I was reading Eric Boehlert’s PressRun and seeing his latest post, “The NYT Must Stop Coddling Trump Voters,” which is another one of his incredible pieces about how the media normalized Trump and his supporters, especially with the continuous “Trump voter” articles.
However, my attention ended up focused on one of the comments under the post. It stunned me, partially because I’m not sure how to think of it. For helpful reference, here is the comment in its entirety:
“Yes, the media has to stop coddling these racist lunatics. They are the biggest threat to our survival as a democracy.
But I also have a Warning for my Fellow Lefties : We have seen what happened to the GOP when they allowed their fringes to take over. We progressive Democrats have to be very careful about allowing our fringe to take over the Democratic Party. We think nothing could be worse than the Corporate Dems, but we are wrong. A cruel, reckless Far Left Democratic Party could be devastating for women and children- especially disabled women and poor women and children of color.
The Far Left consistently trivializes sexual violence and sex trafficking. As a survivor of both those things, I feel completely betrayed by the "Squad" and their recent decision to come out against FOSTA/SESTA, and to mouth the insane slogan "sex work is work."
When a person claims that "sex work is work" they are making a false equivalence between forcing someone to do the dishes and forcing someone to endure unwanted sexual penetration. As an incest survivor, I can promise you that had my father merely forced me to do dishes rather than endure his sexual assaults, I would have been far less traumatized. "Sex work is work" trivializes the severe trauma that most survivors of the sex trade describe. "Sex work is work" is as cruel and misogynistic as anything I have heard from the Far Right.
When it comes to criminal justice, the Far Left would essentially decriminalize rape by encouraging victims to reconcile with their abusers instead of fighting for justice (as oppressed men are allowed to do). Instead of encouraging women to make our criminal justice system friendlier to women and children, they tell women and children to avoid seeking justice altogether. They follow in the tradition of the Catholic Church and the White Evangelicals by telling women to prioritize the freedom and forgiveness of adult men over the safety and freedom of women and children. This is Supreme Patriarchy, and the Far Left and Far Right overlap in this way.
We must not allow the Far Left to dominate our party. Their solution to women's poverty would be to open a "safe" legal brothel in every poor neighborhood and on every Native American reservation (Black and Indigenous women are those most likely to be recruited into the sex trade). As prostitution survivor Rachel Moran once said "When a woman is hungry, the humane thing to do is put food in her mouth, not your penis." The Far Left seems deeply confused on this issue.
Anyway, we do live in a Rape Culture that is as supported by the Left as it is by the Right.
Today, survivors have no real political home. But if the Left could learn to promote both economic justice AND develop a zero tolerance policy on sexual violence and sexual exploitation, survivors might one day be able to call the Far Left their homes. But we are not there yet. And until that day comes, I can no longer donate to or support Far Left candidates or Left Wing publications.
Listen to Survivors. Support the Nordic or Equality Model for decriminalizing "sex workers." And don't be a Dude-Bro or Dude-Bro Handmaid.
Thank You for Caring!”
Does anyone want to make sense of this particular post and what they are saying? Are they right, wrong, well-meaning, misguided, whatever? I just want to know.