xenoqueer:

sera-wohldmann:

strongorcbutch:

arionwind:

I will never not be exhausted by people who seem to think they can be anti SWERF and anti kink.  As if anti-kink doesn’t always always always wind up coming down hard on sex workers.  Come on, kids, at least pretend to put some thought into this shit.

It can be a complex issue. Because as much as people try to make it a yes/no issue, all kinks are NOT created equal. There are people using various aspects of my identity as kinks, aspects of my identity that are not theirs. There are people who are using “kink” as an excuse to craft and maintain explicitly abusive relationships. And this is not a tiny isolated problem. Things like racism and transmisogyny are mainstream problems in kink communities. I can be strongly critical of the scene and community without being anti sex worker. And sex workers can do sex work without participating in denigrating people of color, trans women, and so on.

I’m very pro SW, and worked in cams before. I get there are some kinks that are just “not my thing yet mostly harmless,” but there are also some that are not that.

I see women bragging about their bruises inflicted by men and I can’t help but feel there is something malevolent about that when we live in a world overflowing with male violence. It harkens back to the argument about the failings of “choice” feminism.

I see men who, time and again, avoid culpability and consequences for violating consent in kink communities, and I can reach no other conclusion but the pervasiveness of rape culture.

In addition to the disturbing trans fetishization Eve referred to, I see the same applied to various racial and ethnic stereotypes being fetishized. Those in control in so many kink communities are so very white that it’s hard to see these fetishes as anything other than power fantasy.

So no, it’s not that simple.

Do you react this strongly when women athletes show off their injuries after a bout? What about outdoorswomen who twist their ankles hiking and then laugh about it afterwards?

Or is it only when sex is involved, that suddenly women become incapable of deciding whether the pain involved in an experience is worth the experience itself?

And if you can think of no reason why people of color involved in kink might want to explore race dynamics on our own terms, then I’m afraid you’re just assuming everyone is white and to hell with the consequences of that erasure. I will give you this one for free: after a lifetime of being told I should be grateful for being hypersexualized, sometimes it’s nice to actually be seen as sexually desirable on my own terms and revel in that, instead of having it thrown in my face constantly, against my will. You know, by consent. The thing that makes flirting not be sexual assault, and that makes sex not be rape? That thing?

And as for @strongorcbutch, racism and transmisogyny are mainstream problems everywhere. There is no special trait of being kinky that makes you more racist, more transmisogynist. 

And yet, people rush to reply to the post of a transfeminine person and tell them that they are transmisogynistic for supporting sex workers. People rush to suggest that sex workers, who are indeed mostly people of color, are racist for doing our jobs. 

The assumption that sex workers and kinksters are not capable of knowing what transmisogyny and racism look like is rooted in the assumption that kink is a cis, male, white space and that sex work is too, and that’s so presumptuous on so many levels that I barely know where to start.

I’m glad to see acceptance of people showing off their injuries after someone ties up and batters them. It makes my job so much easier! Back in less enlightened times, if Big Dave and I were doing some “enforcement work” and we went a teensy bit too far and left evidence of actual injury on our victims, we had to bribe the police to get out of charges for grievous bodily harm.

But now that lots of people (completely of sound mind and un-coerced, I’m sure) are happy to be restrained and beaten to the point of leaving bruises, and their good friends and allies celebrate it and don’t worry about them, we don’t need to bother! Now we just say “well, some people enjoy GBH, you know, it’s his word against ours”. Sometimes the police don’t even bother investigating the Scene (that’s kink terminology for “crime scene”, jsyk) in the first place!

It is a very big assumption that kink and sex work is a cis, male, white space that exploits women and people of colour. In fact, here in the UK, only 99% of buyers are cis men and a whopping 6% of workers are male, and only 85% of people in sex work are foreign nationals.
Though I’m sure they’re perfectly nice men, they sound a lot like my usual client base (also mostly cis, white men). That’s not counting the middle-class white chaps who travel to Asia, Africa and South America for the trade, but I’m sure  they’re nice too, one of them was a senior Oxfam boss, so they can’t be all bad.

I agree we should support workers involved in our industries, but could we focus more on those of us who chose our jobs and want to stay in the industry, and prioritise us over the 89% who don’t have a choice? It’s condescending and presumptuous to do otherwise.

Thank-you for supporting the industry and our clients! ❤