{"id":6584,"date":"2014-01-08T12:45:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T12:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org\/1475541.html"},"modified":"2014-01-08T12:45:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T12:45:43","slug":"the-idea-that-sex-workers-are-all-exploited-is-patronising-and-wrong-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2014\/01\/the-idea-that-sex-workers-are-all-exploited-is-patronising-and-wrong-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The idea that sex workers are all exploited is patronising and wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am quite willing to believe that some sex workers are exploited, coerced, and mistreated. Human trafficking is a terrible thing, and should be stamped out. Modern slavery likewise. But when somebody says that the ONLY reason for a sex worker to go into sex work is coercion and\/or desperation, that makes me a bit uncomfortable to say the least.<\/p>\n

The idea that no woman (because when people say this, it IS usually about women)<\/small> could go into sex work voluntarily springs from some very sexist (and quite modern<\/a>)<\/small> assumptions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Women do not like sex as much as men*<\/li>\n
  2. Therefore if a woman Does It with a man she must be doing it for some reason other than enjoyment<\/li>\n
  3. Love is an acceptable reason, money isn’t<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You all know how I hate it when we are treated as members of our group first and individuals second, so I’m not going to labour that point, but… some people have high sex drives, some people have low sex drives, and those things are not always congruent with gender.<\/p>\n

    It is entirely possible that some women go into sex work voluntarily, and enjoy it when they get there. In fact, more than possible, it’s true; you can find myriad testimonies from such women on the internet and elsewhere. And to dismiss them with “oh well they don’t know what they are saying”, which is normally the next step for people who think all sex workers are coerced? Surely I don’t need to point out how patronising and sexist THAT attitude is?<\/p>\n

    TL;DR version: I am a sex positive feminist and I don’t think feminists who aren’t know what they are talking about.<\/p>\n

    \n

    *Anyone who thinks all women have lower sex drives than all men needs to be introduced to me, and then to have a gentle chat with some of my partners, only one of whom comes anywhere close to having my general level of sex drive.<\/small><\/p>\n

    \"comment comments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I am quite willing to believe that some sex workers are exploited, coerced, and mistreated. Human trafficking is a terrible thing, and should be stamped out. Modern slavery likewise. But when somebody says that the ONLY reason for a sex worker to go in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[272,318,270],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism","category-rants","category-sexual-perversions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6584\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}