Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten. – José Bergamín
Every so often a reader will stun me by objecting to my vilification of neofeminist prohibitionists with a statement like, “feminists just want equality” or “feminists want women to have choices” or even “feminists aren’t anti-sex”, which causes me to wonder where exactly that reader has been living his whole life that he’s never had to endure the kind of anti-sex venom which is spewed forth by the likes of Dworkin, MacKinnon, Farley, Jeffreys et al. He can’t possibly have read this blog very often, else he would’ve seen my descriptions of neofeminist rhetoric in columns like “A Short Glossary of Prohibitionism” and “A Fantasy of Hate”, my direct quoting of neofeminists in “The Other Foot” and “In Their Own Words”, and analysis of neofeminist propaganda by myself and others in columns like “A Load of Farley”, “Sales Pitch” and “Down Under”. And he must certainly have never encountered neofeminist arguments that all sex workers are suffering from “false consciousness” or “Stockholm Syndrome”, or heard them speak disparagingly of “choice feminists” and “sex-pozzies”.
Others admit to encountering these hateful harpies, but seem to believe that they are only a small and marginalized group; would that this were so! Though neofeminists are no longer the majority in the feminist movement, they still command most of the money and have the ear of governmental officials, the media and police agencies, who find their “victimization” rhetoric useful as an excuse for persecuting sex workers and undermining women’s rights. Also, the extensive mythology they have developed about whores, our lives and our work is repeated so often it has become an article of faith for many people in the general public of North America and Europe, many of whom (especially in religious-based groups) may not even recognize its origin. Indeed, the neofeminist dominance of institutional “feminist” discourse is so complete that many people (such as men’s rights activists and social conservatives) neither recognize nor discuss any other type!
So I really have to wonder just how sincere these commenters actually are. If I had this conversation, say, fifteen years ago with a bookish sort of person who didn’t watch television and never read popular magazines or anything produced by academic feminists, I might have believed that he had never encountered a neofeminist and was deriving his beliefs from some of the early second-wave literature or the odd early ‘90s sex-positive article. But in these days of the internet (and clearly anyone who comments here has access to that) and the nigh-omnipresence of sex trafficking hysteria, I just can’t accept that anyone living in a Western country has never, ever encountered a fire-and-brimstone, rape-culture-spouting, Patriarchy-fearing, “prostitution is oppression”, man-hating, head-spinning, mouth-foaming neofeminist at one point or another.
So we’re left with several possibilities:
1) That these people are fully aware of neofeminists, but prefer to deny their existence or numbers for political reasons;
2) That they’re in denial because the existence of these harridans offends their idealistic views on what feminism should be;
3) That like me, they refuse to characterize these people as true feminists and are merely expressing themselves badly;
4) That they think of the anti-sex cult as a fringe group and are merely “whistling past the graveyard” about the very real danger they still pose and the extensive damage they’ve done;
5) That I’m wrong, and some people really and truly don’t realize how many anti-sex radical “feminists” are out there and/or the extent of their influence; or
6) That they’re just yanking my chain, trolling or being willfully obtuse.
We have some really good, lively discussions on this blog, and I often learn from my readers, so I’m opening this one up to the Honest Courtesan commentariat; which explanation is the correct one? Is it a different reason in each case, or even a combination of factors? Or is it something else I haven’t thought of?
One Year Ago Today
“No Other Option” discusses a small but important segment of whores’ clientele, namely those men who, due to physical disabilities, are completely unable to acquire sex with amateurs and therefore have no other option but to pay for it.
