Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
One piece of evidence that women are no longer socially oppressed is the lack of gatekeeping around womanness. For example, I just witnessed an argument among sex workers about whether a tech guy in the sex work industry could call himself a 'sex worker.' The argument went, 1/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"it's not ok for someone who hasn't experienced the stigma of selling your body to identify as a sex worker." They saw the title as 'earned' by experiencing the negatives, and were upset that someone was claiming the title without going through the associated hardships. 2/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
So why doesn't the same thing apply to women? I suspect people who are ok giving the "woman" title to people who haven't "earned" it (e.g., grew up with the difficulties of people treating you as female) are ones who haven't seen women actually significantly oppressed. 3/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
It seems likely then that less privileged people from cultures with stringent gender roles, who see more downsides from the struggles of growing up as women, are more likely to try to gatekeep the title of woman, and people from more equal cultures will care less. 4/4
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