Comments on: The Imaginary Choice Feminist

By: Juniper Fitzgerald

Juniper Fitzgerald — Mon, 18 May 2015 02:26:46 +0000

In reply to Savannah Sly. "humanism" as a term ignores the reality of specific humans being treated badly under specific systems, so it wouldn't be an appropriate replacement even if it were available, IMHO

By: Nix 66

Nix 66 — Fri, 15 May 2015 16:49:18 +0000

I think much of the “feminist” critique we’re seeing on SM is a critique of tits and ass. If I need to cover my body so that men don’t have sexual thoughts, so that I will be treated like a “person,” i.e. white man/unmarked, then the current proposition of “feminism” is the death of the Feminine. And the Feminine here, is simply the posed nude body. It’s also putting the onus on women to prevent men from wanting to fuck them, and that is literally impossible. In my experience, most men want to fuck most things most of the time. And it wasn’t sex work that led me to that conclusion. Rather, that conclusion led me to sex work.

By: Kagehi

Kagehi — Fri, 15 May 2015 14:02:55 +0000

Stupid thing is, you get similar idiocy with any other job. I can’t count the number of times that some idiot has said, in reference to someone complaining about there job, “They ‘chose’ to walk in the door and apply for the position, didn’t they?” So… its always a “choice” to pick a shitty job? Well, except when it isn’t, either way, blame the victim of the corporate oligarchy and/or cronyism for needed to pay their bloody bills, so sticking with a job they hate, right? Either they chose the job, or they didn’t, if they did, then they don’t deserve to complain.

Me, I described it to someone as needing a car, being unable to find anyone selling one (or which I could afford) that wasn’t a lemon, then having some idiot tell me, “You chose to buy the thing right? So how dare you complain about it!!!”

Its the same BS double standard every place, just, with porn, you get the additional BS of certain parts of the population seeing it as, ironically, trafficking, so they get to treat you as a victim, right up until you say, “I chose this.”, then, your just one of the idiots complaining about a job you chose, whether or not you actually had any real choice in the matter of taking it at the time. Sort of like… joining a union, or something…

You are not “allowed” to have a problem with something you chose (thanks in no small part of a lot of delusional thinking about what choices you do have, by people who have never had to make a bad choice, or have edited those choices out of their own memory, aka Libertarians, for example), but, if the choice is one that either is, or someone things should be, or in certain contexts can be, or is associated with, in some manner, the illegal – well, then you can’t be a victim either, if you chose to work there. Its a lose, lose, lose situation, or something like that. It also, conveniently, for some people, makes it dang certain that the problems never get fixed, because, well, denialism 101 – it isn’t a problem, or if it is, then its not fixable, or if it is, its too expensive to fix, and on, and on….

By: Brazen Lee

Brazen Lee — Fri, 15 May 2015 02:43:01 +0000

Perfect. Thanks!

By: Emberesque

Emberesque — Thu, 14 May 2015 22:59:22 +0000

Thank you for this. I didn’t realize there was a name for it, but “choice feminism” fits it perfectly. The worst part is how incoherent it is: I’ve heard lots of arguments that sex work is empowering because women choose to do it, but at the first hint that it’s not a perfect job, sex workers stop being empowered and start being victims again.

It seeps into a lot of places, actually. I think it has to do with the knee-jerk cultural response we’ve developed toward anything that looks like victim-blaming. If we say a woman has made a bad choice, that’s victim-blaming, so instead we say that it wasn’t a choice – it was coercion or internalized misogyny that made her do it.

Women can only make good choices, or else have no choice at all. It’s not a very empowering thought.

By: Savannah Sly

Savannah Sly — Thu, 14 May 2015 21:28:15 +0000

I’ve been wondering lately if it’s time for the word “feminism” to evolve into something else….its so broadly interpreted, and can be used to expound on perspectives that are completely contradictory. What are we to do? Tack on prefixes such as “radical”, “2nd wave” and “Choice”?

I’m dismayed by the whole anti-feminism shitstorm that cropped up (and continues to do so) on social media. When fairly uniformed masses of people reject the whole premiss of feminism because they’re reacting to a branch of it that is inflammatory, the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. This is sad, because a lot of those folks would probably actually be on board with ideas of feminism that a lot of *us* here on *this website* subscribe to.

In our own sex worker community, there is sometimes need to phrase our identities differently, as not all erotic laborers identify as “sex workers”, and for a variety of reasons. I find that the phrase “Erotic Services Providers” can bring a lot of leverage to a discussion, and I use it frequently, along with the more playful and non-threatening “Sexy Professionals”. Maybe we need to consider rebranding the core values of feminism we celebrate?

Too bad “humanism” is already taken…though by the looks of this video and the multitude of stances taken via this group in the UK, they’re pretty close to summing up *my* thoughts on feminism.

https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/