#103 

Luba Fein from FiLiA in conversation with Mary Stolinski about the sex trade.

Luba: I'm Luba Fein I'm a FiLiA volunteer. Today I will talk with my friend Mary Stolinski from the United States. Mary and I met on social media. I have seen her writing and she was always different, always different, brilliant, witty, angry, and not trying to please anyone. I felt an immediate connection with Mary because of her courage to speak openly about the horrors of the sex trade.

She knew how to link her personal experience as a prostitution survivor to the in-depth, rational feminist analysis of the sex trade that said, Mary’s feminism focused on abolitionist. So what are other feminist issues close to your heart Mary? 

Mary: Well, Luba, I'm just going to start by saying thank you. And thanks to FiLiA for having me.

So feminist issues close to my heart. The trans issue. It's clearly a problem that we can talk about here at FiLiA and it's so funny because I'm not used to being able to say this out loud. Like I'm always online and I can type it, but it feels so weird to actually talk about it out loud. It's amazing.

As far as the trans issue is concerned, as a lifelong athlete myself, my heart breaks for the women and girls who are forced to share changing areas with males especially considering the skyrocketing in the spy cam porn genre. 

We've already seen cases of trans-identified males abusing women and girls with cameras and that happens of course, not only in changing rooms, but just in restrooms in general. And of course not only the camera abuse, but sexual assaults. And of course male athletes are now able in many places to compete against female athletes and I think that this is really especially insidious when you consider that sports are a way for many young women to advance to higher education by way of scholarships.

This is really bothersome because of course not only their privacy is at stake, but their future. And so as far as the trans issue goes there's that. Then, you know, the whole issue of medical abuse of children and all of the young women who are typically gender nonconforming lesbians being told that they're not women, they're men and they need to have their bodies medically modified.

And it's heart-breaking. There's the trans issue. 

And of course prostitution, pornography, sex trafficking are my primary concerns but of course, other forms of patriarchal violence against women and girls, religious abuse, forced marriage, surrogacy and reproductive exploitation. 

I learned so much about surrogacy from the podcast that FiLiA did. Surrogacy a Human Rights Violation. That was just amazing. Domestic abuse, sexual violence of all types, all of those issues are very important to me.

 Women and girls living in poverty. So, most of the world's poor is female. And they are more likely to be affected by each and every one of those things. It is a lot easier to exploit women when they are poor as well. And so poverty is also a central focus in my feminism for that very reason. 

Luba: This is very interesting. Do you see a connection between those issues?

Is this connection necessary or can you support one of those issues and not another one in your opinion? 

Mary: Oh, there's absolutely a connection between all of those. And the connection is sex-based oppression. And this, as we know, is the concept and the objective truth that all human females are oppressed on the basis of our biological sex.

What I'm going to do for the sake of this podcast is illustrate this with a type of socialist theory and analysis called dialectical materialism. First we have dialectics and dialectical analysis basically means that we recognize that events happen because of other events that came before. Essentially that events do not exist in a vacuum.

So for example, when female infants are killed in a sex selective infanticide, or when female children are subjected to the brutal practice of female genital mutilation, or when young women are murdered by their fathers in honour killings, it is not an isolated incident, not only in the sense that these things happened to millions of girls and women making it a longstanding cultural pattern. But when males decide to brutalise these girls and women, it is not because they woke up that day and they randomly decided that they would commit these atrocities to a random person. And that person just happened to be female. These things happen because of events and attitudes that proceed those atrocities, they did not happen in a vacuum.

They were influenced by mutilations, infanticide and honour killings before them. They were influenced by cultural attitudes that existed long before each and every one of those girls were born. 

So next we have materialism, which is an analysis of what objectively or tangibly exists, regardless of what we think or feel about them.

And that's a very important concept, both to economics and to feminism. 

So the issue of gender and transgenderism is actually a really good way to illustrate this. As we know sex and gender are different things, sex is material while gender is the opposite, which is normally referred to as idealist.

We know that sex is objective. It's tangible, it's there regardless of the social constructs of gender, the XX and the XY chromosomes are objectively present. We can see them in a microscope. Sex characteristics are objectively present feeling or thinking differently will not make those things disappear. And that is an example of materialism.

To summarise everything I just said, the notion of dialectical materialism is this. Things happen because of other things. Events happen because of other events. They are connected and things are what they are regardless of what we think or feel about them.

So the way that all of these events come together, FGM and forced marriage and sex trafficking and surrogacy. They all come together on a dialectical basis of sex-based oppression. And our sex-based oppression is material. They're all linked to our biology and we are all linked to each other because of our biology.

And this is why the concept of sex based oppression is so crucial to feminism. When we remove bits and pieces of the truth about our oppression and how our experiences are connected, the dominoes start to fall in the fight for women's liberation is divided and we cannot advance if we are divided. And so recognising those connections is absolutely critical.

Luba: Couldn’t agree more. So if we are speaking about sex-based rights, we could expect that there will be one feminist movement that represents our path of feminism. But is there a feminist movement nowadays that represents you? which one? And if not so, why? 

Mary: That's a really, really great question.

So I identify with aspects from both Marxist or socialist feminism and with radical feminism, I would say I'm about 50:50, and I am close with a group of women who are the exact same way. 

On one hand, many of us feel that sometimes radical feminism has an economic class problem, I think many women of colour and poor women have felt left out of the feminist conversation for a long time, leftist, radical feminists, particularly those who are not white, think of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, they've been pointing out for decades that feminism still has a little way to go as far as inclusivity of poor women, women that are not white and not from the west.

That being said, modern Marxism is very focused on male workers as a default. If you try to talk about the double oppression of the female worker under capitalism, who are oppressed both on the basis of her sex and her relationship to the means of production. You're told that all workers suffer under capitalism.

It's like how a lot of anti-racist people get shut down. We're all human. We all believe the same. But that doesn't change the fact that we have extra struggles. So basically that's their way of saying shut up doing your problems, because I don't believe that you are any more oppressed than I am.

Luba: So is you support left wing movements and approaches like Marxism and socialism. So, you support sex based rights, antiracism, abolitionism socialism. So this is a very consistent worldview which is identified with political left.

But from what I know from the past, you have not been able to find your home within the political left. You have partly explained why, but can you add something?

Mary: Oh, absolutely. So, piggybacking off of what we were just talking about, male workers are centred in Marxism and overall when it comes to the woke left movements it's oppressed men that are centred, not oppressed women. So it's men of colour, disabled men, poor men, working class men. So that makes things hard for women who experience oppression based on their sex and based on their race or their economic status.

Marx was not a woman of course, although he and other socialist thinkers, they did discuss the capitalistic oppression of women. It was not their main point of view. Classical Marxism is mostly focused on male workers, typically factory workers since Marx  was a writer during the industrial revolution.

And so he talked about the struggles basically from a male factory worker point of view. 

So actually during the beginning years of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, women's issues were considered. The feminist Alexandra Kollontai was very active when Lenin was still alive. He cared about what Kollontai had to say and about how women would fare in the new Soviet Republic.

She was involved in the Soviet government and at the time she was an authority for women's advocacy. 

However, as time went on women's issues were really abandoned especially after Stalin had been in power for quite some time, the whole challenge of building a centrally planned economy and building the Soviet military became the forefront of Soviet policy.

So more women joined the workforce. Sure. But their work as child rearers and homemakers. And I guess men pleasers, that remained largely unchanged. The bulk of raising children and housework that all remained mostly, if not all women's work. 

So it's clear that none of this is new. I mean the misogyny of the far left and the abandonment of women's issues is not new.

So if we fast forward to today, many leftist men, they care far more about class liberation than women's liberation. Even though class liberation cannot happen without the liberation of women. This should be an easy concept but so many leftist men truly do not care. And of course nowadays it's not only that the men on the left don't care, but if you're a woman who dares to say, hey, I deserve recognition because of my sex, you're also called a terf by everyone else on the left, all men and the women though. If they say let's focus on the problems of biological women in the working class. They say terf. And then we're back where we started. 

And nowadays the’ sex work is work’ mantra is everywhere. At least, at least in the Soviet Republic, they knew that prostitution was exploitative.

Now not only do leftist not care about women's roles as homemakers and child bearers, but they also embrace prostitution. Men on the left, hate the idea of wage labour for themselves, but it's totally okay if women are performing wage labour sexually. 

So the status quo for women on the left is even worse than it used to be.

Luba: That story about the radio station, you mentioned the left wing radio station, which refused to interview you. So we can you tell us what happened? 

Mary: So basically, a couple months ago I sent an email to a podcast that's made in my city. It's become quite successful among leftists, not only in my area, but all over the US. I think it was sort of an unexpected success but it is what it is. 

So, I had listened to many of these episodes, all about different talks about history, socialist theory, current events, stuff like that. And so I thought that the guy who runs this podcast, I think he's super smart. And so I sent him an email and I decided that I would say, Hey, I want to do a podcast for your station. So I proposed a podcast with three parts. First part being how traditional capitalistic dynamics play out in the sex industry and how pimps are similar to CEOs just in terms of how they exploit women and workers.

 Number two I wanted to talk about legislation, talk about what's happening in Germany with legalisation, what's happening in New Zealand with full decriminalisation and talk about the Nordic Model, which is now in Israel thanks to you.  And, has been in the Nordic countries for more than 15 years. 

So the third part I wanted to talk a little bit about my own experience in the sex industry. We'll talk more about my story in a bit, but basically I wanted them to know that just because a woman ‘chose it’ that doesn't mean that she was not coerced. It does not mean that she is empowered and it does not mean that she does not need help. And so what I really wanted to do was explain to these socialists that, Hey, we are exploited too why don't you pay some attention to the exploitation that happens in the sex industry?

And so, unfortunately, it seems as though my request fell on deaf ears or maybe selective hearing ears and I got a really not great response. So the guy who runs these podcasts said that my words might make sex workers feel unsafe and that he didn't want his sex worker friends to feel attacked or to suffer because of what I wanted to say now, how ridiculous is that?

I wanted to talk about the exploitation in the sex industry and me saying that makes those women feel unsafe. I mean, really. 

Luba: Pimps are safe, johns are safe, men are safe but sex trade survivor is unsafe. And you were disappointed by this response and thankfully, we have you on our FiLiA podcast. I like this. 

Can you elaborate more about what you wanted to tell our listeners about the sex trade? 

Mary: Absolutely. So, back to my three-point proposal:

Number one, I wanted to talk about how those capitalist dynamics play out in the sex industry. I wanted to talk about how pimps and CEOs work in similar ways to exploit workers and women. And I also wanted to discuss ways in which young women are pulled into the sex industry with lies, grooming, promises and how similar those patterns are to the recruitment into sex trafficking. And so basically what I'm trying to get them to realise is that this is an exploitative industry, even more so than other industries and that's why we should care about the exploitation and not cheer it on. 

So second, I wanted to talk about legislation. Some of the liberal politicians in New York want to fully decriminalise ‘sex work.’ they want to decriminalise prostitution, mirroring what's happened in Spain and New Zealand. Spain especially is a train wreck with all of the women from Eastern Europe being trafficked over there. 

And then I wanted to go over what's happening in places like Germany. Germany has its own set of problems. 

You, and I know that there is proof that decriminalisation and legalisation increase trafficking and a lot of people on the left believe that prostitution should be fully decriminalised or legalised, and I wanted to talk about why that's a bad idea and why the Nordic Model is the best. 

And then number three, I wanted to tell them that when they argue that women who choose it are empowered and don't need saving. They're usually talking about women like me, women who have supposedly chosen it. Really, I just wanted a chance to tell my story. And unfortunately, I was not able to do that until FiLiA decided to interview me. 

Luba: This probably will be my next question. 

You are from a middle class family and this makes you different from many other survivors who came from a background of poverty, weakness and depression. We rightly perceived the sex industry as the choice of ones who have no choice, but what brought you there? 

Mary: Thanks for asking. In short, the answer is drug addiction, but I’ll add a little bit of context. So, my parents are both attorneys. And while they had not very much money and they had student loans, student debt when I was young, they definitely over the years have built their careers quite successfully and they’re very comfortable.

I always knew where my next meal was coming from. I went to public school in a great district that gets plenty of funding and I have a college education. I turned to drugs in my teen years. I'm still struggling with addiction to this day, but it's much better than it used to be.

So I turned to drugs when I was about 15, 16. I was hurting. Definitely. And I'm still kind of working out what caused me to hurt and use drugs in the first place. So while my father was always physically and financially present. He's not emotionally present most of the time. He was severely abused as a child and never really was into getting therapy. So a lot of that maladaptive behaviour was turned onto me and to my mother. 

And so his emotional turbulence really affected all of us and it still affects me because this is what happens when men decide to bottle it in. It affects the women around them.

So I really felt that void. I felt that there was a space where my loving father was supposed to be where he wasn't, I guess, call that daddy issues and drugs seem to be something that made me feel better. And so of course, where an addiction begins, so does a money funnel and so that's how I started not having money, was having a drug addiction.

So, fast forward a couple years later, another woman actually got me to be a ‘sugar baby’ which of course is really just a form of elitist prostitution. There are so many magazines and TV shows and stuff that make it seem like super easy money. you know, ‘I get paid to go out to dinner’ and whatever, but I learned very quickly what the reality of that is. I was beaten many times, raped, degraded, you name it. Prostitution just became my normal. And I tried my best to live on just that, but it was not enough to support my habit and get my rent paid and so I had a problem. 

So one day I got a message on social media from a man telling me that I was pretty, had a nice body and he asked if I was interested in a money making opportunity. Well, of course I wanted to make money. So he told me that by performing on live sex cams, basically pornography from your home. I could make thousands of dollars in a single week if I contributed enough time to it. I was 21 at the time, over my head in addiction, but I still was not quite sure if that was something that I even really wanted to do. 

However, he knew that I needed money and he continued to groom me, lie to me. And it worked eventually. And I gave in. so that is essentially the story about how I got into it.  

Luba: I listen to you and I think about myself and many other women. Could it be that women are coming to the sex industry not just because they have no other choice, I just have mentioned, but also because they do not fully understand the consequences? 

Mary: You know, I think that's a, yes. That's absolutely yes.

 You live in Israel and so you have maybe a different point of view than I do on this. But to me, I think that not understanding the consequences, I think it's especially true, maybe in more affluent countries like, for example, in the United States, most women here are white women and they're not super familiar with prostitution because they don't see it happening. I think that women here definitely don't understand what they're getting into because a lot of them aren't even coming from abject poverty. I was definitely one of those people. 

I was in my late teens when I got into it. And of course the frontal lobe of the brain is not developed yet. And so women at that age, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21, they don't understand what's happening, they don't understand how they're being manipulated. However, that being said, most women in the sex industry can't foresee the trauma that comes with it. I think something like that is just very hard to predict.

So for a little bit more context, here in the United States things like sugaring and sex cams are very glamorised and of course now we've got this Onlyfans thing. You and I have both seen, and I'm sure many women listening, they've seen how OnlyFans is marketed and how it's made to look like you don't have to do anything and you just get these gobs of cash.

So what's marketed to us by media and pimps and all their pimp friends is that there's a super easy, carefree way of making tons of money with minimal effort. Sounds like a deal, right? It could not be more untrue. They tell the stories of the minority in the sex trade, not the majority. They talk about the small handful of women who have been able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars after just a year of doing webcams or OnlyFans or whatever. The reality is that because more women are joining, especially the online sex trade, the pay-outs are getting worse and worse. Women are making less and less money because the market is now saturated with women that have been sold these lies, I fell for it too. I really thought that I was going to hit the jackpot Luba. I really did. 

This pimp made it sound like a total dream. Instead of course, as I mentioned, I ended up being sexually and physically assaulted way too many times.

And then as far as webcams were concerned, I dealt with a lot of emotional degradation. Of course, the online Johns could not touch me but they harmed me with their words and their attitudes. They verbally abused me. They made outrageous demands. And they said, and thought perverted things that I won't repeat to this podcast. But overall, yes, to answer your question, women, young women, especially, like women under 25 they do not understand how this is going to affect them in the long term. And they also don't expect to be hurt so badly because that is not the story that pimps are telling them. 

Luba: True. The webcam industry is described as harmless. Just a sort of non-dangerous sex work, which in fact, it sounds very different from what you say, and this is very important.

So maybe all this positive discourse about the sex trade on social media is sort of grooming of women. Its social media grooming. Yeah. 

Mary: Absolutely. Quite literally, it was an avenue for grooming for me because I was contacted on social media by this webcam pimp basically.

But the discourse, it absolutely also does create illusions and groom women.  

I'll talk basically about why these illusions are wrong. And so I will say this, when I was still in the sex industry, I took part in that positive discourse because I felt like I had to lie about how bad it was or how not bad it was because I felt ashamed of what was happening and I didn't want people to think that I had been duped or fooled or taken advantage of because that's embarrassing. I'm not saying it's embarrassing as in it was my fault, but. It's usually very embarrassing for others to find out that someone else is making decisions for you or you've been taken advantage of, it sometimes makes you feel really weak.

And I will say on the other end, a lot of that positive discourse is what made me feel like it was okay to be there, that it was okay what was happening to me and that it's totally a great idea if you want to make extra money. 

So the discourse groomed me and not only did it groom me, but after I decided to enter the sex trade, the discourse made me reluctant to question what was happening to me.

Now being a woman that's not in the sex trade anymore if I were to go into that discourse and say, ‘hey, this is not the reality’ then they'll attack me, even though I was one of them at one time. And so that's that part.

 One of the lies that this webcam pimp told me was that I could kick out any abusive men that were in my chat room. There are men who will come in and, call you fat, a whore, they'll say all kinds of terrible things to you just because they feel like abusing women. So he told me that I could kick them out anytime and that it would be no problem. I have a right to choose who I work with.

So that's what I did, but then they would send me emails telling me that I needed to stop kicking these abusive men out because it was taking money away from the site, those abusive men bring money. And so do not kick them out because you are losing money for you and for us. And this is not to mention that I was only allowed to keep 30% of my income. They took 70% of my pay check and then they also taxed it on top of that. So overall I received about 20% of my income and because the pay outs were already so low I was feeling discouraged all the time because I would put in all of these hours and emotional labour into doing this. I was feeling like, I don't even know if this is worth it. And of course it's not worth it, but at the time, you know, I was like, should I keep doing this? And I was always told, just keep going. The more time you put in, the more you'll get out. And that was not true but I kept taking it and they kept me in there.

Overall this illusion negatively affects women who are thinking about going into it, women who are in it and women who have exited it, it's just bad for every single woman involved. 

Luba: This is the truth which should be heard about the sex trade. Everyone should know it. And I hope that, uh, more young women will listen to it instead of the normal sex work message. 

Sometimes when I think about the US here in Israel, we spent more than 10 years trying to promote the sex purchase ban. Here in Israel, it was very difficult to convince everyone that punters should be criminalised. In the US it seems to be very easy. You explain to the public that prostitute should not be criminalised and just leave the situation as it is, except to decriminalise prostitutes. You easily can have a Nordic Model. So is there any chance that left or Marxist groups in the US or democratic party will adopt this idea?

This will be a very lean version of the Nordic Model, probably without sufficient exit services, but this is a good beginning we have in the US we have, decriminalisation of women in the sex trade. This is a human any reasonable person supports this. So, but it'll be a very easy step to the toward Nordic Model in the US.

Is there a chance that the left will adopt this idea and promote it? 

Mary: I remain hopeful. There have been some politicians and other public figures who actually have come out in support of the Nordic Model, however. So it's sort of similar to the trans issue where they might have some ideas that are actually progressive, like banning medical operations, sex related medical operations on children, saying that we need less gender, not more of it, or that we help women out of prostitution, but they are pressured by the huge liberal community in the United States that says ‘trans women are women and if you don't believe it, then you're a hateful bigot and sex work is okay and it's real empowering work’

 And if you don't think so, then you're a misogynist and you hate women. And so I would love for the Nordic Model to be here. I just don't know how realistic it is simply because of the pressure from pimp followers in the liberal community. So I'm hopeful but at the same time there's a lot of pressure to fully decriminalise or legalise. 

Luba:  Do you think the decriminalisation alternative will be easier to promote in the US than decriminalising the women in the sex trade? 

Mary: You know in my head; I think that they would be more likely to do full decriminalisation because there's a reason that the Nordic Model is called the Equality Model. By criminalising sex buyers we're sort of creating a more even playing field. The porn business is so big here in the US and I really think that because America is very porn soaked, I think that it would be really difficult to convince politicians to do anything that only benefits women because the American attitude is very entitled and people here, I mean, they believe accessing women is like a basic freedom. And so I think the culture would have to change if the Nordic Model ever has a shot, we have to make people understand that accessing women is not a basic human right for men and get rid of that really just entitled attitude.

Luba: Do you feel that this position is a sort of betrayal of actual leftist values, which you described in the beginning of our conversation? 

Mary: Oh, sure. It is the idea of these sort of woke liberal people that if a woman is choosing to do this with zero outside influence, then it should not be seen as more exploitative than any other job.

However, I believe that every woman enters the sex trade with outside influence whether it's physical force or cultural grooming or financial coercion. I don't believe that any woman enters the sex trade with no influence at all. And so not only are pimps of some kind, almost always involved: I talked recently about this, where I said so many people think of pimps as a guy in a business suit in fedora out on the street, selling women, but pimps are also pornographers. They are the CEOs of these giant porn companies, they're strip club owners, they're administrators on these webcam sites. It's the men up top and OnlyFans. Those are all pimps. 

Because these people don't realise that pimping is involved almost every time they just can't see how exploitative it really is. And so not only are pimps involved but prostitution involves more sexual violence than any other profession.

The empirical research of women like Inge Kraus, and Melissa Farley proved that. 

And so basically their argument is that it should be seen as, you know, they have this word valid, you've probably seen the word valid and you're just like, oh my God. You know, serving men is just as valid as operating on an aircraft or planting trees, they just think it's like the same thing, it's just any other service. But as I said, the research of these women proves that prostitution is inherently more violent than any other profession.

And so how can anyone say in good faith that prostitution is just like any other job? I really don't understand. They say that facing sexual violence as a prostitute is like if you're flipping burgers, it's just like getting burger grease on your pants.

It's just something that happens and something that you should expect if this is what you sign up for. 

Not only is it a delusional way of thinking, but it's victim blaming. They just believe that if you enter prostitution, then you must want all of that, you must be ready or want all of that sexual violence. It's just disgusting. As I said, it's delusional and its victim blaming. So, that's what they have to say about that. 

Luba: Thank you, Mary. One more question that I wanted to ask. I saw you many times criticising not only political left or the pimps and john's lobby but also feminist radical circles.

I see that you have many disagreements with the on-line radical feminism communities. So what is your main disagreement?

Mary: One thing I wanted to say on my last question, so I wanted to just mention a quick quote from Thomas Sankara who was the Marxist and former President of Burkina Faso who helped achieve leaps and bounds in education and medicine. He said that: 

‘prostitution is nothing but the microcosm of a society where exploitation is a general rule. It is a symbol of the contempt men have for women and every major Marxist of the modernist era agreed with that’.

 And so I just wanted to say quickly before we move on that many of these Marxist icons have said these things, but these men like to conveniently ignore that.

So anyway, so to your next question. So the biggest issue I have with online radical feminist communities revolves around the trans issue. It's definitely a problem as we know, how can we fight for sex-based oppression if they claim it doesn't exist? I think that because so many women have been called terf for believing that biology is real and immutable. These women believe that automatically they belong in radical feminism because they're called a terf. They're like, oh, well, that's what I am. Okay. but they share almost no radical feminist beliefs with us. I mean, maybe porn makes them feel uncomfortable, but I've seen so many of these people treat exited women like crap and we're here thinking, aren't you a radical feminist? But a lot of them are right wing and they don't really care about women beyond making sure that we don't have to share bathrooms with men. 

So, you and I know being a radical feminist is super unpopular, women with our views are like such a minority. And I understand the desperation for visibility for us to be recognised for our beliefs but I think because the trans issue is so basic, the understanding that biological sex is real is so basic.

That's what is bringing some of these people into our circle and I really hope that radical feminists can stop accepting these right wing people just because we all know that you cannot change sex. 

There's a British feminist. She's not a feminist! What am I saying? 

Her name is Caroline Farrow and Caroline is very anti-trans ideology, which, you know, that's fine. But she also does not believe that women should have a right to have an abortion, she does not believe that it's okay to be a lesbian, gay or bisexual. So, if we're inviting these people in, just because they understand that men have penises and women have vaginas, it's going to be a self-defeating thing at the end of the day.

Luba: It is not enough to be a common ground.  I agree. 

Mary: That's exactly it. And, especially, as somebody who lives in the United States right now we are witnessing some of the most toxic right wing politics in the history of the United States 

And it is crucial that we do not partner with the right wing right now, because there are women at the Mexico and United States border that are having their uterus removed without their consent. And that is happening under the control of the right wing. So why would we invite these people in when women are what we focus on? So I wanted to mention that.

 So there's a, a feminist, she's been gone for a while now, but her name was Shulamith Firestone and she is actually credited with the first in depth writing about the concept of sex class. This was in 1970 and her idea was basically that we could take principles from Marxism and apply it to feminism.

And that's how she came up with the concept. That men are the exploiters and women are the exploited. And so that was really the first big piece that was written on sex class and she was a Marxist. And so I really recommend that that women read her. She wrote a book called The Dialectic of Sex and that book I think is very critical for radical feminists to read.

Radical feminism and the right wing, they're just never going to be compatible. And so I think that as right wing movements around the world are advancing and women are victimised by that. We need to really make sure that we're not giving these people more fuel to hurt women.

Luba: Thank you, Mary, for your answers.

I think that many women can learn a lot from your story and contemplation and, I really hope to meet you one day at the FiLiA conference, maybe next year.

Mary: Yes, I would love that. That would be so great. Hopefully. Hopefully all this COVID stuff will be cleared up, fingers crossed. 

Luba: Thank you very much. Have a nice day. 

Mary: Thank you, Luba. You too.