I don't know if Dwayne ever followed the sex worker wars but if he did, then he knows exactly what I'm talking about. It was kind of astounding to watch as sex workers would show up at these debates, trying to speak their lives, only to be ignored, belittled, silenced or outright told they were liars.
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Oh yes, I witnessed the sex worker hostilities.
And just as you say, it was astounding to watch women being shouted down, ignored or accused of being men because their biographies and opinions did not support the consensus view.
We've witnessed similar reactions here; notably, the time Tracy Quan's statements (forwarded by Doug) attracted moral outrage mortar fire and when the publishers of $pread Magazine were described as not knowing the meaning of freedom. Accused, in other words, of mistaking the vilest form of servitude *for* freedom.
The topic is so tightly helixed with conflicting notions of gendered virtue, vestigial and active religious ideas, real problems, real abuses and parental angst (to name only a few elements) that it's probably impossible to discuss without, sooner or later, resorting to calling each other coal shovelers for Satan.
.d.