[LAF] [allgendergroup] SWOU

[VolodyA! V Anarhist]

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> I wonder if this is why I hear no response when I post to allgender and
> LAF first hand experiences*.  I now wonder if since you met some sex
> workers firsthand you have formed the idea that all other first hand
> experiences which "talk about how they envision their fight for a better
> life," but which differ from the ones of the people you met in person,
> are not by "people, who were actual people" but by "robots or victims
> talked about by anti-sex-workers."

No, that would be incorrect to summarise my thinking this way. I was contrasting
how i see sex workers against how feminist and mainstream society tells me to
see them.

For example, if the trafficed and abused sex worker wants help from the current
UK government one must not only stop working in the sex industry, but also write
lengthy statements denouncing everybody the particular person came in contact
with. In the event that the individual refuses to see somebody as 100% abuser,
that individual is deported and we never hear from them. This does happen, as
most individuals who are trafficed for the purposes of working in the sex
industry, come to work in the sex industry *consensually*, but are lied about
the conditions of work, etc.

So to state it again. I see all the sex workers as complete individuals who can
make choices, some of those choices lead to the outcomes they have not expected,
and some of those individuals are denied the right to make the choices (by
trafficers or by anti-sex feminists), but they have the potential to make those
choices, and their choices about their own lives must be respected.

>  First of all, I wonder what you mean
> by "robots".

"Robots" is how anti-sex feminists describe sex workers. For example by talking
about they only "servicing men" and refusing to acknowledge other parts of their
mind.

>  Secondly, I wonder what you mean by "victims" and why
> someone who is a victim must be despised on a par with a robot.  These
> ways of speaking about people are dehumanising.

Yes and this dehumanisation is used by anti-sex feminists to step up and take
the lead role in determining what sex workers want or should want. Because if
the fundamentalist wing of radical feminism will accept the sex workers in their
midst as equals they will quickly be told that the rhetoric used is dehumanising.

The question of why our society sees somebody who is a 'victim' as unable to
make their own decisions, is a long one. ACT UP activists talk about it all the
time when they refuse to be "dying of AIDS" but want to be "living with AIDS",
that distinction summarises the impossibility for our society to see somebody on
their 'death bed' from making choices about their life.

> There does seem to be a tendency lately that someone can be dismissed as
> a victim, as if that is something to be despised rather than despising
> the perpetrator(s). 

Yes, i agree. But the perpetrators in what i was talking about are
fundamentalist and anti-sex feminists. I wouldn't want to really "despise"
anybody, however. I believe that in some very strange way those groups honestly
believe that they are helping all the sex workers, and combined with my belief
that thought is action, i must respect at least the goal.

> For example, when we look back in history we
> would I think agree that there were many victims of the Holocaust of
> WWII.  No legitimate view of those victims would decide that said
> victims deserved their fate, or wallowed in it, or were asking for it,
> or deserved it, or were slow-witted to allow it to happen to them.  In
> other words reasonable people accept that there was nothing the victims
> of the Holocaust could have done to escape and that the ones who did
> manage to escape had done everything they could to resist the atrocity
> (just like the ones who did not manage to escape) and usually managed to
> escape with help from other people.  Recently, however, a point of view
> has arisen that it is shameful to be a victim (the perpetrator seems to
> have disappeared from the equation) and that if someone is referred to
> as a victim then they are being infantilised and having their "agency"
> taken away from them.  I do agree that it feels very shaming to be a
> victim but I do not think that saying actually I wanted that myself and
> brought it on or I decided to do that and went into it willingly changes
> things in the long run, only in the short run because at least I can
> feel less helpless/victimised because I chose my situation rather than
> someone else choosing it for me.  The perpetrator is the one who should
> accept responsibility because they are the one who chose their behaviour
> and who exercised their agency.  In the long run it is better to
> challenge the behaviour of the perpetrator(s), and challenge the system
> which perpetuates the opportunity for abuse.  For example, rape is
> commonly seen as something that, if it happens, was either chosen by or
> could have been prevented by the person who was raped.  Now this is
> counter to the facts and if we pretend otherwise, for the possible
> short-term benefit to the woman or man who was sexually assualted (so
> they can tell themselves that, for example, if they did such-and-such
> next time or said such-and-such they will be ok and that therefore they
> were ultimately responsible that this time they didn't manage to avoid
> it) then things will not only stand still, but worsen, because no-one
> will take rape seriously, saying that if it happens the person it
> affected was clumsy or thoughtless and caused it to happen or at least
> allowed it to happen.

This is the example of what i am talking about. You compare sex work with the
holocaust, and this is not only an exaggeration (and quite a big one) but also
proves that you refuse to listen to what the sex workers are saying themselves.
For example there are numerous sex workers who have in the past been trafficed,
and who go and chose to work themselves in the sex industry, and even those who
do not can tell the difference between being trafficed and not being trafficed,
between being abused and not being abused. But yet where is that essential
characteristic in holocaust? Have there been people who have chosen to be put in
concentration camps? Has the significant proportion of escapees built their own
camps for themselves? It is laughable to make that comparison as soon as you
stop seeing sex workers as automatons and look at them as complete sapient
(thinking) beings with their own lives.

> *as an example I re-send one tape of firsthand reports from sex workers
> who do "talk about how they envison their fight for a better life" as I
> have twice before sent a link to this video of firsthand reports to
> allgender group but it seems to have been unremarked upon so far:
> http://www.womenlobby.org/site/video_en.asp
> 
> Joy

The lack of reply is because i normally go through e-mails at home (i download
all the messages and then reply to them offline) thus i am personally unable to
check links in the e-mails.

                       - Volodya

>> Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 23:46:52 +0100
>> From: Volodya at WhenGendarmeSleeps.org
>> To: allgendergroup at lists.riseup.net; laf at lists.aktivix.org
>> Subject: [allgendergroup] SWOU
>>
> Hello, brothers, sisters, etc,
> 
> Sorry for not doing my reports on the All Genders Group recently, i
>> have been
> either missing the meetings or too busy to actually sit down and write
>> something
> about them. But i really am excited about the last "failed meeting" so
>> here are
> my memories and two zloty.
> 
> The last scheduled meeting was on April 5, but the room was booked by
>> the Sex
> Worker Open University. At first they have told us that the upstairs
>> room was
> actually not being used, but we have decided that it would be great to
>> join in
> on the fun. It was too late to take part in the current round of the
>> workshops
> (we didn't want to disturb the participants just to get 15 minutes of the
> discussion), so we have waited for the last actual workshop before the
>> final
> wrap-up one. In the mean time we have discussed some issues upstairs,
>> talking
> about things like sexual education in schools...
> 
> I was very excited to partake in the SWOU, even though i was quite
>> upset that i
> have missed two days of it by then (if i'd have known i would be able
>> to get
> there at least on saturday for a couple of workshops). However, my
>> hopes were
> crushed by the fact that the organiser of the workshop has made a
>> decision to
> make it primarily for self-identified sex workers, asking the rest of
>> the people
> to organise something on their own. Although there was a subject that got
> proposed for use ("How can non-sex workers help sex worker struggle")
>> it was
> pretty clear that the discussion wasn't going to go there. I should
>> mention that
> there was a documentary being made of the event... and our little
>> self-organised
> workshop was being filmed. We did start talking about a paper which i
>> have sent
> out to the list (i actually thought that this was the idea for our
>> meeting for
> people to propose something to discuss, like a paper), as it was directly
> relevant to sex workers and how some radical feminists oppose them.
>> However,
> that conversation didn't get very far, i have a feeling other people
>> weren't
> very interested, and when another person has arrived who made a point
>> that there
> should be no filming the group turnt into a counceling session.
> 
> Now the wrap-up workshop for the SWOU has actually made my day. I
>> really needed
> to have this experience, of having people, who were actual people, and not
> robots or victims talked about by anti-sex-workers, talk about how
>> they envision
> their fight for better life. The room was full of individuals from
>> different
> parts of the world, most of them radical (anarchists, feminists, other
> activists) speaking with the increadible energy and strength, even
>> when their
> language was disallowing them from speaking as poetically as they
>> wanted. They
> have discussed what they found good about the Open University, and how to
> organise for the future, unfortunately i had nothing to contribute to
>> their
> discussion, since this was my first contact with SWOU. I really do
>> hope that
> this is not the last time that i see these increadible comrades organising
> something like this, and hopefully next time i will know of this
>> earlier on.
> 
> - Volodya
> 
> P.S. I have booked the room for next time, so there shouldn't be any
>> problems,
> but we do overlap with the new Queer Activist Group which got formed,
>> maybe we
> can intermingle with them some time.
> 
>>

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