Molly Smith > Quotes

“A sex worker who is living precariously or in poverty, who is at risk of criminalization or police violence, or who is being exploited by a manager or lacks negotiating power is not likely to be particularly 'sex positive' at work. These factors are structural, not a function of the worker's state of enlightenment.”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

“the police appear as the most benevolent protectors in the minds of those who encounter them the least.”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

“Sex workers are the original feminists. Often seen as merely subject to others' whims, in fact, sex workers have shaped and contributed to social movements across the world. In medieval Europe, brother workers formed guilds and occasionally engaged in strikes or street protests in response to crackdowns, workplace closures, or unacceptable working conditions. Fifteenth-century prostitutes, arraigned before city councils in Bavaria, asserted that their activities constituted work rather than a sin. One prostitute (under the pseudonym Another Unfortunate) wrote to the Times of London in 1859 to state, "I conduct myself prudently, and defy you and your policemen too Why stand you there mouthing with sleek face about morality? What is morality?”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights

“Why are these people the only voices you are hearing? What structures are silencing the others?”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

“Uncritical use of the term trafficking is doing the ideological work required for these contradictions to ‘make sense’; it hides how anti-migrant policies produce the harm that we call trafficking, enabling anti-migrant politicians to posture as anti-trafficking heroes even as they enact their anti-migrant policies.”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

“Prostitution is heavy with meaning and brings up deeply felt emotions. This is especially the case for people who have not sold sex, and who think of it in symbolic tenns. The idea of prostitution serves as a lightning rod for questions about work, masculinity, class, bodies; about archetypal villainy and punishment; about who 'deserves' what; about what it means to live in a community; and about what it means to push some people outside that community's boundaries. Attitudes towards prostitution have always been strongly tied to questions of race, borders, migration, and national identity in ways which are sometimes overt but often hidden. Sex work is the vault in which society stores some of its keenest fears and anxieties. Perhaps the most difficult questions raised by prostitution involve what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society.”
― Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights