Ever since I have been writing about prostitution and the sex industry more broadly, I have been accused of one thing: not respecting “sex workers.” Often of “hating sex workers,” actually — of “whorephobia.”
Since about 2011, I have been labelled a “SWERF” (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist). While this term didn’t catch on in the same way “TERF” (trans exclusionary radical feminist) did, it caught on among leftists, third wave feminists and those advocating for the legalization of the sex trade. The intention was the same as with the term, “TERF”: to twist feminist advocacy for women’s rights, safety, and dignity and efforts to protect women from dangerous and predatory men by preserving women’s spaces and/or by criminalizing men seeking to exploit and abuse women and girls in the sex trade into some kind of “phobia” or effort to discriminate against a “marginalized population.”
On ‘Respecting Sex Workers’
