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All the evidence I have ever seen is in favour of legalising or decriminalising sex work, this has been the view of every sex worker I've ever known.
I'm a liberal, so I need to be very confident that an action restricting freedom will reduce harm to others before I can endorse it.
One of my most beloved friends is facing having her livelihood destroyed because of the censorious attitudes of our current government about the sort of videos that consenting adults can make.
And yet....
All the sex workers I know, and all of the ones I read in the not-mainstream-but-popular-with-our-kind-of-people press are pretty privileged; they might not be entirely wealthy, but they're not impoverished. They might struggle with misogyny, queer acceptance, transphobia and transmisogyny, but most of them don't actually struggle with how they're going to feed their kids tomorrow.
And there are people like Fiona Broadfoot, Bridget Perrier, Rachel Moran, who for those reasons or others feel like they were co-erced into sex work and are not happy about it, and feel that the Amnesty position is ignoring or silencing them.
And it would be easy, so easy, for me to construct a narrative where queer people of colour weren't systematically ignored, because the one I spend the most time with rarely brings it up, and it wouldn't be that hard to stop hanging out with the rest. And it would be so so easy to just not worry about whether I was paying enough attention to the voices of PoC, but I try not to do that because I'm not a complete cunt.
I am pro sex worker rights. But I am worried, that the decisions about what is in the interest of sex worker rights is all about the people who have a university education or a bunch of funding from Patreon, or a popular blog which results in offers to write for the Guardian or the New Statesman, or one way or another already have a voice, and is ignoring the Fiona, Bridget, and Rachels of the future. I would like to see some evidence from the SWU, and other pro-decrim organisations that they have sought out and listened to the voices of women who are in sex work through desperation, or trafficking.
Edit: I should probably have read it before posting, but actually, Amnesty's draft proposal provides this evidence quite clearly on pages 12-15. I am now convinced.
I'm a liberal, so I need to be very confident that an action restricting freedom will reduce harm to others before I can endorse it.
One of my most beloved friends is facing having her livelihood destroyed because of the censorious attitudes of our current government about the sort of videos that consenting adults can make.
And yet....
All the sex workers I know, and all of the ones I read in the not-mainstream-but-popular-with-our-kind-of-people press are pretty privileged; they might not be entirely wealthy, but they're not impoverished. They might struggle with misogyny, queer acceptance, transphobia and transmisogyny, but most of them don't actually struggle with how they're going to feed their kids tomorrow.
And there are people like Fiona Broadfoot, Bridget Perrier, Rachel Moran, who for those reasons or others feel like they were co-erced into sex work and are not happy about it, and feel that the Amnesty position is ignoring or silencing them.
And it would be easy, so easy, for me to construct a narrative where queer people of colour weren't systematically ignored, because the one I spend the most time with rarely brings it up, and it wouldn't be that hard to stop hanging out with the rest. And it would be so so easy to just not worry about whether I was paying enough attention to the voices of PoC, but I try not to do that because I'm not a complete cunt.
I am pro sex worker rights. But I am worried, that the decisions about what is in the interest of sex worker rights is all about the people who have a university education or a bunch of funding from Patreon, or a popular blog which results in offers to write for the Guardian or the New Statesman, or one way or another already have a voice, and is ignoring the Fiona, Bridget, and Rachels of the future. I would like to see some evidence from the SWU, and other pro-decrim organisations that they have sought out and listened to the voices of women who are in sex work through desperation, or trafficking.
Edit: I should probably have read it before posting, but actually, Amnesty's draft proposal provides this evidence quite clearly on pages 12-15. I am now convinced.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-18 10:56 am (UTC)From:Sex work is very much a queer issue. People doing it are disproportionately likely to be LGBT as are their clients.
Does it really need saying that forcing people to do work they don't want to do is wrong? There is nothing special about sex work in this regard. The issue isn't the sex work, it's the forcing.
The more choices you (think you) have, the better experience you can have doing sex work. Provide people - especially marginalised people! - with more choices. Then respect those choices.
No matter what you do, streetwork will be there. From one side, some clients get off on the danger. From the other, yes, many people doing streetwork have addictions of one sort or another. You could greatly reduce the number of people doing streetwork simply by having a sensible policy on drugs.
I am always deeply cynical about some of the more privileged opponents of sex work, particularly in relation to how much they pay their cleaners. Why is it ok to pay someone minimum wage to wipe your shit off the toilet bowl and not ok to pay them twenty-ish times as much to help you have sexual pleasure?