What would TERFs do if there weren't such a thing as being transgender? Who would be their target?

Easy question, easy answer: sex workers.

Trans-exclusionary “feminists” today still retain that anti-sex, anti-sex-work streak. They’re largely the same people—not completely so, Catharine MacKinnon has supported trans rights, despite her sex-negative and rabid anti-sex-worker views—and you’ll find a lot of sex-workers-negative thought amongst anti-trans activists.

This was a prevailing narrative in feminist circles in the 70s and 80s, and the wave of sex-positive feminism post-1980s was in a lot of ways a reaction against the sex-negative, sex-work-negative “feminism” of people like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. (There’s an element of “women should be free to choose whatever they want, as long as they choose what we think they should choose” that was incredibly common in 1970s feminism, especially about sex, and it eventually got up people’s noses.)

I’m wondering about attachment and transference with the therapist and the idea of escape and fantasy? How much do you think your strong feelings, constant thoughts, desires to be with your therapist are a way to escape from your present life? I wonder if the transference serves another purpose than to show us our wounds and/or past experiences, but is a present coping strategy for managing what we don’t want to face (even if unconsciously) in the present—-current relationships, life circumstances, etc. Can anyone relate to this concept of escape in relation to their therapy relationship? How does this play out for you?

Radical feminists have a long, ignoble, sordid history of going after sex workers. The classic narrative is: Women don’t like sex, at least not with men. No woman anywhere would ever, ever voluntarily choose sex work. All sex workers are coerced, invariably by men. Any woman who says she does sex work voluntarily is a liar or so brainwashed by the patriarchy she’s effectively incapable of making a rational decision. All sex workers are victims, and the one who don’t acknowledge their victim hood are part of the problem.