Posted on by jillbrenneman

The coming November 16, 2011 protest against Backpage by CATW, NOW-NYC and Prostitution Research and Education is another example of harmful actions and campaigns by elitist feminist academics against both consenting sex workers and trafficking victims. These alleged feminist activists claim they are fighting human trafficking by protesting Backpage to force the closure of its adult advertising, but his is theatrical garbage activism that is toxic to the very people they purport to be trying to help.

I am a consenting sex worker. I was, at one time, a human trafficking victim. I am still doing sex work in my 40′s because I need the money to pay bills, including medical needs related to multiple blood clots in my lungs; without sex work I could not afford the medical care that I need to survive. It is not the right of alleged feminists to take my income or that of so many of those like me. We work to live and to pay our bills, just like you high and mighty CATW, PRE and NOW-NY activists…well, most of you anyway; many of your ranks are college students that know little about the issues faced by those of us who did not get high school or college options.

Backpage adult advertisers are nearly all independent sex workers who are neither pimped nor trafficked, and shutting down Backpage would eliminate a major advertising venue that we use to stay independent. You would know this if you asked us rather than feigning expertise. We need our jobs and will keep them, but the closure of advertising spaces makes us vulnerable to the very pimps and traffickers that this garbage activism claims to be fighting. When our independence is taken away we become vulnerable to predators that will exploit our labor because we lack options. When I was a teenage trafficking victim and advertising venues closed for whatever reason, I wasn’t freed from prostitution. My sadist pimp didn’t suddenly end my captivity and free me; he just put me on the street instead, which was far more dangerous to my safety and exposed me to the harsh elements. I would truly like to see these supposed experts work the street for weeks in the winter in a northern city and come back and tell me that I was better off because advertising failed and I was out in the cold. Still a slave, just a much colder and much more vulnerable one getting into cars alone.

You high and mighty abolitionist activists disgust me; if you knew anything about this issue you wouldn’t be taking this rubbish approach. Yes, you can trot out your “survivor” activists who were harmed in the sex industry to advance your position, but these survivors are allowing their pain to misguide them into promoting a criminalization model in order to ostensibly end harm to prostitutes by ending prostitution. I, too worked to advance that garbage until I woke up and realized the harm I was causing as an abolitionist filled with the bullshit lies of abolitionist feminism, a movement led by vacuous intellectuals who were never prostitutes and choose to assuage their pain by tearing away the rights of those in the sex industry.

Let me tell you what your efforts to “eliminate” prostitution actually accomplish: You team with law enforcement officers who disingenuously claim to care about trafficking victims but are actually seeking to arrest more prostitutes. We suffer as a result of your alleged “concern”; the risk of arrest keeps us from having access to law enforcement when we are the victims of crime while doing our jobs. Pimps and violent clients know that we can’t go to the police and won’t because we fear the police, getting arrested and all the consequences that come with arrest. We can’t be honest with our doctors when we suffer brutal rapes and assaults because we can’t explain our injuries without exposing ourselves to legal risk. You think that’s a positive? Try having a violent LEO client brutally rape you, suffocate you with a trash bag and hit you in the head so many times that you are taken via ambulance to the ER, incoherent with a major concussion, and are not even able to honestly explain how you were injured.

You think it’s worthwhile abolitionists? Try meeting with a “reputable” businessman who realizes you are legally defenseless and so feels safe in overpowering you, tying you to a bed and beating and sodomizing you with a bamboo cane while forcing you to count the strokes. You take 493 violent blows all over your body as I did; the bastard shoved my underwear and fee into my mouth and left me blindfolded, bleeding and tied to a bed. Please…. Come tell me feminist anti prostitution activists protesting Backpage how I benefit from your activism. Tell the other sex workers who saw me immediately following these assaults if I was better off with your criminalization. And now you wish to further criminalize prostitution AND close our advertising venues. Great. So I and others like me can be criminalized and shoved into the hands of pimps and traffickers. You and your activism disgust me.

Tell me how your efforts helped me or the “submissive girlfriend” of a man who wished to beat her so hard before my eyes that I truly doubted that “girlfriend” actually consented. I’ve seen these people first hand. I’ve been harmed by them. I’ve been absolutely vulnerable to them, and this man was one of them. I could do nothing but reject his offer to hire me; I had no way to report my suspicions to the police without risking arrest myself, and as a prostitute I had zero social credibility even if I did go to the police. Likewise, the “girlfriend” had no protection from being arrested if she was ever found. I went to a friend who is also a police officer and asked for advice, and was told to leave it alone: there wasn’t enough evidence and as a sex worker I wouldn’t be deemed credible enough for law enforcement to take action, yet I would expose myself without helping her. Maybe she will get lucky like I did and get away through a fluke, but it sure as hell won’t be because Backpage was shut down or because we are all made criminals; instead, there will be far more like her. Perhaps some who are independent escorts now will end up like her, brutally harmed because their options for safety were taken away by grandstanding activists and their clueless and self advancing politician and law enforcement allies.

Feminist anti-prostitution activists protesting Backpage: you are harming both consenting sex workers and trafficking victims. You can write all the pretty press releases about fighting trafficking, sexual slavery and pimps that you want to, but I have lived the reality of your “work”. Someone has to expose your lies and self-serving career advancement tactics that harm the rest of us. I have been hurt in the sex industry – a lot – and the hurt continued because I was and am a criminal, deprived of rights. I can call you on your BS from the perspective of someone who has been harmed because of you, and I am happy to do it because you are toxic, harmful frauds. Preach to your choir and get your support there because those of us that are hurt by you know who you are; we know what you are doing and we are paying the price for your toxic activism. Now come tell me how I benefit from your “work”.

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Filed under: Academia, Activism, Arrests, Farley, Feminism, Harassment of Sex Workers, Penguins, Sex Worker Bloggers, Sex Worker Rights |