let’s clear something up feminist friends!
- someone hiring me for work I willingly choose to do is not the same as someone violating me
- even if they were violating me (which can only happen if my consent is not respected!) they would NOT “own” me after the violation.
- I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sexual pictures or videos of me.
- I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sex with me.
- I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people give me money for choosing to provide them with sexual images, phone sex, or actual sex.
- I am still my own if the money I choose to accept for sexual acts is pivotal to my survival.
If you refer to sex work as “buying women”, if you say that by doing sex work I “become a product”, you are dehumanizing me. My job - and the fruits of my job, like porn clips - do not dehumanize me. Being sexual for a price does not dehumanize me; I am still a person, choosing to be sexual for a reason that you don’t choose to be sexual for. People like you contribute to a culture that encourages people to see people in my line of work as less than human.
Scapegoating frequently-objectified women for the objectification all women experience at the hands of men is patriarchial respectability politics. It is victim-blaming. And does not teach anyone to treat sex workers or anyone else with real respect.
I’m offended both as a sex worker and as a rape survivor at the idea that choosing a job that departs from your misogynist ideas of sexual purity is somehow morally equivalent to being abused against my will.
I’m appalled as a rape survivor and as a sex worker that you consistently imply that I no longer belong to myself after having sex for pay or selling cam sessions, and list your inaccurate rape equivalence as the reason. Do you not see how disgusting that is, to say that rape means you now somehow belong to the rapist? Your ideas are rotten all through.
tl;dr: I do not become a product when I do this work, I am a person providing a service. Encouraging others to think of me as a product instead of a service provider contributes to my dehumanization and the dehumanization of all women who dare to be sexual in ways that threaten the heteropatriarchy.
(via academicfeminist)
