Luca, an organizer with Sex Worker Open University posted a comment to the fundamentalist feminism thread I posted earlier. In it, she pointed to the Sex Worker Open University blog, http://www.sexworkeropenuniversity.blogspot.com/
She found the blog post on Laura Agustin's use of the phrase, fundamentalist feminism, and found the posts helpful because this is the first time she's encountered the attacks on her position and was quite befuddled. In her comments, she notes that she was inundated with email attacking her and her fellow sex workers. She said she received:
"incredibly defamatory email accusing us of being at the same time pimps and punters and edgy, cool, middle class hipsters, not recognising the gender inequality of the sex industry (though 12 out of 15 workshops and presentations are made by women ) and a the same time being sexist for the use of a bare breast woman on our flyer, denying the existence of trafficking etc "
This same kind of behavior is documented, repeatedly, by Agustin. I found it a relief, in a bizarre way, to have it confirmed though lots of research that the behavior is widespread -- particularly having been the target of it once, by a radical feminist law professor who threatened to out me *and* demanded that I resign from my supposed job as a feminist. Bizarre. An influential writer (in bloglandia terms) similarly accused me of being an agent provacteur for the right wing -- also a big radical feminist.
When you're the object of such strange attacks, you often have doubts and think maybe it's just weirdos. Agustin makes it clear that this is their modus operandi in general.
aT any rate, I didn't get to blog about the whole book, ran out of time. I'll order it again and get back to it at some point. In the meantime, I have to review _The Great Financial Crisis_ and finish Postone -- which I read at lunch today!
http://cleandraws.com/category/laura-agustin/
"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."
-- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws