Okay so let me be very blunt.
I was a survival sex worker. I sold my body sexually to men for money to put food in my fridge. I chose to do this. And while yes, some women, men and children are trafficked and sold into sexual slavery against their will, more of us do sex work by choice than not.
SWERFs, (Sex Work Exclusionary Feminists) help asshole conservative politicians craft draconian laws that only hurt sex workers and actually help traffickers. They criminalize the purchase of sex across the board with no regard for the people who do the work. They make it easier for traffickers to isolate their prisoners and harder for the unwilling to escape or be helped. And they isolate those of us doing it by choice and make it easier for us to be raped or killed.
Which is ironic since SWERFs and Conservatives claim protecting us from rape is WHY they enact these laws. Except their rhetoric is that ALL sex for money is rape. And that deeply offends me because it erases my agency.
So let me be clear. As a survival sex worker, and as a lesbian, did I enjoy fucking men for money? Did I WANT to be doing it? No, I did not. As a sex worker by choice of my own volition and free will, did I CONSENT to be fucked by those men? YES I FUCKING WELL DID. Were my clients therefore raping me? Well, except for the one who actually did rape and torture me, no, they did not. I offered a service that all but one of those men paid for. I was, at the end of the day, a self-employed woman offering a service for money to keep my kitchen stocked.
Did I love my job? No. But nor do most people. Most employees of, say, the DMV hate their jobs. But they do those jobs willingly. The people who come to get their IDs renewed are certainly not raping them by partaking of their services.
It offends me that SWERFs claim all my clients raped me by giving me money for sex. It outright irritates me that they use that bullshit claim to fearmonger politicians into passing laws that put me and my “co-workers” at greater risk, isolating us, othering us, in some repressed misguided attempt to “protect us”.
To these people I say fuck you, go fuck yourselves you repressed meddling busybodies. YOU are harming us. YOU are making it easier for pimps and traffickers. YOU ARE ISOLATING US. And YOU need to fucking stop telling us what’s best for us and start listening to US.
