Besides the anti-trans stuff, is it bad that I agree with a lot of what radfems say? Like for example, I think the porn industry is very evil and some people aren’t critical of it enough, as sites like PornHub facilitate trafficking and the existence of violent acted-out porn itself has awful affects on men and women alike for different reasons (though I wouldn’t blame any individual sex worker for this).
Radfems will sometimes say things that, on their face, make sense, but fall apart as soon as you start looking further into them. Their anti porn points are a good example. The porn industry is abusive. Performers are underpaid and taken advantage of both financially and sexually. Tube sites do make it way too easy for people to upload videos of csa or sexual assault, and there's evidence of this happening on many occasions. A lot of people (esp young men) do learn all the wrong lessons about sex from porn and develop an unhealthy relationship with sex because of it.
The issue is that radfems believe that these problems are inherent to porn, rather than the product of other societal forces. Performers are abused so frequently both because the institutions meant to protect victims of sexual assault and workplace abuse are woefully bad at serving their intended fuctions, and because these performers are not respected as workers to begin with. Despite how many people watch porn on a regular basis, performers are not viewed as "real" workers doing "real" work, because what they are doing is stigmatized by a misogynistic, puritanical society. People develop toxic attitudes about sex from watching porn because sex education doesn't teach you what is and isn't normal or pleasurable during sex and people do not communicate with their partners about what they actually want. The problems with porn do not exist because porn in and of itself is misogynistic, they exist because porn, like everything else in our society, is affected by patriarchy.
There's no way to make rape a job. Being raped isn't work. Filming it does not make it work. Being raped is not labor.
Money is power. Using power to get sex is rape. Porn is rape on tape.
"Under capitalism all labor is coerced!" Yes, and what do you call coerced sex? That's rape.
If you don't want to have the sex itself, you only want the money, you're being raped. If you dissociate and go somewhere else mentally, you're being raped. If you need cocaine or other drugs to get through a scene, you're being raped.
Prostitution is rape. Filmed Prostitution is still rape.
Jacking off to rape desensitizes you.
Oh so now the crossdressing moid who makes YouTube shipping videos for children’s cartoon shows is now some “expert” on how porn ACTUALLY doesn’t harm women and children? Shut the fuck up, male
"Radfems will sometimes say something that almost makes sense like 'women don't deserve to be raped on camera in order to eat,' but what they REALLY mean is 'we refuse to put male desire or priorities ahead of women being exploited' 🥺"
This is such a fucking false equivalence I don't even know where to start. The way this is phrased perfectly encapsulates why the radfem arguments around sex work don't make sense because you're right, all labor is coerced under capitalism. And yet, when people discuss other forms of labor, they never suggest that a particular form of labor should be outright banned in the short term.
You could argue that restaurants and coffee shops and theme parks are just as unnecessary to the functioning of society as sex work. Plenty of people have been traumatized by workplace injuries and customer or management abuse working at these places. And yet no one ever says we should make restaurants or coffee shops or theme parks illegal. For all of these jobs, leftists generally agree that the solution is worker control and removing the threat of homelessness and starvation. Because if the workers own the means of production (or at the very least have a strong union) and have a social safety net in place to prevent them from dying on the street if they lose their job, suddenly the fact that they're getting paid to do something isn't so coercive anymore!
And YET radfems never apply the same logic to sex work! The possibility that sex workers could have a union or own their own materials or that if we had a functioning social safety net people wouldn't be forced to do sex work they didn't want to never crosses these people's minds!!!
And the reason for that is not because sex work is uniquely evil and traumatizing, it's because they think sex itself is uniquely evil and traumatizing, which is just blatantly untrue for the vast majority of the population.
Criminalization is not the solution. It does not solve the core problem (late stage capitalism) and in fact it creates a new one. Because, as we've learned from Prohibition and the War on Drugs, outlawing a vice industry does not kill the vice industry, it just pushes it underground and makes it way more dangerous for all involved. Even if you reply to all my earlier points with "yeah good luck dismantling capitalism" or whatever, legalized or decriminalized sex work, in the short term, is dramatically better for sex workers (the people radfems allegedly want to protect) than making the industry fully illegal. Literally any prostitute will tell you that their lives would be dramatically better if they didn't have to be constantly looking over their shoulders for the cops. Making porn illegal would just exacerbate all the existing problems with the industry, because it would only serve to remove what limited protections the state offers to sex workers.
In conclusion: sex work is real work and should be treated as such. If you are anti sex work, it is because you are anti sex.
Also I haven't made a ship video in like a year, give me a break!!!!!
[ID: a gif of singer Ariana Grande, saying "and what about it?" before turning around and walking away, hands on her hips. /end ID].
