Belgium is working towards new laws regarding sex work, making the workers eligeble for pensions, healthcare plans, contracts and overall more legal status. This was done in corporation with sex workers, orgs surrounding sex work and my place of work, the Union.

Now, I worked with former sex workers and human trafficking victims myself and I am aware of their struggles. I am not going to outright deny their right to fight for improvement.

What bugs me is the normalization of an industry that is heavily, and I mean very heavily, infested with human rights abuses. For every one empowered sexworker there are a thousand human trafficking victims. Giving them a pension is not helping in the slightest.

And then there is the whole thing of tying things like unemployment benefits to you wanting to look for work. Here in Belgium your benefits can be cut as soon as you refuse a job that is offered to you through government instances. What if we further legitimize sex work and you refuse a sex worker position? There have been caes already of the instances offering unemployed actresses porn jobs, so why not offer them sex workers contracts? And why not cut their benefits of they refuse a fitting job? Right?

And everyone is so happy about it. As if the whole industry is one collective of happy people doing a fun job instead of the horror it is.

Sorry for ranting but fuck me what a mess

    • MarxMadnessEnglish
      14·
      2 months ago

      The second step was the law the country passed at the beginning of May—the one that The Publica makes sound like a horrifying, dystopian mess. In fact, the measure had the support of the Belgian sex workers union…

      But the law also explicitly protects the right to refuse specific customers, sex acts, etc.

      It stipulates that “every sex worker has the right to refuse a client,” that “every sex worker has the right to refuse a sexual act,” and that “every sex worker has the right to interrupt a sexual act at any time.” It also says that “any sex worker has the right to perform a sexual act in the manner they wish” and that “if there are dangers to the sex worker’s safety, the sex worker may refuse to sit behind a window or advertise.”…

      “If a sex worker exercises the right to refuse more than ten times in a six-month period, the sex worker or the employer may seek the intervention of a governmental mediation service,” according to UTSOPI. “That service will assess if there is anything wrong with the working conditions, if there is a problem in the employer-employee relationship. The service can also offer professional reorientation possibilities.”

      I don’t trust Reason’s reporting on this very much, and the article is full of libertarian junk. I’m curious as to why the sex workers’ union supported this, though. Maybe they think the protections it includes are sufficient. Like 100 other things, it’ll come down to how it’s enforced.

      • MakanEnglish
        8·
        2 months ago

        I agree.

        Reason is lauded by someone who was a former friend who turned into an anarcho-capitalist and, trust me, from what he said about the staff there, there are some real, err, kooky people there.

        And honestly, the legal framework and laws seem… fine in principle, but yeah, how it’s enforced is another thing, and honestly, it seems better than what came before.

        I’m still reading up on this issue, but Reason’s reporting on this almost made me think that what’s happening is better than what was the case before.

        And the OP should be in line with their org’s policies; I feel that just joining an org simply because it’s ML or because it’s “near to you” is not enough; you have to actively agree with the politics (beyond it just being Marxist-Leninist because many Marxist orgs have their own politics and political culture; no two Marxist or Marxist-Leninist orgs are the same).

        Whatever, ig