Whorephobia is Oppression is Exploitation

leighalanna:

she-minions:

Some people have this idea in general but especially regarding sex workers that oppression is ‘treated poorly’ or ‘(some) people not liking who you are or what you do’ and tbh with that framework no wonder shit like ‘vanilla privilege’ is considered to be an actual thing.

Oppression doesn’t exist for no reason, it’s a way to exploit people and maintain the status quo (specifically, exploitation of labor). So when we talk about whorephobia, we’re not just saying ‘people look down on us cos of our jobs’ or even ‘society mistreats us cos of our jobs’. In reality, the oppression of sex workers is a form of violence which serves a number of material purposes in society, such as:

– To protect other women from male violence and rape. The marginalization of sex workers puts us in a position where we’re expected and forced to be targets of male violence (“if we didn’t have sex workers, men who can’t get sex for free would start raping women!” is a prime example of this thinking) to protect civilian women and in general, women who are considered valuable. This is forced on us by marginalization such as criminalization (which puts is in danger of violence by forcing us to take risks and leaving us no recourse when violence occurs) and whorephobic beliefs that posit us as being undeserving of safety (“all sex workers were abused as children” i.e. the damaged goods hypothesis demonstrates this as we’re literally seen as ‘already broken’ and therefore further violence against us doesn’t matter and we’re ‘asking for it’ cos of our jobs). In this way, civilians benefit materially from the oppression of sex workers.

– A warning to Valuable women; if you engage in certain behavior, present yourself a certain way etc, you’re a ‘whore’ that is, you’re a Bad Woman and undeserving of safety, you’re responsible for any acts of violence perpetrated against you etc. This is a large part of why the word Whore is used against civilian women even though it’s a slur against sex workers; equating a civilian woman with a whore is an attack on her value, her integrity etc. Following on from this

– Reinforcing a social system in which the bulk of women’s labor is unpaid and we can’t demand payment or compensation for it. Oppressing women who engage in sexual labor for payment in a direct transaction serves the interests of men who expect sexual access to women for free as they believe they’re entitled to it under patriarchy. Much of women’s labor is unpaid and uncompensated, and whorephobia is a system in which this is enforced – women are criminalized, abused and vilified for daring to demand compensation for their labor. Therefore, whorephobia helps to maintain patriarchy and women’s oppression in general, particularly in regards to women’s sexual labor.

– criminalizing and thereby eradicating undesirable people. It’s no secret that decriminalization of sex work and ending the stigma surrounding sex work is only half the battle, cos many people who are working under decrim are criminalized in other ways, that is, the state still wants them gone so it uses different laws, such as loitering, drug possession etc. Sex work is often the only available option for people who are oppressed; many forms, such as independent full service (which is what we’re primarily talking about here) require no police clearance, degree or work experience or even ID and so predictably, people who have criminal records, who are experiencing housing instability/homelessness, LGBT people (particularly trans women, who experience the highest rates of violence due to transmisogyny), PoC, undocumented migrants etc often engage in it. It should go without saying that all of these groups are targets for Statist violence, regardless of SW status. Criminalization of sex work gives the state a way to target already oppressed people while maintaining a veil of legitimacy. 

There are other things that tie in here too, such as the criminalization of street-based economies and the Prison Industrial Complex which directly benefit the State and of course are heavily tied in with the exploitation of labor. It’s impossible to talk about whorephobia without also talking about wider systems of exploitation which both lead people to sex work and provide one of the major motivating factors for the State to criminalize it. This list is by no means exhaustive but hopefully if nothing else it offers a reality check to those who dismiss whorephobia as an axis of oppression and in particular, those who claim to be Marxists while propagating oppressive exploitative frameworks.

I don’t know from sports, but I believe the technical term for this is “nothing but net.”