me when she wrote this, however, the timing was just too perfect, the criticism of a word I use often "gal", the discussion on language? Well, a lot of people all around found the timing just a little too convenient for this to merely be random and, oh gee, not at all about what I happened to be posting on at Feministe. I hadn't even noted the post here until a transblogger dropped me a note saying "How can people be upset with you for writing about Harm Reduction?" Which, you know, is a good question? And once again, the piling on and attacks are a two way street. You get angry at sex worker advocates and the term sex work? Well, I get angry and people who mischaracterize sex worker advocates and refuse to realize, why yes, there is such thing as a sex worker. Oh, and the constant refrain (like in your response to V there) that we're full of fallacies and deluded? Do you have ANY idea how damaging that is? People will take that kind of attitude and use it to say, "all those people are liars and stupid". Not helpful, at all.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:47 am40 admin
You know, Ren, re working to lessen harm to women in the sex trade, I can completely get behind that project. But there’s something else that got me writing this post, in addition to all the other stuff I’ve already mentioned. Someone I like and go back a ways with recently interviewed Nina Hartley, who with her husband, Ernest Green, is part of your circle of people apparently concerned about harm and sex worker rights and so on. (For those who do not know, Ernest Green publishes the SM/Fetish mag “Taboo” which is owned by Hustler. )
I was fairly discouraged about this interview and was then told Hartley doesn’t advocate for condom use in porn anymore which I found hard to believe. I went poking around and found this to be true. NOTE, MAY TRIGGER.
So much for harm reduction. Even if it’s true that condoms might increase the chances for transmission of STDs in some instances and acts in pornography, not using condoms while performing in pornography, on film, films distributed widely, models an incredibly destructive message to those who watch porn, including young people, including young women who get into the sex trade. The fact that porn performers are tested monthly does nothing to mitigate or lessen that particular harm or the ongoing, cascading harm that inevitably will result from young women having sex with random men without condoms.
This stuff somehow doesn’t get talked about much on the pro-porn/pro-prostitution blogs.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 11:13 am41 Renegade Evolution
Heart, I’m not surprised that you won’t post me standing up to Satsuma and her attacks, frankly, and I wasn’t attacking Maggie I was explaining that as upset as she gets, well, she’s not the only one. I stated she’s not the only one who gets upset about things, and I MERELY ASKED Rebecca a QUESTION…even stated that her voice needed to be heard…how is that grandstanding or an attack????
That I do not understand at all.
And let’s not act like I’m the only one who attacks people or calls them out. It’s not true, and you know it.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 11:20 am42 Renegade Evolution
Heart:
There was actually a huge discussion of mandatory condom useage on my blog at least. And there have been discussions on how porn is crap sex education, and STD’s/STI’s, safer sex practices, and all those things. If I need to prove that, I can, but yes, it is all there.
Nina & Ernest were also a huge part of getting AIM established, which absolutely counts as harm reduction, and continue to work on similar related issues. They absolutely care about workplace safety and the well-being of performers, this I know from dealing with them personally. Porn is in no way a perfect business (no business is really), but the two have them have done a lot to make it better for the performers, and seeing that dismissed? Well…not so keen on that at all.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 12:09 pm43 v
Heart - Can I respond to Rens comment addressed to me? Because im responding to ren about her post on feministe as much as her comments here. i feel safer responding to it all here than i do there, but if you would prefer i took this comment to feministe, then i will cos this is your blog!
Of course you can post it here, V. — Heart
Ren -
Something i want to say is - we (me and you) have very different perceptions of the same thing. Which doesnt mean either of us is necessarily wrong, because we can only speak from our own position. Ive avoided you for ages because i struggle to keep that in perspective, and i think you do too, judging from the amount of hatred you direct at radical feminists.
The vocal sex worker advocate orgs - especially those that have absolutely no transparency into what the positions of their membership might be - also lack perspective. They tend to push one position (pro!) as the only possible one, but they often go further and there is a lot of trashing aimed at feminist anti-prostitution work, and of ex-sex workers who are negative about the industry. I think that they attempt to monopolise control over acceptable language, so some ’sex worker advocates’ actually operate to silence and further victimise a proportion of the people they claim to represent.
So your piece on feministe about whether we should be allowed to say “selling our bodies” - seems to me like part of that policing. And also hypocritical, since i’ve seen you argue on many occasions before against language censorship. I dont know why this would be different?
You don’t use that phrase to describe what you do, fine. But other women do. I don’t actually like to use the word prostitution for what i’ve done. Just as its easy to deny addiction “cos i don’t inject”, its pretty easy to deny prostitution “because i never did it for cash money”. Exchanges of sex for other sorts of goods and favours, in my experience, are really common, but most of us doing that don’t describe it as ‘exactly’ prostitution. I think that’s a class issue within those circles themselves - i may fuck for drugs but i don’t accept cash, so i’m better than *her*. I may fuck for cash but i do it out of a nice flat, so i’m a better class than a street hooker. I may do dancing but i dont do touching. Etc.
And i wonder, when you say you don’t sell your body, whether that too is partly about *you* marking out your own position in the sex work hierarchy. You don’t merely sell your body, you sell a certain standard of services, so you claim to provide a better service that someone who maybe just provides a body. I don’t know if there’s anything in this that resonates with you, i’m sure you know all about the class distinctions among sex workers that i’m talking about though.
But so anyway, i wonder whether your annoyance with the terminology is about that hierarchy, and setting yourself apart as having higher service quality, or something like that. As you say, its your choice to do it, and you can use whatever words you want to promote your own services and get the best payment you can for them. But i don’t reckon you should draw lines through other peoples language like that - maybe its well annoying having to always tell people “actually i don’t do that, i do *this*”, but unfortunately that’s what you’re gonna have to put up with if you defend the right of other people to keep using the terms they find relevant for themselves.
Just like people like me have to constantly correct (or switch off) people who assume we did it for kicks or out of choice, because we were ‘dirty sluts who couldn’t get enough’, because we were ‘too lazy to get a real job’, or because we just looooooved the attention, or etc, rather than because we were stuck in a messed up situation and didnt have (or know) any other way of getting by. Its not much fun for me either, to hear people banging on about how exciting and liberating it all seems cos they ‘watched billie piper the other day on call girl and she wears such wicked stuff’.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 12:38 pm44 admin
Ren, I would have been okay with you “standing up to Satsuma” for yourself, Ren Ev, but not on behalf of the beleaguered masses you think she “shames” and whom you think you should defend here. That’s what I mean by grandstanding. I mean, you want to defend Satsuma on behalf of mothers? Hello, mother of 11 here, grandmother to four, I think I can handle it! That is just deeply disrespectful behavior. You’re no knight in shining armor and I do not need any protection from you against radical feminists here and nobody else here does either. You shame and attack women constantly, publicly, by name, so where do you get off acting as though you are now some huge defender of women? Too, it’s blogwar stuff. I’m not going to let this thread be used as some sort of launching pad for bringing up all the resentments and aggravations you (or anyone else) have been accumulating over the years reading various comments here. In your comment directed to Rebecca, you made a show of how you would “ask” for something of Rebecca and be respectful and so on. Why don’t you just directly ask her instead of talking around her here or referring to her in the third person. That is just really deeply disrespectful to all of us here.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 1:16 pm45 Renegade Evolution
Heart, fine.
Satsuma- Thank you for asuming that I, as a person who is in the sex industry and occassionally enjoys BDSM, have been molested or raped as a child, so on so forth, and have suffered some sort of trauma, ect., Such things are untrue, and you are in no position of authority over the truth of anyone else’s expierences, so I’ll thank you not to speak for me (as a sex worker) on such matters or assume you know what the truth (for me) is or has been.
Fair enough, Heart? Also, I asked Rebecca because she was here, involved in the thread, and I’d prefer to ask her rather than just link her at Feministe. It seemed expedient and was not intended as some great insult towards her or anyone else.

Can I respond to V here? If so…
Ren -Something i want to say is - we (me and you) have very different perceptions of the same thing. Which doesnt mean either of us is necessarily wrong, because we can only speak from our own position. Ive avoided you for ages because i struggle to keep that in perspective, and i think you do too, judging from the amount of hatred you direct at radical feminists. I think all people have different perceptions, as for actual “right and wrong”, I think often, it’s somewhere in the middle? If that makes sense at all. And, sigh, I don’t hate ALL radical feminists. Do I have serious issues with some people? Yes, I do, and I shall admit and own that freely.
The vocal sex worker advocate orgs - especially those that have absolutely no transparency into what the positions of their membership might be - also lack perspective. They tend to push one position (pro!) as the only possible one, but they often go further and there is a lot of trashing aimed at feminist anti-prostitution work, and of ex-sex workers who are negative about the industry. I think that they attempt to monopolise control over acceptable language, so some ’sex worker advocates’ actually operate to silence and further victimise a proportion of the people they claim to represent.
That may very well be true of some people involved in various orgs. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know with some, the treatement they received at the hands of SOME anti folk definitely harmed and pushed them in the pro direction, they ended up, no matter how terrible their actual experiences, feeling used and discarded by the anti side, or found once they began to question some anti tactics, well, very very silenced. So, I suppose like many things, it goes both ways? I mean, everyone out there it seems has been trashed and treated badly, gets angry, and trashes and treats badly back. Anger and feeling dismissed and demonized (all around, to and from ANY side) breeds that sort of stuff I think.
So your piece on feministe about whether we should be allowed to say “selling our bodies” - seems to me like part of that policing. And also hypocritical, since i’ve seen you argue on many occasions before against language censorship. I dont know why this would be different?
I’ve always, personally, hated the term, and asked people not to use it. (Asked, not demanded, and suggest they think about it), and I’ve explained why…I think it’s horribly dehumanizing. Most folk in the sex biz I’ve spoken to, which yes, range from people like me to transwomen of color who do street level work, seemed to hate the term. However, if that is how others describe their expierence, then by all means, they should use the terminology that seems to fit or describe things for them. I didn’t intend to tell women who have been in the sex industry that they should define their exepereinces in terms I prefer…I mostly meant other people who have never been there shouldn’t…oversight on my part for not making that clearer, and I apologize.
You don’t use that phrase to describe what you do, fine. But other women do. I don’t actually like to use the word prostitution for what i’ve done. Just as its easy to deny addiction “cos i don’t inject”, its pretty easy to deny prostitution “because i never did it for cash money”. Exchanges of sex for other sorts of goods and favours, in my experience, are really common, but most of us doing that don’t describe it as ‘exactly’ prostitution. I think that’s a class issue within those circles themselves - i may fuck for drugs but i don’t accept cash, so i’m better than *her*. I may fuck for cash but i do it out of a nice flat, so i’m a better class than a street hooker. I may do dancing but i dont do touching. Etc.And i wonder, when you say you don’t sell your body, whether that too is partly about *you* marking out your own position in the sex work hierarchy. You don’t merely sell your body, you sell a certain standard of services, so you claim to provide a better service that someone who maybe just provides a body. I don’t know if there’s anything in this that resonates with you, i’m sure you know all about the class distinctions among sex workers that i’m talking about though.
Um, I sell the same services anyone else in the sex industry does-and I’ve done it in some less than stellar places too…and a peeve with me is that class distinction thing…I don’t think I’m better than any other sex worker/ prostituted person…we’re all different, but its not about better.
But so anyway, i wonder whether your annoyance with the terminology is about that hierarchy, and setting yourself apart as having higher service quality, or something like that. As you say, its your choice to do it, and you can use whatever words you want to promote your own services and get the best payment you can for them. But i don’t reckon you should draw lines through other peoples language like that - maybe its well annoying having to always tell people “actually i don’t do that, i do *this*”, but unfortunately that’s what you’re gonna have to put up with if you defend the right of other people to keep using the terms they find relevant for themselves.
Nope. It’s not about that. It’s because I find the term dehumanizing. As I said, I sell the same things other people in the industry sell, but that’s not the whole of me as a person, or even the whole of my body…there is more to any and every human than that, and when a person (person not in the business, especially) implies otherwise, I find it very dehumanizing and even quite moralistic and judgmental. But point taken, if other people wish to use that term for themselves, it is not my place at all to say that they can’t.
Just like people like me have to constantly correct (or switch off) people who assume we did it for kicks or out of choice, because we were ‘dirty sluts who couldn’t get enough’, because we were ‘too lazy to get a real job’, or because we just looooooved the attention, or etc, rather than because we were stuck in a messed up situation and didnt have (or know) any other way of getting by. Its not much fun for me either, to hear people banging on about how exciting and liberating it all seems cos they ‘watched billie piper the other day on call girl and she wears such wicked stuff’.
Well, even those of us who do choose to do it get to put up with a lot of that crap too (lazy, its all about attention) so on… Hell, if there is one thing I do believe whole-heartedly, its that people, no matter how or why they ended up in the sex industry, have to put up with a whole lot of bullshit assumptions and hateful crap from other people…from the lazy/you loved it trope to the you must have been raped by your dad/are deluded trope. No one scenerio or set of circumstances fits all people involved, and I am sure all folk get annoyed with it being assumed they and their situations are something they most certainly were not.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 1:34 pm46 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Heart:
That is just deeply disrespectful behavior. You’re no knight in shining armor and I do not need any protection from you against radical feminists here and nobody else here does either. You shame and attack women constantly, publicly, by name, so where do you get off acting as though you are now some huge defender of women?
Well, I found Satsuma’s behavior also deeply disrespectful. Her allies don’t need to, it’s not surprising, but yes, I find generalizations and assumptions like hers to be disrespectful. An no, I am no knight in shining armor…the thought makes my skin crawl, actually, and no, you don’t need my protection, nor was I exactly offering it? You hold your own just fine. And yes, I call people out by name. Which isn’t always a bad thing. It clears up a lot of miscommunication and leaves no one wondering just whom I am talking about or addressing…I prefer the straightforward approach rather than having people wonder “did she mean me? Where did I say that?” And no, I am no huge defender of all women, then again, I don’t think anyone, present company included, is. However, that is solely my opinion, and not one I expect you to agree with…which is fine.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 2:30 pm47 julia
Why do so many people hate Andrea Dworkin? Even women I know who consider themselves strong feminists shudder when they hear her name. I agree with everything I have read of hers. It pains me that nothing was done to honor her when she died, and she died so young. There was supposed to be a banner for her in our Take Back the Night march (2005) but there was nothing…..DemocracyNow!, which I thought more progressive back then, only gave her a headline, but did an entire segment on O.J. Simposon’s lawyer when he passed waya (both died in the same year).
It makes me crazy to see how some feminists have co-opted porn. It seems like they got tired of fighting and said ‘if you can’t beat em…..’ I like Hip Mama magazine, but felt like vomiting as I read the current issue - there’s an article about a woman who retrieved her self-esteem taking a pole dancing class and having $60 thrown on-stage for her at her class performance.
Is this the best we can do?

on 27 Aug 2008 at 3:59 pm48sam
v wrote: “I don’t actually like to use the word prostitution for what i’ve done. Just as its easy to deny addiction “cos i don’t inject”, its pretty easy to deny prostitution “because i never did it for cash money”. Exchanges of sex for other sorts of goods and favours, in my experience, are really common, but most of us doing that don’t describe it as ‘exactly’ prostitution.”
This where you get kicked out of the credibility club. In my experience, the majority of the kicking out is done by strippers who call themselves (but not girls sucking for their supper) sex workers, phone sex operators who call themselves (but not boys fucking for drugs) sex workers, women who sell nude pictures of themselves and call it (but not an actress posing in Playboy) sex work.
The term “sex work” is a top-down phrase meant to mark the hierarchy within prostitution, to highlight the differences between women instead of their commonalities. If you don’t explicitly embrace how men sexually exploited you as a prime indicator of your identity then you are out of the hierarchy and are expected to shut up. Personally, I think there’s a unique perspective shared by those of us who have repeatedly been beaten so viciously we thought we were going to die, but patriarchy hasn’t devised a sexy, catch-all club moniker to euphemistically dignify that experience.
When women paid to get fucked is honestly called prostitution then I might consider using the term ’sex work’. So long as women in pornography are considered not prostitutes but “sex workers”, I’m going to have to treat the term as a tool used by the dishonest and in-denial to intentionally mislead people about the truths of what prostitution is and how it affects prostituted women.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 4:52 pm49Rebecca
This is a very interesting debate. I freely admit that for me it is hard not read and write without the gut of me when I was prostituted wanting to scream with frustation. It is very when you have been on receiving end of the “ugly” side of the sex trade, to always stay calm and reasonable.
I was interested in V saying how hard it to name when not paid in cash.I would name it now prostitution, but when I lived it had no language for what was happening to me.
I had sex with strangers in exchange for a bed, when I didn’t want to home to my abusive stepdad.I had sex with strangers for free drinks.I had me beaten up unconscious instead recieving cash, then I would also have sex.I was given “presents” or food instead of money, then had sex.And sometimes I was in cash, usually not the full rate, then had sex
Now I say that is all prostitution.I tried hard to believe it wasjust one-night stands.
But there no talking, just violence and fucking.There no meeting before the cold act of sex.I did not see their faces.I did not know their names.All I knew was to do whatever they wanted, and to hope I was not hurt too bad.
I had to pretend to myself I just unlucky.
I could not allow myself to know I was being manipulated by the club manager.I could not allow myself to know that the men that raped and tortured me had pre-planned the abuse.I could not allow myself to know that those same men would rape and torture other girls that worked in the club.I could not believe I was trapped.
I think it is bloody hard for women and girls who in the hellish end of the sex trade to have a language for their reality. They have to make it unreal to survive.
I think having a language when working in the sex trade, can be coz experiences not “too bad”, so there are still words.The worst of living inside trauma is there no language that is adequate to say the pain, grief, confusion and terror.That can only come if you lucky enough to survive.
(As for writing for Feministe, it is their choice who they invite. I am not American, so it is of little relevant to me.)

on 27 Aug 2008 at 5:09 pm50 v
This where you get kicked out of the credibility club. In my experience, the majority of the kicking out is done by strippers who call themselves (but not girls sucking for their supper) sex workers, phone sex operators who call themselves (but not boys fucking for drugs) sex workers, women who sell nude pictures of themselves and call it (but not an actress posing in Playboy) sex work.
yeh, thats familiar to me too.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 6:05 pm51 Renegade Evolution
WRT to Sam’s comment, isn’t this the exact sort of thing that I did that upset everyone in the first place…defining terms for other people & their experiences??? I mean, if I shouldn’t be doing it, neither should Sam, really…I mean, I know a lot of very un-privileged people who call themselves “sex workers”…

on 27 Aug 2008 at 6:07 pm52Maggie Hays
Why do so many people hate Andrea Dworkin? Even women I know who consider themselves strong feminists shudder when they hear her name. I agree with everything I have read of hers. It pains me that nothing was done to honor her when she died, and she died so young.
I also get upset by that too, julia. Andrea Dworkin was absolutely amazing.
I believe she was hated because she firmly stood against patriarchy and she was very vocal about resistance to patriarchy. And, in a patriarchal society, such a woman is hated, including by some (patriarchist) “feminists”.
To me, anybody who defends pornography, prostitution, Christianity, capitalism, male-supremacist laws, custom or institution, etc. (while being fully aware -without necessarily admitting it- that these things are inherently misogynistic or oppressive) is a patriarchist.
So much for harm reduction. Even if it’s true that condoms might increase the chances for transmission of STDs in some instances and acts in pornography, not using condoms while performing in pornography, on film, films distributed widely, models an incredibly destructive message to those who watch porn, including young people, including young women who get into the sex trade. The fact that porn performers are tested monthly does nothing to mitigate or lessen that particular harm or the ongoing, cascading harm that inevitably will result from young women having sex with random men without condoms.
Thanks for letting us know about this, Heart. I am not surprised at all, but useful to know. It is so sad.
You and those you hang out with online appear to lie awake nights strategizing attempts to publicly shame, attack, and demonize any woman who stands up to ya’all. A quick perusal of your blog will reveal many straight up attacks on women– entire posts dedicated to that project. You shame and attack women constantly, publicly, by name, so where do you get off acting as though you are now some huge defender of women? Too, it’s blogwar stuff. I’m not going to let this thread be used as some sort of launching pad for bringing up all the resentments and aggravations you (or anyone else) have been accumulating over the years reading various comments here.
True, Heart. :(
I would have no problem whatsoever with Ren if she was blogging about “how wonderful it is to be a sex worker” or “how great porn is” (fair enough, her views- free speech- I wouldn’t even link to her posts to target them) and if she did leave us alone. But what she is doing on her blog is clearly (sometimes sexualized) cruelty & utter distortion of our words and it is triggering (hate speech). Does Ren not know I am a survivor of rape? If you’re really pro-pornstitution, well then defend it, do just that, use your own “anti-porn feminists” tag to express that you disagree with them (as I said, I use the tag ‘”sex work” advocates’ to show how & why I’m I am very angry at & disagree with them) but do not target individual bloggers (who are survivor of rape & sexual abuse) by their name, this is really nasty stuff. This is online bullying.
I only used your name twice, Ren, on my blog regarding the W&M issue back in April, and when I did it was for defending Sam, defending us, while trying to show your cruelty of targeting people who’ve done nothing to you apart from disagreeing with your crowd and wanting to have our own views expressed freely on our blogs without having to be targeted as a person for the politics we believe in (whether you like radical feminism or not). Then, after these two times, it was over and done with, gone. I would never use your name again in my posts.
Please have more consideration for survivors of rape. And when you allow your pro-porn male friends Kennerson, IACB, etc. to target us by name, you are actually allowing and condoning misogynist bullying from men to us, btw.
Why don’t you leave us alone? As I said, radical feminism is in the margin of society while pro-porn views are in the mainstream. Pro-porn views are usually popular and loved out there, while radical feminist views are (usually) either totally hated or not even heard of. Look around. Pro-porn views are mainstream. So, why wouldn’t you just leave us alone then? I mean, because of the fact that pro-porn views are mainstream & popular in contemporary culture (and hardly anybody is interested in rad fems’ work anyway), why wouldn’t you stop targeting us by name as individual women? I’m asking you politely, Ren?
And I do believe you are capable of a civil answer, perhaps?

on 27 Aug 2008 at 6:25 pm53 Renegade Evolution
Maggie- This is me being civil via not addressing 90% of that comment with my side of the story. Stop pressing me and utterly discounting the actual work sex workers rights advocates do and it won’t be much of a problem at all. We disagree, I often find things you say as offensive as you find things I say. Civil enough for you? Because I’m afraid, at this point and time, that’s as civil as I’m going to get. Things I disagree with or find to be mocking or discounting, yes, I’m going to say something, just as many people would do, but you know, the last two threads I’ve been in that you’ve been in, I would’ve been more than happy to leave you alone, if not mentioned and called out by name. I’m utterly content not to speak to you again on this thread, actually. Is that civil enough?

on 27 Aug 2008 at 7:10 pm54 admin
Ren, I think that you are interested in using words that bracket off the having of sex for money from feminist and political considerations. I think you want the words you use to communicate that having sex for money can be value neutral and apolitical. I think Sam is interested in using words that communicate that this isn’t really possible. And that’s really the issue, or one issue: Is it possible to have sex for money and declare, via the words you use for it, that what you are doing does not have political ramifications so far as sexism, so far as relationships and interactions between men and women under male heterosupremacy? I don’t think it is, because we live in a sexist, misogynist world. We cannot escape this reality by denying it via the words that we use. Since feminism concerns itself, among other things, with the politics of relationships and interactions between men and women, and since feminism views language as an important site of political resistance, feminists can’t with integrity or honesty use language that betrays our own deep convictions about the nature of sex inequality and what role prostitution plays in maintaining sex inequality.
Here’s an example that might not offend one and all, might not be irretrievably inflammatory, and that might be somewhat illuminating. Some years back Amy’s Brain wrote a post, and I think it was on her blog, about why she disagreed with married women or men referring to their husbands or wives as their “partners.” She disagreed with that for reasons that are comparable with what I’m articulating here. Calling a husband or a wife a “partner” communicates that the relationship is value neutral and apolitical, that there is no qualitative difference between persons married with the full blessing of the surrounding male heterosupremacist culture and persons who are partnered but forbidden to marry because they are lesbians or gay men. It obfuscates, in other words, the feminist politics around civil marriage in a way that inures to the benefit of the societally benefitted or privileged (married people), as opposed to the disenfranchised (lesbians, gay men). If there’s really no difference between married het partners and lesbian partners then what’s wrong with lesbian partners and why do they keep demanding equal rights? Why don’t we all just call our significant others “partners”, and voila, civil marriage as a perk and enforcer of compulsory heterosexuality goes poof! Except, of course, that it doesn’t. Instead real, important, destructive political realities get erased.
In the same way, calling selling sex for money “sex work” inures to the benefit of the surrounding male supremacist mainstream, not those of us who have been harmed by it, whether by rape, pornography, prostitution or sexual abuse. If sex for money can just be work like any other work, and “sex work” is really not qualitatively different from all other kinds of work, then what about the millions of women who have gone through hell because they had sex for money? Where do they fit in? Where is their voice? They are made, as others have said, to be somehow less than “sex workers”, aberrant, the suggestion being that there is something wrong with them, they are abnormal, they are the exception to the rule, when in fact, we know that they are by far, by far, the rule and not the exception. The word “sex worker” is like the word “partner” used by het people. It hides political realities that are central to the struggles of feminism.
There are, of course, layers and complexities here. If you tell me personally in a discussion with you, Ren, that you do not want me to call you “prostituted,” or describe you as “prostituted,” then I won’t in my discussions with you, because to do so would conflict with other ethical and political values of mine around respecting individual women and what they have to say about themselves and their lives and about treating women with respect. So, I will look for other words that communicate my meaning and that are not the equivalent of throw downs. That doesn’t mean, though, that I won’t defend the term because it does accurately describe a phenomenon I believe has historically until today been central to the perpetuation of male supremacy: men paying women for sex. It communicates who does what to whom. Your or others saying the word is unacceptable is like someone who is married saying calling her husband her husband is unacceptable; in each case there as an obscuring of important and specific political realities feminists are concerned with.
Too, I don’t really care on an individual level whether someone calls her husband or someone calls his wife his or her “partner.” I know people are operating according to the understanding and insight that they have and they’ve probably never thought too much about it. But if someone launched a campaign to insist that married people should use the term “partner” and not “husband” or “wife,” I would then have to take issue with that because again, that would amount to a deliberate effort to conceal the reality of compulsory heterosexuality and the way it is privileged under male supremacy.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 7:14 pm55sam
You know people who find spiritual fulfillment in prostitution, but far and away most don’t. You call yourself a sex worker, but far and away most people in prostitution don’t. A good many don’t call themselves “prostituted” either, and since I don’t speak to them but instead direct my words to johns, pimps, pornographers and their enablers, my language takes the most clear, widely-accepted term to convey to them what an estimated 90% of people in prostitution say they have experienced.
People urgently need to see these people as people first, not as income-generating products in a capitalist system first (hello all the “Tax it!” comments that infest public discourse.) Sex is already considered women’s work. Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest profession for decades (centuries?) and much more harm than good has been done to women, children, and men from that longstanding pimps and johns framing. The creation and popular use of “child sex worker” is an inhumanity that sustainers of the old frame newly introduced to my planet.
Time for a new frame that puts people before profits.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 7:28 pm56hexy
sam:
When women paid to get fucked is honestly called prostitution then I might consider using the term ’sex work’. So long as women in pornography are considered not prostitutes but “sex workers”, I’m going to have to treat the term as a tool used by the dishonest and in-denial to intentionally mislead people about the truths of what prostitution is and how it affects prostituted women.
I’m sorry, but I’ve read that paragraph several times now and it still doesn’t make sense to me. You’ll consider using the term sex work when everyone else starts using the term prostitution? You prefer to use the term prostitution BECAUSE the women in question use the term sex work? I’m lost.
“Sex work” is a label coined by a sex worker, used by sex workers, and promoted by sex workers. It doesn’t just make the point that we’re not all prostitutes, it reframes the language in a fashion that avoids the negative connotations of “prostitution”. As I’ve said repeatedly, I completely respect the right of any women who considers herself to have been prostituted and exploited to choose her own terminology, and I will respect her by using it. I do not respect non-sex-workers who flatly deny sex workers that same right.
Maggie:
As I said, radical feminism is in the margin of society while pro-porn views are in the mainstream. Pro-porn views are usually popular and loved out there, while radical feminist views are (usually) either totally hated or not even heard of.
While I’ll agree with you that “pro-pornography” views are more mainstream than “anti-pornography” views, I think you make an error when you attempt to extrapolate this to love and popularity of actual sex workers vs radical feminists. We’re a marginalised group. Trust me, I WISH the stigma surrounding what I do for a living would disappear, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Heart, I’ll just add a thank you for letting this conversation happen here. I’m not sure what you’re editing out of Ren’s comments, but simply having a discourse instead of posting past each other is something I always like to see from women and feminists.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 7:36 pm57hexy
The creation and popular use of “child sex worker” is an inhumanity that sustainers of the old frame newly introduced to my planet.
Ugh. That is just sickening.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 9:11 pm58 anuna
Because I’m pretty new here, and no one knows me, I’d like to say that I don’t think of myself as an authority, and am not trying to tell other people what to think. I suspect what I quoted about S/M upset some people, who probably felt judged. It wasn’t my intention to blame any women for their sexual feelings, but rather to question a system that I believe installs certain ways of thinking about sex into us.
Heart’s post 51 reminded me of something, because I am a heterosexual married woman, and I have a husband. The institution of heterosexual marriage has certainly been called into question in feminist discussions. But that doesn’t make me angry and defensive, because I can see for myself why this institution is questioned. The whole idea of patriarchal marriage IS harmful! Heterosexual privilege and enforced heteronormativity ARE oppressive! All of the above support the patriarchy! It is liberating as well as painful for me to be able to see this, and question myself about how I’m going to deal with it. Motherhood is vigorously questioned, too, and I’m a mother. White privilege? Got that too. I don’t feel guilty about any of those things, but I do see the problem.
So I guess my question is, when all these things so integral to me and many other women are up for questioning, why is it unfair to question porn and prostitution? What is so all-fired special about satisfying men’s sexual demands for pay, such that it should be beyond questioning? I dunno. That seems like expecting too much privilege.
And back to S/M for just a minute: I work in the science fiction community, and there are a lot of BDSM people in sf fandom, so I’m not unfamiliar with that. So I know BDSM people feel they are a persecuted minority. But to me, as I look around at society and the images I’m presented with, it looks as if S/M is all-pervasive in society. Maybe mainstream society picks on certain people who operate outside approved structures, but within the patriarchy, S/M is heartily approved. All I have to do is look back on my own Catholic wedding with its symbolism to see that! The white gown, concealing and constricting the bride’s body and turning her into a container for her “virginity” . . . the crucifix itself . . . the word “deflowered” . . . being “given away” . . . Yuck!! Jeez, why didn’t they just put a collar on me and get it over with?
Not meaning to derail the topic, just to give an example of why I think it’s important and valid to question the sadomasochistic power play that’s so important in pornified sex.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 9:11 pm59Maggie Hays
I think you make an error when you attempt to extrapolate this to love and popularity of actual sex workers vs radical feminists. We’re a marginalised group. Trust me, I WISH the stigma surrounding what I do for a living would disappear, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
You are totally misrepresenting my views, Hexy. I do know that women in prostitution are a marginalized group and that their is a stigma surrounding prostituting. However, that stigma is NOT created by radical feminists but by johns, pimps, prostitute-haters and woman-haters. As Heart said above: “There are thousands of hateful words used against women and I want a world where none of them can be used ever to hurt any woman. That certainly would include the word “slut.” As to slut shaming, there is nothing like that here. If anyone is to be shamed — not, in my opinion, a very useful tool or strategy for change — it is those who have built empires for themselves by way of the prostituted bodies of women.”
You are misrepresenting my views, Hexy. Never have I said that I was “extrapolating this to love and popularity of actual sex workers vs radical feminists.” Some radical feminists are former prostitutes (’sex workers’). And my comment was to Ren, not you, btw. Please stop misinterpreting what I say.

Ren- I’m asking you politely, Ren?And I do believe you are capable of a civil answer, perhaps?

on 27 Aug 2008 at 9:18 pm60Maggie Hays

my comment was to Ren, not you, btw. - I mean… you’re not trying to speak for her… are you…
Ren- my comments and questions are still here., btw

on 27 Aug 2008 at 9:50 pm61 admin
Hexy, I’ve edited two of Ren’s posts. In one I edited out one sentence because it indicated she thought my blog post in its entirety was directed towards her, and it wasn’t. * NO, you edited out a sentence where I said I would, and I quote, directly, “Reading this shit and this altering of what I’ve said…it’s worse. And gee, color me surprised if I don’t see the comment published, too bad I believe in making both sides known… Frankly, woman to woman, I’d take a rape to this kind of distortion…and I mean that full heartedly. Don’t get how THAT feels? I wouldn’t be surprised” THAT is what you edited out.

In one other of her posts, I edited out stuff that seemed too likely to result in yet another blog war. Other than that, I haven’t edited anything.
Here’s the deal. While yes, I respect women and honor what they have to say about themselves and their lives as a matter of my radical feminist principles, at the same time, I’ve lived a bit. 15, 16 years ago, I would have told you I loved being a literalist Christian, loved my role as a submissive wife, loved making house and home my all, chose it all. I wasn’t and wouldn’t have been lying. It’s not that I wasn’t happy in all of that, in a certain way, I was. But to be happy in it, I had to do violence to myself. I had to harm myself and tell myself it was right and good and even empowering to harm myself. I know how that works.
So when a woman tells me she has chosen something I believe hurts her and me and all women, I can believe and affirm her on a certain level, remembering always that I also told women that I was choosing something that hurt me and all women, that I wanted to be believed, and that eventually, I had to leave all I believed, had to abandon all I had said, at great cost, to save my own life.
This is what happens when you get old, become a crone. You’ve lived a long time, lived through many things, recognize what you’ve experienced in other women. You try to hold it all together, you try to harm none. It’s hard.
We believe women and affirm them where they are, and we seek a world in which women can live free.

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:08 pm62Maggie Hays
I mean… you’re not trying to speak for her… are you…
I mean of course I know you’re NOT trying to speak for her. Sorry (my bad).
My comments and questions to Ren are still here though…

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:10 pm63 admin
Anuna: So I guess my question is, when all these things so integral to me and many other women are up for questioning, why is it unfair to question porn and prostitution? What is so all-fired special about satisfying men’s sexual demands for pay, such that it should be beyond questioning? I dunno. That seems like expecting too much privilege.
Exactly. And also exactly to your observations about SM. Those of us out of patriarchal religions are intimately acquainted with SM and know it for what it is– a mechanism designed to perpetuate heirarchy, patriarchy.
I will have more to say tomorrow, tonight I am very tired, but for now, let me tell you how much you ROCK. Your insights are always so amazing and right on time, anuna.
Heart

on 28 Aug 2008 at 2:45 am64Aletha
Heart, what you say about the use of the word partner is partly why women such as Riane Eisler and I are trying to reclaim that word. Usually when a woman calls her husband a partner, it is wishful thinking, and when a man calls his wife a partner, he is obfuscating the true nature of that relationship, for his own reasons, possibly to placate her. I have never been married, though I have considered it. If I call my SO my partner, it is far from value neutral and apolitical. It means he does not try to control me. I use the word to defy all the conventional wisdom about relationships, to make a political statement, and to place value on that defiance. I do not believe in any kind of traditional marriage, nor the perks associated with it. If there must be perks associated with intimate relationships, they should be available to everybody in such relationships. Anything else, to my mind, is a violation of the separation of church and state, but of course, that has never stopped our culture from promoting relationships it approves, while trashing other relationships as less worthy, sinful, abominations, or worse.
More on topic, the term sex work is just too convenient for men. They love those euphemisms that legitimate and cover up what is really going on. I always wonder about this choice argument, would any woman choose to have sex with a john if she was not getting paid? If she really wanted it, she would not take money for it. If she needs the money, how can that be a free or informed choice?

on 28 Aug 2008 at 3:43 am65 Renegade Evolution
maggie, I replied, the comment has not been let through…and NO ONE speaks for me, but me.

on 28 Aug 2008 at 3:58 am66 Renegade Evolution
Sam doesn’t get to decide shit for me. Does my work have implications, sure it does…so does you having 11 kids. Are either of us to be hung for it, or let other people judge us for it? NO!

And you can say what you want, even say the terms you prefer…partner, husband, prostituted… But if someone says NO, that’s not how it is, will you listen? You may be older than me, but at edging on towards 37, I am no child.
Sam: You know what? Don’t speak to me, or presume to speak for me. You had your chance to speak with me, and I regret that didn’t happen. Do I see it as spiritual? Hell no. But I do dare you, or anyone else, to say that I haven’t helped people who want out or helped people who have left…I dare you. Because I have.
And guess what? In My Life, what I Do? It’s not all about the MEN.

on 28 Aug 2008 at 4:12 am67 Renegade Evolution
Maggie, is your question will I leave you alone? Is that it? Well, if so, it depends.

on 28 Aug 2008 at 4:32 am68 admin
The difference, Ren, or one difference, is I’m not defending having had 11 kids, saying it was a good or empowering or an unbounded choice, and more relevant to this thread, I haven’t invented or used words that obfuscate the nature of my choices. I’m not drawing some distinction between, for example, what it meant for me to have had 11 kids and what it means for other women in other situations to have had many children or suggesting that the nature of my choice was different from theirs, or that my choices somehow did not shore up male heterosupremacy or were empowering to me or other women, because they did and weren’t. I’m not leading some crusade that women with huge families should call themselves “family workers” instead of mothers with huge families.
As to whether or not any of us should be judged for our decisions and choices, well, people in the grip of their inner judge will judge, you know? I see you judging women all the time, Ren, day in, day out. And so what? As a feminist I am going to make judgments about acts and politics that harm women. I don’t have to go the second step and mistreat women because I don’t like what they’re doing, but that’s a different issue. As to “hung for it,” that kind of stuff isn’t helpful here, it’s heat, not light, nobody’s suggested anything like that, so kindly tone it down a notch.
Sam and I and all feminists certainly may and are obligated to analyze the choices women make and the words they use to describe those choices because as women we are all affected by what other women do, the choices they make, their politics. I can accept and affirm a literalist Christian Quiverfull mom, believe her when she tells me that is her choice, treat her with respect and like her personally and be her friend while at the same time subjecting her choices and words to fairly rigorous and thorough feminist analysis, as I have here on my blog many times. My analysis doesn’t “hang” her or me or anyone else. My feminist analysis is critical and central to my own feminism, my own liberation, my own life.
I have listened to you here, Ren and I believe what you say about your life and your choices. At the same time, I know that throughout my life of now 56 years made many choices that I defended at the time — choices to take up with really bad men, choices to enter into destructive and damaging communities and relationships, choices to embrace politics and world views that hurt me and other women — and the perspective I have now because of those choices I made and had to abandon necessarily informs how I respond to what you say and the sense I make of it.
As to what you do being not all about the men, well, if it were not for the men and the patriarchal, male supremacist society and world men have built, your choices and life would be different, no? At the very least you would not be subjected to some of the horrific stuff your work has subjected you to because you are a woman and your clients are men. And the same for me, and all women, as second class citizens under male supremacy, our choices are bounded, limited, not free. Feminism exists to create a revolution that will change all that.
Heart

on 28 Aug 2008 at 10:55 am69 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Heart:
I guess this is where the biggest divide is:
“and more relevant to this thread, I haven’t invented or used words that obfuscate the nature of my choices. I’m not drawing some distinction between, for example, what it meant for me to have had 11 kids and what it means for other women in other situations to have had many children or suggesting that the nature of my choice was different from theirs, or that my choices somehow did not shore up male heterosupremacy or were empowering to me or other women, because they did and weren’t. ”
See, I don’t think the words I use to describe what I do obfuscate the nature of my choices. For me, it’s a job. I don’t automatically assume that for other women, and far prefer to let them self define their own experiences, I mean, I did actually listen when V was talking about how she felt about the term “selling your body”, and I will remember that. But I do think some of us certain had choices, and I also think, often time, feminism and empowerment need not go together. Something can be empowering to a person, even a group of people, without causing mass benefit for others.
And yep, I’ve had craptastic things happen to me at work. I’ve also had craptastic things happen to me while not at work, I’ve had craptastic things done/said to me by men and women alike…such is life I suppose.

on 28 Aug 2008 at 10:56 am70Maggie Hays
NO ONE speaks for me, but me.
Yes, I know that. (I said Sorry to Hexy above- I didn’t like the fact she misrepresented what I’d said, that’s all).We disagree, I often find things you say as offensive as you find things I say.
But I don’t target you by name with dozens and dozens of posts that are triggering to rape survivors.
Anyway, you evaded my main questions. Which were:
Does Ren (you) not know I am a survivor of rape?… Pro-porn views are mainstream. So, why wouldn’t you just leave us alone then? I mean, because of the fact that pro-porn views are mainstream & popular in contemporary culture (and hardly anybody is interested in rad fems’ work anyway), why wouldn’t you stop targeting us by name as individual women?
Face it: Pro-pornography views are usually what’s popular out there, while radical feminist views are (usually) either totally hated or not even heard of. And there are more people who give attention to your work than there are people who give attention to mine…
You evaded my main questions. I knew you would. Which exactly proves Heart’s point here:
You and those you hang out with online appear to lie awake nights strategizing attempts to publicly shame, attack, and demonize any woman who stands up to ya’all. A quick perusal of your blog will reveal many straight up attacks on women– entire posts dedicated to that project.
You would never stop targeting individual women (for the politics and views they believe in) by name with triggering things. There is no way you would. Which is a very sad and cruel fact…the last two threads I’ve been in that you’ve been in, I would’ve been more than happy to leave you alone, if not mentioned and called out by name.
Sometimes, you said my name first in those threads, I’ve not forgotten that.
I’m utterly content not to speak to you again on this thread, actually. Is that civil enough?
Because of ignoring some crucial questions… I’ll just have to keep ignoring the nasty targeting and bullying by name, in the future, by splitting my mind into parts, by pretending what your crowd is saying, about me while singling me out as an individual person with triggering (sometimes sexualized) cruelty and distortions & misrepresentation of many of my words, is not there… I’ll just have to… keep pretending this targeting by name doesn’t exist… split my mind into parts… numb the pain… take the pain away… split my mind into parts…
More on topic, the term sex work is just too convenient for men.
True, which is why I reject that term. I still acknowledge that there are many very unprivileged women in the sex trade who call themselves ’sex workers’ while feeling negative about prostitution though. And when they tell their painful stories while using the term ’sex work’, well I’m absolutely fine with that. Their stories matter as much as so many others’ who’ve been harmed in the sex trade. Obviously, their pimps (and some of their johns) called it “sex work” when they spoke to them, which makes sense why these women have internalized the term. I can fully understand that… We’re living in a patriarchy…
That doesn’t change the fact that “sex work” is not in my dictionary, as it is patriarchal and it benefits men with their age-old anti-woman beliefs. As Sam said, prostitution has been called the world’s oldest profession for ages and ages. And prostitution has not yet been recognized as an inherent form of sexual slavery and violence against women for the vast majority of the women & girls in it…
Julia- because you love Andrea Dworkin (former ’sex worker’), I have a very powerful quote from her to leave here in this thread:
“The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable. The power of the master is absolute and incontrovertible. His authority is protected by civil law, armed force, custom, and divine and/or biological sanction. Slaves characteristically internalize the oppressor’s view of them, and this internalized view congeals into a pathological self-hatred. Slaves typically learn to hate the qualities and behaviors which characterize their own group and to identify their own self-interest with the interest of their oppressor. The master’s position at the top is invulnerable; one aspires to become the master, or to become close to the master, or to be recognized by virtue of one’s good service to the master. Resentment, rage, and bitterness at one’s own powerlessness cannot be directed upward against him, so it is all directed against other slaves who are the living embodiment of one’s own degradation.Among women, this dynamic works itself out in what Phyllis Chesler has called “harem politics”. The first wife is tyrant over the second wife who is tyrant over the third wife, etc.The authority of the first wife, or any other women in the harem who has prerogatives over other women, is a function of her powerlessness in relation to the master. The labor that she does as a fuck and as a breeder can be done by any other woman of her gender class. She, in common with all other women of her abused class, is instantly replaceable. This means that whatever acts of cruelty she commits against other women are done as the agent of the master. Her behavior inside the harem over and against other women is in the interest of the master, whose dominance is fixed by the hatred of women for each other.Inside the harem, removed from all access to real power, robbed of any possibility of self-determination, all women typically act out heir repressed rage against the master; and they also act out their internalized hatred of their own kind. Again, this effectively secures the master’s dominance, since women divided against each other will not unite against him.”– Andrea Dworkin, in Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, pp. 85-86.
We live in a patriarchy. Patriarchy limits our freedom. More women need to realize that, see the male-supremacist system for what it really is, it is crucial…

on 28 Aug 2008 at 11:12 am71Maggie Hays
if it were not for the men and the patriarchal, male supremacist society and world men have built, your choices and life would be different, no? At the very least you would not be subjected to some of the horrific stuff your work has subjected you to because you are a woman and your clients are men. And the same for me, and all women, as second class citizens under male supremacy, our choices are bounded, limited, not free. Feminism exists to create a revolution that will change all that.
Great points, Heart! I agree…
We live in a patriarchy. Patriarchy limits our freedom. More women need to realize that, see the male-supremacist system for what it really is, it is crucial…

on 28 Aug 2008 at 11:18 am72Maggie Hays
Sorry, I forgot a ‘t’ in the Dworkin quote above: “… all women typically act out [t]heir repressed rage…”

on 28 Aug 2008 at 3:20 pm73Maggie Hays
Sorry I forgot something else in the Dworkin quote above. I forgot “self-” somewhere.
“…to identify their own self-interest with the [self-]interest of their oppressor…”
Could you please edit the 2 omissions in the Dworkin quote in my comment above, Heart?
(you don’t necessarily need to publish my pointing out errors I’ve made in the quote, btw. Simply edit it, please.)

on 29 Aug 2008 at 12:41 am74Maggie Hays
Now you’re misrepresenting me. I never said the stigma was created by radical feminists.
I’m sorry if that’s not what you meant. I believe you, Hexy. It’s just that radical feminists are too often mistakenly portrayed as “shaming the women in prostitution” (not by you but by others on the blogosphere) as if we were the ones who “created the stigma” while the stigma was created by the misogynists of the patriarchy. Sorry for misinterpreting.
I just don’t think you do anywhere near as much to get rid of it as you like to think.
That’s your opinion. Well, nobody is anywhere near as much to get rid of it as we would really want that stigma gone. Sweden’s law has eradicated a great part of that stigma, IMO. I’ve met Swedish people who did not believe in that stigma and they said that in their country women in prostitution are (generally) not shamed nor stigmatized. Sweden’s law is great because prostituted women are provided with help & exit programs, and the few women who genuinely want to stay in prostitution are not criminalized in Sweden. You may disagree with that, but I won’t… I’m pro-Sweden’s law, you favor another legislation… but *let’s not argue over that, please*, I really do not want to… Different people support different legislations…
You DO present, quite frequently, the idea that women in your particular kind of radical feminism are shunned by mainstream society, and that “pro-pornography” types are lauded.
Well, IMHO, it is true, Hexy.
If by that you meant people other than sex workers themselves, fair enough… but it hasn’t been clear to me at all from your usage.
Exactly: I meant people other than the women in prostitution. I meant the wider culture as a whole. Sorry to not be clear.
I don’t speak for Ren, and I wouldn’t bloody dare try to!
Hexy, as I’ve already said *twice* (look) above:
1/”I mean of course I know you’re NOT trying to speak for her. Sorry (my bad).”
2/”NO ONE speaks for me, but me.
Yes, I know that. (I said Sorry to Hexy above…”
Ren had (sort of) replied to my comment but I could not see it (as it had been somehow stuck in moderation). I could only see you replying to my comment, which had given me a mistaken impression for a number of minutes, sorry. Then I did notice, Hexy, which is why I then wrote “I mean of course I know you’re NOT trying to speak for her. Sorry (my bad)” 40 minutes later. Sorry for the *misunderstanding*.

on 29 Aug 2008 at 12:10 pm75 admin
So, yes, I have comments in my moderation queue.
My problems are several and among them are these:
* If I approve some of the comments, I will be approving mean-spirited, undeserved, unproductive attacks on fine women;
* If I edit the comments, deleting the mean-spirited, undeserved, unproductive attacks and snarks, then the commenters appear to have been reasonable, polite and respectful when they were not. But only I know this because I’m the only one who saw the comments before they were edited;
* If I do not approve the comments, the suggestion is that I cannot or will not respond to the issues the comments raise.
* If I do approve the comments, many who read here, survivors of the sex trade, in particular, but others of us who are survivors as well, will be triggered in ways which are very hard to deal with. The comments I’ve already approved have been severely triggering to some of my regular commenters.
I will be approving comments soon, but I wanted to preface my approvals with the above. I don’t like approving ugliness, self-congratulatory bullshit, disingenous grandstanding, and comments mostly intended to inflict distress, or comments which — intentionally or unintentionally — trigger good women. In the end, I think the interests of women will be better served if I do approve the comments in their entirety than if I don’t.
I might change my mind about that at any moment after approving and responding to the comments in my moderation queue. I will be watching the responses carefully. If you want your comment to be approved, don’t attack anyone, don’t be dismissive, don’t be a jerk, participate honestly and decently in the discussion.
Heart

(*note that, comment, right there...ahem-RE)

on 29 Aug 2008 at 9:32 pm76Maggie Hays

Sorry, Heart, I forgot another thing (one more thing) in the Dworkin quote from Our Blood. I forgot “on other women” somewhere.
“…all women typically act out [on other women] their repressed rage against the master…”
Could you please edit this and correct this 3rd omission in the Dworkin quote in my above comment?
Sorry to bother you with that. I love quoting Dworkin and I hate making errors when I do.
Again, you don’t necessarily need to publish when I’m pointing out errors I’ve made in the quote, btw. Simply edit them, please.

on 31 Aug 2008 at 12:51 pm77 CoolAunt
You didn’t ask my opinion but if you had, I’d say don’t publish them. This dead horse has been beaten many times over the years. Let it rest in peace.

on 01 Sep 2008 at 7:47 pm78 Dana
Heart, you said something about getting underneath the notion of choice in pornstitution, and getting down to the notion that men are paying money for sex work. That’s really it, that’s the heart of the issue, and that’s the thing that “voluntary” sex workers ignore. Sex is made into a commodity. Women’s bodies are made into a commodity. Pornstitution says that women are things to be bought and sold. We bring this up over and over and over again in some form or fashion and the “sex pox,” as Ginmar puts it, come out of the woodwork and completely ignore that aspect of it.
So when you turn sex into a commodity you cheapen it. When you turn women into a commodity you dehumanize us. It’s that simple. I thought we outlawed slavery? Then why are women still things to be bought and sold–even if it’s just a few parts of our bodies and just temporarily?
Eating is not a commodity. But one of the hallmarks of civilization, as Daniel Quinn puts it, is that food is locked up where once we could procure it freely. Drinking is not a commodity. Yet water privatization threatens to be an even larger political issue than oil ever was, with far more explosive results worldwide. (You think the Iraq war’s bad?) Seeking shelter is not a commodity, but we just witnessed what happens when you turn houses into a get-rich-quick market. Breathing is not a commodity, but oxygen’s the latest thing to be made into a consumer product (aside from medical uses) and I know I have no aspirations of ever going into an oxygen bar.
Why do we think nothing of commodifying sex? It is said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Even if that is true, and I don’t think it is, we all know which gender most often solicits money in exchange for sex. For a long time, also, marriage resembled nothing more than a prostitution transaction–the father of the bride was paid by the groom’s family for the privilege of marrying the daughter. (They didn’t turn it around and demand a dowry from the bride’s family until later, and even now in some cultures the wedding-price still comes from the groom.) And then there were female slaves. Those were the three classes women fell into. Whore, wife, and slave. We’ve always been owned by someone, even temporarily. So I can guess why we think nothing of commodifying sex. Because it’s the men doing the buying. And we all “know” men should be able to buy whatever they want. The Earth’s being destroyed on the basis of that very premise.
Another point I realized the other day: If you expand the pornstitution industry and look at where women are now buying sexual services from men, you see an interesting contrast. I was thinking specifically of strippers, and Chippendales in particular. All they ever do is strip and pose for pictures. Yet they have an identity of their own, even if it is manufactured. Their bigger fans probably even know each individual man by name. And the group itself is known nationwide, probably throughout North America in general, even by people who don’t like stripping by either sex.
You don’t see that kind of notoriety in female strippers beyond the local scene unless they were porn stars first. Ever. They’re not supposed to have names. It’s not about their identities and personalities.
Ain’t that something?

on 01 Sep 2008 at 9:25 pm79 admin
So I can guess why we think nothing of commodifying sex. Because it’s the men doing the buying. And we all “know” men should be able to buy whatever they want. The Earth’s being destroyed on the basis of that very premise.
Exactly, Dana, and great comment.
What calling this buying that is done by men, of women, does is, again, it erases who is doing what to whom. It is MEN buying the bodies of WOMEN, if only for a short time. It is women’s bodies that are purchased and it is men who are the purchasers. Yes, there are outliers, a very few women who pay for sex from men, but they ARE outliers, there is no history of millennia of women’s enslavement there, there is no history of disenfranchisement or marginalization on the basis of sex, so the meaning is completely different, and let’s face it, the few men who sell sex to women are NOT in danger, do not get raped, do not get battered by the women, do not get pregnant. (Not so so far as men who are prostituted by men, but that is a different situation entirely, women have nothing to do with it.) In a sense men who sell sex to women really might be able to say they are choosing “sex work” in a way that a woman never can because again, what we do takes place in a specific context of sex inequality.
As one formerly prostituted woman wrote to me (about this thread) via e-mail, calling prostituted women “sex workers” and using terms like “harm reduction” and “non-forced prostitution” is deeply insulting to her because it makes johns invisible, it makes the reality of a lifetime of having been groomed for prostitution invisible, and it places the responsibility to “reduce harm” or work for “harm reduction” on the prostituted women, as though it is up to them to make sure they are not raped or beaten. It also, again, erases the salient, central fact that it is MEN who are buying and WOMEN who are working. Sort of like the way the media says that a woman “was raped” or “was murdered,” but often avoids saying that a man raped a woman or a man murdered a woman. The misogyny that is central to prostitution, to rape, to battering, to violence against women gets erased and prostituted women are left without language to describe their reality.

on 01 Sep 2008 at 11:08 pm80hexy
Heart:
I’ve never seen the term “harm reduction” used to imply that the onus to reduce harm is on the prostituted woman or sex worker, and I’ve been involved in several harm reduction movements covering everything from sex work to drug use/abuse. The sex industry harm reduction model covers things like decriminalisation and legal protection, free provision of barrier contraception and access to medical treatment and support services as determined by the needs and wants of the people in the industry.
While I certainly empathise with your contact-via-email’s concerns about being labelled with language that isn’t hers (see, oh, everything I’ve posted) her objection to harm reduction as phrased here is based on a miscomprehension.

on 01 Sep 2008 at 11:56 pm81 admin
Hexy, I don’t think my contact suffers form a “miscomprehension.” I think she is talking about her lived reality in which there is all of this lofty speech from sex workers about all kinds of harm reduction– everything, of course, but the kind of “harm reduction” that would have actually benefitted her and 90 percent of the women and girls in the world who are prostituted, i.e., NOT HAVING TO BE PROSTITUTED AT ALL, not having to be raped, not having to be battered, not having to disocciate, not having to self-medicate, not living in fear, not being treated like so much trash. When the focus is on the rights of those who identify as sex workers and when theirs is the public agenda, the 90 percent of those who are prostituted and do not identify as “sex workers”, who want out, become invisible– to everybody. Because patriarchy wants very badly to focus ON the sex workers, and on all of this great harm reduction, and on the fact that sex work can be made “safe” or “safer”, *that way the 90 percent of women and girls who are involuntarily prostituted and can never be made safe can be ignored*. Prostituted women do not think of themselves as “people in an ‘industry’” working for their “wants and needs.” They are prostituted, used and abused like kleenex, and they want OUT before someone kills them or they kill themselves. God, hexy, you SO talk out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand you make this huge distinction between SEX WORKERS and PROSTITUTES and insist the two categories not be confused. On the other hand you talk about harm reduction, decriminalization, etc., as though ALL prostituted women are in fact “sex workers,” referring to them as people in the “industry” who are organizing around “needs and wants”. It’s exhibit A of what my contact is talking about. She didn’t care about harm reduction, she didn’t want to be called a sex worker, she wasn’t organizing around needs and wants, she just wanted to get OUT, as by far most prostituted women DO. You speak for a tiny minority internationally of women who say they have chosen. When you do that you *erase the realities of those who do not choose* and especially *in the eyes of the men who create and perpetuate the demand in whose best interests it is to view all prostitutes as “sex workers” and to pat themselves on the back for supporting “harm reduction.”
Right here in this thread we’ve got Ren defending a pornmaker/star/prostituted woman, Nina Hartley, who is an icon, who publicly rejects the use of condoms in het porn because it’s “boring” and inefficient. (Hartley is also a nurse!) When I challenge what that models to basically the entire porn-watching population (who begin at a young age these days), Ren’s answer is that she wrote a blog post once about what bad sex ed porn is, like that’s some answer. I don’t care how many condoms get handed out in the Third World somewhere (as someone commented proudly in a post I haven’t approved yet), what about fracking highly privileged sex workers married to publishers of Hustler’s fetish porn modeling random, highly dangerous, het sex practices with many partners, without condoms? How is handing out condoms in Chile addressing the tremendous harm that particular modeling does, in terms not only of what is imitated by young people, but what is demanded (and taken) from prostituted women by johns? Hell, Nina Hartley does it without condoms, everybody in porn does it without condoms, why shouldn’t he be able to go without condoms?
Maybe the onus is not on prostituted women to prevent harm yet, but if the prostituting of women is framed as an “industry” where those in the “industry” are working towards getting their “needs and wants” met, then ultimately, the onus WILL be on prostituted women, because if all of these “sex workers” are doing all of this great stuff for themselves, what’s prostituted women’s problem? Shouldn’t they get off the dime and organize for harm reduction between getting raped and beaten by johns, pimps and who knows who all? These women’s struggle to just live through another day is being ERASED by a few very privileged people who on the one hand other them relentlessly and on the other hand presume to speak for them.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 12:26 am82 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Heart: Merely here at this point to answer questions asked of me. You ask: “As to what you do being not all about the men, well, if it were not for the men and the patriarchal, male supremacist society and world men have built, your choices and life would be different, no? At the very least you would not be subjected to some of the horrific stuff your work has subjected you to because you are a woman and your clients are men. And the same for me, and all women, as second class citizens under male supremacy, our choices are bounded, limited, not free. Feminism exists to create a revolution that will change all that.”

I don’t know if my choices would be different. Or how different. I myself am a porn consumer, and not because men tell me or make me watch it, but because I enjoy watching (and making) it. I suspect I’d still enjoy it, but the truth is, I have no idea how my life or choices would be different…nor does anyone else. And like to believe it or not, most of the truly horrific stuff I’ve been subjected to in life has not come from men. It’s come from women, and yep, often due to my job, but sometimes regardless of what I do for a living. And see, I don’t even know if you’ll publish this statement, even though it’s not really an attack on any one, but because it seems you and other folk just don’t want to hear or believe that. Being threatened, being physically attacked, being consistently lied about, and having my experiences twisted? Not things men have done to me. Things women have done to me. More than once. Men have called me names, so have women. Men have made me uncomfortable, so have women. Men have been more physically forward with me than I would have liked, so have women. And sorry, I’m not going to blame men for the very real actions of those women, which make shit men have done to me pale in comparison. I don’t have actual scars from men, I do from women. Oh, and I do have women clients, actually.

Maggie, you asked:“But I don’t target you by name with dozens and dozens of posts that are triggering to rape survivors.” You know, I prefer direct to nebulous. If I have an issue with someone, I say so. I dislike indirect. And while I don’t actually find your posts triggering in the manner you seemingly find mine, I find them hugely dismissive and enraging, which I guess could be similar.

“Does Ren (you) not know I am a survivor of rape?… Pro-porn views are mainstream. So, why wouldn’t you just leave us alone then? I mean, because of the fact that pro-porn views are mainstream & popular in contemporary culture (and hardly anybody is interested in rad fems’ work anyway), why wouldn’t you stop targeting us by name as individual women? Face it: Pro-pornography views are usually what’s popular out there, while radical feminist views are (usually) either totally hated or not even heard of. And there are more people who give attention to your work than there are people who give attention to mine…”

No, I did not know. I’m sorry such a thing happened to you, and I can’t imagine how it changed your life. Leaving people alone is a two way street. And I would also disagree on who’s views are most mainstream…government funding? Academic forums? A voice into policy modification? We don’t have those things. And as I said above, no, I probably won’t, because I believe in being direct. And I don’t think there is an actual way to know whose work, yours or mine, gets more attention.

“You evaded my main questions. I knew you would. Which exactly proves Heart’s point here: You and those you hang out with online appear to lie awake nights strategizing attempts to publicly shame, attack, and demonize any woman who stands up to ya’all. A quick perusal of your blog will reveal many straight up attacks on women– entire posts dedicated to that project. You would never stop targeting individual women (for the politics and views they believe in) by name with triggering things. There is no way you would. Which is a very sad and cruel fact…”

Maggie, I didn’t evade your questions. The moderation on this thread has made things hard to follow, and I’ve been at a dance competition since Friday. I am more than happy to answer you, now that I see specifically what you’re asking. Well, as for Heart’s comment…I often work at night, and you know, I often figure y’all do the same thing. True for some on either side? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. And yep, sure enough, I call people out, by name. There is reason for it. For instance, I am not the only one out there, on this thread even, who assumed (correctly or not, and to what degree) that this post was about me writing at Feministe, and what I wrote about. For me, considering the content of this post and what I was writing over there, I found it real hard to believe otherwise, and I was not alone in that. So, when I am mad at or disagreeing with or rebutting something said by A Specific Person…naming them slices through all that drama. Everyone knows who I am talking about, and thus, they do not assume I meant them. Direct and to the point, that’s the way I work. And you can call me sad and cruel all you want, you won’t be the first person to do so, and I suspect you will not be the last…but truly, I’ve not been given a whole lot of reasons to play nice. I see a lot of outrage out of one side when I say mean shit, but I see very little (if any) when, oh, folk from that same side basically say I deserve to be raped, or utterly distort my experiences for their own ends, or actually, oh, threaten me. All things which have happened, and can be proved. I know what’s been said in many, many places…and when you face the above mentioned things and get called the things I’ve been called? The desire to be nice simply packs up and leaves town. I mean, it’s triggering for me when people randomly speculate on my sanity and intelligence, or talk about me and people like me as if we were not there, or presume to speak for us, or know what’s best for us, or what we must have been through, yet, people do that all the time and say some really nasty shit. Yet no one tells them to knock it off. Well, I feel no need to be kind to people who treat me in such a manner or stand by when others do. Why would I? It pisses me off, and no, I don’t lay there and let people kick me, sorry. And for the record, every post of yours I’ve ever called out? I’ve linked it, for contexts sake. Your words speak for you, just as mine speak for me. I hope those answers are satisfactory and civil enough.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 12:47 am83 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Um, Heart…
Right here in this thread we’ve got Ren defending a pornmaker/star/prostituted woman, Nina Hartley, who is an icon, who publicly rejects the use of condoms in het porn because it’s “boring” and inefficient. (Hartley is also a nurse!) When I challenge what that models to basically the entire porn-watching population (who begin at a young age these days), Ren’s answer is that she wrote a blog post once about what bad sex ed porn is, like that’s some answer. I don’t care how many condoms get handed out in the Third World somewhere (as someone commented proudly in a post I haven’t approved yet), what about fracking highly privileged sex workers married to publishers of Hustler’s fetish porn modeling random, highly dangerous, het sex practices with many partners, without condoms? How is handing out condoms in Chile addressing the tremendous harm that particular modeling does, in terms not only of what is imitated by young people, but what is demanded (and taken) from prostituted women by johns? Hell, Nina Hartley does it without condoms, everybody in porn does it without condoms, why shouldn’t he be able to go without condoms?
I’m defending Nina because a) I consider her a friend, b) she’s done a lot to make porn a hell of a lot safer for those in it and seeing that glossed over is unfair, and c) even in reading her article on AVN, the one you mentioned, she is speaking about condoms in relation to porn only, states why, explains why in detail, and does not in anyway encourage other people not to use them.
Also, I’ve written extensively, not once, on sex ed, why we need better sex ed, and why porn is crappy sex ed. Whole blog swarm about it any everything, with a whole lot of participation, because one thing we might, maybe, possibly, agree on is that youth deserve good and realistic sex education…and porn is not it.
Also, ugh, don’t know how many times I’m going to have to say this? Part of sex worker outreach? Includes getting people who want out, out. Big part, really, that whole helping people who want out to get out. That being ingored is utterly unfair.


on 02 Sep 2008 at 5:27 am84 Saorla
I don’t care how many condoms get handed out in the Third World somewhere
Well I care about condom distribution in the developing world (third world is pejorative now), I live in Cambodia. In Cambodia whether the sex work is through trafficking or voluntary the women call themselves sex workers. They feel that “prostitute” is pejorative. The major of sex workers in Cambodia turn to sex work through poverty, rape or trafficking and they are damned sure they want protection through condoms. People living with HIV are discriminated against and Cambodia has a high rate of HIV transmission.
http://saorla.blogspot.com/2008/05/ignorance-is-no-excuse.html
It’s nice that you have the luxury not to care when you live in a country that withdraws billions of dollars in vital aid when condoms or abortions for sex workers are funded.
http://saorla.blogspot.com/2006/10/religious-right-and-development-aid.htmlhttp://saorla.blogspot.com/2007/07/flicker-of-common-sense.html
You have a choice not to care. You could choose not to be callous about that choice. But your government makes sure to put these women in further danger

on 02 Sep 2008 at 5:29 am85 Saorla
Oh and by the way, there’s virtually no porn in Cambodia and definitely no hardcore stuff but sex work is at every level of society

on 02 Sep 2008 at 11:03 am86 admin
I apologize, Saorla, I should have qualified what I said about condoms. Of *course*. you are correct, we need condom distribution everywhere in the world, no question. I was making a (pissed off) reference to a comment I haven’t yet approved (and may not) in which someone who is allied with pornographers who, in fact, make, promote and publish porn where actors don’t use condoms, uses the fact of having distributed condoms in Third World countries as evidence of some commitment to harm reduction. Of *course* it’s good that the condoms were distributed, wherever they were distributed. It’s horrible, however, to use that as evidence of your efforts to reduce harm when you’re allied with people who are responsible, in fact, for tremendous harm to prostituted persons (and all women).

on 02 Sep 2008 at 11:28 am87 Renegade Evolution
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Heart-
Don’t know why I’m bothering, but…
I’ve made/been in porn both with and without condoms, and you do now know why in porn, condoms are not always the best things for the performers to be using, and yes, to the most naive of people, it might seem like I am having tons and tons of unprotected sex with tons and tons of men…which A) is not actually the case, and B) other protections have been put in place and are industry standard. In all other things, yep, I use condoms. And promote condom usage. People *myself included, have even done “promoting safer sex practices porn”, where condoms are used, it is shown how they are put on correctly, and in place/changed for every single sexual act. Because yep, I think it is important to have that message out there incase people don’t know about the massive testing undergone by porn people.
I also advocate harm reduction and safer sex practices and yep, making sure folk engaged in prostitution have simple, life saving things like condoms. Does the fact that I sometimes make porn without condoms, for reasons of health, with other safety measures in place negate everything else I do in your mind? If the answer is yes, can you see then why people get so angry and feel like such attitudes are utterly dismissive of and belittling to what they are actually doing?

on 02 Sep 2008 at 12:46 pm88 admin
From the correspondent I referred to earlier, in response to your comment, Hexy:
I am sorry to be such a coward to write again about your blog and how Hexy has chosen to see my e-mail to you. I did write straight onto your blog, but I’m scared of getting involved with their lies, because it throws me back into thoughts I had when I was living with my mother.
[But] there are a few things I need to say to back you up. [Hexy has said] that women like me are misrepresenting “harm reduction”, but I have strong reasons to be wary of such language. I believe that much of [what is described as] harm reduction benefits the sex industry, [because] it prevents women from leaving and gives the delusion of safety. There is lots of publicity about the handing out of condoms with prostituted women. But it is not realistic. Mostly [the handing out of condoms] is done with street prostitutes, but even then, it does not work if a [john] refuses to use a condom, usually with the threat of violence or [the threat of] going with another prostitute who will not “mind”. Most prostituted women and girls work indoors, in a very controlled environment, where the manager/pimp will sell the added extra of non-condom use, often for extra money.
That is the reality of harm reduction for the majority of prostituted women and girls. It does little or nothing to prevent rapes, batterings and murders of them, but lots to keep a constant flow of women and girls for men to use.
I am sorry I did not write this straight onto your blog, but I [am not able right now] to defend myself in public.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 1:14 pm89Faith
“Oh and by the way, there’s virtually no porn in Cambodia and definitely no hardcore stuff but sex work is at every level of society”Saorla,
I apologize if I’m incorrect, but I get the impression that you are making this comment based at least in part to many of the people here being anti-porn. As such, I would like to say personally, I am anti-porn. I am not unaware that prostitution exists in parts of the world in which porn does not. Prostitution and sexual violence against women has been around long before the advent of porn. I personally do not deny this and I personally have never seen another anti-porn feminist deny this either. My feelings are simply that the porn industry (at least in its current form) is but one factor that is both a cause and a symptom of misogyny in society. It is not the only cause or symptom. And even if it all ceased to exist tomorrow, misogyny would still be with us. But even given the fact that porn is not solely responsible for misogyny and the existence of prostitution (not by a long shot), I still feel that the porn industry is at best not helping the plight of women at all, and at worst, it’s contributing to the problem significantly. I tend to lean far more to the “at worst” side of the equation.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 3:45 pm90 Sis
What?! They don’t have the internet in Cambodia?
Well a Canadian man was recently sentenced for pedophilia in one of Thailand or Cambodia (he was charged on incidents in both countries but can’t remember which took). He had his capers plastered on the internet, in sites filled with the photographed escapes of other sex tourists. I can’t believe for a minute that pornography plays no role there. I think someone is defining pornography very strangely.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 3:46 pm91 Sis
“escapades of other sex tourists”.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 5:35 pm92sam
There has been some fact-devoid propaganda circulating as “what Cambodian sex workers want” that directly contradicts what all the available research into prostitution in Cambodia says sex workers in Cambodia really want.
A 1995 study of 6110 sex workers in Cambodia revealed that 84% of those interviewed wanted to leave prostitution.
Reasons included:
- desire to return to their home village and reunite with their families- ashamed of the job and want to start a new life by engaging in a small business or work in a more decent occupation- do not want to grow old in the business and would want to have other income-generating skills- want to find a husband which she could not achieve if she continues to work in prostitution- want to continue her studies.
A lesser percentage, 16%, have given up hope for being freed from prostitution. They cite the following reasons:
- shame in going back home to their families and villages- have no other skills by which to live by- cannot marry anymore because of their background- it is easier to find income in prostitution compared to other jobs they have had.
“Child sex workers” aged 12 to 17 years old comprise 31% of all Cambodia’s prostitutes.
http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/1996vol06no04/219/

on 02 Sep 2008 at 6:19 pm93Faith
“What?! They don’t have the internet in Cambodia?”
I’m no expert on Cambodia, but I’m sure that whatever internet connection exists - or resources to connect to the internet - is very scarce to not existent.
I am positive Cambodia has had a problem with prostitution since long before the internet was invented.

on 02 Sep 2008 at 7:57 pm94sam
Actually, the perception of Cambodia, along with other countries in SE Asia, being a paying rapist’s playground is a new development historically. According to what I’ve read, there wasn’t much of a trafficking or prostitution problem in Cambodia until quite recently. A summary edited from online sources:
“Prior to 1970, the trafficking in children was not practiced as today. Between 1970 and 1975, the nation was controlled by a military government that caused much suffering to the people in rural areas, which increased the flow of migrants to the urban areas. During this time trafficking and prostitution were practiced. During the Khmer Rouge time (1975-1979) people were living in unwalled prisons and migration, trafficking, and prostitution were prohibited as a result of movement restrictions, oppressive social controls, and the collective economy.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and the re-establishment of relationships with neighboring countries, the trafficking and exploitation of non-Cambodian children began and increased. 85-95 per cent were Vietnamese girls. The arrival of the UN’s Transitional Authority in Cambodia peace-keeping troops in 1992 was also the arrival of a great increase in prostitution and the trafficking of women and children. By the end of 1992, the estimated number of sex workers in Phnom Penh alone was more than 20,000. When the UNTAC mission ended in 1993, the number of sex workers dramatically decreased to between 4,000 to 10,000.
In Phnom Penh in 1995, 31 per cent of prostitutes were age 17 and under, while the total number or prostitutes under 18 years of age in all of Cambodia grew to 20,000. About 65-70 per cent of the prostitutes were Cambodian while 30-35 per cent were from Vietnam, China, or other countries.
An alarming trend is that the age of sex workers is becoming younger and the number of trafficked women and children is increasing. The report also provided the youngest ages of prostitutes found in various years as follows: 1992 study-18 years old; 1993 study-15 years old; 1995 study-12 years old; 1997 study- 11 years old.”
It is an old story that war creates desperate women and children willing to let men rape them in exchange for food, shelter and money, but in the 1990’s prostitution changed globally.
Pornstitution industries around the world exploded in the 1990s as the WTO and NAFTA made pursuit of money over human rights and health an official edict, as the disparity between rich and poor grew, as high-speed internet porn consumption multiplied the number of men seeking to use prostitutes (UK john demand doubled between 1995 and 2005), as more SE Asians started selling their daughters for luxuries like TVs and designer clothes where before absolute poverty forced the sale of children, and a host of other reasons whose confluence made an entire subcontinent of Earth synonymous with child rape and cheap hookers who “love you long time.”

AND CHECK THIS ACCUSATION!!!-RE

on 02 Sep 2008 at 10:32 pm95 admin
Saorla, I will not be approving any of your comments until you e-mail me and give me more information about yourself. I went to your blog and see that you say you have been in Cambodia two years. You appear to be a man. Your blogroll is a virtual who’s who of pro-porn pro-prostitution people. My guess is you’re a john, a “punter,” a “sex tourist”, prostituting Cambodian people yourself and here to defend it.
I’m getting better and better at recognizing people like you. The day is going to come when I spam you before I read 10 words you have written. How dare you comment here as some sort of expert on Cambodian prostituted women, when what the truth most likely is, you prostitute them yourself.
Don’t comment here again until you e-mail me and tell me precisely who you are in ways I can substantiate independently because I’ll tell you what, there are many sick people on the internet, many of them prostitute women and I won’t have them commenting to this thread.

*For the record, S is a woman and aid worker living in Cambodia....oh, wait, Heart now takes a moment to cover her ass…-RE

on 02 Sep 2008 at 10:32 pm95 admin
I’m removing this comment based on having received an e-mail from Saorla.
Heart

on 02 Sep 2008 at 10:51 pm96 Saorla
Sam - quite a few of your assertions are incorrect
85-95 per cent were Vietnamese girls - No they weren’t but that’s the myth that is spread by Khmer men who think that no pure Cambodian woman would ever engage in sex work
SE Asians started selling their daughters for luxuries like TVs and designer clothes where before absolute poverty forced the sale of children - No, that is another rumour. Absolute poverty is the reason people sell their children in this country.
Prior to 1970, the trafficking in children was not practiced as today - The vast majority of child trafficking is not for sex work but to sell and sell trinkets on the street of Bangkok for Western tourists
Prior to 1970 there was a military coup and absolutist monarch and colonisation by the French. I don’t know where you are getting your information but life is very different on the ground.
I am not denying that there is sexual slavery. I am not denying that there is rape. I have punched sexpats in bars and intervened in violent situations. All I am saying is that the sex workers want protection. They want condoms to be available. They want harm reduction strategies.

on 03 Sep 2008 at 6:42 am97 Faith
“Actually, the perception of Cambodia, along with other countries in SE Asia, being a paying rapist’s playground is a new development historically.”
Sam,
I have tremendous difficulty believing that. Prostitution is something women have been forced to engage in since time out of mind. It may be that it’s gotten worse recently (in the past 20-30 years) due to more foreign men traveling to these countries and an increase in trafficking…

on 03 Sep 2008 at 7:38 am98 admin
For the record, nobody here, including me, has argued against things like condom distribution. As I’ve already said, and it’s a no brainer, of course, condoms are critical as are other strategies designed to help women in the sex trade (i.e., imo, decriminalization). My point was, how can someone boast about distributing condoms when they’re allied with, for example, pornographers whose films feature condom-less sex? * Gee Heart, I explained that, but you decided not to let my comment out of moderation! Also, I am betting the moderated comment is from Jill B, a former forced sex worker and now rights activist, who, um, is not exactly allied with the porn industry in anyway, other than via me. It's like 6 degress of Kevin Bacon around here, it seems!- RE
I have wanted this thread to highlight the experiences and voices of those who have been in the sex trade, and in that context, I’ve wanted to talk about the significance and meaning of the words used to describe their experiences. * No, you wanted to highlight some of them-RE I think what my correspondent wrote in my comment up there is really important. * Ah yes, the mystery correspondent, her words matter, fuck Hexy, Me, Jill B, and the rest of us!-RE Of course, condoms, but how are they a solution, when johns will threaten women or hurt them because the ask that condoms be used or when pimps require them also to have sex without condoms because the pimps can charge more? How are they a solution when a generation is growing up exposed to porn featuring risky sex without condoms? *Once again, the porn part was mentioned, yet lives in moderation!-RE Of course, by all means, condoms, but let us listen to the voices of women from the sex trade that are right here telling us why words like “harm reduction” are hollow in light of their experiences. *Yes, listen to them, but not those who say how words like “prostituted women” are hollow in the light of their experiences! Listen to them if they say what Heart wants to hear!-RE

Right then, that’s where the thread is, right now. Really, take a gander, let it sink in…drink it all down and let it settle. Feel like puking? On a thread supposedly where the voices of the women doing the job are supposed to matter? Heart claims she moderated and edited out hurtful thing, unreasonable things, triggering things & attacks. Funny, I don’t see much of that in moderation, what I see is dissent from at least one woman in the industry, defense of other people in the industry, and corrections which would make Heart look bad. Imagine that?

I also see that, on this thread, women such as Satsuma, Sam, and Maggie are allowed to say whatever the fuck they want, even if it might be dismissive, hurtful, and triggering, yet, when one of those uppity deluded “prostituted women” says as much…also moderated out.

And what about that attack there on S that Heart then edited out? Mighty hurtful, dismissive, triggering and slanderous, wouldn’t you say? You can delete, moderate, and edit, Heart, but we know what we’ve said, and we know what you’ve said…oh, did you apologize by the way? Funny, I see no actual apology…

I also know that both Hexy and Jill Brennemen (sex workers, sex worker advocates) had their words moderated, so I invite them to post them here in comments, along with anyone else who got spun right out of truth, so people can see what’s really been said. Nina, that includes you too!

As you can see, I’m sick of it, and I am not taking this shit lying down.

There’s a word, and it is Hypocrite.

And this here bullshit has done been captured and cashed.