The connection between certain anti-trans ideas and negative views of sex workers is not necessarily clear to people who don’t intimately understand the rhetoric used against each group. Why would having an issue with trans people make someone hate sex workers too? Why would being disgusted by prostitutes make someone hate trans people? For many people, the assumption is that bigotry breeds more bigotry, and they don’t look deeper. I would argue that it’s important for us to understand the connection to be able to fight either kind of bigotry, and for trans people and sex workers to have solidarity.
Among sex workers, trans people are disproportionately represented. This is true of many groups of marginalized people, because selling sex or making amateur porn is work which has little to no barrier to entry depending on the type of sex work undertaken. It isn’t just trans peoples’ high prevalence within sex work that makes the connection between bigotry against trans people and sex workers – it’s the issue of autonomy to do what we want with our bodies and the view that some choices are a form of betrayal of one’s sex class.
Trans men are seen as gender traitors to the female sex class, trans women are seen as deniers of the female sex class, and cis female sex workers are seen as encouraging the objectification of the female sex class. Male sex workers are ignored almost entirely. For trans men, their supposed betrayal lies in choosing to transition and to be seen as a man, thereby accessing privileges that come with being viewed as a man and theoretically attaining success at the expense of cis women. With female sex workers who are viewed as “choosing” to sell sex (separated out from forced “prostituted women” as long as those “prostituted women” agree with them), they are viewed as encouraging the objectification of women and as betraying other women for money in doing so. Trans women are viewed as appropriating the struggles of the female sex class, claimed to be making a mockery of womanhood in doing so, and it is also suggested that they undermine the struggles that cis women face by choosing to live as women.
In both the case of trans people and with sex workers, a large portion of each group is often framed by radical feminists as having been manipulated or forced into either transitioning or into sex work. It is common for young trans boys and men to be infantilized and presumed to have been coerced into transition to escape womanhood, and for claims to be made that most sex workers are trafficked and are prostituted by coercion or force. In each scenario, a nefarious group of people are framed as the manipulators. Whether the people accused of manipulation are pimps or brothel managers or sex worker activists or doctors or teachers or prominent trans people, the claims are similar – that people are being manipulated or forced in huge numbers to be trans or to be sex workers.
Once you start to notice the similarities in anti-trans rhetoric and the rhetoric used against sex workers, it becomes very easy to spot. Trans people are called groomers and sex workers are referred to as the pimp lobby, whenever they advocate for their own rights and particularly for access to resources for young people in either group. Supposedly both groups include mostly people who were groomed into transition or sex work, and yet most people report entirely different reasons for their choices. For trans people, the majority of us transition because of a desire to live as a different gender to the one we were assigned without any sort of push in that direction (to the contrary, we’re bombarded with messaging that we shouldn’t transition), and for sex workers we mostly sell sex because we need money rather than due to a third-party grooming us. Being a sex worker and being a trans person are very different experiences, but the same bigoted arguments can be used against each of us. Why come up with new bigoted rhetoric when you can just recycle?
Some of the more prominent people in the self-described “gender critical” movement make no efforts to hide the connection between their lack of support for sex workers and their anti-trans views. People like Julie Bindel, for example, flit between anti-trans commentary and advocating for the Nordic Model for sex work which put sex workers at more risk. Even among those who do not openly attack sex worker activists and call us a “pimp lobby” like Julie Bindel does, you’ll find plenty who will give out figures on sex trafficking without admitting that their figures include consensual sex workers and who never mention sex workers’ fight for rights.
Due to the way many attacks on sex worker activists and trans activists use a lot of the same arguments, sometimes the existence of sex workers is ignored to avoid revealing the inaccuracy of a claim about trans people, or vice versa. When talking about how “prostituted women” are often harmed in the sex industry, they will avoid admitting that many trans women are abused in the same manner within it. When arguing that historical trans women supposedly had access to male privilege, they’ll avoid admitting that those same women were often sex workers because they had no access to other employment.
I recently listened to the podcast “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling”, which features Rowling herself. The podcast ignores the existence of sex workers even when we are directly relevant. Amongst Rowling’s anti-trans sentiments showcased on the podcast was a segment mentioning the Yorkshire Ripper. I know a lot about the Yorkshire Ripper, because he killed sex workers. Specifically, the Yorkshire Ripper targeted prostitutes and the reason that the police initially put in so little effort to catch him was that they didn’t care when his victims were sex workers. Only when he killed someone who wasn’t a sex worker, years after his killings started, did police say the first “innocent” victim had been killed and start to express actual concern that he should be caught. What’s noteworthy is that only after 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald’s death did the broader feminist movement (outside of sex workers themselves) start to see the murders as feminists’ concern and argue that all women were at risk. None of this is mentioned on the podcast.
When I listened to the segment about the Yorkshire Ripper, who was brought up to talk about the kinds of feminist issues and movements Rowling grew up surrounded by, the fact that he targeted prostitutes was not mentioned. Time was spent discussing how women worked to “reclaim the night”, followed by Rowling saying that she thinks her “sex class” are targeted because of their “biology” rather than admitting to the various social reasons that women are mistreated regardless of what their biology is, with biology being only one of the things women are targeted over. I was surprised, kept waiting for prostitutes to be mentioned, but the podcast episode moved on… because admitting that Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) targeted women for selling sex rather than for their sex undermines Rowling’s argument.
One thing many of these prominent figures have in common is that they will claim they are being silenced despite their prominence. Some cite cancel culture, others simply say their free speech is being suppressed, but the claim is similar. The reality is that people who actually have the lived experiences of being trans or selling sex or both are routinely spoken over by prominent radical feminists who have no experience of the issues they’re discussing. It’s easy for them to say this with minimal pushback because of the tendency for the public to not want to hear from sex workers or trans people directly anyway.
Sex trafficking victims who oppose the sex industry and detransitioners who regret transition are each used as tools by anti-trans and anti-prostitute radical feminist movements. They are held up as reasons that the rest of us should not be permitted the right to do as we wish with our bodies. If an activist points out that sex workers and trans people are being spoken over, radical feminists point to this small handful of people they use as political tools and argue that they’re actually uplifting the voices of people with these experiences. In reality, they are uplifting the voices of people who no longer associate themselves with either community and who want to see our rights taken from us.
So, prostitutes can only be accepted by the radical feminist movement if we say we were groomed into it and stop selling sex, and trans people can only be accepted if we say we were groomed into it and detransition. Being trans or selling sex is seen as contrary to the interests of the female sex class and so we must be absolved of responsibility for our actions if we blame a third party. I’m not willing to agree to that deal, because I disagree that we’ve done anything wrong in the first place.
We can see why these anti-trans and anti-prostitute feminists group together, but let’s address their ideas about us as betrayers of our sex class. Is there any merit to them? Short answer: no.
A woman selling sex does not harm women as a whole. A trans man choosing to transition and no longer present as a woman or claim to be one does not harm women as a whole. A trans woman choosing to transition and to access spaces with other women does not harm women as a whole. The belief that any of these actions harms women relies on the false assumption that the patriarchy’s oppression of women is partially a consequence of women’s actions and partially a consequence of biology.
Biology and the actions of women are used as excuses by patriarchal structures for their oppression of women, they are not the cause.
I would never deny that part of the root of patriarchy is a goal to control women’s reproduction and therefore the family and then the populace. What I deny is that having a womb causes a person to be oppressed in and of itself, or that people without wombs aren’t oppressed based on gender. Cis women without uteruses are still oppressed by patriarchy, and so are trans women. Trans men do not escape the state attempting to control and restrict our reproduction by transitioning. Acknowledging this is not a denial of biology or of the driving forces behind patriarchal control.
Women choosing to sell sex when they need money, rather than to be in a worse financial situations, is not feeding the patriarchy. Men who objectify women do not gain permission to do so because some women sell sex, because objectification involves ignoring someone’s autonomy and reducing them to an object! There are large structures which deny women certain rights or which privilege men over women, many of which push women into situations where the best choice available is to sell sex, and that is deeply misogynistic. What women do once placed into those situations is not something they deserve blame for. A woman selling sex isn’t making men view all women as more worthy of mistreatment, because the kind of men who view a woman as lesser for selling sex were already viewing women that way in the first place. The feminist movement is not served by women starving or losing custody of their children due to an inability to financially provide for them, in lieu of selling sex.
Sex workers aren’t encouraging abusive men by selling sex. Trans people aren’t denying biological reality or the roots of patriarchy by transitioning. That anti-trans and anti-prostitute radical feminists would treat us all as traitors is simply evidence that they do not truly value bodily autonomy and that they hold marginalized individuals accountable for structural harms. We need solidarity with each other to overcome these attacks.
Trans people and sex workers must support each other.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 