The “empowerment” propaganda has to stop.

honeyhealing · 2022-03-10T09:57:08+00:00

This is so true. I used to be a sugar baby at age 16. My sugar daddy very clearly knew my age. He wanted me to call him ‘daddy’ and act as through we had a father/daughter relationship. A few years later I looked him up and found his daughter’s Instagram, who was the same age as me. So many men are paedophilic and incestuous and porn fuels these paraphilias, while ‘sex work’ allows men to indulge in their sick fantasies. These industries hurt and exploit ALL women, not just the workers.

ArugulaIsAwesome · 2022-03-10T15:24:59+00:00

I wish I had the ability to completely memorize and repeat posts like this.

ConstantNurse · 2022-03-10T09:43:28+00:00

When someone tells they support "sex workers", I look at them disgusted and ask "So, you support sex trafficking?"

They will usually try to stammer and back pedal and "NOT ALL SEX WORKERS ARE TRAFFICKED" bs. So I ask them to differentiate between who is "doing it of their own free will" and those doing it because they are forced to because they have no other options. Then of those who "joined because they wanted to", how many of them ended up with mental health issues after the fact, how many of them committed suicide or died of drug overdose or ended up with severe addictions? How come they didn't stay in the industry?

Nothing about sex work is positive. If it were, experience and age would be a draw to the field but the industry is about breaking the young.

Edit: There was one person who commented about liking sex and getting into it for that reason. Let me clarify something. You like consensual, safe, and healthy sex with your partner. Now add about 50 other people watching you along with about 3-4 hours of prep work in addition to several hours of redoing the same damn position/sex scene over and over because Jimmy the rager couldn't keep himself hard or one of you made the wrong face at the wrong time. And then don't forget all of the coercion that happens to. You may have agreed to a specific sex act with a specific person but when you show up to set it's someone different and they want to do something else.

Porn relies on shock value and any porn sick guy will admit that "vanilla sex" doesn't do it for them. This means consistent escalating and extreme sex acts. If you are unwilling to a specific scene, word gets out quickly that you hard to work with. You will lose contracts (and money). In addition, this does not even remotely address the issues of sexual assault in porn scenes itself, in where you agreed to plain jane vanilla sex and Jimmy springs anal on you or the director tells him to do so. There is no governing body that protects the rights of autonomy in Porn or Sex Work as going to law enforcement to report a rape during a sex scene is going to get you laughed out of the building.

So tell me, how much do you like sex? Because work and play are very very different.

jugularlemonade · 2022-03-10T13:36:02+00:00

It’s crazy how the everything the “Me Too” movement is against becomes ok if it’s labeled porn or prostitution. How blind can people be?

ifhewantedtohewould · 2022-03-10T10:40:22+00:00

People who try to justify “step sister” or “teen girl” porn are extra disgusting and make me sick to my stomach. There’s a REASON it’s among the most popular porn categories, along with “bdsm” aka literal physical abuse 🙄 Porn is nothing but exploitation and there’s absolutely NOTHING empowering about it.

NotMyRealName814 · 2022-03-10T11:33:46+00:00

This is an excellent post. I honestly believe we can win the proxy war against women that porn encourages. I've always been disguised by the step sibling and barely legal porn. We need to really confront women who support porn by asking if the age of consent is age 16 or 17 in some countries is it ok for those girls to act on porn? We need to get in people's faces on this subject with really specific questions to force them to truly think about what they're condoning.

n3rdgir7 · 2022-03-10T16:05:27+00:00

"Sex work" is horrible, but even when it gets fought, it's done so wrong. Most places arrest the woman who probably needs mental health and drug recovery support, instead of going after the men, who are irredeemable sex offenders

starlight_sequence · 2022-03-10T15:07:42+00:00

This is heart-breaking.

My friend group is a lot of very dogmatic, liberal feminists. I considered reposting this to social media, but hesitated because I'm afraid of the backlash and potentially being ostracized. I'm so frustrated that having honest conversations about these things is so socially fraught, because these are conversations we need to be having.

hopeful_flounder93 · 2022-03-10T17:07:40+00:00

You could write an entire doctoral thesis on how porn harms women, but I usually shut down these leftie-woke porn supporters with a quick,

"Sorry, I just don't support human trafficking."

Shuts most of them up.

Tharwaum · 2022-03-10T09:24:18+00:00

Poor woman 😞 I agree with you. The left wing group think is mainly for good purposes but sex positivity is a huge hypocritical issue they need to address

shemague · 2022-03-10T16:30:38+00:00

I used to be a sw and I’m glad to be here because every other space will literally berate me for saying it was a bad experience. MY OWN EXPERIENCE!!!

Vaahla · 2022-03-10T13:42:58+00:00

If pornography was about sex, healthy sex, wouldn’t the top search items be things like: “big boobs” or “doggy style”, “shower time”…

Instead top search terms are things like “Ukrainian girl”, incest, BDSM….

lilac_and_gold · 2022-03-10T15:26:58+00:00

Pretty Woman horrified me because I was homeless as a teen in LA. I was lucky to never be sexually abused while on the streets, but I witnessed some horrific things that will never leave me. Sometimes I wonder how many impressionable girls watched that stupid movie and ran away. LA is full of runaways at the Greyhoud station downtown. Why aren’t girls and women protected? Why TF are we viewed as something to be used and then disposed? Why are we blamed for being victimised as chicken?

I am just now coming out of the misogynist mindset and I feel like a vail has been pulled. I struggle with what reality is and sometimes I wish I could go back to being ignorant because seeing the reality of men, hurts my brain.

yfunk3 · 2022-03-10T16:07:29+00:00

It disappointed me to an unimaginable degree when Last Week Tonight recently did a show about sex workers. They tried to play the "we're not telling you how to view it morally or debating it. We just care about thr sex workers"" angle. I could tell right there and then that their staff is majority male.

curlybeatbox · 2022-03-10T11:41:15+00:00

I really wish this talked about more. I feel like the left shuts down all discussions regarding the topic and the right doesn't help by blaming women. Notice how politicisation only benefits patriarchy by claiming you have to agree with one of two wrong conclusions or you're throwing your vote away.

Japanese_Lasagna · 2022-03-10T15:22:43+00:00

I think a lot of this “sex work is empowering” BS comes from women who became cam girls because they make a lot more money getting themselves off on camera in the privacy of their homes than they did in their careers. I’ve known multiple women who went to college, at times for hard science degrees, and they either burned out or lost their jobs, and they became convinced that camming was the solution to their problems at the time. Every last one of these women who got into camming “temporarily” is still camming. They never went back to having a normal career. They are the biggest proponents of how “sex work is empowering” and act like you’re a bigot if you disagree. These women have also deleted their social media because every last one of them has had to deal with stalkers. They act like camming is the same as other forms of sex work when it really isn’t, and they act like it is safe when all the stalkers they get show it isn’t. These women are brainwashed. They all knew of one woman who got into camming after she’d done other kinds of sex work to escape a horrible family and poverty, and they saw this not as the actions of a desperate young woman but actions to aspire to despite their more privileged situations.

imnutsbutwhoisnt · 2022-03-10T16:46:36+00:00

When I was 21, I was a sugar baby due to my family declaring bankruptcy. It was a major adjustment for me as I grew up decently well off, we almost lost our house, my car got repossessed, I had to figure out how to pay for college (something that was never taught to me). I went to a wealthy school and it was a shock for me and I felt so lost. The men on there are predators.

I would get messages from guys who were my fathers age. I ended up meeting a guy and dating him for three months. He was completely psycho and he preyed on my vulnerability, emotionally abused me, sexually assaulted me. He was a compulsive liar (he lied about his height, his credentials, HIS EX’s (lol I found out one of his “claimed” ex’s that he compared me to a lot as a form of emotional abuse briefly dated him, and had a similar experience to me) and I ignored the red flags because I needed the money and I was so depressed. In the end he ended up stalking me when I broke up with him, cyber harassing me, messaging guys I talked to telling them I was an escort (kinda was a blessing in disguise , filtered out the LVM), creating fake Instagram accounts. Pathetic dude, it took the cops two months to hunt him down and serve him because he would just hide in his apartment. He was a weirdo who talked in a baby voice sometimes and would pee sitting down. I have ptsd to this day from it and for a few years I really hated myself for doing that. On top of it, my old roommate who was a bitch told everyone I was an escort and it was so humiliating and I was shamed.

Took me years of therapy to learn I was doing what I needed to do to survive and it was these fucking horrible men who took advantage of me in such a vulnerable lost state. I never aspired to be a sugar baby or a “trophy wife”, I was always smart and successful even tho due to confident issues I thought I wasn’t.

Being a sugar baby is basically another term for prostitution IMO. Like porn, only fans, empowerment has to stop. That being said though, I do have sympathy for some of the women who have endured this and I also hope and pray that the women still in the industry find a way out

That being said as well.... if there’s a place for me to anonymously reveal a guy and ruin his life please let me know because I know he’s doing this to other women. He now claims he’s a widow lol

SheWasntDead · 2022-03-10T14:36:32+00:00

I relate to this so much. I became a Suicide Girl at the age of 20 - it didn’t last long after I realized it wasn’t just pictures- I was expected to “interact with my fan base” online which really meant chatting with perverts and/or caming with them, I refused to do that and was immediately fired.

Its only now that I realize protesting porn - an $86 Billion a yr industry, is actually punk rock - not posing naked with a mohawk

Subject-Investment88 · 2022-03-10T18:47:30+00:00

This!! Liberal third wave feminism is poison to female empowerment and advancement and caters to, benefits and prioritizes the very males they swear they’re trying to break oppression from. I just can’t understand the logic and the hypocrisy and get angry that they don’t see how they’re falling right into the patriarchy’s hands but maybe that was all part of their plan. Im waiting for the day when they admit that liberal feminism is about keeping males in their position of power and pandering to their feelings. “Empowerment” my ass 🙄

OutlandishnessOk · 2022-03-11T00:51:39+00:00

Absolutely. If all labor is exploitative, sex work is exploitative of an already marginalized group, and further marginalizes ALL marginalized groups.

Sex work normalizes racism and ableism thus promoting it in ALL industries.

I support sex workers- in that many need support to get out of sex work. But I do not support sex work.

levelitradically · 2022-03-10T16:02:49+00:00

Wholeheartedly agree. And I see you're on radfem tumblr! A mutual of mine on there mentioned FDS, which is how I found this subreddit. I love how female-centered spaces constantly build up other female-centered spaces instead of competing.

battyblueberry3789 · 2022-03-10T16:55:36+00:00

I see it as a relationship between addiction and codependency of a whole culture magnitude.

People who enjoy porn (mostly men) defend it because they are addicts. It doesn't have to be logical or make sense. Addicts defend, minimize and explain away their addictions with passion and fervor that mirrors sincerity. That's because the worst thing that they can imagine is giving up their next fix. They are sincere in believing that whatever harm comes from their addiction is still much better than them giving up their substance of choice.

The non-addicted "woke" supporters are the co-dependents. Many women had been denied acceptance, affirmation and validation when they were very young, so they desperately seek it through adult intimacy. They try to achieve it by providing unconditional acceptance to their partners. They've been shamed for existing their whole lives, so they can't bear the thought of shaming men. It seems so fundamentally wrong to inflict this pain on anyone. But if you can't bring yourself to shame for a certain behavior, you may eventually start rationalizing that behavior as not shameful.

And what is more, there are things in which we, as human beings, find deeply hurtful to be seen as failures. It's deeply hurtful to be seen as conventionally ugly or stupid. It's similarly deeply hurtful to be seen as bad at sex, lacking in passion or just universally opposite of fun. Addicts often manipulate their codependents by accusing them of lacking understanding, nuance, passion or just being bitchy and uptight. Since the codependent is seeking intimacy, those things are the worst possible to be accused of and a codependent is desperate to avoid these labels.

Somehow, modern society at large (the extremely large number of porn addicts) has proclaimed that those who are not addicted to porn are not sexual, are bad at sex, lack passion, aren't fun, ect. It's understandable that girls don't want to be labeled those things. Many are too young and moldable to understand what is happening, but as they desperately try to distance themselves from the ostracizing labels, these girls start to yell out their support for porn the loudest.

I really can't believe this is happening on societal level.

Morpheusismybrother · 2022-03-10T20:57:51+00:00

I always wonder: if this is all so empowering, why is it that these services disproportionately profit men, are consumed by mostly men, while women, children and even some vulnerable men are exploited?

VesperLynd- · 2022-03-10T10:02:25+00:00

That poor woman, but I’m glad she was strong enough to tweet about it. We need way more of this, education about what „sex work“ really is and how girls and women get groomed and forced into it. „Sex work is empowering because we take back our sexuality and drain the stupid mens of their money! Yay feminism!“ goes hand in hand with „don’t kinkshame, I like being choked and pissed on“ and I don’t care who offends this. If you support the rape, exploitation and traumatization of girls and women you cannot call yourself a feminist. You’re a patriarchal capitalist. A sexist and a woman hater.

I said this in another comment and I’ll say it again: prostitution isn’t empowering. You don’t reclaim shit by selling your body and dignity to men. Shooting yourself in the leg „of your own free will“ equals the same outcome as letting someone else do it

Noemie_Mathilde · 2022-03-11T00:29:33+00:00

Really interesting the way they call out films as stripper/prostitution propaganda.

I relate, because 'coolgirl/pickme' is so prevalent in the media too. Not to mention social media, nowadays.

The media narrative needs to change.

presentable_corpse · 2022-03-10T13:02:30+00:00

This needs to be stickied on every feminist sub. Even the ones that are bs.
Idg how people don't understand that prostituting yourself because you're poor IS COERCION. On a societal level. I'm so glad she survived to post this, I hope more people see it.

Logotrix · 2022-03-10T17:43:02+00:00

It's an absolutely degrading multi-billion dollar industry that feeds on human vulnerability, pain, and in so many cases - literal enslavement. If you're a feminist or a human being who claims to have any social conscience whatsoever you can't support this horror show.

Thicccredhead34 · 2022-03-11T00:02:58+00:00

i have never seen something i agreed with so much… it’s honestly making me rethink everything. like i feel like for anyone to get into sex work, something evil involving a sexual situation has had to occur in their life at some point, i can speak personally. it makes me ill to know that anyone can find anything and fetishize it and it’s completely normal… every boyfriend i had, id see there porn history and in my head all i said was “why cant thet just watch alexis texas?” like come on…

Muffcakelord · 2022-03-11T08:53:12+00:00

8th of march was awkward for me.

We had a group form a group at the end of the women's march which had different sections in it, standing for "inclusiveness". They were funded by the bdsm club, sex work associates club and the poly club. All three hurt women and we know it, from statistics and interviews and common sense, yet so many people and especially people i knew thought it'd be a great idea to promote sex work/porn on international women's day.

One woman in my group, the literal radfem-lile "anti femicide" group, had a sign saying "fuck men" and "support sex work" on the very same sign? I was baffled

Title	The “empowerment” propaganda has to stop.
Author	makeawomancum
Upvotes	1809
Comments	77
Date	March 10, 2022 8:48 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/taugxw/the_empowerment_propaganda_has_to_stop/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/the-empowerment-propaganda-has-to-stop.1105807 https://theredarchive.com/post/1105807

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