“When I first started speaking out about the realities of the sex trade, I noticed one thing immediately: radical feminists believed me & supported me – and liberal feminists called me a liar & moved heaven & earth trying to shut me up.” -Rachel Moran
For this week’s instalment of What the hell does that mean? we will be looking at a liberal feminist term that every radical feminist is sure to have had hurled at her at one point or another. SWERF.
SWERF is an acronym that stands for “Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist” and it’s just as nonsensical and contradictory as it sounds.
How is it used?
The Radical feminist analysis of the sex industry is very clear and unlike the liberal feminist stance it is rooted in reality. We know that most women in prostitution are not there out of choice but rather a lack thereof. Racially marginalised and poor women are overrepresented in prostitution as are victims of child sex abuse. These women are subjected to terrible violence and suffer PTSD at the same severity and higher rates than war veterans. Prostitution allows men to prey on women in vulnerable positions and financially coerce them into unwanted sex. As every feminist should agree, coercion into sex by any means is rape.
We also acknowledge the impact that providing men the ability to circumvent the need for mutual attraction and consent has on women in our society as a whole. The most notorious form of misogynist propaganda in our society at present is pornography. Not only are real women trafficked, abused and traumatised in the making of porn, it also functions as highly effective incitement to and justification of violence against women.
Liberal feminists will often cite full decriminalisation of prostitution as a means of making prostitution safe for women but we know that this is not true and that it also leads to an increase in sex trafficking. This is why we support the decriminalisation of all who are prostituted along with the criminalisation of their exploiters and rapists.
We recognise prostitution and pornography as a form of male violence that dehumanises women and sexualises female subordination thus making it inimical to female liberation.
Liberal feminists on the other hand have adopted a very different position which has led to them believing participation in patriarchal institutions like prostitution and pornography to be a path to female empowerment. Liberal feminism is very much centred around the notion of individual empowerment as opposed to female liberation. According to their “feminism”, any choice a woman might make is automatically a feminist one. Due to this, these women cling strongly to the illusion of the “happy hooker” for she chooses to self-objectify and pander to male supremacy and she says she enjoys it so who are you to decide what is and isn’t bad for women? In their world, the declaration of a practice as empowering by one woman trumps any valid criticism of said practice as well as all contradicting experiences of other women.
Therefore, they deem anybody who doesn’t support the decriminalization of pimps and punters and has anything less vapid than a “you go girl!” attitude towards women exploited in the sex industry to be prudish SWERFs who hate “sex workers”. This logic is even applied to sex trade survivors.
We are often accused of trying to control women’s sexualities unlike the great, uber progressive dudes who literally bribes a woman into suppressing her own repulsion, fear and lack of desire so as to better cater to his sexual proclivities regardless of how much she may personally hate it. If anybody can be accused of denying women sexual agency, surely it’s those who advocate for the decriminalisation of pimping and financial coercion into sex?
The irony in all of this is that it’s actually liberal feminists who are most willing to not only exclude but to engage in slander and intimidation of women who are representative of the majority of women in the sex industry. To delude oneself into believing advocating in favour of the sex industry is ethical, one has to either ignore or tear down any evidence to the contrary. This is why we so often witness grotesque exhibitions of disrespect and lack of empathy towards sex industry survivors from liberal feminists.
An Australian conference against sexual exploitation hosting radical feminist and prostitution survivor speakers was protested and picketed by pro-decriminalisation activists in 2018. They held signs with slogans such as “Blow jobs are real jobs”, exposed their rear-ends to prostitution survivors and threw things at attendees. When survivors approached the protesters about their interruption of a speech on child sex abuse they were told “We are not here to listen, we’re here to interrupt.”
It’s clear that the frequently used slogan “listen to sex workers” only includes the “sex workers” who say what pro-decriminalisation activists want to hear.
In contrast, radical feminists include all women in our analysis. That is why we simply cannot look at an unusually privileged woman and decide that her individual choice is reason to throw the millions of women and girls experiencing hell in prostitution under the bus. Besides, it is no secret that porn culture having seeped into almost every aspect of our society has been functioning to groom young women en masse into resigning themselves to the role of the sex object. Patriarchy informs and limits our choices as women. Our choices are not made in a vacuum and oftentimes, like all human beings, women make choices that harm ourselves and others. Any halfway feminist woman should understand this.
It is truly baffling how the people who seem to do everything in their power to make sure the voices of women who tell the truth about prostitution aren’t heard can accuse anybody else of being “sex worker exclusionary”. Even their analysis of consent seems to exclude prostituted women. For example, just like radial feminists, liberal feminists expressed outrage at landlords soliciting sex in exchange for rent during the pandemic. This was immediately recognised as the exploitative form of sexual abuse it is.
However, it is interesting that though they can recognise landlords coercing women into sex with shelter as sexual abuse, they can’t seem to apply this logic to men coercing women into sex with the money they need for shelter. The two scenarios are virtually the same but obviously liberal feminists have decided that the right to consent need not be afforded to all women. The dehumanisation of prostituted women that comes from those who vomit “SWERF!” at every challenge to their dogma is palpable.
Ultimately, the individualism inherent to third wave liberal “feminism” inevitably leads to the exclusion of the majority of marginalised women in favour of the senseless adulation of everything the minority of very privileged claim to enjoy.
Just like most liberal feminist rhetoric “SWERF” serves only one real purpose: Silencing women while absolving and serving men. The sex industry offers men dominion over society’s most marginalised women and girls. Anything less than vehement opposition to this cannot be considered even remotely feminist.
Perhaps when your stance on prostitution is directly in line with that of human traffickers and pimps, it might be time to take off the “sex work is work” badges and think about what your opposition is really saying. After all, we are not the ones condemning a designated portion of the female population to an underclass of women available to be purchased, used and abused by the oppressor class.
Student, 25, Radical Feminist. If you enjoyed her work, donate to this writer.
2 Comments
At last a description of feminism that respects women.
I’ve always thought of myself as a feminist, but have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the loud and aggressive male voices shouting their way into women’s issues.
Solidarity! Hello to a fellow feminist that centre women!