Dreams of an Exited Woman

This is my speech from the Glasgow FiLia, with the poem I wrote for that event.

SPEECH

Hello, it is good to speak at FiLia. I have spoken here before, but I have had a huge break. – which has change what I know and what I can do as an Abolitionist.

I tend to focus mostly on trauma and confronting the emotional impact of what it means to be an exited prostituted woman. This made it clear that the term “sex worker” is not wrong, but irrelevant to the reality of being prostituted and now exited.

If we are to make progress in abolishing the sex trade, we must stop speaking the language of labour, which is used to hide that violence and hate are the founding stones of the whole of the sex trade.

We must explore the language of human rights, the language of what it is to be tortured, and the language of radical feminist. That would be a good beginning to understanding the depths of the trauma that is inside prostituted women.

To speak to this trauma, it is vital to destroy all attitudes that lead to calling the prostituted “sex workers”. In the language of “sex work” -there can be no trauma, no grief, no fear, no rapes and no access for the prostituted woman to be fully human.

Instead, “sex work” language goes into the world of Alice Through the Looking Glass. A world where everything is chosen by the prostituted, where sexual violence is named as kinky or rough sex. It is a where the prostituted woman has no voice, no human rights and no routes to escape.

That is not work, that is not sex. That is torture, that is a form of slavery. This can lead to the disappearances and deaths of too many prostituted women and girls.

When I campaign – I campaign as a radical exited woman who speaks with and for all prostituted women and girls. My voice is part of a huge movement that has existed for many centuries and in most most countries. The resistance of prostituted is not new, it has never had borders – it has just been silenced by the power of the sex trade.

Only in recent years, has the authentic voices of exited women been made public. Before we just spoke to ourselves, without anyone listening. We are slowly gaining ground. But still, we are rarely respected, even by our allies. Too often we are only allowed to speak as victims. We are still rarely paid for our witnessing and campaigning. We are still used as tokens for our allies to look good. Our voices are still controlled and madet to be unradical – even in the radical feminist movement.

We are treated as sub-humans. So whilst we are furious at the sex work lobby, please look within yourselves about how you treat exited women. Listen and deeply hear the multiple voices of exited women – even when you may disagree or get hurt by our words.

Exited women are not tokens or your pets. We refused to be controlled again even by those who claim to be our allies.

POEM

NOTHING WILL COME OF NOTHING

To be prostituted is to be in a void

It is nothing happening to no-one

Our bodies are not allowed to exist

Our pain is silenced

Our grief is tossed away

Even our memory of being human is written over

To be prostituted is to be no-one

Our voice is taken over by the sex trade

Our ability to feel is numbed

Our sense of hearing is only there to obey

Our skin is so polluted it becomes an alien

To be prostituted is to belong nowhere

No room can fit us

No room or space is safe enough for us to scream

Our screams go to the pain of our bodies we ignore

Pain that is our only home and remainder

This is not right

No right to have an authentic view

No right to know safety

No right to privacy

No right to life

We had nothing, nowhere and no humanity

So called that

Sex work