LIVES LIKE MINE:

While #Radical #Feminists accuse #SexWorker activists of being "cold" and "uncaring" towards the poor victims of human trafficking and some abusive sex trade practices - while they claim to speak for the silenced who can not speak for themselves - when actually confronted by an immigrant woman of color who has previous experience with poverty and living on the street, their reaction to such a voice attempting to speak for herself is to harass, demean, condescend, and silence that voice.

While they dismiss all #SexWorker activist voices as being privileged and non-representative, they do not subject themselves to the same critique.

What I can reasonably gather from my interaction with such "radical feminists" is that they are largely composed of unreasonable, abusive, and hypocritical Global North woman with a bad case of the White Savior Complex: perpetuators of violence against true grassroots organizers, women of color, people from the Global South, and marginalized peoples from various communities (including drug-users, people with mental illness, disabled, migrant workers, trans women, and the working poor) who try to speak for ourselves.

The fetishization of the chaste victim is a form of sexual sensationalism that dwells on and exploits the narratives of suffering, to soothe the condescending imaginations of the First World feminist mind.

In Canada, 20% of sex workers are streetworkers, and 80% are NOT. Streetworkers are a minority of sex workers. The working conditions of the 20% of streetworkers are indeed complicated by drug use and other dependencies. When street workers speak for themselves about their experiences with drug use and mental illness, their voices are dismissed when it does not come out of a repenting narrative of victimisation. Meanwhile, sex worker activist organisations that conduct much needed peer outreach, such as PEERS in Vancouver and YWEP in Chicago, are denied funding and subsequently closed down. Our work is discounted in favor of condescending social work professionals who better incorporate the poor into mainstream institutions of rehabilitation, repentance, and re-appropriation of narrative.

This is unacceptable. This is against the core principles of Feminism. This is a problem that the all free-thinking members of society who believe in human rights and human dignity, need to pay attention to. Its a problem that direly needs to be addressed.