prostitvte:

I really want people to understand that swerfs whorephobia is 100% intentional and they plan and discuss strategies for how to harm us and silence us amongst themselves. They hate us and want us to die and they succeed because people refuse to acknowledge that the harm they cause is intentional.

For example, you know how they claim that our grass roots activist orgs are “pimp lobbies”? I’ve seen them discussing how to smear Scarlet Alliance (Australia), an organisation that was created in response to the AIDS crisis and only allows sex workers to join – auxiliary workers (drivers, receptionists etc) and bosses/owners are strictly forbidden. They knew this of course, yet they were planning what lies to tell to whom to try to shut SA down, an organisation created in response to and credited for drastically slowing and reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The fact that SA has been instrumental not only in protecting sex workers health but the health of the general public doesn’t matter to them. Thankfully it didn’t get off the ground (the fact that they planned it publicly didn’t help lmao) but this is the sort of shit they engage in.

When swerfs push for criminalisation then claim we’re “not representative” of the majority of sex workers, it is not a mistake. They know we’re talking from personal experience about laws that will directly effect us, but moving the goal posts from state or national laws to hypothetical women in unnamed exploited nations who won’t even be impacted by these laws enables them to deflect accountability, as does their no true Scotsman approach to whose voice counts (hint: if you agree with them then you matter, if you disagree then you don’t).

When they say we’re privileged and don’t care about “real” sex workers with zero knowledge of our lives or circumstances, they’re not making some mistaken assumptions; this is a way to dismiss our voices and our words and our work and posit us as selfish rich white western abled etc while they’re bravely fighting for “the voiceless”, never mind that a tumblr or Twitter account is free. Suddenly, our lives don’t matter.

When they say “whorephobia isn’t real, it’s just misogyny” this isn’t just a mistake, this is a way for them to claim a unique form of oppression we experience, and take away our language to describe how they oppress us. When they say “whorephobia is a slur” then continue to use words like hookers, prostitutes etc, words we’ve told them repeatedly are slurs, this is an excuse; they want to talk about us as objects and further the oppression and dehumanisation these words perpetuate.

When they tell us horrific stories of violence against sex workers, this is not merely insensitive or an attempt to make us ignorant selfish whores understand, it is a deliberate form of psychological abuse and one they primarily use against those of us who have talked publicly about experiencing rape or violence, especially at work. Beyond the sick gratification they get from reading, recounting and crafting these stories, this tactic is designed to make us look insensitive to violence against women and to trigger us to the point where we have to disengage, which then let’s them claim that they ‘won’.

When they create entire careers and make themselves rich by publishing books filled with butchered statistics and outright lies, this is not merely an ethical issue; it is exploitative. It is pure exploitation and this is demonstrated not only in the flagrantly incorrect statements they make but the fact that they lie to and coerce sex workers into giving them ‘horror stories’. Remember how I mentioned the fact that they attack us with descriptions of horrific violence and badger us about acknowledging problems in the industry then steal and misconstrue our work to suit agenda? This doesn’t just happen on the internet, career feminists from Andrea Dworkin to Gail Dines have done the exact same shit, and they get rich off it. They get rich off exploiting us while writing about our supposed exploitation. Also, fun fact: both of these swerfs collude/d with the extreme right and ‘conservative’ Christian groups, and that’s not an accident either; when they do acknowledge this, which is rare, they say “it’s worth it for The Cause”. In truth, their agenda is closely aligned with those they claim to be against, as are their beliefs.

Nothing they do is accidental. They are not misinformed. They know the laws they push for are killing us, and that’s what they want because they blame us for misogyny and believe we’re betraying other women. They know sex work is predominantly the area of marginalised women, and that works great because it enables them to be racist, ableist and transmisogynist as well while pretending to be oppressing us for our own good.

The only time a swerf has ever told the whole truth is when Julie Bindel said “when the sex war is won, prostitutes should be shot and killed for their terrible betrayal of all women.” While most refuse to address this entirely or deny it claiming it’s a misquote, they reveal themselves when they say “we [women] are all victims of prostitution because of the culture it creates”, in other words “prostitutes oppress Good Women by creating a culture where women are products to be bought and sold”, which more than a few have said outright just to me personally; they’re the victims of the misogyny we – simultaneously mere objects, helpless victims and agents powerful enough to change entire cultures just by doing our jobs – are the perpetrators. It’s not like whorephobia exists right?

They hate us and they want us to die, and their organising is centred around this fact. There are no accidents and no misunderstandings here, the only misunderstanding is when we think they’re just misinformed.