Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, so let's talk about how we can do this. It starts with recognizing and respecting some basic concepts:

1.) Sex work is voluntary labor. It is not trafficking. Sex work & sex trafficking are not the same. (1/?)

2.) Sex work encompasses several items: physical sex; phone/virtual sex; sexting; erotic dancing and massage; pornography; erotic writing; stripping and burlesque; creating/manufacturing/selling erotic and sexual items. From having sex to selling sex toys, it's sex work. (2/?)

3.) Sex work is labor. Sex workers, in order to be competitive in a capitalist market of any kind, have to perform well in their chosen area of expertise. Labor deserves compensation, as does expertise.

4.) There is a demand for sex workers. This is possibly the most important point for a bunch of you to understand. I don't care if you're in relationships or not--partnered people are some of the most avid consumers of sexual labor. (4/?)

4a.) Are you watching/reading erotica? Do you frequent OnlyFans or Pornhub? Considering experimenting with plugs and need to find a supplier? Congrats--you are partaking in the sexual economy and are proving the demand for the supply. Sex work deservers compensation. (5?)

5.) Sex workers are not just women. Men are sex workers, too. You don't think of them as sex workers because you are not taught that you can consume men, and that's ingrained sexism and bias at work. (6/?)

6.) The reason that modern societies by & large do not consider sex work as such is because it's primarily associated with women, and women are not respected by society at large. You are taught that you can consume us for no compensation because you control us inherently. (7?)

7.) In western society, marriage has been used to guarantee sex for men, theoretically in exchange for material comfort for women. This reality of the unspoken expectations for marriage (blanketed over by 19th-century insistence on romantic love) has led to the comparison of

Marriage to sex work--for women only. So here again, women are to be consumed but not men (and women, generally, do not get to consume men in marriage--women typically disappear as a legal appendage of men in marriage. Fight your culture, not me, on this fact). (8/8a/?)

8.) Sex work is labor that deserves to be compensated because compensation is what determines capital worth and legal value, at least in US society. So without recognized validity and compensation, THAT makes sex workers vulnerable to abusers (individual and state). (9/?)

9.) Violence against sex workers rages because sex workers are not inherently "respectable" because our society wants to control sex (i.e. women's sexuality) on the assumption that men are entitled to sex & women, but also because "men" as a class aren't marginalized. (10/?)

10.) Men as a class are taught that the marginalized are there for the using and abusing, and that they alone are the arbiters of respectability for others, which sets sex workers (especially women) outside of the parameters to deserve compensation and physical safety. (11/?)

11.) The most vulnerable sex workers are trans women of color, based on the aforementioned refusal to recognize sex sold by women as legitimate, voluntary, desired services and because of racism and homophobia besides. The state and individuals harm them with impunity. (12/?)

12.) Sex workers deserve our social, cultural, and legal protection because our society and culture in fact pivot on their labors. In order for sex workers to be afforded their human and civil rights, however, you have to accept the facts of this thread. (13/13)

Fin.