Rebecca Mott‘s Speech at Feminism in London’s Conference 2015

« It is great to be speaking here. I am amazed at the hard work and dedication that has gone into creating this event.

I was up and down about being here. This is I find too much of modern feminism is liberal, and speak to the anti-abolitionist language. But I am proud to be here – for this conference has made a strong stance for the Nordic Approach, and made it clear this is not a debate with the sex work lobby.

I speak a radical exited woman who cannot debate when I see and know of a constant genocide of the prostituted class being made normal. This is a genocide that is made invisible by the sex trade profiteers who will replace the dead or discarded prostituted by yet more vulnerable women and girls.

The reason I fight so relentlessly is to speak to the source of this genocide – speak to the creators of this genocide, and speak to who gains from silencing of this horror.

In all cases, we must know that the creators and source of this hate and violence to the prostituted is male demand, and those who supply and profiteer from that demand. That is why I and other exited women fully back the Nordic Approach as a first step to full human rights and dignity for all the prostituted.

We must keep our focus on that male demand, and build a culture where it becomes normal that no man has the entitlement to consume another human just for his sexual greed and porn dreams.

We must see our focus is being thrown off-course by the sex work lobby insisting that it all about the individual choices of prostituted women, or it should spoken in the language of agency or empowerment.

If we want real change, we must know male entitlement is the core of the problem. No male orgasm is more important than the basic human rights of the prostituted.

Punters make the choice to consume the prostituted with the knowledge that he has full permission to as violent as he can imagine. Most punters consume porn, and use the prostituted as their personal porn-toy. This means they will torture her, they will rape or gang-rape her, they threaten her with death or actually murder her.

Punters all violence that they do not to be real violence – for they view the prostituted as sub-human sexual goods. It is nothing that is happening to nothing.

Punters are allowed to exist in this bubble, because we allow the sex work lobby to control the language, imagery and culture of how we can speak to prostitution.

I hate the term sex work. It is a lie. It is mental violence to those of us who have the reality of being prostituted inside every cell of our bodies. It is a language that erases male violence, erases how organised the sex trade is, and erases any access to human rights for the prostituted. Alongside the term sex work, are other terms or lies, such as – empowerment, choice and female liberation. These terms are used to create a cloak over the sex trade, making it appear leftist or even feminist. It hides the fact that prostitution is the most vicious form of capitalism that man has ever invented.

All that matters to the sex trade is to make huge profits – it does not give a damn about the safety, human rights or dignity for the prostituted.

To understand prostitution, you must see inside what it is to be prostituted. For that, I will speak to my personal – always knowing that I had thought was my fault is common practice in indoors prostitution.

I could not know my own reality. I like so current prostituted women, spoke to the language of empowerment, to controlling the punters and being content. I could not allow in my reality – a reality of constant violence, a reality of rape after rape after rape, a reality of being mentally suffocated. Like a toddler, I thought if I shut my eyes hard enough – all the bad stuff would disappear.

But if you had see n me with clear eyes, and not just listen to my words – you would of seen that my eyes were dead, or seen in those eyes so much pain and grief words could not contain them. You would have how still my body was – like a rabbit staring down a shotgun. Would you see that my words had been force-fed into me by male violence.

I had walked into prostitution.

But I was 14, and had live with mental and sexual violence since before I had words. The only emotions I could relate to was self-hate and fury with no expression.

If you view that as free choice, you are living on a different planet from me.

I survived prostitution by killing all my emotions. I murdered all expressions of pain, grief or confusion. I could not let in the reality of how I was being made sub-human, and was being brought and sold as easy as buying bread. I made myself into a robot, I painted on the Happy Hooker smile and learnt to fake orgasms – and hope I would be killed. It seemed the only escape that I could imagine.

That is indoors prostitution in the raw – but really it is just a tiny glimpse of that hell.

Most exited women live inside extreme complex trauma. It is normal for it to take about 3-7 years to face the reality of being prostituted, and how you were made sub-human. Trauma can be life-long for many exited women, it is a shadow that follows them.

This is where the sheer callousness of the sex trade is to be seen. They used that so exited women have extreme trauma to attack us. They will say we are too damaged or mentally ill to know our own realities. They used that many exited women have fragmented memories to say we are misguided or liars.

These personal attacks show the weakness of their viewpoint – for their « facts » are shown to be full or hole, or bare-faced lies.

Try to read and listen to the language of the sex work lobby with a critical brain.

To end, I would say read and listen more to exited women. We are carriers of dangerous truths – truths that will shake the foundations of the sex trade until it becomes dust. Our words, our experiences, and our ability to see and know connections – that is the dynamite that will bring about justice and full human rights for all the prostituted. »