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i think what's unfortunate about the thread of empowerment in current/mainstream political sex worker discourse is that it obscures the very real fact that many of us are already impoverished before entering the trade.
they discuss this part of history in the introduction to SPREAD. whores basically had to choose who to align with; feminists for whom "is cheating abusive?" and "hypergamy 2.0., yes?" OR self-proclaimed abolitionists who believe whores have no agency under patriarchy.
it is this idea-- that sex work is spiritually empowering, combined with the idea of our divine feminine ability to heal or con men via goodpussy or one's feminine wiles-- that gives women *outside of the sex trade* the nerve to fix their lips to speak on "hoe economics."
this doesn't mean that sex work cannot be empowering. but it is a very real truth that many of us got into the trade for the obvious: because we needed money. and many of us are fighting for rights, justice, and harm reduction. but just as many are just trying to pay bills.
i see civilian women speak on "hoe economics" often but they don't know any of the stats or the ins and outs of different areas of the industry at all. they don't know what a regular, average income looks like. they believe that we age out of erotic labor.
i see cis women get a lot of room to compare themselves to working whores because of patriarchal misogyny. i think we should vigorously shut them down. they are whorephobic, transphobic, and biphobic, and they're willfully ignorant to our struggles-- this includes many feminists.
a lot of cis women constantly punch down at whores. I've watched them laugh at violence against us. I've seen them claim that any man (though many of us do not solely partner with men and some are non-monogamous) who "benefits" from our income is a pimp. they are feds.
anyway, this always: https://twitter.com/thotscholar/status/1182068407119822848?s=19
y'all don't see sex work as "real work" until you suddenly wanna clock who has "poor pussy management" (and thus is failing at life/capitalism). all of us aren't exceptional/empowered but that's the narrative y'all thrive on because, American exceptionalism.
some of y'all think like this yet follow me anyway, and i can't understand why. whoring and whore's money is not separate from the general economy. we are human and some of us are poor and that's not a reflection of our worth, nor is our worth measured in rich husbands.
