If you've spent some time in activist or feminist spaces, you've probably come across
the term SWERF.
It stands for Sex Work Exclusionary Radical Feminism or Feminist depending on the usage,
and it's a really shitty ideology.
If you've seen my video on TERFism, AKA Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism, this
is probably a familiar concept.
Just like with TERFs, who are a subset of feminists who hate women because they are
trans, SWERFs are a subset of feminists who hate women because they are sex workers.
Either way, they hate women, which is kinda the definition of misogynistic.
And yet, they both call themselves feminists somehow. Sure.
But anyway, SWERF ideology stems from this idea that sex work is inherently bad, that
it's a tool of the patriarchy and anyone who does sex work is contributing to their
own patriarchal oppression.
They've basically taken the kind of general anti-sex work ideas that exist out there in
the world and applied the most shallow, surface-level feminist analysis to it that they possibly could.
Because really, it's saddening to see how much every day people hate sex workers.
Jokes about dead prostitutes aren't uncommon in movies and TV shows, and people often use
words like "whore" or "hooker" or "prostitute" to as insults to put women down.
But SWERFs have just taken this kind of generic misogyny against sex workers and justified
it using their own twisted logic.
As far as I can tell, from everything I've seen from SWERFs, they consider human trafficking
and sex work to be the same thing.
They conflate these two completely different things, and that's why they consider sex
work to be inherently bad.
But conflating these two things requires you to lack any sort of intersectional feminist analysis.
It's easily the status quo.
FOSTA-SESTA was just recently passed in the US because lawmakers think human trafficking
and sex work are the same thing, and it will end up hurting both trafficking victims and sex workers.
So let's be clear, when I defend sex work and the women who choose to take part in sex
work, I'm not defending human trafficking. No one is.
As much as SWERFs may like to conflate the two, they're fundamentally different.
Trafficking victims are forced to perform commercial sex acts under duress.
Sex workers choose to exchange sexual acts for money without any duress.
It's a really simple difference.
The way that SWERFs muddy this, though, is by saying that all sex workers are actually under duress.
They say that sex workers are only doing sex work to get money because otherwise they wouldn't
have money and could end up homeless and living in poverty.
SWERFs argue that sex workers can't genuinely enjoy their job because nobody could really
enjoy that kind of work or want to do it if they weren't under duress.
There are two parts to this.
The first is that, technically, under capitalism, we're all kinda under duress regardless of our job.
You have to work to make money to have shelter and food.
This forces people to work all kinds of jobs they don't want to work.
Some people have shitty office jobs they don't want or enjoy, some people have to clean stuff
all day that's exhausting and painful, some people have to work in Amazon warehouses where
they pee in bottles to avoid losing their job, and some people have to work in coal
mines doing extremely strenuous labor under unsafe conditions.
There are so many jobs that people do that they probably really wouldn't want to do
if their life didn't depend on it.
Sex work is just another one of those jobs.
Sex workers don't sell their bodies any more than coal miners or warehouse workers do.
And look, there's a whole discussion to be had here around capitalism forcing us to
be productive 24/7, and I do think there could be a better system where people are just given
housing and food and water and allowed to work on things they actually want to, or at
least allowed to work less and in safer conditions -- but right now, this is the system we're in.
Through this lens, everyone is under the duress of poverty.
Human trafficking adds another layer of duress where people don't choose to be trafficked
and can't leave because their traffickers won't let them.
That's why trafficking is different than sex work or any other work, because being
trafficked is not a job.
Sex work, desk jobs, coal mining jobs, these are all jobs that people choose to be in,
even if capitalism is making them choose some kind of job.
So yeah, there are probably people doing sex work who don't particularly like it, just
like there are people in other professions who don't like their career at all.
That's the nature of capitalism for all of us, not just sex workers.
But, part two of this is that some people genuinely love being sex workers.
Hear me out: Maybe people experience the world differently than you and enjoy things that you don't.
If you wouldn't want to be a sex worker, that's totally fine, but don't assume
that you see the world exactly as every other person sees it.
SWERFs will claim that even sex workers who say they like it are just lying or brainwashed
or whatever, but that's bullshit.
Denying women their agency and telling them what they really believe is misogynistic bullshit.
Feminism should be about believing women when they tell you how they experience the world.
It should be about allowing women to choose the profession they want even if it's not
something you would want to do.
Sex workers don't hurt anyone.
They're just trying to make a living just like the rest of us.
But by marginalizing sex workers and talking about them like they're less than human,
SWERFs do harm sex workers.
Sex workers are already in danger because a good chunk of their profession isn't legal
in the most of the world.
Because sex work is an umbrella term for things like performing in porn, prostitution, phone
sex, stripping -- all that sort of stuff.
So some of those things, like porn, are legal, while others, like prostitution, are illegal.
Because if someone pays you to have sex, it's apparently only legal if they film it and put it online?
Anyway, the point of all this is: SWERF ideology leads to the further oppression of all sex
workers and specifically the women working in these industries who are already some of
the most marginalized folks in the country.
Sex workers don't need to be "saved", they need for their profession to be decriminalized
so they can work without fear of the police.
Sex work can be a dangerous profession largely because law enforcement drives them to the
fringes of society and won't help them if they're abused or assaulted.
SWERFs are a part of that mentality of denying sex workers their basic rights just because
of their profession -- they just coat their oppressive rhetoric in feminist lingo to make it sound nicer.
At the end of the day, SWERFs are the fucking worst, and feminism should include sex workers.
If you strive to make your feminism as intersectional as possible, it's important to make it clear
that you support sex workers and that you're not here for SWERFs.
Anyways, that all I had for you today.
If you would like to help me survive under capitalism, you can click over here to support
me on Patreon, which I would really really appreciate cause I like paying rent and eating
food and stuff, and I need your help to do that.
You can also click over to here to subscribe to my channel.
Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment