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Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Here are some of my thoughts on why violence against sex workers happens and some suggestions for helping to end it:
Violence against sex workers boils down to two things: a woman who demands money for sex is a woman who is saying NO to sex without money. For all of our fancy talk and progress, our society STILL does not wholly support women's right to say NO. Our problem is not just with women charging money for sex, our problem is with women SAYING NO to sex with men unless the men meet conditions set by women.
We still do not wholeheartedly agree that women own their own bodies. We still do not wholeheartedly agree that women should have the right to determine the circumstances under which we choose to allow people access to our bodies. We still think that one woman's individual sexuality is responsible for wreaking havoc on men's behavior, on other women's happiness, and on children everywhere. We still blame individual women's sexual agency for bringing about the downfall of all that's good for the Christians' cause, for the feminists' cause and for unraveling the the moral fabric of society. We still believe women shouldn't be allowed to capitalize on natural resources the way that men do -- we fear the complete disintegration of order in our society if women are allowed to openly capitalize on and dominate the biggest demand in the marketplace.
Violence against sex workers is all about refusing women the right to NOT consent to sex; this refusal is RAPE. We're all (as a society) accessories to rape by not supporting sex worker rights.
Violence against sex workers is violence against women. Violence against sex workers is often an act of angry insistence that women are of no value except what men, their brainwashed handmaidens, certain hysterically irrational feminists, and society place on them or allow them to be, and that a woman who values her body enough to deny someone access to it unless they provide her with money or material compensation is a woman who has stepped so far out of line that she deserves to be punished or committed to the care of Concerned Women who insist no woman in her right and undamaged mind could have chosen sex work willingly.
Gary Ridgeway, The Green River Killer, did not just target prostitutes because he knew crimes against people who work the streets are harder to solve; that makes it sound like he would have been happy killing just about ANYbody when that's not the whole truth. He didn't want to and never did kill homeless veterans or women who consented to having sex with him for free. Gary Ridgeway said, "I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex." That hatred of sex workers and the belief that charging money for sex is loathsome, unjustifiable, immoral, indecent, "devalues" women (the most absurd charge of all), and/or somehow dirties or corrupts a society that would otherwise be asexual outside of the bonds of married love or male ownership permeates our culture and is not unique to serial killers. Gary Ridgeway was able to talk openly with his neighbors about his desire to exterminate prostitutes without them batting a fucking eyelash; chances are you yourself have tolerated similar hate speech without objection when you would certainly have responded differently had the target of the hatred been twelve year old Catholic schoolgirls or boy scouts or soccer moms.
When people say that women's bodies and sex are SO VALUABLE and precious that it's taboo to put a real dollar amount on sex acts, they are talking irrational, brainwashed rubbish, pure and simple. Violence against sex workers is not so much about women charging money for sex as it is about women having the right to WITHHOLD sex and to define the terms under which they will CONSENT to sex. Any of us who deny sex workers the right to set the terms of consent is effectively denying ALL WOMEN their right to consent or not consent to sex. Do not tell me or any other woman that she can only have sex when she loves someone or is attracted to someone or is sex-positively horny for someone or is in the politely prized possession of a husband. Do not tell me or any other woman that she is "too good" to
