I have appropriated the pimp lobby’s red umbrella to fight for the Nordic Model.
Perhaps everyone who actually cares about women in prostitution can…
I respond to this because it needs addressing, knowing full well the OP is absolute scum of the highest order. This is one time when Tumblr’s auto-“reblog as link” comes in handy.
Scarlet Alliance is an organisation run only by sex workers, for sex workers. You cannot be a member of Scarlet Alliance if you own a sex-work related business, even if you also work yourself. Calling them “the pimp lobby” is defamatory and disgusting, and it’s a smear that people like plansfornigel make, know full well that it is an absolute lie, so they can excuse the fact they’re shouting down the national elected voice of women with real lived experience.
1. Scarlet Alliance opposes exit programs because they – at least in the way abolitionists imagine them – are fucked. The one we have in our state (which Nordic model fans stan for) is notorious for leaving women more tramatised than they were when they came in. Women who need support leaving the industry need real support tailored to their needs, not ideologically-driven NGO roles which mainly exist to give civilian abolitionists lucrative jobs.
2. Scarlet Alliance does not argue that trafficking does not exist. They do argue that the government should get the fuck out of our lives unless that intervention is asked for, because that intervention invariably makes our lives *worse*, not better, as anyone who had actual lived experience of dealing with the state as a sex worker would know.
3. Scarlet Alliance opposes all specific “laws, regulations, rules or policies for the sex industry” for the sex industry because all of those make us less safe. The two most regulated states in this country are the states I’m almost too terrified to work in, and this is not a coincidence. We are safest when we can work in the conditions that make us safest, without some usually male bureaucrat or lawmaker who’s never met a sex worker in his life making random decisions that make it harder for us to protect ourselves.
4. I call bullshit on abolitionists who make broad claims about the specifics of Scarlet Alliance’s position on trafficking without ever providing citations to back it up. Scarlet Alliance’s position on migrant sex worker issues is written by migrant sex workers, for migrant sex workers, and it’s an issue on which I don’t trust civilians to be able to tell their head from their arse.
5. Scarlet Alliance opposes greater police access to brothels because we’re a stigmatised population with a history of being treated extremely badly by police, and we don’t want them in our workplaces unless they have an actual reason to be there. Again, this is the sort of argument that could only ever be made by somebody with zero lived experience of the sex industry. Police are not our friends, we fear them for good reason, and in the event we actually do need their assistance and dare to seek it out we’re still usually doing it with a lot of trepidation.
6. Again, Scarlet Alliance opposes police having an administrative or regulatory role because it ends badly for us. It is the sort of logic that allows police to coerce sex workers into agreeing to have oral sex without a condom and then arrest them for it, as currently occurs in Queensland. Sex workers need to be able to deal with the police if, and only if, we have actually been the victim of a crime.
I skipped a few because I’d merely be repeating the above.
7. Scarlet Alliance opposes “anything that hinders the promotion of “sex work” because it’s a terrible fucking idea. What does that even mean? Stopping us from advertising? Stopping the outreach services that support us? Educating women in the industry on how to say stafe and around sexual health?
8. I find it amazing that abolitionists who claim to be really, deeply concerned about trafficking adamantly oppose visas that would allow more migrant sex workers to work legally. This, more than anything, is where your complete lack of giving a shit about their lives becomes readily apparent. Anyone who is working illegally in this country has no rights: they can’t go to the state and their ability to access services of any kind is incredibly restricted since either makes them risk arrest and deportation. Your opposition to work rights for migrant sex workers is a fucking Christmas present of biblical proportions to men who want to abuse migrant sex workers and yet you applaud yourselves for it.
You want to defund the only national, sex worker-only, elected voice, that allows sex workers to speak to our own issues, and send that money instead to clueless people who have never had sex for money in their lives so that they can make a lucrative living off advocating laws that kill us. You are the height of fucking immorality and so many women in this industry die or are raped every year because of the advocacy against our safety and our rights of women like you.
Madeira Darling is a snarky mystic, devout Satanist, serious Marxist, laughing dominatrix, and writer from San Fransisco where they live with their boyfriend in a house full of altars to their various demons.
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