I co-authored one of the first large-scale studies on people in the sex trades to ask this question about relationship between chronic mental + physical illness in relation to trading sex (at my urging). And guess what we found? https://twitter.com/GISELLE_HGC/status/1373289052917600257

The relationship was often violence--> mental illness--> inability to work 9-5-->sex work, which, bc it's criminalized-->more violence + cycle continues. Solutions would be UBI and full decrim, which I'm sure you'd call "normalizing".
Oh PS @GISELLE_HGC I'm also a crazy whore

The way you all can't hold back yr hatred of mental illness long enough to pretend to be concerned! Idk that kind of internal conflict + cog. dissonance is what seems nuts to me @GISELLE_HGC, meanwhile I'm living life free of hatred, hypocrisy+ shame, which is p mentally healthy

There's actually quite a lot more to mental wellbeing than whether or not you have a diagnosed mental illness and can function in a 9-5. Your ability to live your values, reduce your risks+ live in community are critical to wellbeing + many sex workers have that over @GISELLE_HGC

You know, all of this "sex workers are damaged" shit that is, unfortunately, common among therapists as well as Twitter SWERF commentariat and "mediapreneurs" is based on a phenomenological understanding of unwanted sex + violence that they just assume is universal.

Like, "the experience of having sex when I wouldn't want to in order to pay my bills is something I would experience as damaging TO ME, and so I assume everyone would experience it that way". It's not like that for everyone.

It's like that for some of us! It's like that for me! I fucking hate it! But you know what? Even for me, it's more the material conditions that produce the violence I'm concerned about. If we only look at the phenomenology, then I must be hurting myself for no real reason!

But if we look at the circumstances under which I first did sex work when I really didn't want to and hated it-- uhhhhhh I was about to be evicted + my PTSD was part of what was preventing me from getting other work.

I've since learned to work in ways that feel less bad but also things have improved for me financially. That says a lot more about the relationships between sex work, mental illness, and violence, but it would be unpalatable to either a woman who might conceivably find herself...

...in that position or a 'mediapreneur' or other high-income, upper-class individual who is complicit in the violence of capitalism.

So it's easier to be like "Idk those bitches must be crazy" than to be like "Oh actually those bitches are poor". Sorry, breaking news, poverty is violence.

I say this often, but in our society, unless you're lucky, you pick the type of violence you prefer. Picking survival sex work over homelessness isn't crazy. Capitalism producing that kind of no-win scenario is crazy.

But in order to understand that, you'd have to have the kind of moral courage to do more than yell about crazy whores on Twitter, or make your money off of diagnosing them. You'd have to re-evaluate your values, your hobbies, your career, your philosophy, your relationships.

You'd have to commit to anti-capitalism, and that's hard for people ensconced in respectability or middle-class comfort, and so you choose to do more violence. Sorry, but that kind of cowardice is what seems crazy to me.

I guess in that sense I'm lucky tho, cause I'm too mentally ill to ever ease back into respectability or that kind of middle-class job so the choice to radicalize was made for me!

Join the crazy communist whores, we have more fun anyway