Unifying the Struggle: Why We Must Support the Most Exploited Workers on International Working Women’s Day
Y’all, stop pretending that speaking up for the most exploited working women harms those with more privileges. On this International Working Women’s Day, let’s fight for the liberation of all workers.
I’m not sure when I first saw — and began to agree with — the idea that we should always advocate for the most vulnerable in our communities. But damn, do I ever agree!
As an internationalist*, I understand that this extends beyond borders. I should care about the most vulnerable in the world. And so I must pose a question and seek to answer it: when did it become controversial to advocate for our most vulnerable sisters?
On this International Working Women’s Day 2025, I want to examine who among us are the most vulnerable working women. I sit at the laptop on which I write this essay, being non-binary and intersex, assigned female at birth, assigned Black by society, assigned Mexican by history, and assigned American via slavery. Given that I have thus far lived more than half my life as a woman with these identities, it’s given me a unique perspective, one that is often shunned or ignored.
I want to share, from my perspective, some observations on how we talk about working women who need our support, both in action and rhetoric — and not merely as an aside when advocating for those with better material conditions.
I want to talk about the women we now call sex workers. I want to talk about women who are disgruntled, angry, and hungry for vengeance. I want to talk about women who are sex workers against their will, and who are being sex trafficked. When I discuss these matters offline, it’s often easy to reach unity: no one should have to have sex with other people for money to survive. However, I have often observed that these conversations are not so easy online. Let’s ask ourselves why that is — beyond the simple explanation that online forums provide ample ground for hot takes and people with bad, incorrect ideas**.
When we speak of working women, we can’t only speak of women with jobs outside the sex industry, nor can we only speak of women in the sex industry who have chosen that profession to some degree. Women who work against their will are still women who work. My ancestors who were slaves still labored. Their forced labor obviously did not make them any less deserving of dignity or liberation.
Too often, however, I see women who are sex trafficked pitted against women who work in the sex industry with some degree of choice. This is doing the ruling class’s work for us. When myself and others have spoken out against sex trafficking, and spoken up for those who want to exit the sex industry but don’t see a way out, we’ve been met with accusations that we’re harming sex workers and implying each and every one is in imminent danger and needs the government to swoop in with police forces to criminalize them.
I often counter these accusations with: is speaking of exploited Amazon warehouse workers speaking over the happy Amazon employees? Is speaking of exploited garment workers in the Global South speaking over corporate employees of haute couture fashion lines? No, right?
Yet whenever we speak of our siblings who have been trafficked — of our siblings who would prefer to be teachers, scientists, hell, even carpal-tunneled journalists or underpaid servers, but are forced into the sex trade because it’s their only option for making money and a choice between life or death — people lose their proverbial shit online.
The controversy surrounding the advocacy for our most vulnerable sisters stems from the structural need of capitalism to divide the working class. Capitalism thrives on inequality, not only between the working class and the ruling class, but also within the working class itself. By positioning certain workers — especially the most vulnerable —as distractions from TRUE liberation, the capitalist system maintains its hierarchy and prevents genuine class unity. When we advocate for the most exploited, we challenge this system, threatening the profits that rely on exploitation. Thus, the ruling class and their ideological enforcers — often within institutions or mainstream discourse — create a narrative that presents the advocacy for the most vulnerable as controversial, distracting, and as actually doing the work of the ruling class. Really disgusting stuff.
Workers in the sex industry must combat sexism and whorephobia. However, many wrongfully act as if acknowledging the intrinsic exploitation of sex work strengthens both sexism and whorephobia. This is not the case. I posit that acknowledging this exploitation will narrow the divide among sex workers themselves.
Countless exploitative professions wouldn’t exist under socialism — industries like fast food, where workers are paid pennies to produce billions in profits; call centers, where employees are subjected to hours of mind-numbing work for minimum wage; gig economy jobs, where workers are treated as disposable and denied basic rights; and the tech industry, where warehouse workers and drivers are overworked and underpaid, all while tech companies rake in record profits.
These jobs, like many others, thrive under capitalism and imperialism, but they wouldn’t be necessary in a world where labor was organized around human need, not profit. Rather than celebrating our oppression as a means of survival, we should embrace revolutionary optimism — a belief in a future where we no longer have to endure this exploitation. We should find joy in the struggle itself, knowing that the fight for a better present and future for the most vulnerable among us is worth every ounce of energy.
Ultimately, we are more than our current professions, and acknowledging that the work we do is often exploitative isn’t an attack on ourselves or our characters. It’s a recognition that we deserve better, and we will achieve better when we end capitalist imperialism.
Under our current conditions, where do the traumatized survivors of the sex trade go when they want moral support and want to wage war against their former employers, their former pimps, and the ruling class that treats sex workers and the sex trafficked as virulent wreckers of a moral society? Where do the angry prostitutes, bitter sugar babies, and camgirls with the fire of revenge in their eyes go when they want to build solidarity and unity and organize with their fellow lot of angry sex workers? The answer is most commonly: nowhere, for proletarian feminist organizations with a correct line on the sex industry are still rare, unfortunately.
Many so-called “sex worker orgs” are only safe spaces if you’re a sex worker who hates capitalism, but is quite content to work in the sex industry otherwise. Organizations that see the horrors of rampant sexism understandably want to create spaces where sex workers don’t have to self-flagellate.
This leaves us with a grave reality: there aren’t many organizations — and thus communities — for sex workers who don't want to do sex work for their own fundraising efforts, or glorify the work in any way, to go. If you no longer want to partake in sex work, you’re often left buddying up with religious organizations that treat you like a whore to be reformed or truly sex-worker-exclusionary groups that hold you on the same level as the traffickers, johns, pimps, and madams. At worst, you’re thrown to organizations that are in bed with the prison industrial complex and which routinely put those who work in the sex industry at risk of incarceration.
A similar fate is left for those who have finally escaped sex trafficking. Worse still, too many of our comrades suffer under the foot of rampant trafficking. As of 2024, an estimated 27.6 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking, and a significant portion of them are women and girls forced into sexual exploitation. This means that many of us — too many of us — have coworkers who are being trafficked, and we may not even know it. It has been uncovered that websites like PornHub, which has over 130 million daily users, continue to host countless videos with non-consensual acts of trafficked victims — making them purveyors of sexual violence. This also means that millions of people around the world have normalized rape as a form of entertainment and indulgence.
It should outrage the self-confessed happy sex workers to have their work uploaded and enjoyed next to such depraved acts. It should outrage us all that so many of our comrades are suffering this fate, who could be saved. We must stop pretending that everyone who speaks out in defense of our sex-trafficked siblings is secretly a sex-worker-exclusionary feminist (SWERF). This often leaves people accusing many of us of being self-hating sex workers, forcing us to out ourselves, or engaging in concern trolling*** about sex workers that does nothing to improve their material conditions or lessen their marginalization. It’s tired, and it’s time to stop.
If one truly cares about liberation for sex workers, one must then put an end to the kidnapping and rape of our comrades that masquerades as consensual and normal. These conditions should inspire you with revolutionary rage to put an end to the violent commodification of one of life’s most basic pleasures that you claim to love so much.
We must also fight against laws that criminalize those who have been sex trafficked and survivors who kill their captors — because their liberation will require it. The ruling class perverts will not easily give up their power, as we’ve seen in the case of Chrystul Kizer, who murdered her abuser and is now imprisoned for defending her own life. We must demand her freedom and the freedom of every survivor fighting for their lives.
Remember, this struggle is not limited to any one country — it’s a global epidemic driven by imperialism and the commodification of human life. Take, for example, the recent news of a human egg harvesting racket being uncovered in the country of Georgia, with international connections stretching across continents. In this case, around 100 women are kept as slaves, their bodies exploited for reproductive purposes in yet another form of commodification. This is not just sexual slavery but reproductive slavery, two sides of the same coin, both serving the ruling class’s desire to objectify and consume human beings for profit and pleasure.
On this International Working Women’s Day, let’s commit ourselves to the liberation of ALL working women — including the angriest, the most exploited, the most vulnerable. Let’s fight for the sex workers who want out, for the trafficked who deserve freedom, and for the survivors who demand vengeance and justice.
Free Chrystul Kizer!
All power to socialism!
Unite, Defend, and Fight for Working and Oppressed Women’s Rights!
Persevere in the struggle against imperialism and all its reaction!
Definitions
*Internationalist: One who believes in the solidarity of the working class across all nations, advocating for the collective liberation of oppressed people worldwide.
**Incorrect ideas: Concepts and beliefs that uphold the ruling class’s power, rooted in exploitation and oppression. All incorrect ideas come from the social practices of the ruling class.
***Concern trolling: A disingenuous form of argument where someone pretends to care about an issue only to undermine it, often weaponizing supposed concern to silence or discredit marginalized voices.
How to Send Mail to Chrystul Kizer
#1 - Prepare Your Envelope:
Write Chrystul Kizer’s full name and DOC number clearly:
Chrystul Kizer #00675639
Use the official mailing address:
Taycheedah Correctional Institution
PO BOX 189
Phoenix, MD 21131
#2 - Include a Return Address:
Make sure your envelope has a clear and complete return address in the top left corner. Mail without a return address may not be delivered.
#3 - Follow Mail Guidelines:
Do not discuss Chrystul’s case or any ongoing legal matters.
Avoid any inappropriate or inflammatory content.
Header image: Internationales Jahr der Frau (Women’s Day). CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication