[This is Chapter 1.2 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link]
As we will see in detail in this book, the Nordic Model—and the accompanying baggage, stigma, stereotypes, gaslighting of sex workers’ own experiences and boundaries, and de-facto criminalization it heaps on sex workers—goes squarely against all of the ideals professed by Ashley Judd and other Nordic Model proponents also involved in the #MeToo movement. All this makes Judd and her colleagues in Nordic Model advocacy, unfortunately, justly described as anti-sex-worker advocates.
Why? Just look at the way they erase the very existence of sex workers when sex workers are demanding them loudly and publicly not to.
In 2018, Judd gave a talk at the feminist co-working space The Wing in New York, promoting the Nordic Model. In this talk (see the embedded video), she said, “There’s no such thing as sex work.” In the run-up to this talk, she had also approvingly retweeted tweets by other organizations in the ASW coalition that stated “#NeitherSexNorWork” and “#SexWorkIsNeither.” And one prominent ASW feminist whom Ashley Judd describes as her own “HERO,” and whom Judd introduced at ASW events, is Rachel Moran, who has tweeted, “There’s no such thing as ‘sex work’ – therefore there is no such thing as a ‘sex worker.'”
If you regard yourself as a sex worker—as hundreds of sex workers who responded on social media in outrage to these statements do—then it would seem fair to say that someone who says you don’t even exist and that you’re wrong to think that you do exist is “against” you. Hence I believe the term “anti-sex-worker” is a perfectly valid, in fact, objective, description of this stance towards sex workers.
What precisely to members of the ASW coalition mean when they repeat their common slogans that “There’s no such thing as sex work” and “Sex work is neither”?
What they mean is that, in their view, the sex is not sex, it’s rape, and the work is not work, it’s rape. They make this point clearly in another oft-repeated slogan of the ASW coalition, which Judd stated in an Instagram post during this recent social media firestorm: “prostitution is paid rape.”
Sex workers have reacted furiously in social media, articles, and at a face-to-face “call-ins” at one of her talks, at having their own sexual experiences and boundaries—in fact, their very existence—defined and denied for them by an outsider. At a protest outside of Judd’s talk, soon after these comments, sex workers held up signs that boldly proclaimed “I am a Consensual Sex Worker” and “Consensual Sex Work is Not ‘Paid Rape.'”
An article by Amy Zimmerman in the Daily Beast, covering these online and offline protests, was called (in different titles) “No, Ashley Judd, Prostitution is Not Paid Rape,” and “Ashley Judd’s Anti-Prostitution Crusade Angers Sex Workers.” Zimmerman writes: “Unsurprisingly, real-life sex workers took issue with Judd’s numerous assumptions (she seems to be implying that all sex workers are women, and all clients are men) and assertions (that sex workers cannot give consent).”
Related to Zimmerman’s point that not all sex workers are women, and not all clients are men: members of the ASW coalition never tend to question whether men in the sex industry are capable of consenting to their work. They don’t questions whether male sex workers who serve other men, or who serve crowds of screaming bachelorettes, or the small but growing number of male escorts who provide sex to women for money can consent to their work.
Are Chippendale’s dancers in fireman costumes being “sexually assaulted” by the drunk brides who shove dollar bills down the men’s bulging thongs? Was Magic Mike XXL movies about women’s sexual assault against men (and if so, why did so many women flock to it and proclaim it a “feminist” movie?) Are male escorts for women being “raped” by the women who hire them? If not, then what is it about men in the industry—such as Chippendale’s dancers—that magically allows them to consent to these acts, whereas women in a similar position are incapable of the same consent?
What we see here is a classic example of Victorian Christian moralism about women’s “sexual virtue” given a thinly-veiled feminist garb. According to this Victorian morality, women are delicate creatures who cannot make decisions for themselves–particularly not decisions that Mommy and Daddy or Priest disapprove of, and least of all sexual decisions that Mommy and Daddy or Priest disapprove of. If she happens to be engaged in sexual activity that the Victorian moralist thinks does not befit her pristine sexual virtue, then she must have been forced into it (or otherwise “fallen” from her virtue). Meanwhile, no such judgment is applied to men; their sexual agency and robustness is assumed.
Feminists generally despise sexual double-standards applied to women–and yet ASW feminists uphold Victorian double-standards like these all the time. We will see this Victorian “virtue” morality running throughout modern ASW feminism, and of course the Christians they ally with. I will analyze this crossover in much more detail later in the book.
In response to Judd’s statements, Lizzy Alice, a self-described((When quoting sex workers, I use their public stage names, and the language they use to describe themselves on their publicly-available social media bios, website bios, or advertisements.)) nude cam model, porn performer, and sugar baby, took to Twitter to present sex workers’ answer to the risks they face in the industry: not putting them out of work, but rather, more targeted and efficient harm reduction within the industry. “Harm and lack of safety isn’t an inherent problem in sex work, it comes from the unsafe conditions sex workers must operate in as a result of it being criminalized and stigmatized! The solution isn’t to get rid of sex work, the solution is to make sex work safer!”
Judd responded on Twitter: “Hi, Thanks for your perspective. I disagree. I believe body invasion is indeed inherently harmful, and cash is the proof of coercion. Buying sexual access commodifies something that is beyond the realm of capitalism and entrepreneurship: girls and women’s orfices [sic].”
At the protest outside her talk, a sex worker held up a sign, which read: “Ashley Judd, Please Don’t Reduce Me To My Orifices.” This sign echoed something you’ll often hear sex workers say: in their experience, the feminists who decry how men objectify women in the sex industry objectify them far more than the clients do, in the way these feminists reduce them to one-dimensional, cartoonishly-simple stereotypes.
One sex worker named Farryn O’Hara replied on Twitter: “Wow you’re one sick puppy. I’ve have never had a client objectify me as horribly as YOU just did.” And another female sex worker wrote: “there’s nothing more derogatory than some savior coming up with disgusting ways to describe sex work, & telling actual sex workers these things.”
And an escort named Brooke Brouillard wrote on Twitter: “No one has ever forced me to have sex for money or against my will. My service as a SW is not about my ‘holes.’ I know that none of my clients see me this way, they see me as a person & treat me with respect. Your focus on orifices is really disturbing actually.”
Can you start to see why sex workers view Judd and her colleagues in favor of the Nordic Model, who share similar views, as anti-sex-worker?
It’s simple: if you want to not be considered anti-sex-worker, then don’t describe sex workers in the most insulting, degrading, belittling and dehumanizing ways possible.
Next: Chapter 1.3: The Sheer Hypocrisy of Ashley Judd’s Anti-Sex-Worker Advocacy >>
<< Previous: Chapter 1.1: Starlets vs. Harlots: Why are Liberal Hollywood Actresses Allying With Right-Wing Christians to Throw Sex Workers Under the Bus?
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