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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