I hate the trend of having a fit over the trends of the moment and acting like your special because of it. There’s a sort of irony in this “I’m so above this, I don’t just do what everyone else does” that so fricking many people do. The trite culture of complaining about trite culture. If you don’t like it don’t do…

Exactly! I use it to basically mean “Holy crap I did the thing that everyone else does so easily but it took me ages to accomplish and I’m so proud even though I know it’s stupid and I’m bad at being an adult, but fuck it I did this one thing right so yay!”

Thank you for getting (somewhat) where I'm coming from, but I'm afraid we just are too far apart ideologically. I really wish you had read the link I had sent you, but I'll go ahead and quote from it anyway:

You're missing my point. I agree that women are treated like goods all the time, and not just in the financial sense. My problem was that you seemed to assume that sex work turns women into INHERENT objects. And that's a very dangerous rhetorical avenue to take, even if you think that you're on the side of the workers.

Women are not sex objects. Period. Sex work doesn't negate that - it doesn't automatically transform women into goods, and the reason that everyone from clients to, well, YOU pretend and act otherwise is because of stigma, and of course MISOGYNY.

I'm a sex worker and I follow sex worker rights pretty closely, including SWOU.

That's glib bullshit and you know it. You can do better than that, I'm embarrassed by what you just tried to pull.

Working in a mine or a hot field will wear your body out faster than sex work.

I don't understand why you think that sex workers are more coerced than fruit pickers, garment workers, miners, etc.?

The problem isn't SEX work, the problem is WAGE labor. I mean I think you probably agree with this, but I'm not sure why you think that sex work should be illegal but minimum wage McJobs should be legal?

This. Research has already shown that a guaranteed annual income bringing people up to the poverty level works - most people still work at jobs, because they want to, but it means that they can afford to make positive choices. Keeping people below the poverty level is very expensive and makes people very vulnerable to…

My family is working class, so I know a lot of minimum wage workers. I guess it depends on a number of factors, whether you can support yourself/your family on minimum wage. I know a few people who like the jobs they are working, but can't make it on minimum wage. Not that they went into their jobs unaware that they…

warning men that what they see as harmless fun could be perpetuating slavery

Working at McDonald's or Wal-Mart is exploitative, too. Many of the same kind of women - single mothers who can barely get by - are exploited by being paid a wage just barely enough to scrape by, often by working more than one job. Slaves are used as laborers in fields other than sex work: textiles, field work,…

You're right that legalization isn't enough by itself. But to use your own analogy, do you think that making picking vegetables illegal would benefit migrant workers? Would making clothes illegal help garment workers? I don't think so. Legalization (or at least decriminalization of selling sex) is necessary but not…

"It's not some women that it's last ditch, it's not some women who are trafficked into sex work. It's the majority." We need to be careful in concluding this because there are a lot of dubious studies regarding sex work. Even the definition of "trafficked" changes from study to study, and in many studies any woman…

You can think what you want about why I did it but I just want everyone to understand how the current laws effect prostitutes in the real world. When you're poor and black and a cop is threatening to taze you for committing the crime of doing what you need to survive those laws aren't helpful. Chances are you're going…

I have done different kinds of sex work in the past. I can say from personal experience that prostitution being illegal hasn't helped me or anyone I know. I got into it because I needed money and didn't have access to education or any kind of help. That said, I wasn't forced to do any of it. For me it was just a job.…

Have you asked sex workers about this? I follow quite a few from the sex worker open university on Twitter and this is a trope they hate. Want to call them unfortunates forced into that situation? At least speak to them directly first.

I'm going to reserve my outrage for a few days until we get the inevitable "It was a prank/fake/viral marketing" announcement.