Pictures of patriarchy and real honest to whatever irony…
Holy friggin crap, today I spoke with a dear friend at the echo’s of violence conference, (a men stopping violence con here in Atlanta), on sex work from the view of sex workers. Now I knew there was a great chance that it was going to be utterly ridiculous, as the backing here is almost all second wave feminist, and anti-sex industry rhetoric, but hey all the more reason that people actually in the industry need to talk, all the more reason that the topic would really need to be covered, so off I went. For the first hour or so, there was little in terms of attacks, though one man did ask me if I, “would like to be forced to be pounded in the ass by 6 different men in one night”, to which I answered, “personally no”, (this is only the begging of a long slew of frankly sexist and harassing comments from MEN at a men stopping violence conference made to me and to c), then after that hour things took a turn for the worse, we had been mostly getting the group to talk amongst themselves, and ask us questions, as neither of us were comfortable with having our experiences in the sex industry be the only ones covered, each time either of us answered questions involving our own experiences or opinions, we made it clear that we were speaking only for ourselves. The stack of people was pretty thick, and I guess just to make the irony thicker, one older white male in the back stood up with his hand raised to make sure I knew he wanted to speak, (note the stack was 7 deep when he firs rose his hand, but I guess he thought his POV was more important than those who had come before him), he then immediately said that he was disappointed with, “the politeness in the room in the face of the fact that She and I were clearly not representative of all sex workers”, he told me that “feminists are anti-sexwork”, (oh silly me and here this little poor oppressed needing to be saved girl I am I thought I was a feminist, guess I needed a white man to clear the meaning of feminism up for me), began to demand that a panel be organized of a more representative grouping of women before there could be any more talk on the matter, and that I personally somehow vouch that the sex industry is a great and wonderful thing for everyone involved… it just went down hill from there, we held our own though and we received applause at the end, there were many heated turnings of phrase, my favorite being “look this is how it seems to me, those of us that are pro-sexwork, and who are sex workers, it’s like we are trying to fix the leaks in the roof, and there are a lot of holes, but all the while you are standing outside screaming at the sky to stop the rain”, and, “well fine then lets talk about exploitative jobs, lets talk about the clothing industry, there is lots of organizing around sweat shops, but no one is saying we should stop wearing clothes, if we can honestly try to address the issue of sweatshops without being anti-clothing why can’t we attempt to address sexwork under the same light?”. We went into issues of union organization in the industry and that most unions don’t want to touch sex work the fact that the teamsters and AFL-CIO said no flat out to the lusty lady etc.
Strangely most of the talk was anti-capitalist, but only in terms of sex work, as though capitalism only falters and patriarchy only wins in terms of the sex industry. There also seemed to be much confusion between consensual sex work and trafficking, wage slavery is a form of slavery yes, but frankly and simply put trafficking is real standard slavery, it isn’t work, it isn’t sex, it’s slavery and rape and there is a very big difference, I have no clue how the two have become so interwoven in the minds of so many but they are not at all related, and I find this both disturbing and flat out mocking the pain of anyone who is in fact the victim of trafficking.
The thing that I found the most odd though was that there were several men in the group, all older and mostly caucasian, who were obviously offended by our candid answers to questions about our own personal experiences, none of the women there ever seemed offended by us, some disagreed vehemently but none seemed offended, but these older men who were so venomous in their verbal attacks as to leave my co-presenter shaking at the end were simply bound and determined to save “those women” from “the male oppressors” and that kids, that is today’s dose of legitimate fucking irony.
Strangely most of the talk was anti-capitalist, but only in terms of sex work, as though capitalism only falters and patriarchy only wins in terms of the sex industry. There also seemed to be much confusion between consensual sex work and trafficking, wage slavery is a form of slavery yes, but frankly and simply put trafficking is real standard slavery, it isn’t work, it isn’t sex, it’s slavery and rape and there is a very big difference, I have no clue how the two have become so interwoven in the minds of so many but they are not at all related, and I find this both disturbing and flat out mocking the pain of anyone who is in fact the victim of trafficking.
The thing that I found the most odd though was that there were several men in the group, all older and mostly caucasian, who were obviously offended by our candid answers to questions about our own personal experiences, none of the women there ever seemed offended by us, some disagreed vehemently but none seemed offended, but these older men who were so venomous in their verbal attacks as to leave my co-presenter shaking at the end were simply bound and determined to save “those women” from “the male oppressors” and that kids, that is today’s dose of legitimate fucking irony.