I’m against criticising fanfic for being problematic because I’ve so rarely seen it done well, and so often seen it be destructive to young writers and to communities and to healthy conversation, that it’s probably better to just say “don’t like it, don’t read it”.
But I’m amazed that no one who is enthusiastic about criticising problematic fanfic says anything about what is objectively the most problematic fanfic, which is “character A is a sex worker and character B saves him and then he quits sex work and they fall in love” fics. Like, that’s perpetuating an actually really harmful message to an audience that actually mostly doesn’t know better, the people writing it often pretty much believe in the message as presented and basically never problematize it (also, none of them use the phrase ‘sex worker’), the characters are mostly morose caricatures who lament how they “fell so far” as to be “selling their body”, and there are disappointingly few subversions in which the sex worker is not, in fact, miserable and abused or brainwashed or enslaved (or in which they want to stay in sex work after Falling in Love.)
and seriously:
police departments will often do mass arrests of sex workers specifically for the good PR. It’s good PR because people believe that the sex workers are helpless and in need of rescuing, but these rescues basically never make their lives better and often involve horrific violations of human rights. Treating sex work like a dangerous addiction you can save people from results in abuses of the people involved. Sex workers don’t think or speak in terms of ‘selling their body’, which is bullshit anyway; like everyone else, sex workers sell their time and labor. And you shouldn’t date a sex worker in the hope that, once they fall in love with you, they’ll “see they’re worth more than that” and switch careers.
ending state violence against people involved in sex work (by legalizing it) is really important. stopping the hot fanfic in which the narratives that serve that state violence are used to fuel plot is less so. but I still find it unpleasant to run across, and it’d be cool if writers would throw in a scene that reflects the actual biggest source of violence and risk in the industry: the police.
From what I understand, legalizing the selling and the purchasing of sex work has not reduced abuses and human trafficking in Amsterdam. However, legalizing the selling of sex work but criminalizing its purchase has reduced abuses in Sweden.
(This observation is corroborated both by the linked article and by Professor Bridgette Carr, who runs the human trafficking clinic at the University of Michigan).
And while both she and the article would agree with you that legalizing the selling of sex work is important (and would certainly agree that that fanfic trope is Bad), imo it’s important to make the distinction.
Nah, I support full legalization. First of all, “trafficking” laws are written so broadly that “I helped my sex worker roommate make rent” or “I drove my sex worker partner to a hotel for their work” can make you a sex trafficker; “rate of sex trafficking” is not a useful or meaningful statistic if you’re interested in the safety and rights of the people involved. People think “trafficking” means “being forced into sex work against your will”, but a vanishingly small share of trafficking arrests have anything to do with that.
Sweden’s model doesn’t make sex workers safer. It still means that there’s no way to screen clients or spread the word about dangerous or manipulative ones, it still means that sex workers can be subject to police raids, and sex workers mostly oppose it. Also, as @2centjubilee observed, it hasn’t lowered rates of violence or abuse against sex workers, and your link itself doesn’t say it does.
Likewise the study you linked doesn’t say anything about abuses or the rate of “human trafficking” (which, remember, doesn’t mean forced sex as often as it means ‘assisting sex workers in finding clients’ ) in Amsterdam.
Also, saying that “the rate of sex work has gone down” is the metric by which the success of an intervention is measured is bullshit. Why should sex work go down? Sex work is fine. I don’t oppose state violence against sex workers because I think then it’ll be easier to rescue them from their tragic and/or sinful careers. I don’t want to “end demand”. I just want people to be able to have consensual sex with others for money without any state violence on either end.
Also, in Finland it’s even “trafficking” for two sex workers to work together. The laws are trying to ostracize sex workers out of the legal economy, isolate them from any support and security, and basically do everything to destroy them that isn’t outright banning them. Full decriminalization and deregulation, as regulation itself segregates the work into the law-abiding and legitimate, and the marginalized.
2 months ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time #steel feminism · 169 notes · source: theunitofcaring · .permalink
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