Belgium is working towards new laws regarding sex work, making the workers eligeble for pensions, healthcare plans, contracts and overall more legal status. This was done in corporation with sex workers, orgs surrounding sex work and my place of work, the Union.

Now, I worked with former sex workers and human trafficking victims myself and I am aware of their struggles. I am not going to outright deny their right to fight for improvement.

What bugs me is the normalization of an industry that is heavily, and I mean very heavily, infested with human rights abuses. For every one empowered sexworker there are a thousand human trafficking victims. Giving them a pension is not helping in the slightest.

And then there is the whole thing of tying things like unemployment benefits to you wanting to look for work. Here in Belgium your benefits can be cut as soon as you refuse a job that is offered to you through government instances. What if we further legitimize sex work and you refuse a sex worker position? There have been caes already of the instances offering unemployed actresses porn jobs, so why not offer them sex workers contracts? And why not cut their benefits of they refuse a fitting job? Right?

And everyone is so happy about it. As if the whole industry is one collective of happy people doing a fun job instead of the horror it is.

Sorry for ranting but fuck me what a mess

  • Hazel@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    3 months ago

    benefits can be cut as soon as you refuse a job

    …

    you refuse a sex worker position?

    Imo this would be a very clear cut case of human trafficking, carried out by the state. Meaning if cases like this happens, which is inevitable, no justice would ever be given, and it wouldn’t even be recognized as human trafficking.

    What your union HAS to do is, lobby for a law, that exempts every kind of sex working jobs from this fucked up rule.

    As for if the rules improve the material conditions of sex workers… idfk I am no sex worker, but the sex workers and orgs surrounding that field will know. HOWEVER your concern is incredibly valid. The sex work industry shouldn’t be legitimized. That is one of the worst thing white feminism has done imo. So it is important to also lobby for laws like… making it illegal to make advertisement for sex work. Though this might criminalize the workers in some case, which is the thing they always tell us not to do.

    Also destroying sex work lobby is also very important, because the lobby will only be beneficial for the most disgusting capitalists.