I’m a queer trans woman, and consequently I exist in spaces where positivity about “sex work” is compulsory. It is very tiresome. God help you if you decide to point out that being a sex slave for rent as a day job seems dehumanizing or horrific, because that’s not very progressive of you!
Kind of shocking and ridiculous that these so called feminists fret endlessly over misogynistic messaging in media, the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, and sexual exploitation in workplaces, but turn into free market libertarians over the distillation of this violence into an industry apart.
All jobs involve selling your body!
No they don’t! I work in a factory. It’s not always pleasant, but when we say “corporate is really bending us over on this overtime,” this is at least a metaphor. My legs hurt from working twenty days in a row, but no one raped me. Are we living on the same planet? Yes, I am using my body to work. This is actually an extremely superficial similarity. I cannot believe this needs to be litigated.
Sex work is part of Queer history!
I find this offensive. Picking cotton is part of Black history, too. Wholesome!
Criminalizing sex work only hurts sex workers!
This is true, but legalizing it won’t help anyone but the existing capitalist class within the industry. The only way to help sex workers is to give them ways to escape. You won’t see me calling the cops on them.
Sex workers should unionize!
A statement dreamt by the utterly deranged. How are they gonna strike? How are they gonna prevent scabbing? Is the economy gonna collapse if your demands aren’t met? Please show your work.
Genuinely, this might be a psyop.
But it wouldn’t be work then. There is no reason to commodify your sexuality if your survival does not depend on your labor. It would just be a hobby.
Edit: I guess you could make the same argument for other work but I think we can all agree that there is a difference between, for example, building infrastructure or schools or being a doctor and filming your sexuality for others to watch online.
Edit2: this comment was a bit whack and a further explanation is below
But we would still get paid doing it through only fans or some such system. Would that not be normal work like any other?
See, I feel like i hear this everytime in these discussions as this self evident point. I don’t really see it as this self evident at all and literally all sex workers i have ever talked to also just see it as another job and chose it because it is less dehumanising for them than McDonalds or other minimum wage jobs.
It’s really hard for me to form a proper opinion beyond just listening to the sex workers themselves (especially marxist sex workers), nodding and saying “yeah, what she said!”. Especially with many marxists still being white men that have pre-revolution thought processes on social issues.
This is all excluding street prostitution and similar of course. I assume prostitution will die off the second these girls and women no longer need it/are forced and the rest who just enjoy it can maybe continue because it will be such a small number of people? Again, really hard for me to form a full ideological opinion on it.
Edit: Your comment here https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/7259454 already answered most of my questions actually :)
I’m not really sure what point I wanted to make with that comment lol but I’ll keep it up anyway
Huh? Pretty sure you still need a job to secure your livelihood under communism.
One is socially acceptable, the other isn’t. Aside from morality around sex what is the difference between an actor in non-adult films and a porn actor? Or how do you view acting as a profession?
I wanted to type out something but along the way I realized that we probably agree anyway and that a lack of clear terms in this thread makes people argue while not really knowing what the other means with their term.
My point is that under communism the abusive system that is current day prostitution and/or sex work would and should cease to exist. I don’t think I would be overly dramatic to say that over 90% of the people currently active in these systems are trafficked or forced into it one way or another.
I’m not necessarily against the idea of people working with a sexuality in a system that does not force them to (i.e. threat of starvation / homelesness without a job, patriarchal views on sex, etc.). Just as people wanting to be a movie actor being able to become a movie actor right now.
It’s basically the sex workers discussion: sex workers need rights to function in their job but the larger issue in the industry is that the vast majority of people in it would not be in it if they had a choice. And because of that you get camps of people opposing any progress in the working rights field, not because of puritan reasons per se but because they view the system as rotten to the core to begin with. The sex workers who do it out of pure passion are a tiny minority and unfortunately get grouped together with human trafficking victims in the industry and vice versa, and because of that they also face difficulty in finding allies in left wing circles.
Absolutely, and the path to worker empowerment is by improving their material conditions. And that’s what I think most people want to do when they say “sex work is work”.