Renegade drew my attention to this bit of sex worker news this morning. Like Ren, what I found particularly unnerving about the missive was its insistence that the phrase “sex worker” should be put in quotation marks, and the writers’ very obvious and apparent distaste for this line of work. Considering the fact that the writers, Margaret Brooks and Donna M. Hughes, insist that they wish to “protect people from exploitation,” I find all of this a bit odd. Not all sex workers are explicitly or implicitly forced into the trade, and yet those people need protection from exploitation too. They deserve dignity as much as the next person.

I also found the very obvious slut-shaming of Elizabeth Wood to be jarring and not in line with progressive politics at all. How do you get a woman you dislike to shut up? Why, imply she’s Slutty McSlut. It’s an Old Testament mentality and it is both intellectually lazy and profoundly demeaning.