Sexual Harrassment Epidemic

[CorruptUser]

I'm a guy and I prefer it when the women are a bit more aggressive. Within reason of course...

[jewish_scientist]

And if material depicting X is legal and you don't want it to be, you could make X illegal.

Can you name a X that is easier to make illegal than material depicting X?

Hooray for ex post facto illegality!

Could you please explain this?

If step sibling porn is legal today, you film tomorrow, and it's illegal next week, is the material illegal to possess next week?

Bills usually include a grace period so that this problem does not happen.

[natraj]

That being said, I would definitely agree that the pornographic industry -- and the sex industry -- needs heavy regulating. I'm not convinced everyone involved in this industry is wholly consenting, and that's a pretty harrowing prospect to face. The proximity of capitalism to fantasies involving exploitation creates enormous risks for actual exploitation -- something which I don't think any (sane, rational, mature) adult wants.

you aren't wrong that everyone is not wholly consenting and that there's large risks of exploitation, but this isn't in any way unique to the sex industry. capitalism creates enormous risks for actual exploitation -- you could stop there, unqualified. it's just in the sex industry people get shocked and moralize about it more whereas all the coerced and exploited domestic/agricultural/restaurant/etc labourers aren't quite so titillating to think about.

[CorruptUser]

You make it sound like it's a problem unique to capitalism, and not just because people are shitty. Because the bible never mentioned any prostitutes, right?

[morriswalters]

Hippo's right. Even I enjoy forceful sex, handcuffs and saying "No that doesn't mean no" sometimes. So I guess I retract my rhetorical question about pornography/sex workers. And by the way Morris Walters: Ask me on Sunday to do all those sexy things with you and I'll submit. Just ask a woman to do sexual things with you in a respectful and caring way. Then they'll actually appreciate your gentlemanly tact and maybe give you what you truly want.

In an old fashioned time we called that manners. However the point was that when we turn a very powerful biological drive in to a billion dollar industry, it asks the question, are we creating a mindset that turns the idea of consent on its head. Half of consent consists of the expectations of the person asking. Do we prime, young males for instance, to hear consent that isn't given. Anyway, you all have fun with it. I'm gone.

[natraj]

people are shitty, yes, but capitalism creates conditions to amplify that shittiness in a unique way.

also idgiaf if there have been prostitutes in the past? there's nothing inherently bad about transactional sex in and of itself.

conditions where people are forced to labor without any meaningful choice in what they do or else starve/be homeless/etc are exploitative regardless of the labor involved. that doesn't only happen under capitalism, but it is amplified under it in particular ways that, living in a capitalist society, are relevant to me to critique.

[CorruptUser]

People were forced into prostitution long before the modern era. More frequently, in fact. Subsistence farming was not what Norman Rockwell portrayed it. It was so godawful that people WILLINGLY went into the sweatshops to avoid it. Before those, well, ancient Greeks used to let their kids die if they couldn't afford to feed the kids, and you can guess which gender of kids were left outside for the wolves to eat, part of the reason for Greece's attitude towards both homosexuality and conquest. One way to make money was to take the girl babies and raise them in a brothel...

[Mutex]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[natraj]

... yes, and? because other systems have been terrible somehow i shouldn't comment on how capitalism is also terrible? that's a pretty bogus point. the fact that other societies have failed their communities in the past doesn't mean that we aren't also currently failing our community right now and should aim to do better. so many of the ways that we exploit people and make people vulnerable could be ameliorated -- not excised completely -- if we address some of the ways that our system is set up to make people vulnerable. the fact that in the past people have also sucked doesn't make that not true.

[CorruptUser]

You make it sound like it's a problem exclusive to capitalism or that it's somehow worse under capitalism while conveniently ignoring the shitshow that was the entirety of human history. But this argument bores me.

[Thesh]

"Hey, look, this isn't the worst system imaginable" - CorruptUser's only defense of capitalism.

[CorruptUser]

"Hey, look, this isn't the worst system imaginable" - CorruptUser's only defense of capitalism.

More like
"The version of capitalism we have is better than 95% of the other systems, and the remaining 5% are the Scandinavian versions of capitalism".

[Thesh]

So, you look at the developed nation with the highest level of inequality and violence and say "Well, this is obviously better than any other system."

I mean, go back a few hundred years, and you would give the same exact defense of mercantilism or feudalism. They all have the same problem as capitalism: they are designed to keep people with power in power; it's just that you see yourself as having power. Since you are on top, you feel the need to defend the system and you are completely uninterested in considering alternatives.

[Pfhorrest]

It might be helpful to define what is meant bu “capitalism”. Here if one means what we have now in distinction from systems we have had in the past like medieval feudalism or the slave economy of the classical world (in other words if one means “a free market”), then such “capitalism” is clearly not more exploitative than those alternatives. But if by “capitalism” you mean a system with problems like we have now in distinction from proposed systems that aim to do away with those problems, then just as clearly it is more exploitative than those. And the problems of capitalism in that latter sense are also problems of earlier systems too.

[Thesh]

The only real difference between those systems and what made America less exploitative was the decentralization of the control of our economy. However, as our wealth becomes more and more centralized, I'd argue that those benefits are disappearing and that without government laws protecting workers and consumers we would end up with similar degrees of exploitation just in different forms.

[CorruptUser]

I'd go with capitalism as the "mixed economy where government provides infrastructure, basic education, and a bit of social welfare programs, and a regulated free market provides most other goods and services". But if you are going to suggest free market providing infrastructure, or being local monopolies with little oversight, yeah, I'm just going to point to the telecoms as living proof of that being an idiotic idea.

As far as this leads to sexual exploitation, sure, on the land of sunshine and (consensual) blowjobs where everyone had enough to comfortably live on without having to work, yeah, I'll agree that any person saying "if you want to keep your job, drop to your knees" is going to get laughed off, and any spouse threatening to cut off the other if they don't put out is sleeping on the couch. But even in this society, you will still have things like the casting couch, because even with infinite resources there's only a finite amount of fame or potential partners and so on.

[Thesh]

So capitalism is indistinguishable from market socialism, in your view? I guess private property ownership is just not an important feature of capitalism...

[jewish_scientist]

Spoiler:

people are (*)&^*$, yes, but capitalism creates conditions to amplify that #)%* in a unique way.

[citation needed]

also idgiaf if there have been prostitutes in the past? there's nothing inherently bad about transactional sex in and of itself.

I can think of quite a few philosophers who would disagree.

Before those, well, ancient Greeks used to let their kids die if they couldn't afford to feed the kids, and you can guess which gender of kids were left outside for the wolves to eat, part of the reason for Greece's attitude towards both homosexuality and conquest.

I really don't see how this connects to homosexuality.

One way to make money was to take the girl babies and raise them in a brothel...

Usually, conquerers would take gold, food, and land. You know, stuff that provides capital. Plus every person kidnapped is another mouth the conquerers would have to spend their spoils feed.

I mean, go back a few hundred years, and you would give the same exact defense of mercantilism or feudalism. They all have the same problem as capitalism: they are designed to keep people with power in power; it's just that you see yourself as having power. Since you are on top, you feel the need to defend the system and you are completely uninterested in considering alternatives.

You do realize that this is the argument Marx used for advocate revolutions a.k.a. civil wars.

"Hey, look, this isn't the worst system imaginable" - CorruptUser's only defense of capitalism.

The argument that X < Y is equivalent to the argument that Y > X. Your summary of CoruptUser's argument can be rewritten as, "Hey, look, this is the best system imaginable."

Capitalism designates an economic system with all of the following features:

The means of production are, for the most part, privately owned;
People own their labor power, and are legally free to sell it to (or withhold it from) others;
Production is generally oriented towards profit rather than use: firms produce not in the first instance to satisfy human needs, but rather to make money; and
Markets play a major role in allocating inputs to commodity production and determining the amount and direction of investment.

[CorruptUser]

So capitalism is indistinguishable from market socialism, in your view? I guess private property ownership is just not an important feature of capitalism...

Social democracy, actually. I'm a bit of a neo-keynesian, and as every economist knows, Keynes was an ardent defender of capitalism and wanted to save capitalism from destroying itself.

[Thesh]

I mean, go back a few hundred years, and you would give the same exact defense of mercantilism or feudalism. They all have the same problem as capitalism: they are designed to keep people with power in power; it's just that you see yourself as having power. Since you are on top, you feel the need to defend the system and you are completely uninterested in considering alternatives.

You do realize that this is the argument Marx used for advocate revolutions a.k.a. civil wars.

Do you have a point, or are you just afraid that Marx will give you cooties?

[CorruptUser]

Getting back to sexual assault and sweet sweet porn...

[jewish_scientist]

I mean, go back a few hundred years, and you would give the same exact defense of mercantilism or feudalism. They all have the same problem as capitalism: they are designed to keep people with power in power; it's just that you see yourself as having power. Since you are on top, you feel the need to defend the system and you are completely uninterested in considering alternatives.

You do realize that this is the argument Marx used for advocate revolutions a.k.a. civil wars.

Do you have a point, or are you just afraid that Marx will give you cooties?

The USSR collapsed because it was economically weaker than the US. I think that qualifies as pretty damning evidence against Marxism.

[Thesh]

So, yes, you are afraid of getting Marx cooties and have no interest in learning about economics.

[CorruptUser]

Unless "Marx Cooties" are a new species of pubic lice that Harvey Weinstein spread...

House spent small fortune settling harassment claims, hidden until actual requests from rest of house

[Thesh]

The point is that you cannot address the sexual harassment epidemic unless you fix the conditions that enable it, and if you won't even acknowledge that our economic system creates an environment where one large group of people is wholly dependent on another, smaller group of individuals (the people who do own the means of production) for their ability to live then there is no hope of addressing it. Our political, economic, and social structures must change to give everyone equal power if we want to avoid exploitation.

[CorruptUser]

1) You aren't going to fix it with a radical new system. Best proven solution is social democracy, everything else has either not been proven to work as well or been proven not to work as well
2) Eliminating income inequality and giving everyone a million dollars stuffed into unicorns won't do a thing to stop the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. If there is only one leading female role, there will be women who would do anything for that role regardless of how much money they already have. It'll stop the little dictators, like the assistant manager forcing the teenage girl with no family to do a "late shift", but not the big ones like Weinstein or Moore.
3) Also won't stop prostitution. Girls get trafficked in when locals can't meet the demand, unless you are talking about some magical fantasy land where the pimps can't get paid. Sorry, even Star Trek had latinum.
4) Arguing about economics is BORING.

[Thesh]

1) You aren't going to fix it with a radical new system. Best proven solution is social democracy, everything else has either not been proven to work as well or been proven not to work as well

Just because you have absolutely no interest in thinking about the solutions doesn't mean that there aren't solutions. You are ignorant about economics, willfully so, and only because you are afraid of change. Literally, your arguments could be used to justify slavery because hey, anything we haven't tried cannot be proven to work. You have simply put absolutely no thought, no consideration, and have shown absolutely no interest in addressing any problems that exist in capitalism purely because you see this system as working for you.

2) Eliminating income inequality and giving everyone a million dollars stuffed into unicorns won't do a thing to stop the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. If there is only one leading female role, there will be women who would do anything for that role regardless of how much money they already have.

You do not understand the problem, nor are you interested in understanding the problem. The fact that you think that there must necessarily be a single producer who has massive say in people's careers is a testament to the fact that you just do not know anything about alternative systems and have not put consideration into them.

3) Arguing about economics is BORING.

You aren't even making economic arguments - you find it boring because you just don't have an interest in the topic. If you really do not like economics, then you should stop coming in whenever capitalism is criticized and spouting your uninspired, ignorant bullshit about how we should just accept our shitty economic system because unless another system has been implemented and proven to work it should not be considered. You have literally nothing to say because you are absolutely unwilling to consider the issues, yet you still feel the need to come in and tell everyone they are wrong and that we can't fix problems.

Well, let me tell you something: YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM. So if you really hate it that much, do the entire world a favor and stop getting involved in politics. The world will be a much better place if everyone like you just shut the fuck up and stayed home on election day. Maybe listen to what other people have to say for once in your life, and stop being such a selfish prick.

[CorruptUser]

I don't hate economics -it was my minor, almost got a masters in it-, I get bored arguing with people who have no background in economics, in much the same way doctors get bored of arguing with patients who think that the university of Google is a better alma mater than Columbia.

[Thesh]

Just because you have a minor in economics, doesn't mean you know what you are talking about. You have literally done nothing but make assertions that our problems cannot be fixed, and you have provided absolutely no reasoning to back this up.

I'm guessing you've some understanding of one school of market theory and monetary theory (probably outdated), but have not studied socialist economic systems at all - thus your education is completely irrelevant. It's quite obvious that you haven't put any consideration into alternatives to capitalism or even the problems with capitalism itself, nor do you have interest in doing so. You simply lack the knowledge to actually rebut any argument made, and so you turn to your credentials as if they mean something.

[sardia]

Just because you have a minor in economics, doesn't mean you know what you are talking about. You have literally done nothing but make assertions that our problems cannot be fixed, and you have provided absolutely no reasoning to back this up.

I'm guessing you've some understanding of one school of market theory and monetary theory (probably outdated), but have not studied socialist economic systems at all - thus your education is completely irrelevant. It's quite obvious that you haven't put any consideration into alternatives to capitalism or even the problems with capitalism itself, nor do you have interest in doing so. You simply lack the knowledge to actually rebut any argument made, and so you turn to your credentials as if they mean something.

Do you have an example where they changed the system which, reduced sexual harassment?

[morriswalters]

Unless it has been done, almost any endevour is pure speculation. I mean, how would you know if it has never been tried? And if we, as a people understood sexual discrimination, we could create better policies. Currently we try one thing or the other, because some college educated elite says so. And their batting average isn't spectacular. Now that I think on it I don't think it's better than dismal. Anyway just my one vacant thought.

[The Great Hippo]

you aren't wrong that everyone is not wholly consenting and that there's large risks of exploitation, but this isn't in any way unique to the sex industry. capitalism creates enormous risks for actual exploitation -- you could stop there, unqualified. it's just in the sex industry people get shocked and moralize about it more whereas all the coerced and exploited domestic/agricultural/restaurant/etc labourers aren't quite so titillating to think about.

You're right; it's easy for me to forget that sex isn't necessarily a special or sacred type of transaction given my (mild, but constant and unchallenged) protestant background.

But this argument bores me.

Yeah, I know what that's like. Arguments with you tend to be boring as hell.

[Thesh]

Do you have an example where they changed the system which, reduced sexual harassment?

There have been changes that have reduced sexual harassment, and you can see the type of power structures in which it is more prominent; so you can see where the problems are, and from that you can see how to address the problems. However, it's not the economics alone, but also the social structures and cultural issues that arise, so good studies of this specific topic are going to be lacking and it will be difficult to quantify what is social, cultural, or economic when doing studies between systems in different countries.

The problem with Hollywood is the same as any other centralized industry - people like Harvey Weinstein, purely through wealth and the influence that brings, have massive influence over what films get made and who gets put in those films. If you want to fix that problem, you need to decentralize the industry and make it so no one person or small group of individuals controls the purse-strings. However, you can't fix the problem just by fixing one industry - the power of any worker is dependent on the power of all workers, and without addressing the greater wealth and income inequality issues, there would still be a lot of problems with exploitation.

[The Great Hippo]

If you want to fix that problem, you need to decentralize the industry and make it so no one person or small group of individuals controls the purse-strings.

This is, to me, the most relevant bit; you can talk about alternative systems as much as you like, but capitalism -- with its ability to consolidate excessive power and *keep* it -- is here to stay, at least for now. The only way you can address these excesses is by either 1) Taking away Weinstein's absurd power, 2) Empowering people so they don't need Weinstein's power, or 3) Both.

I prefer #2, because as much as I'd like to see someone like Weinstein rendered powerless, I think that's more of a revenge fantasy than anything; what's important isn't that people like Weinstein become powerless, but the people they would target for abuse become power*ful*. You accomplish that a lot of different ways -- giving victims of abuse legal recourse to address that abuse is just one, but ultimately, what this looks like is the quote above: Decentralization of power.

EDIT: I also don't like focusing on 'disempowering' people like Weinstein because I feel like that gives everyone an easy out. "Oh, I'm not as bad as Weinstein" -- the problem isn't Weinstein, the problem is the context that allows Weinstein to do what he did with such impunity. Punishing or disempowering those people after their actions appear won't do anything but satisfy our blood-thirsty ethics. If you want to actually address this problem, you need to empower the people they're preying on.

Not that we shouldn't drive Weinstein out of Hollywood -- I'm just concerned that people might think driving people like Weinstein out of Hollywood solves the problem. It doesn't.

[Ginger]

Hippo's right. Even I enjoy forceful sex, handcuffs and saying "No that doesn't mean no" sometimes. So I guess I retract my rhetorical question about pornography/sex workers. And by the way Morris Walters: Ask me on Sunday to do all those sexy things with you and I'll submit. Just ask a woman to do sexual things with you in a respectful and caring way. Then they'll actually appreciate your gentlemanly tact and maybe give you what you truly want. ;)

In an old fashioned time we called that manners. However the point was that when we turn a very powerful biological drive in to a billion dollar industry, it asks the question, are we creating a mindset that turns the idea of consent on its head. Half of consent consists of the expectations of the person asking. Do we prime, young males for instance, to hear consent that isn't given. Anyway, you all have fun with it. I'm gone.

Young men take my non-consent as proof for that I want their penises inside of me sometimes. How funny. I guess you're right? A billion dollar industry based on making some sick fetish out of rape can screw with anybody's ideas of proper consent. Young men or young women.

[Sableagle]

Any "stud" who's "banged" dozens of women but never once made tender love with one who really wanted him has no idea what he's missing.

Anyway, as we're boring each other I thought I'd let someone else do my research for me. Spoilered for length.

Spoiler:

A Fascinating Map of the Worst Countries for Modern Slavery Jun 20, 2013

"During the year, Chinese sex trafficking victims were reported on all of the inhabited continents," the report found. "Traffickers recruited girls and young women, often from rural areas of China, using a combination of fraudulent job offers, imposition of large travel fees, and threats of physical or financial harm, to obtain and maintain their service in prostitution."

However, the State Department also singled out the country's epidemic of forced labor, in which both internal and external migrants are conscripted to work in coal mines or factories without pay, as well as its continued use of re-education hard labor camps for political dissidents.

In Russia, there are estimates that 50,000 children are involved in involuntary prostitution, said David Abramowitz, vice president for policy at Humanity United, an advocacy group. What's more, about one million people there are thought to be exposed to exploitive labor conditions, including extremely poor living conditions, the withholding for documents, and nonpayment for services.

In Uzbekistan, the annual cotton harvest has been the biggest human-trafficking culprit. The country is the world's sixth largest cotton producer, and each year local officials force thousands of children to pick cotton in the fields in order to meet quotas cheaply.

Generally, it can be said that, in international law and in the literature, prostitution is hardly separated from sexual exploitation and trafficking in human beings, while some of the recent literature points to the complexity of the issue with prostitution taking place at the intersection of culture, power, and difference. Historically, the views on prostitution and sexual exploitation have been discussed widely and with different focuses in politics, by civil society organisations, and by academics. Women’s rights groups, feminists, and so-called 'sex feminists' have argued about the right approach, i.e. whether a difference can be made between voluntary and forced prostitution.

Havocscope indicated that prostitution revenue can be estimated at around $186.00 billion per year worldwide. According to a report published in 2012 by Fondation Scelles, prostitution has a global dimension, involving around 40-42 million people worldwide, of which 90% are dependent on a procurer. 75% of them are between 13 and 25 years old.
The most conservative official statistics suggest that 1 in 7 prostitutes in Europe are victims of trafficking, while some Member States estimate that between 60% and 90% of those in their respective national prostitution markets have been trafficked. Moreover, the data available confirm that most trafficking in Europe is for the purposes of sexual exploitation, principally of women and girls.

The question whether prostitution is delivered as a sex service or under conditions of coercion or force is qualified as the criterion to distinguish between prostitution and sexual exploitation. While some argue that the number of those entering the prostitution business deliberately is higher than assumed, it is mostly supposed that women would avoid the abuse of their bodies if they had a valid alternative. In this sense, poverty and bad economic and employment situations are seen as strong push-factors forcing women into prostitution, and which call into question whether their consent can be assumed to have been voluntarily given.

Since the late 1990s, some Member States, like the Netherlands and Germany, introduced new legislation to legalise prostitution and to enable prostitutes to work as service providers (known as the regulatory approach). The access of prostitutes to social security systems and their registration as tax payers should enhance the social recognition of “sex workers” and reduce the vulnerability of prostitutes to exploitation. Several studies made in recent years suggest, indeed, that the legislation on prostitution increases the flow of trafficking for sexual exploitation, while the working conditions of prostitutes and the level of violence have not improved – according to government reports.

On the other hand, the abolitionist approach, which is based on the criminalization of all activities related to prostitution, has been adopted in Spain and Sweden but with a different focus. It seems that the Swedish legislation, which targets the buyer (mostly men) and thus criminalises the demand side instead of the prostitutes themselves, is the only one which successfully criminalises men buying women. According to official evaluations, this seems to have effectively reduced demand and deterred traffickers.

Some Member States, such as the United Kingdom, have criminalised the use of prostitution services if they are delivered under coercion or force. In other Member States, clients are called upon to indicate possible victims of trafficking to the police, like in the Netherlands. However, it has proven difficult for clients to correctly distinguish women providing the services voluntarily from those who are forced into prostitution.

That last bit suggests that an awful lot of men going to prostitutes are unable to distinguish between "actually consenting in exchange for money" and "pretending to consent so someone else gets enough money to stop him hitting her," which suggests that ... umm ... well, that he's never once made tender love with one who really wanted him has no idea what he's missing, and also that he's not a good choice of lover, both of which would, of course, tend to imply he's more likely to go to a (forced or voluntary) prostitute. It's all a bit film noir, isn't it?

Ugh. The powerful sell the powerless to the wealthy, and "that's just the way the world works," according to the wealthy and powerful.

Hear about the children playing at being the world who "won" the game in the last seconds by simply giving enough resources to the poorest nation to get them all above the "doing alright" threshold? Of course, they'd been told the rules and win conditions by the adults in charge who thereby led them to see "everyone's doing alright" as a win, whereas the rich and powerful know that they are the adults in charge and that them being richer and more powerful than everyone else is a win, because they've been told so by ... er ... themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL7UzdWGCeA

Kicking off from the bit about Germany there:

[url=https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/]Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

In 2013 the U.S. State Department estimated that there are 27 million victims worldwide trafficked for forced labor or commercial sex exploitation. A 2011 report from the Department of Justice found that of more than 2,500 federal trafficking cases from 2008 to 2010, 82% concerned sex trafficking and nearly half of those involved victims under the age of 18.

According to the International Labor Organization, human trafficking is a $32 billion industry, second only to illicit drugs. A 2011 paper in Human Rights Review found that sex slaves cost on average $1,895 each while generating $29,210 annually, leading to “stark predictions about the likely growth in commercial sex slavery in the future.”

Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.
The effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a potential destination country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic supply acts as a constraint.
Criminalization of prostitution in Sweden resulted in the shrinking of the prostitution market and the decline of human trafficking inflows. Cross-country comparisons of Sweden with Denmark (where prostitution is decriminalized) and Germany (expanded legalization of prostitution) are consistent with the quantitative analysis, showing that trafficking inflows decreased with criminalization and increased with legalization.
The type of legalization of prostitution does not matter — it only matters whether prostitution is legal or not. Whether third-party involvement (persons who facilitate the prostitution businesses, i.e, “pimps”) is allowed or not does not have an effect on human trafficking inflows into a country. Legalization of prostitution itself is more important in explaining human trafficking than the type of legalization.
Democracies have a higher probability of increased human-trafficking inflows than non-democratic countries. There is a 13.4% higher probability of receiving higher inflows in a democratic country than otherwise.

I'd raise the question here of to what extent a country where being a prostitute is legal sees a higher reported rate because more of the victims come forward to report it themselves.

[ObsessoMom]

This article in the San Diego Union-Tribune contrasts our mayor's 2013 sexual harassment scandal with the scandals of today. Sort of a "lessons learned and not learned" retrospective. Some here might find it interesting.

[Ginger]

I think Sable Eagle is the only one bored about discussing sexual harassment. And feminists suck at debating sex workers. They treat them like fragile mind broken dolls. They treat transgender women sex workers like creepy men in dresses that prey on vulnerable people AKA their fucking clients. It's a serious problem in feminism and borders on being sexual harassment itself. Because they'll try to manipulate you, push your buttons and provoke a sexy reaction just so they can gasp, slap your face and get all offended so they can chase you out of any community where they live. Making you an outcast anywhere feminists show up.

[Pfhorrest]

I want to make a semi-snarky semi-sincere "#NotAllFeminists" comment but I'm not sure how to phrase it in a way that won't be simultaneously misinterpreted in two opposite directions.

(Sincere in that, while there are such trans-exclusionary feminists and they're a real problem and I'm sorry you've had to deal with them, it really isn't everyone operating under the banner of feminism who's like that; snarky in that, well, that sounds an awful lot like what a lot of guys say, hashtagged "#NotAllMen", when feminists raise issues of misogynous male behavior, so a "#NotAllFeminists" in response to issues with TERF behavior is kinda ironic).

[CorruptUser]

And feminists suck at debating sex workers. They treat them like fragile mind broken dolls. They treat transgender women sex workers like creepy men in dresses that prey on vulnerable people AKA their fucking clients. It's a serious problem in feminism and borders on being sexual harassment itself. Because they'll try to manipulate you, push your buttons and provoke a sexy reaction just so they can gasp, slap your face and get all offended so they can chase you out of any community where they live. Making you an outcast anywhere feminists show up.

As there is no professional exam or certification required to declare yourself a feminist, there are about as many definitions of feminism as, well, the number of people who agree with the phrase "women should be treated better than they are". More, probably. We can organize them into relatively vague groups; the Trans Exclusive Radical Feminists are generally a problem, as are the Sex Worker Exclusive Radical Feminists (though of course who you consider to be a problem depends on whether their goals align with your own), mainly because those are the nutjobs that managed to get some seriously awful shit codified into law. Many other feminists are pro-prostitution in the sense that you should have near-absolute control over your own body, including what parts of it you can and can not rent out. Many others are pro-trans rights. But of course, these groups don't seem to be nearly as loud.