Look: Abolitionism invokes the law as if laws eliminate violence instead of perpetuating it. It holds up some lived experiences as valid, and attacks others. It uses some fucking bonkers logic to justify stepping on people’s agency in the name of “ending violence” (as if violence can be ended) against “women and girls.” (Trans and genderqueer people complicate the gender binary second-wave feminism relies upon and are attacked and dismissed. Second-wave abolitionists are strangely silent on the subject of sexualized violence against trans women sex workers.)
The problem with abolition is not just that sex workers’ supposed lack of agency is fundamental to its ideology— the problem is that it would preclude our ability to express agency at all. Criminalizing our livelihoods puts us exactly where those who would exploit us (and “save” us, and legislate us into the margins) need us to be. This ought to be self-evident. The commodification of sex (and the violence that often accompanies it) exists at the intersection of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy and heteronormativity, and will continue as long as those systems do. Criminalization of johns (and whores by extension) doesn’t do shit to undermine these systems.
Abolitionists argue as if sex workers don’t know that sex work can be and often is violence against women and trans people. No one gets to define sex work to us: not feminists (especially, ugh), not privileged sex workers like me, and not even survivors. Insisting, at a legislative level, that the experiences of sex workers are always rape is a horrifically arrogant denial of agency and of many people’s lived experience.smalltimehooker: Criminalizing sex work does not end sex trafficking.
(bold mine)
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clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead: Look: Abolitionism invokes the law as if laws eliminate violence...
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