[LAF] Feminism and Whores by Douglas Fox

[VolodyA! V Anarhist]

Feminism and Whores is an article written by Douglas Fox, a sex-worker activist, 
which talks about an internalisation of the patriarcal bigotry by many parts of 
the contemporary feminist movement. The author discusses the roots of oppression 
of a sex worker and how important it is to recognise the empowering elements of 
sex work, while at the same time fighting against human trafficing and abuse 
within the sex industry.

This is not an article that is written from an anarchist perspective, but an 
author non-the-less tries to highlight the importance of individual freedom for 
each person.

==Link==
* http://www.iusw.org/node/69

==Text==
Once upon a time Feminism was the natural bed fellow of the civil rights 
movement, the gay liberation movement and the human rights movement. As a gay 
man I felt a natural empathy with feminists and their struggle against the 
common enemy the patriarchal system that oppressed gay people and women and men 
equally. I remember the slogans like “Make Love Not war” as capturing and 
epitomising a moment of idealism that could change the world. Now however 
instead of all lovers of liberalism and all idealists standing together resolute 
in the face of growing fundamentalism and radicalism we are divided.

It is a sad realisation that advocates for liberalism in thought and deed today 
find themselves oppressed by feminists or at least by those who have adopted the 
feminist mantle as a cloak to hide their true intent. Those comrades have now 
adopted the very mantle of the patriarchal system that feminism once battled 
against and have become patriarchal apologists. The patronising and disingenuous 
war waged by those who have adopted the feminist Cause and who have corrupted it 
into a radical ideology of oppression is especially obvious in the anti sex work 
rhetoric of Melissa Farley, Julie Bindel and Cath Elliot. They have perhaps been 
duped by the system or perhaps they have duped true feminists.

By attacking sex workers and equating sex work with rape and as universal abuse 
of women they ignore that true feminism is about empowering all individuals, 
both men and women and supporting all regardless of gender or sexual orientation 
or choice of labour. The ideal of the feminist struggle was surely a realisation 
that we are all oppressed by a system that equally traps men as it does women in 
assuming roles that maintains a status quo which allows a patriarchal hierarchy 
to flourish and which dismisses individual liberty of thought as dangerous and 
sexual freedom as decadent.

It is no coincidence that whores and gays equally have historically been the 
scapegoats for a society that enforced prescribed and rigid gender roles that 
severely constricted sexuality. Society enforced social conformity through 
religion and class while punishing by law and social exclusion those who do not 
easily fit false societal norms.

Whores and gays challenge the hierarchal hegemony that equally stifles 
individualism while fearing uncontrolled sensuality. Sex is perhaps the 
strongest human impulse. The patriarchal sex quilt trip and legal penalties 
imposed on sexual behaviour is because of a realisation that sexual liberation 
is about more than allowing an unchecked libido free reign. Sexual freedom 
challenges the rigidly prescribed norms of the patriarchal system that defines 
men and women equally, imprisoning them in roles that support and perpetuate the 
oppression of that system. Sex is not always about duty and nor should it always 
be about confirming societal expectations that effectively produces machines who 
fornicate only in prescribed socially engineered and unchallenging 
institutionalised parameters. Love and sex are powerful and wonderful emotions. 
They are experiences that the patriarchal system fears and has corrupted into 
structures that are often intrinsically violent.

Men have been traditionally marshalled into harsh and emotionally stifling 
institutions where they are encouraged to conform and to view sex either as a 
shameful weakness or as a means of control while women have been corrupted into 
believing that their sexual impulses are intrinsically morally corrupting and 
therefore dangerous. Both men and women have equally been duped into making war 
on themselves and to deny sexual gratification in order to maintain a society 
that perpetuates sexual oppression as a means of control.
Just as gay sex defines gay men because it is a hedonistic act that is not about 
reproduction or class but rather a definition of existence and the joy of that 
existence then whores equally challenge the institutionalising of women as 
wives, mothers or virgins. Sexual liberation is a rebellion against the rigid 
prescribed normality of the patriarchal state that produces unthinking and 
blinkered cannon fodder and is the exact opposite to the free thinking 
individuality that once feminists and gays and liberals jointly adhered to in 
order to challenge patriarchy and its assumptions on gender and the roles of men 
and women in society.

When Julie Bindel and her friends use the feminist label to attack whores and 
their clients they are not liberating women but rather redefining the 
patriarchal mantra of conformity to their prescription of narrow gender roles 
and thus redrawing the stereotyped scapegoat of the pervert and the fallen 
woman. Is it surprising that so many young women reject any association with 
feminism when feminism in the hands of some has assumed the role of oppressor?

When radical feminists stereotype all men as oppressive rapists and predators 
who objectify women while at the same time castigating whores both as victims 
and accommodators to male aggression they are literally reiterating age old 
stereotypes that are unjust to men and infantilise women as weak and powerless. 
The truth is that men are not predatory rapists and whores do not 
institutionalise the sexual objectification of women. Julie Bindel and her 
colleagues deliberately confuse and hyper emotionalise societal guilt by 
reaffirming age old prejudices. When Julie Bindel refers to the vaginas of 
prostitutes as “Spittoons for male seamen” it seems to me that she is vocalising 
a deep rooted misogyny with in herself that is alarming for one so vocal in 
establishing herself as a voice for the feminist movement. Confusing the horrors 
of modern human trafficking with the wrongs with in an industry as stigmatised 
and criminalised as the sex industry is not soliciting universal liberation for 
women but simply re packaging and re branding prejudice and shame and confirming 
institutionalised intolerance.

Many leading radical feminist have too easily assumed the mantle of “good women” 
who instruct rather than listen. They rejoice in encouraging the law to infringe 
on individual liberty and choice and in denying labour rights to men and women 
who refuse to kneel to their oppressive liturgy of intolerance. True feminists 
would embrace the whore and understand the power of the whore and understand 
that far from epitomising male violence the whore challenges social oppression 
of both men and women by refusing to conform to narrow oppressive role 
prescriptions.

The radical feminism espoused by those who negate whores and pimps and johns are 
by their attacks doing nothing radical. What they do is reinforce the prejudice 
that supports the traffickers and abusive pimps and the degrading conditions 
often unfairly associated with sex work. When they deny the possibility of 
alternatives and refuse to listen to sex workers and use negative language that 
stereotypes sex work they are not liberating women but upholding an abusive 
legislature and discriminatory culture. When Julie Bindel and friends choose to 
distort the realities of the experiences of the majority of sex workers they 
support rather than challenge the patriarchy that also allows the abusers in the 
sex industry to prosper. Arguing for and encouraging social exclusion and legal 
abuse against sex workers secures both the radical feminists in their distortion 
of the truth and allows them to secure arguments by attempting to wipe out the 
conditions that would allow alternative working conditions for sex workers to 
flourish. This is the exact opposite to the liberal idealism from which modern 
feminism was born.
Thus Radical feminism is anything but radical but rather a betrayal.

Douglas Fox, Sex Worker Activist



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