Listen to the sex workers – but which ones? - Helen Lewis - The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/09/listen-to-sex-workers-but-which-ones?CMP=share_btn_tw
According to the prevailing tide of internet feminism, it is easy to tell who is right. You simply look at who is speaking. “Stay in your lane, rich ladies,” sniped a writer at Feministing. “People who trade sex need people to listen to them. And they don’t need you.” But framing the debate this way is absurdly misleading. It conveniently ignores that the Amnesty letter wasn’t only signed by Dunham – she is not the sole arbiter of feminism in 2015, whatever 1,000 overwrought blogs would have you believe. It was also endorsed by charities, academic researchers and those who style themselves as “prostitution survivors”. These are women with direct experience of the sex trade who believe it is intrinsically demeaning and harmful.
And there it is, the problem with the injunction to “listen to sex workers”. Yes, policy debates are too often conducted on Mount Olympus, far from the lives of those affected by them. We should be alert to that. But from this moderate premise blooms an alcopinion. If we are ordered to listen to sex workers, the obvious retort must be: which ones?
