File spoon-archives/marxism-feminism.archive/marxism-feminism_1997/marxism-feminism.9708, message 31


Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 10:57:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tracy Quan <quan-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-FEM: Queer Kids and the...Libertarianism/Individualism


For 25 years, the sex workers movement blathererd on about feminist
issues. This is old hat for us.

We're all aware of the different trends in feminism -- I formed a women's
group in my high school in 1973, and was deeply embroiled in internecine
feminist cat fights for a decade after that. This bit about how feminism
is really factionalized and diverse -- if whore activists don't know that,
who does? We've played politics with Dworkin/Barry/MacKinnon, with CLR
James's widow (Selma), with NOW, FACT, and so on. We were at the Beijing
Women's Conference (and we had our first blood-soaked factional split of
our own at the women's conference in Copenhagen in 1980 -- or ws it '81?) 

Framing sex work as a women's issue marginalizes the sex workers who are
not women. It also scapegoats or ignores the rights of customers -- who
are largely male. 

I don't necessarily see it as a labor issue, btw. But many sex workers 
do, and I've been trying to show how diverse and factionalized *our*
movement is -- perhaps moreso than the feminist movement.

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, malgosia askanas wrote:

> It depends on what kind of feminism you're looking at.  "Feminism" is not
> some kind of a unified movement or area of endeavor; there are different
> feminisms.  I agree with you that the important sex-work issues are labor
> issues.  To the extent to which this type of labor is predominantly done
> by women, this labor issue is also a feminist issue.  The fact that the
> kind of feminism that is most vocal in the US approaches the issue from
> the perspective of "image and emotion" is hardly surprising -- it is rooted
> in the ideology of the status quo. 
> 
> -m 
> 
> 



   

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