I recently made a post about this topic but it caused a lot of controversy. I did not specify and used the broad term of sex work which probably made the interpretations so varied. For the purposes of this conversation, I want to focus on work that is consensual because obviously human trafficking or coercive sex is inherently wrong and exploitative. Some people even said that sex work is not valid labor which I personally found strange. I’m personally not a fanboy of the sex industry at all, but most people involved would say that the illegality of it exacerbates the bad situation that they find themselves in, and I cannot personally find a reason to be going against what the people involved are saying. And yeah it probably wouldn’t exist under socialism but at the same time, I think it is a huge mistake to go in with an iron fist and just say “I’m going to make everyone stop sex work right this instant because it’s not socialist” because this does not treat the underlying causes of it, which will only make it spring back up anyway.
And I’m not just expecting one type of answer but if I am making an error in applying dialectical materialism or Marxism-Leninism please let me know.
If I understand what you are saying, and correct me if I am wrong, is that you feel as if the underlying conditions are fixed there would be no reason for sex work to be a thing. and secondly that you feel as if this proactive banning of sexwork comes off as misogynistic. would this be correct?
I also would like to ask you to not make personal attacks in GZD.
Third, some of the points you have brought up I do not, to my reading did not appear in the origional comment. The Comment you are replying to, to my reading appears to be saying. 1) People do not like thinking they are exploited so they mention it as empowering even if they still are exploited. 2) they are in society made to feel as if they cannot speak up 3) Exploitation and socity pressuring women to stay quite is unjust and 4) we as marxists must oppose injustice. @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml please correct me if I am wrong
Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off hostile but in re-reading what I wrote I can totally see that, I’ll try to do better moving forward.
To the first thing, I think I was framing this with the context that sex work is a creation of the patriarchy and serves to perpetuate misogyny, sexism and exploitation. In response to this, I would think that focusing on the patriarchy, re-educating men and providing a much bigger emphasis on dismantling those violent concepts, then the nature of sex work would be fundamentally changed. It may even resolve itself, since there wouldn’t be pressure, coercion, and potentially there would not be a want for it as it stands now.
I think some of the points that I was speaking to was not just in the comment that I replied to but within the whole thread. The points that you enumerated I’m absolutely in agreement with, make no mistake about that. There were points that I interpreted as having an undercurrent of misogyny, I wasn’t trying to claim that darkcalling was doing that intentionally but that’s how it felt to me.