#anti-porn. anti-sex. anti-sex worker movements

[canichangemyblogname]

A friendly reminder:

If the state has the power to decide who must give birth

It also has the power to decide who must not give birth.

#in the wake of mass disabling events #like a global pandemic #there is a rise in eugenics movements #and it is no coincidence #that we see a corresponding #restriction on abortion #and a rise in sterilization- among black. brown & disabled people #we will also witness the take over of an anti-BC movement too #and the take-over of #anti-porn. anti-sex. anti-sex worker movements #reproductive justice

[brettdoesdiscourse]

One main issue with the anti porn movement is lacking nuance.

You cannot treat some random person making porn of themselves, by themselves the same way you treat Hefner running Playboy.

The conditions simply aren't the same. You can't act like every sex worker is being abused and taken advantage of when that's simply not the case.

Some random couple filming amateur porn independently is nothing like Mia Khalifa being exploited.

Even if you're against porn across the board, no matter who makes it or how it's produced, you simply cannot treat them the same way.

Acting like there's not a difference in the situations is ignorant and harmful, even if you fully support all sex work being banned.

#pro sex worker #pro sex work #social discourse #discourse #reblog #brett does discourse #sex work is work

[gatheringbones]

[“Feminists’ discomfort with proximity to sex workers reached a fever pitch during the so-called ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s. In this era, radical feminists locked horns with ‘pro-sex’ feminists over the issues of pornography and prostitution. The radical-feminist perspective on sex work holds that it reproduces (and is itself a product of) patriarchal violence against women. This analysis could extend to all heterosexual sexual behaviours, as well as public sex and kink (commonly known as BDSM, for ‘bondage, domination, submission/sadism, masochism’).

The focus in this era was on censoring porn and ‘raising awareness’ rather than addressing prostitution through criminal law directly, but a nonetheless vehement anti-prostitution stance became commonplace in the feminist movement. Writer Janice Raymond stated that ‘prostitution is rape that’s paid for’, while Kathleen Barry said buying and selling sex was ‘destructive of human life’.

The defence of porn and prostitution that followed in response was based on ideas of sexual liberation through nonconformist sexual expression, such as BDSM and the ‘queering’ of lesbian and gay identities. Many ‘pro-sex’ or ‘sex-radical’ feminists posited that not only could watching porn be gratifying and educational, it could upend patriarchal control over women’s sexual expression. Moreover, that the sex industry was sticking two fingers up at the institution of marriage, highlighting the hypocrisy of conservative, monogamous heteronormativity. While some people who fought for sexual liberation were sex workers – such as LGBTQ and AIDS activist Amber Hollibaugh – many sex radicals advanced their arguments from a non–sex worker perspective. Defending porn often meant defending watching it, rather than performing in it.

Radical feminists famously described sex radicals as ‘Uncle Toms’* pandering to the primacy of male sexuality, while they in turn were derided as ‘prudes’ invested in preserving sexual puritanism. Rather than focussing on the ‘work’ of sex work, both pro-sex feminists and anti-prostitution feminists concerned themselves with sex as symbol. Both groups questioned what the existence of the sex industry implied for their own positions as women; both groups prioritised those questions over what material improvements could be made in the lives of the sex workers in their communities. Stuck in the domain of sex and whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women (and adamant that it could only be one or the other) it was all too easy for feminists to think of The Prostitute only in terms of what she represented to them. They claimed ownership of sex worker experiences in order to make sense of their own.

Anti-prostitution activist Dorchen Leidholdt spoke to this feminist impulse; ‘this de-individualized, de-humanized being has the function of representing generic woman … She stands in for all of us, and she takes the abuse that we are beginning to resist.’ It was in this context that former prostitute Andrea Dworkin’s work became highly influential in the movement, and set a new tone for criticism of sex work. The Prostitute, she said

lives the literal reality of being the dirty woman. There is no metaphor. She is the woman covered in dirt, which is to say that every man who has ever been on top of her has left a piece of himself behind … She is perceived as, treated as – and I want you to remember this, this is real – vaginal slime.

Her confrontational writing style – and her experiences in the sex trade – helped to legitimise and normalise similar usage of graphic and misogynist language in ‘feminist’ discussions of sex workers and their bodies. Barry, a contemporary of Dworkin, likened prostitutes to blow-up dolls, ‘complete with orifices for penetration and ejaculation’, while Leidholdt wrote that ‘stranger after stranger use[s] her body as a seminal spittoon … What other job is so deeply gendered that one’s breasts, vagina and rectum constitute the working equipment?’ Academics Cecilie Høigård and Liv Finstad wrote of women who sell sex that ‘at the core they experience themselves as only cheap whores’.

Sex working feminists have long found themselves harshly excluded, and not only by de-humanising language in academia, but by explicit lack of invitation into spaces. Kate Millett recalls a feminist conference on prostitution, held in 1971. Disgruntled working women arrived to demand a seat at the table: An inadvertent masterpiece of tactless precipitance, the title of the day’s program was inscribed on leaflets for our benefit: ‘Towards the Elimination of Prostitution’. The panel of experts included everyone but prostitutes … all hell broke loose – between the prostitute and the movement. Because, against all likelihood, prostitutes did in fact attend the conference … They had a great deal to say about the presumption of straight women who fancied they could debate, decide or even discuss what was their situation and not ours.

Unlike the hostile environment of radical feminism, sex radicals were welcoming and supportive to sex workers. This influence helped shape the movement’s growth. In 1974, COYOTE hosted the first National Hookers’ Convention. The bright orange flyer nodded to the way prostitutes had been shunned from the women’s movement: emblazoned with a hand touching a vulva, it proclaimed, ‘Our Convention Is Different: We Want Everyone to Come’”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

#molly smith #juno mac #currently reading #history stuff

[papirouge]

Pro sex work feminists will never make sense to me. they say they know that men attack vulnerable women, that prostitutes are at high risk for sexual violence, that they’re always targeted by serial killers, they back it up with stats, but then believe that by having the government involved, it will some how lower the rates of violence? That these women will be protected. I can’t wrap my head around how they think by legalizing it, somehow human trafficking will go down. They ignore the real numbers of how legalized prostitution have the highest rates of trafficking because traffickers drug and hide their victims as “workers” They don’t seem to understand the grim and very real dark truth that these men’s demands for the most depraved sexual acts outweigh the supply of willing women. That these men will never be satisfied having consenting sex with adults.

I’m happy to see more people hate on porn and bring up how addicting it is like any other hard drug. I see already the younger generation throw away hookup culture completely (mainly from girls) but these pro sex work feminists don’t want to understand how awful their messaging has been. Do you think they’ve been paid for by pimps? Like the whole movement seems to be an agenda by pimps and porn producers to exploit them for financial gain

I always found the "banning xx won't stop xx from happening" argument ridiculously stupid because....not law every stopped ever crime from happening.

Laws purpose to create a coercion aiming to refrain those crimes from happening. No law states that it's going to totally eradicate whatever crime or offense they're targeting.

So pro sex work people pulling out that card to defend sex work should have the same energy to remove law about any other offense too ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Same with pro abortion, who act like illegal abortions still happening in places where it's illegal is a proof that banning abortion is pointless... Mind you, a bunch of pro abortion people are also anti sex work (such as radfem) and I just can't with their cognitive dissonance lol (some of them even rebuke the "can't stop prostitution from happening" argument of the pro sex work squad.......but rehash the SAME argument to defend abortion access, I- 💀)

#answered

[askfucktoyfelix]

Oh yeah could you hekp with some common sex negtuve talking points I’m well aware of many of them, but I’ve been thinking of writing some kind of parody? Satire? Thing critical of that sort of stuff so..but if you’re trying to parody it it’s good to get an good idea of what you’re parodying, so…I have some idea of the ideology of course, I live in a exteremky sex negative society, but it could still be helpful

The flavor of the talking points changes depending on the flavor of the sexneg. Religious people tend to say that sex is only between married people, often for only the purpose of procreation. Often times masturbation is shunned too. Basically there's a tendency to believe that anything that brings you pleasure outside of god is evil in some way. This is useful to them because the more shame people have, the more people need to beg eternally for their gods forgiveness. These types are particularly controlling of women's sexuality. Women are to be chaste, pure and obedient...and never desire sex, only desire to carry men's children to term. Porn addiction was basically invented by these people, who conveniently also have a ton of "treatment" programs that are intertwined with their churches. They fund almost all of the anti-sex and anti-porn movements, and they have A LOT of money to do that. They think sex workers are sinners but will act like sex workers are just victims needing saving to mask their extremely violent anti-sex worker policies. Another type is the reactionary pretending to be a feminist. They're put off by a lot of the religious sexneg's stuff, but they still hate sex so they appropriate leftist language and mental gymnastics their way into believing sex is misogynist. Ironically these types also tend to be really misogynist, and tend to shame women who like expressing sexuality just as badly as the religious people. In their ideology, sex is inseparable from the patriarchy and women who like sex are just experiencing "internalized misogyny" and using sex to gain favor with men...who are The Enemy of course. Some even claim that no woman can actually consent to have sex with a man because of the inherent power difference. These types are especially critical of kink...their shallow analysis being: people pretending to be violent is exactly as evil as actual violence. If a woman is submissive she's been brainwashed by the patriarchy, so she basically can't consent no matter what she says. If a woman is dominant, she's just catering to the fetishes of the submissive man, as she is completely incapable of any sexual agency of her own. These types don't usually fund anti-porn movements, but they do a lot of the worst propaganda work online. They tend to have a lot of other left-leaning politics which misleads people into believing this is a normal and rational left-wing position as well. They're often extremely transphobic, but even when they aren't they usually push for a lot of policies that further criminalization and violence against sex workers. (Again, the belief being women don't have agency, making all sex workers "trafficking victims") There are also some other miscellaneous anti-sex people that have most likely just experienced deep sexual trauma at some point in their lives...and wound up baking that into their politics. They're not capable of thinking directly about sex enough to be able to imagine it being healthy, and so they can't empathize with people for whom sexuality IS very healing. Yet they fixate on other people's sex lives WAY more than is healthy, in useless bids to convince happy kinky people that they are actually unhappy, or self harming. Their favorite thing to do is command people to go to therapy in an almost jeering way. "Get help!" is ironically a common mantra for these types to yell at people who are sex positive. There's really...a lot and I want to make a big post about common, normalized, sex negative habits in our culture at some point but idk when!

#sex positive #kink positive

[thatpropornchick]

We Keep Repeating Ourselves...

Why does the SW community and those who support it keep needing to explain how much work ethic actually goes into maintaining their job?

The truth is those who are adamantly against sex work choose to ignore the glaring truth that porn stars, content creators, strippers, and escorts are tax paying citizens just like the rest of us. Their objection to any type of sex work becomes less justifiable when the work their against is safe, morally just, and stable.

The anti-porn & anti-sex worker movement uses what's always been used to justify bigotry. Lies, fear-mongering, and smear campaigns. Sex workers need to be painted as lazy, stupid, naive, traumatized, abused, godless, and overall troubled.

This is why despite the many women in the industry coming forward to show how much time, effort, and thought goes into their living, the anti-sex work agenda stays blind and deaf to those voices. Those voices never have and never will matter to them. This is why SW efforts should go towards educating the masses. Closed minds do not play a part in cultural shifts.

It's no surprise this mentality is directly linked to a patriarchal system. Women are seen as sexual property. Their worth is in their beauty and purity. When women take their power back, those who benefit from this system feel challenged.

#addiction #religion #science #sex work is real work #antiporn #anti pornography #anti sex industry #radical feminism #feminism #sexism #sexuality #sexaddiction

[passionesolja]

My biggest issue with the male side of the anti pornography movement is that it isn’t anti porn because pornography creates hyper unrealistic expectations of women, sex, and all of that. It’s that it’s rooted in purity culture. These men want a pornstar, they want a want a woman who will be that for them, but they want that in a wife instead of just watching it. Which to me is worst because it’s one thing to watch professional sex workers who have experience and everything. It’s another thing to want every woman to be your personal sex worker but frame it as being a “good wife” because you want a maid in the mix as well

[philsmeatylegss]

I now get why most terfs are also anti porn. I was dipping my toe into the anti porn movement and I asked the reddit if it’s possible to be anti porn, but pro self employed online porn (ex: onlyfans) and still pity irl sex workers and when I say I was torn to shreds

#literally said I was new to the movement and knew nothing about it #stated that I was against the industry because of violence and sexualization of minors incest and a billion other shit #could not have been less judge mental #fucking torn to shreds #I suggested I pity irl sex workers because most are forced into it and man you would’ve thought I said babies deserved to be murdered

[brettdoesdiscourse]

The anti sex work movement act as if abuse can't/doesn't happen in so called regular working environments

You can easily get abused working at McDonald's or retail

you can have a whole ass high paying career and still get abused

These people are just icked out by it and believe sex work shouldn't exist even if the environment is safe

You're absolutely correct, anon.

And you want to know something else? In my experience, I've been less protected in traditional working environments than in sex work.

At 18, I had a man stand in front of me and my manager, yelling at me for something I wasn't even on shift for. He asked if I was an idiot, if I was that stupid, etc. And I just had to take that.

When I was camming, I had full control to kick someone from my room if they were behaving in a way I didn't like.

When I was stripping, there's not a chance in hell the owner would ever let a customer yell at one of the dancers or speak to them like that.

When I was doing videos/pictures/etc, I had full control to block and delete those comments. I was even able to report them as abusive.

In sex work, I've never had to just smile and take that kind of abuse.

In my experience as well, I had people treating me way shittier in retail situations than they did in sex work. (Most the time.)

I like to compare sex work to the media industry.

There is so much abuse that happens on movie and TV sets. Physical, sexual, financial, mental, emotional abuse. They all happen and they're all pretty common with movies/TV shows.

Yet, nobody is boycotting movies/TV as a whole because this abuse happens. Hell, a lot of people won't even boycott a movie/TV show where they know abuse specifically took place.

Nobody's screaming on their accounts that you're abusive if you watch movies/TV shows. Nobody's telling "normal" actors that they're automatically being exploited if they're in any movie/TV show. Nobody's discounting independent movies where all the actors are happy and there's no signs of abuse as "still abusive" just because abuse happens in the industry.

At its heart, the anti sex work movement is anti sex.

The only real difference between porn and a regular movie is the intention. Porn is meant to arouse (in most cases), it's meant to be enjoyed sexually. And so many people still have such puritanical, conservative views on sex that this that's meant to arouse is worse because its "only" purpose is to arouse.

If you want to talk about people getting their autonomy taken away, sex work is another huge aspect for that. And not just in the way people think.

Yes, we get our autonomy taken away by predatory studios/clients. But we also get our autonomy taken away by lawmakers. We get our autonomy taken away by anti sex work people when they tell us that actually we "can't consent" to that. We're routinely told what we have to do or cannot do with our bodies, regardless of what we want to do with them.

And in my experience, most of that autonomy (in the current day) is stripped away by people who are anti sex work. The same people who hide behind "I'm pro sex worker" and "I just want to protect these poor people (usually they say or mean just women)"

#pro sex work #pro sex worker #sex work is work #discourse #social discourse #asks #brett answers #brett does discourse

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

The Stereotyping of the Left

Woke is a Chud bad joke.

Stephen Jay Morris

8/6/2023

©Scientific Morality

One aspect of oppositional propaganda the conservative Right hasn’t mastered is the art of stereotyping. All of history’s Left wing tropes have made a better impact than racist conservatives’ caricatures of people of color. The latter’s tripe includes Black face; bucktoothed, Japanese soldiers; dumb blondes; hook-nosed Jews; pencil thin homosexuals; and women depicted as scared little girls who were stupid and needy. Left wing propaganda was more effective, i.e.: the drawings of the workers depicted as Roman Gods; the image of the all-woman work force during World War Two, otherwise known as “Rosie the Riveter”—a female worker flexing her muscle. These images were complimentary to the oppressed masses.

The Right wing has never been astute of the arts. They are not a creative or romantic people. As such, they must imitate the art culture of the Left. But, in so doing, it all falls flat on its face, with cringe! They act like spectators watching Jesus Christ wearing the crown of thorns and carrying the cross. They mock, heckle, and laugh. The good are accused of being bad and vice versa. This has been the plight of human behavior for thousands of years.

So how do they make Leftists look? Before I get into that, let me clarify that these stereotypes are nothing new.

How do they depict the Left? The Right wing’s propaganda alternates between these two stereotypes: the effeminate male, which in today’s vernacular is called, a soy boy,” created to make the Left look weak and clueless, henpecked by feminists and anally raped by Black men. The other: that of the scary Leftist monster that is demonic and eats white children, or has sex with them. Due to the Right’s anti-intellectual bent—they are, after all, Anti-Intelligentsia—they focus on the source of intelligentsia, the place of learning:  the college campus. As most know, reality has a Left wing bias. It's fucking true! Come on! What did the Right ever do to enhance America? Not a damn thing! So, they attack and attack the universities.

Due to their misogyny, they make all the Left-wing culprits appear to be emotional and hysterical females. They get a sadistic thrill and make money from this hate porn. Their Left wing characters have pink hair and thick glasses, and their bodies are full of tattoos. They claim that the Left has school programs where white children must stand at the front of their classrooms and apologize to the Black kids for having been mean to them for 400 years. They propagate that there are rules in place which state that, when a white person stares at a Black person for more than two seconds, the former is a racist. Other rules require boys to wear dresses in class and permit the girls to lift up their skirts. The Right also claims that the Left places urinals in girls’ bathrooms to accommodate trans males.

Alas! These things do not occur! But the religious Right has paranoid fantasies. Fact: there is no CRT curriculum in any public school in the country.  The course is offered in graduate law school, but only as an elective; it is not a requirement!

These woke stereotypes abound because propaganda is a masquerade for lying. Most CHUDs are liars. Most CHUDS are also grifters, opportunists, attention whores, and mentally ill. There are more narcissists in the conservative movement than there are in the progressive. Their narcissism is evident by their proclivity to project: they accuse the Left of everything of which they are guilty!

Someday, the American people will catch on that these cretins are full of shit, and they will be tarred and feathered!

At which point, I will ask, “where’s my microwave popcorn?”

#stephenjaymorris #american politics #poets on tumblr #anarchism #anarchopunk #anarchocommunism #anarchoindividualist #anarcho communism #anarcho capitalism #anarchofeminism #anarcho syndicalism #anarchoqueer

[rotationalsymmetry]

Because I think this needs repeating every so often and I’m too lazy to search for my own post:

Radfem is not the same as terf (terf is a subset of radfem, all terfs are radfems but not all radfems are terfs) but radfems still have shitty ideologies whether they’re trans exclusive or not.

Radfems are feminists who looked at the concept of bodily autonomy and decided it meant nothing to them. They think that sex work is not a labor issue and that sex workers should be “rescued” and never actually listened to or allowed to lead their own movements. They appear to not understand that some people can enjoy sexual things that other people find unpleasant, and as such they are opposed to kink and see all kink as intrinsically abusive. (They also tend to ignore kink that isn’t male top/female bottom, and they also ignore when female bottoms actively desire and seek out kink.) They are against porn — not in the sense of “the porn industry can be exploitative so this is a labor issue” but in the sense of “visual images of sex are intrinsically harmful to women.” They talk a lot about sexual assault and abuse, but exclusively in a male perpetrator/female victim way — never about abusive girlfriends/wives, or mothers, or teachers or nurses or female therapists or female caregivers of disabled people.

And radfems have a different definition of lesbian than anyone else. Literally. They define lesbian in terms of choices and relationships rather than in terms of orientation. And they think everyone else should use that definition. Which distorts their understanding of bisexuals, asexuals, people who prefer “queer” as a label, and people who fight for the entire acronym rather than just women who prioritize relationships with other women. Even radfems who aren’t super weird about trans women or who are themselves trans.

Many radfems are also weird about trans people in that they think that if a trans woman lived say 20 years as a guy and 20 years as a woman only those first 20 years matter, and that if a trans woman demanded she be treated as a girl at age 5 and socially transitioned at that age and never looked back and has literally never once in her life been treated as a cis man, her agab still matters more than nearly the entirety of her life experience. Which is fucking weird. And there are reasons terfs get singled out as unusually harmful to the community (ie, it’s not just wonky beliefs, it’s also active harm, from online bullying and doxxing to physical assault to lobbying for anti trans legislation) but uh, yeah, non-terf radfems also have incredibly shitty and harmful politics.

Anyways, non-terf radfem beliefs aren’t very coherent because the idea of transness being real hinges on the idea of bodily autonomy and the idea of consent, which terfs don’t believe in (see: fighting to crack down on sex work as being uniquely harmful to workers as opposed to, you know, people choosing which option under capitalism seems least bad to them at the time, see: frequently viewing all heterosexual sex as being fundamentally rape, see: viewing kink as being the same as abuse) and yeah, radfem beliefs are still incredibly fucked up and harmful even when they’re not explicitly transphobic.

Also, while in terms of word origins “radical feminism” comes from “radical” and “feminism”, of course, and at least some radfems are in fact conversant with Marxism, there are many strains of feminism and “radical feminism” is in many ways quite reactionary/fascist-istic, dunno if you want to blame that on horseshoe theory or having a movement dominated by upper middle class white people or what, but radical feminism isn’t the only or most coherent place to land if you want to have feminism inform your leftism or radical politics inform your feminism. Of course most feminism isn’t “radical” as such, it’s liberal to progressive, but … yeah, lots of us don’t think gender essentialism is particularly “radical”. Anyways, you can look into bodily autonomy (a perfectly cromulent radical concept) and sex positive feminism and intersectional feminism (which again usually isn’t radical as such but can cover a wide swath of “how do we feel about capitalism/heirachy/the state” positions.)

#hey guess what #I haven’t had terfs trying to argue me into their beliefs since I put up a leather flag on my blog #let’s see if that’s terf repellent or if I still get terf evangelizers #frankly most of the feminism I’ve been exposed to isn’t really radical as such so that’s the main weak spot in my argument #but god damn there’s nothing radical about gender essentialism #and there’s nothing radical about trying to control other people’s life decisions #tbf most of what I’ve read about anything isn’t radical

[livingzomboy]

arepublicans are anti child mutilation, but when i tell them myself and many other AMABS have thought about cutting it off ourselves and bottom surgery post therapy is safer and not at all mutilative because it isn't offered to kids what then? When in the nane of the gender binary countless intersex individuals have their genitals sewn shut and mutilated to "give them a normal life" (even though its more dangerous for them)? What then? They dont want to switch to a society that is open and loving. Thats it. Dismantling ideas of binary gender also dismantles ideas of their power in a way that confuses them.

Republicans dont want me in bathrooms because i will assault someone but trans women were more likely to be assaulted, raped, murdered, or brutalized, and that percentage of trans women goes up every single year. Trans women and men are MORE LIKELY to be victims. But we cant change the system.

republicans hate trans and queer people but lets take a look at the top porn shall we?

Men view trans porn more (22%) than women. Lesbian was the most searched term in the last years. Trans porn popularity was upped by 72+% in 2022 alone. That number grows each year.

You hate us but we are your porn. You hate us but we contribute constantly to science, technology, art. You hate us but queer people stood by you, women, when you were fighting for rights. We stood by you, people of color, when we fought intersectionslly for your right with the civil rights movement. You hate us but we push constantly for spaces to be safe for mental health, and isnt that one of the LEADING ideals of the mens rights movement? we are part of ALL your communities and we fight for you ALL THE TIME! And we let you fetishize us in porn and on the street as sex workers! So why wont you fight for us? Why wont you fight for queer liberation.

Frankly my point being if you hate queer people no matter all the evidence as to why you shouldn't, and all the holes in the normal arguments, then i reserve the right to call you names and slurs. Oh youre a woman and a homophobe? Get back in the kitchen you dont need to be thinking terf. Oh youre black and anti queer? why dont you come on a roatrip to louisiana with me? I promise not to give your info to the KKK!

Whats that? Oh its literally terrible to say something bigoted like that? Huh. Who wouldve thought.

#braains🧟