Some thoughts regarding the Gawker article “Sex Workers Rights are Rights for All Women”
Sex Worker: a person whose work involves sexually explicit behavior; especially : prostitute (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
When you enter into sex work, your body changes. That is to say, you begin to view your body differently and inevitably, the reality you exist in around and in relation to your body morphs into something new. You begin to realize that your body is no longer your own. But then…you begin to wonder if it ever was. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, since it send the mind whirling…it sends your mind off to wonder if its body may have belonged to any number of figures in your life, be they real or imaginary.
I think it’s funny how people talk about “sex workers” as though they’re not talking about “women.” I could go into the invisibility of non-gender assigned female sex workers, but I mean to point out here: we talk about female sex workers like their apparitions, like they’re “non-female.” That women’s issues are different than whore issues.
Well, I’m not going to directly posit that all women are raised to be “sex workers,” though, on some level, I do believe that to be true. Of course, not all women become sex workers, at least not in name or in professional choice, and I’m sure most women would only acknowledge that statement with a mixture of horror and disgust, but they still tow a certain line that looks a whole lot like hooking yourself. For this reason, I will be bold enough to say that women are trained to prostitute themselves, their being, the things about them that are “profitable,” to the world.
Women are, in fact, raised (if not by their families, then by society as a whole), to be very aware of the fact that they have to give up a little bit more than everyone else does. They are raised to know that if they’re not pretty, life will be that much harder. And for those who aren’t pretty, if they aren’t actively trying to be pretty, life will also be hard. They are reared to know that if they chose their own interests before others, before the high calling of being objectified and commodified and really, used by other people, their fathers and their boyfriends and their lovers will love them a little bit less. They are meant to know, deep down, that their bodies are never truly their own, because someone’s going to own them just a little bit more than they own themselves, always.
I feel my self being sucked away from me every day: when I walk in front of a group of men on the street, when a man introduces himself to my chest, when a male doctor talks over a female one in front of me. We roll our eyes and sigh when women bring these things up, because it’s old (so old), and after all, what can we do to stop it? Then we turn around and throw every whore, bitch, cunt under the train that we can, hoping that the sacrifice of their bodies will somehow save our own.
Sex work is not the problem, but (and this is a big but) it is part of the problem. That’s what few people who are sex worker advocates want to admit. Sex work is just a grosser display of what we all know to be true: sex workers just throw its truth right smack in your face. (Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks). Well, I think we should champion the rights of sex workers because we should champion the rights of all women. When we say that a sex worker is being poorly treated at her job, that she is subjected to the rules of men, we say this because all women are towing the very same lines. We say this because sex workers stand at the front lines of a war that all women fight. Sex workers stand with their sexuality teased outwards, in declaration, while other women are taught to hide their sexuality, protect it from the world as long as they can, til the inevitable feast on their beings, in whatever form that might take.
One of the most basic tenets of sex work is that your body is not your own, it’s your commodity. In sex work, your body is your workplace, the glowing hearth from which all your monetary fires burn. So when I say “all women are whores,” that is precisely what I mean. Any woman who has to consider how much cleavage to show (or not show) at her place of work should know what I mean. I left sex work because I wanted my own body back, because I was sick of giving it to other people in exchange for rent, clothes, admiration or acclaim. But I am no fool and I am not confused about the fact that I have not escaped the grasping hands of sexual need that clutch at my being, regardless of my status of “retired whore” or not.
