“I would like for sex workers to no longer be the 'other'. I would like if people could imagine sex workers as a mix of many different people with many different views,” says Tilly Lawless, one of three out sex workers speaking as part of the Sex Work and Feminism panel at this year’s All About Women Festival at the Sydney Opera House. A writer and proudly vocal sex worker, Lawless is widely known for her 2017 TED Talk, which powerfully argued for why sex work is integral to contemporary feminism.
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“Second wave feminists generally think that we're catering to the patriarchy. In the same way that they may think that a woman who gets plastic surgery, or a woman who wears a lot of makeup, or a woman who decides to be a stay at home mum is catering to the patriarchy,” explains Lawless.
She adds: “I would like feminists to generally step away from such oversimplified arguments. This kind of obsessive fear or paranoia we have that women are somehow traitors to their side, I think this is the same fear that people have around transgender women and transgender men as well.”