The struggle sessions tend to be cishet men ranting about ideals for a communist utopia while actual sex workers reiterate why we’re not human trafficking victims and that claiming “sex work is SA” is extremely offensive and misogynistic. Ironically, many of those same people with SWERF views tend to claim they are “strictly rational”.
But also people who have sex workers in the past get screamed at by you for saying it. You're entirely unwilling to accept that there are former sex workers who look back on their time having done sex work as one of economic coercion and that we feel much of it was sexual assault.
Last time this topic came up I got attacked so viciously by several people here that I've stopped participating in the topic and frankly every time it comes up I consider no longer participating on the site altogether because there is absolutely zero nuance at all and the level of viciousness that occurs is appalling.
I don't think I joined in with previous struggle sessions, mostly lurking and upvoting people who were arguing against SWERFs. I validate and support anyone who is a former sex worker and feels their experiences were SA. I hope they are safe now and can heal from those experiences.
I set a clear boundary of rejecting attempts by others to insist I am being SA'd when that is not my personal experience with sex work. I will continue to reject that framing when it is directed towards me as it feels like someone encroaching on my body and attempting to retroactively SA me. I will also speak out against the idea that sex work is by default somehow SA.
Full support, love, and solidarity for all former and present sex workers. I try to leave space for nuance and I hope my comments show that, upvoted you because I appreciate you as a person and as a part of this site. :anarchy-heart:
I'm terrible with names so you may well have not done!
For me, I have a big problem when it comes to discussing my views of the economic element. For example, one of my views aligns with others that you've been very mad at elsewhere in the thread -- I do think that sex work under capitalism is quite difficult to separate from sexual assault because of the economic coercion inherent to work under capitalism. I would have had EXACTLY the same view as you while I was doing the work, it was only afterwards and with a perspective that no longer involved it being in my economic interests to defend it that my view became as it is now.
Like, I really don't like falling out with people over it. I don't want to exclude sex workers from the support, rights and care that they ABSOLUTELY need. But I do think that people inside the industry have opinions that are influenced by the economic interests they hold and I think people have a difficult time admitting that. I think the opinions of people those currently doing it vs those who have done it in the past tend to be a bit more... Complicated. I think people inside the industry that rely on it as an income source also literally can't even entertain thinking about the topic because it could materially destroy them, I know several people who upon exiting the industry became pretty broken by it, finally having no economic incentive to maintain the emotional coping-mechanisms they constructed in their head then led to a lot of repressed stuff exploding out.
It's hard. Especially when people who are currently doing it rely on it and seem fine, I am worried about them later though given my experience and what I've seen with some others. Not all of course, at least not to my knowledge, but yeah.
Probably the only topic I am pretty scared of discussing on this site to be honest.
Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, I'm glad that you're in a better situation.
:anarchy-heart:
It's such a balance because like another user mentioned, this site is one of the only non-SWERFy communities with ML's I've found online. Most of the orgs I've been around IRL were fine, thankfully.
I personally support full decriminalization to get the police further away from everyone. If there was an actual social safety net following a revolution, then conversations around abolition could maybe be realistic. As it is, I've known women who found themselves deported or incarcerated after being "rescued".
My experience online when talking about sex work is that I have to come out of the gate ready to fight or I will be dismissed, talked down to, and dehumanized. I try to temper that reflex as much as I can in places I know are safe.
The problem I think that exists is that since my experience is that I believe the economic coercion made it sexual assault, the problem we run into is that our experiences become diametrically opposed.
By that I mean that it's impossible for me to believe that economic coercion = sexual assault and for you to believe that it's not sexual assault. One of us must be wrong. The problem here is that when it comes to respecting "experiences", which is something we all mostly want to do because it makes it easier to tell each other we still see one another as dignified humans, if we disagree on this then we must disagree on the experience in some way.
This then leads to.... Vicious results. People recognise that these two experiences can't coexist and one camp (usually those still in sex work) tends to get hyper-aggressive, I actually understand this reaction, I get aggressive about protecting my means of survival as well. But it's difficult.
I do think that people's views on this topic tend to change when they don't have that personal economic interest. And in a sort of protective instinct way it makes me very concerned. It's difficult of course, because this concern can be seen as "talking down to" someone, I've seen enough people come out of the industry and then just break afterwards to feel like there's a lot more going on with it than people currently in the industry tend to admit to.
I think a lot of this conversation however tends to not matter much? Like, materially what we want to happen for sex workers isn't that different even if we might disagree on the matter of economic coercion. We both want protections for sex workers, want them to be able to continue doing that work (because you can't just abolish the industry anyway) and want a future where that economic coercion is eliminated. What happens after that is so far off in the distance and so far outside of our current experiences it's not worth imagining.
But also people who have sex workers in the past get screamed at by you for saying it. You're entirely unwilling to accept that there are former sex workers who look back on their time having done sex work as one of economic coercion and that we feel much of it was sexual assault.
Last time this topic came up I got attacked so viciously by several people here that I've stopped participating in the topic and frankly every time it comes up I consider no longer participating on the site altogether because there is absolutely zero nuance at all and the level of viciousness that occurs is appalling.
I don't think I joined in with previous struggle sessions, mostly lurking and upvoting people who were arguing against SWERFs. I validate and support anyone who is a former sex worker and feels their experiences were SA. I hope they are safe now and can heal from those experiences.
I set a clear boundary of rejecting attempts by others to insist I am being SA'd when that is not my personal experience with sex work. I will continue to reject that framing when it is directed towards me as it feels like someone encroaching on my body and attempting to retroactively SA me. I will also speak out against the idea that sex work is by default somehow SA.
Full support, love, and solidarity for all former and present sex workers. I try to leave space for nuance and I hope my comments show that, upvoted you because I appreciate you as a person and as a part of this site. :anarchy-heart:
I'm terrible with names so you may well have not done!
For me, I have a big problem when it comes to discussing my views of the economic element. For example, one of my views aligns with others that you've been very mad at elsewhere in the thread -- I do think that sex work under capitalism is quite difficult to separate from sexual assault because of the economic coercion inherent to work under capitalism. I would have had EXACTLY the same view as you while I was doing the work, it was only afterwards and with a perspective that no longer involved it being in my economic interests to defend it that my view became as it is now.
Like, I really don't like falling out with people over it. I don't want to exclude sex workers from the support, rights and care that they ABSOLUTELY need. But I do think that people inside the industry have opinions that are influenced by the economic interests they hold and I think people have a difficult time admitting that. I think the opinions of people those currently doing it vs those who have done it in the past tend to be a bit more... Complicated. I think people inside the industry that rely on it as an income source also literally can't even entertain thinking about the topic because it could materially destroy them, I know several people who upon exiting the industry became pretty broken by it, finally having no economic incentive to maintain the emotional coping-mechanisms they constructed in their head then led to a lot of repressed stuff exploding out.
It's hard. Especially when people who are currently doing it rely on it and seem fine, I am worried about them later though given my experience and what I've seen with some others. Not all of course, at least not to my knowledge, but yeah.
Probably the only topic I am pretty scared of discussing on this site to be honest.
Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, I'm glad that you're in a better situation.
:anarchy-heart:
It's such a balance because like another user mentioned, this site is one of the only non-SWERFy communities with ML's I've found online. Most of the orgs I've been around IRL were fine, thankfully.
I personally support full decriminalization to get the police further away from everyone. If there was an actual social safety net following a revolution, then conversations around abolition could maybe be realistic. As it is, I've known women who found themselves deported or incarcerated after being "rescued".
My experience online when talking about sex work is that I have to come out of the gate ready to fight or I will be dismissed, talked down to, and dehumanized. I try to temper that reflex as much as I can in places I know are safe.
The problem I think that exists is that since my experience is that I believe the economic coercion made it sexual assault, the problem we run into is that our experiences become diametrically opposed.
By that I mean that it's impossible for me to believe that economic coercion = sexual assault and for you to believe that it's not sexual assault. One of us must be wrong. The problem here is that when it comes to respecting "experiences", which is something we all mostly want to do because it makes it easier to tell each other we still see one another as dignified humans, if we disagree on this then we must disagree on the experience in some way.
This then leads to.... Vicious results. People recognise that these two experiences can't coexist and one camp (usually those still in sex work) tends to get hyper-aggressive, I actually understand this reaction, I get aggressive about protecting my means of survival as well. But it's difficult.
I do think that people's views on this topic tend to change when they don't have that personal economic interest. And in a sort of protective instinct way it makes me very concerned. It's difficult of course, because this concern can be seen as "talking down to" someone, I've seen enough people come out of the industry and then just break afterwards to feel like there's a lot more going on with it than people currently in the industry tend to admit to.
I think a lot of this conversation however tends to not matter much? Like, materially what we want to happen for sex workers isn't that different even if we might disagree on the matter of economic coercion. We both want protections for sex workers, want them to be able to continue doing that work (because you can't just abolish the industry anyway) and want a future where that economic coercion is eliminated. What happens after that is so far off in the distance and so far outside of our current experiences it's not worth imagining.