tejuina:

i was watching testimonies by survivors of sex trafficking, and a lot of them talk about how their captors referred to them as “sex workers” and kept telling them they had to “work” and generate profit if they wanted to eat, if they didn’t want their relatives killed, if they didn’t want to be hit. if a “client” paid for a “service,” they had to give it to him.

work work work work work never rape never prostitution always work, to little girls who had heard of prostitution but never “sex work,” who didn’t know what was happening was illegal, who were told that what was happening was normal, that it would stop hurting eventually because “it’s just work, look at all these other women doing it.”

there was a testimony by a pimp, who admitted to having kidnapped girls off the streets. he said he liked the power of bossing people around. he said he liked having so many “employees.”

normalizing prostitution and using “destigmatizing” language is not a new tactic to “empower” (prostituted) women. it’s something perpetrators of sex trafficking have been doing for years to hide the realities of the sex industry from young girls and keep them from seeing themselves as victims of a crime.

don’t call yourself a feminist if you’re unwilling to see the parallels between sex trafficking and “consensual sex work.”