... Whoa

I've been off reading the comments to this thread at Making Light, which have been a fascinating and frustrating discussion of all kinds of things related to sexism and gender identity (and kept me up far too fucking late because there are umpty-hundred of them and I didn't even finish). (It got linked by someone saying, 'Wow, the discussion starting at comment 602 is fascinating'. I read the previous 601 comments, too, as I had last read the thread when it was around 20 ....)

I just got to this chunk of comment by the inimitable Teresa Nielsen Hayden. (This is comment #730, by the way; it has a wee bit of context.)

I once heard Annie Sprinkle say that until prostitution is legalized, no woman will be free. This struck me as true at the time, but it took a long time for me to tease out the implications. One of them is that as long as there are women who are outside the protection of the social contract, all women are threatened with reassignment to that category.

Well, hit me with a fucking brick. I'm just sort of, ... what an illuminating angle to sit at and peer.