[Update: Thanks to Donna L for calling to my attention the fact that Feministe‘s editors have said that they removed the post at the request of the author. However, that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, such as: why they made the whole thing disappear without a trace, along with the comments; why didn’t they address the removal in a more public manner, instead of burying it in a “spillover thread”; and what positive steps they’ll take to center the voices of sex workers in the future.]
Sometime late last week, the editors of Feministe made a very embarrassing and controversial post about sex work disappear from their site, along with several hundred comments. As of this writing, they have not posted any explanation, apology, or retraction for the post, apparently hoping that they can just make it vanish down the memory hole.
Jill Filipovic, Editor of Feministe
(Image from Wikicommons)
I wrote about the problems with “Dear Feminists” by Sarah Elizabeth Pahman last week, just before the Feministe staff decided to make it disappear. To summarize: it was not only whorephobic, but racist and classist. Although it pretended to be about poverty in America, and specifically about impoverished sex workers, it was all about Pahman, and how seeing them for the first time made her feel.