Refuting Antis, Swerfs & Whorephobes

Refuting antis, swerfs & whorephobes

As a general rule - which is virtually always correct btw - antis aren’t worth your time; even if they genuinely don’t realize how their rhetoric harms sex workers (which most do btw) they don’t care; they view the harm they inflict upon us by supporting whorephobia and statist violence as payback for how we’re “selling out” other women.

To quote Julie Burchill, “When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.” [Source]

Having said that, arguing with antis can be good for three reasons. Firstly, it outs them as whorephobes, secondly, it pisses them off, and finally, you’ll hopefully educate other people who aren’t complete shitheads in the process who are also reading the conversation.

So here’s a short list of lies antis tell and how to combat them:

“You’re a privileged white western choice sex pozzie *buzzword buzzword buzzword* and you’re not representative of most prostituted women!!” This can be disproven by linking them to the global sex workers and sex worker activism tags, which show sex workers and sex worker activists all over the world pushing for decriminalization, freedom from stigma and police violence, and social inclusion. You might also want to ask them if they know what a ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy is. Keep in mind that even if you’re none of the things they accuse you of being, they’ll still ignore you.

“Most prostituted women enter the industry at 13!” proven untrue, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and there are countless more sources out there too. So where is this myth coming from? Well, this rescue industry propaganda has regurgitated this statistic and cited the Polaris Project and the source. What’s wrong with the Polaris Project? It’s the epicenter of the rescue industry and we have a whole tag about it! Another common source is Melissa Farley, a notoriously shoddy researcher who faked her own sex industry experience to write a salacious novel and silence actual sex workers. She has a tag too! You can view it here. So TL;DR every reputable source acknowledges that the 13 years old statistic is not only true but literally impossible.

“All these exited prostitutes claim porn/prostitution is bad!” Most of them are lying either under coercion by radical feminists or rescue industry bigwigs, or simply because they chose to. Melissa Farley lied about her (actually non existent) sex work history, Andrea Dworkin did it to Linda Lovelace, Shelley Lubben (who also fabricated most of her industry experience) notoriously lures sex workers into her “charity” then exploits them and abandons them with nothing, Somaly Mam coerced young girls to lie about being trafficked, its one of the main tools antis use to push for legislation that oppresses sex workers and harms survivors of sex trafficking. Also, this article written by yours truly explains why former sex workers have no place debating sex work law anyway.

“Prostitutes are all survivors of child sexual abuse i.e. too fucked up to realize they’re being raped” This is called the damaged goods hypothesis and its repugnant as it compares consensual transactional sex with rape and posits that actual rape and violence against us is the same as the consensual encounters we have. This logic puts sex workers in the position of being unrapeable and makes our consent meaningless. Obviously, this is an example of whorephobia and it’s also probably false, though frankly, it shouldn’t matter anyway. This notion was probably started by notorious SWERF Catherine Mackinnon based on her own shoddy “research”, so you might want to ask where SWERFs they got this shitty idea from.

“We want to criminalize you out of your jobs because we care about you!” try the entire radical feminists tag, also the radical feminism tag as I use both. Also, the masterpost on sex work and feminism may help.

“The Nordic model!!! the Nordic model!! but have you considered the N O R D I C  M O D E L ?¿?¿” try the Nordic Model tag, the criminalization tag, and this masterpost

“The word ‘whorephobia’ is degrading to you disgusting prostitutes!!” lmao try the sex workers, languages and slurs post.

Any bullshit about sex trafficking and/or underage people in the sex industries (and I say bullshit because antis don’t actually care about underage people in the sex industries or about trafficking victims, which is why they cite false statistics): the rescue industry tag, the sex trafficking tag, the moral panic tag, underage sex workers, and the youth search results, and this masterpost specifically

“I want to abolish ALL jobs because I’m anti-capitalist!” and yet they’re focusing solely on the sex industries with zero concern for how we would support ourselves if they succeeded in criminalizing us out of existence. This isn’t based on fact, it’s just a pathetic excuse and a red herring argument but try the marxism tag and the communism tag.

There are always more but hopefully this will help since these seem to be the popular arguments at the moment.