Last month, actor and activist Ashley Judd sparked backlash on social media when she posted her controversial positions on sex work and consent.
After facing criticism for an Instagram post about “#survivors of #prostitution who are saying #MeToo” in which she wrote that “prostitution is paid rape,” Judd stood by her stance. She tweeted, “I believe body invasion is indeed inherently harmful, and cash is the proof of coercion. Buying sexual access commodifies something that is beyond the realm of capitalism and entrepreneurship: girls and women’s orfices [sic].”
As The Daily Beast previously reported, Judd has consistently conflated sex work and sex trafficking, and is on the advisory council of Demand Abolition, an organization that seeks to eradicate “the illegal commercial sex industry in the US.”
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Unsurprisingly, sex workers and activists did not take kindly to Judd’s offensive takes. Kate D’Adamo, a sex-worker rights advocate and partner with Reframe Health and Justice, was one of the first to call her out, tweeting, “Congrats, @AshleyJudd, on your hard work trying to make #MeToo a space where those most likely to face and harm are unwelcome and unsafe. #sexworkerlivesmatter.”
Another social media user who responded to Judd on Twitter, @BrookeBrou, told The Daily Beast that, “At best it sends a confusing, conflicting message when a celebrity uses the #MeToo movement as a way to support their anti-sex work crusade. At worst it gives everyday people wrong and harmful information about [sex work], while also missing the mark on what consent truly is.”
Despite her track record of reducing folks in the sex trade to trafficked “orifices,” Judd is still welcomed and celebrated in feminist spaces. On Thursday night, a group of activists congregated outside of The Wing Flatiron in Manhattan to protest a conversation with Ashley Judd. The Wing is a members-only women’s co-working space that’s “dedicated to the advancement of women in our wider community.”
When @SXNOIR, who asked to be identified by the name of the platform that she founded, saw that Judd would be coming to The Wing, she saw it as an opportunity to engage with the actress about her recent anti-sex work statements. She worked with activists Brooke Kelty and Clara Cline to organize a two-part action: inside, @SXNOIR would ask Judd a question during the Q&A, while outside, a silent protest would gather to catch Judd and The Wing members on their way out.
Just minutes before the event, @SXNOIR walked The Daily Beast through their strategy and objectives, emphasizing a “call-in” as opposed to a “call-out”: “We want to be loving, we want to be caring, but we want to hold people accountable.”
“I think it’s very important to be mindful and also educate the people who could be misinformed about how [Judd’s remarks] put women in potential danger,” she explained. “Everyone on Twitter who has responded to her cannot physically be here right now, but I’m here right now, and so we want to elevate their voices the best way we can. We’re physically here, you cannot shadowban us.”
She made it clear that, “We’re not coming for The Wing,” but did express disappointment in their handling of the Judd event. “One thing that I will criticize The Wing on is, when I joined, I was so impressed with how diverse their programming was. Like when they had the women of color and wellness event, they passed the mic to the people who could actually talk about it. And with this event with Ashley Judd, they’re not passing the mic at all out of fear of making someone uncomfortable. And it’s like, imagine how we feel sitting in the audience listening to someone who is actively working against us? That makes me very uncomfortable.”
@SXNOIR mentioned that there were initially hopes of having a sex worker or an educated ally engage with Judd onstage in an official capacity. “I can’t say it was ignored, but it wasn’t taken seriously,” she explained. “It was somewhat dismissed. And so I think that speaks volumes, and I think The Wing could use their resources and use their members better, because I know for a fact they have members who are sex workers. So are you inclusive of them, or are you not?”
Judd’s conversation with The New York Times’ Cara Buckley lasted about 40 minutes and covered a number of topics, from going on the record about Harvey Weinstein to Judd’s humanitarian work; at one point, the actress even performed parts of the “Nasty Woman” poem she recited at the Women’s March. Near the end of the talk, Buckley did ask about the recent backlash against Judd, and her statements essentially erasing consensual sex work. In response, Judd reiterated that, “There’s no such thing as sex work.” She continued, “It’s paid sexual access, it’s not sex, which is something that’s consensual and sacred.”
When @SXNOIR got the chance to pose her question, she began by asking Judd about her work with Demand Abolition. Judd called for the decriminalization of women and girls in the sex trade and the criminalization of people who purchase sex, a “solution” that many sex workers and activists take issue with. As Kate D’Adamo previously told The Daily Beast, “We have the data—in places where they increased policing of only clients/johns, violence increased, the level of violence people were willing to endure before they reported it to police increased, and people end up seeing more clients for less money. It’s not a question mark anymore. This is willfully valuing an opinion over someone’s life.”
@SXNOIR continued, “I’m here today to call you in and to say that we’re ready to talk. We want to sit down with you, we want you to hear our stories. And I understand that you have your opinion and we have our opinion, but it’s not OK to not listen to all of the women who are affected by sex work, and there are a lot of women who do consensual sex work.” After a back and forth between @SXNOIR and another member of the audience, Judd finally addressed her, saying, “You are beautiful and eloquent.”
“I’m on your side,” Judd concluded. “I’m not on the side of the pimps, the brothel keepers, and the pornographers.”
Clara Cline, a co-organizer of the protest who also attended the talk, told The Daily Beast that she found Judd’s response to be lacking. “I thought it was very cute how she was like, well I appreciate you, clap clap clap. As in, this is over. She didn’t have a real thoughtful response, as if she had listened to anything, any of the talking points [@SXNOIR] mentioned.”
When asked if she thought Judd might seriously reconsider her positions, Cline laughed, “Hell no! She’s probably going to go home, get on Twitter and write something like, wow, good for these people exercising their freedom of speech! She’s not going to change her stance, but we’re here to show her, and to show the people who are following her on social media that we are here, and she can’t talk over us.” Cline added, “We’re not out every day and so it’s hard for us to have a voice, especially when we are shadowbanned.”
As the crowd at The Wing dispersed, multiple attendees came up to @SXNOIR to thank her for her contribution. Outside, a small band of activists lined the streets with signs reading “Don’t be a SWERF [sex worker exclusionary radical feminist]” and “Hey Ashley Judd, please don’t reduce me to my orifices.”
While most of the decamping Wing members walked by quickly, two attendees from the talk who were not affiliated with the protesters picked up signs and joined in. One of them, a Wing member named Brittany, told The Daily Beast that Judd’s statements during the event “rubbed [her] the wrong way,” particularly “that she was conflating the idea of sex trafficking, which is real and is terrible and needs to be fixed, and the idea of a woman who is consenting to using her body in a way that she wants to.” She said that @SXNOIR’s comments articulated the discomfort that she was feeling, “and so as soon as she told me inside that there was a potential to stand with women in a way that I felt more authentically connected to outside, that felt like the obvious next step.” Brittany concluded that while she found some of Judd’s points during the talk interesting, the conversation ultimately “wasn’t encompassing of all women. And I want to be a part of the conversation that is.”
Eventually Judd exited the building into the protest. She greeted @SXNOIR and went up to many of the activists individually, shaking their hands and introducing herself. Brooke Kelty, a sex worker and sex worker rights activist who co-organized the protest, told The Daily Beast that she was pleased with the outcome, saying, “I didn’t think [Judd] would actually talk with us, so that was nice.” Kelty continued, “I was hoping for a little bit more people, but I was super happy some members of The Wing actually joined us.”
Moving forward, Kelty offered, “The best case scenario is that [Judd] would be in contact with a group like SWOP and have conversations with other sex workers, because sex work is huge and it’s very diverse. There are lots of different voices. There are survivors who are unhappy and don’t agree with me and the people who are protesting here, but like I said, it’s a very big community, so you need to have a more diverse group that you’re listening to.”
Kelty concluded, “I understand in some part where [Judd’s] coming from—she is a rape survivor, and so she wants to protect women. She wants to protect people. At the same time, I just don’t agree with how she’s going about it.”
