I see sex work as somewhat analogous to coal mining. It’s not that it isn’t real work, or that those who work in that capacity don’t deserve rights, dignity, or a society that works for them. The problem, of course, is the ever-present exploitation of the workers coupled with the severe unpleasantness of the occupation which ensures that the people who do work these jobs are those with few other options. That isn’t to say that all sex workers and/or coal miners are miserable. Even so, the patterns around this kind of work are unmistakable.
Given these facts, I think most reasonable people understand that sex work should go extinct. That isn’t to say that you can’t make pornography or have sex with strangers. However, it’s impossible to gauge enthusiastic consent when money is changing hands, and enthusiastic consent is a vital component for an ethical sexual encounter.
My question for the community is how exactly this is meant to be accomplished. How can sex work be abolished without harming the very people it’s meant to protect? The number one problem western sex workers face, more so than creepy clients, is the cops, who profile them, steal their wages, and arrest them on a whim. Clearly, criminalizing sex work hasn’t done much for sex workers. What are some alternatives?
Personally, I used to cam model and it was the same labour relation as gig work because I worked for a pretty much gig-economy type company who paid me based on my income and took a cut, with added levels of misogynist exploitation. To me the issue is that late stage capitalism produces not what is needed for society but what is needed for the reproduction of the capitalist system itself, which depends on the subjugation of women. All workers are subjected to supply and demand within labour markets, and unemployment is emportant to keep wages low. Sex work can be a way out of wage suppression workers face in more ‘legitimate’ labour relations, so it is a sensible thing in terms of workers acting in their own interests within a broken system. Also sex workers are pretty well organised both in terms of demands as workers and networks of support and solidarity in many places around the world. Like all workers are, some are coerced in to it by fucked up systems, some are doing alright and aren’t precarious. Personally, I wouldn’t really expect leftist on a fake-reddit website to have the best ideas in the interests of a community that’s probably more active and pragmatic than a lot of the posters here, so I would take a lot of people’s musings with a grain of salt. Even my own, I have been out of that world a while and am far from precarious, so can’t speak for them. But I think their unions and organising is cool and should generally be supported as its the self determination of those people.
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Not sure if the condescension towards comrades here was necessary or warranted. While there are likely to be people speaking from positions of no experience, you also don’t know that.
Another point too: just because not all of us were directly in the sex trade, doesn’t mean we don’t know people who were, or haven’t heard their stories. As arundati roy said: once you know of oppression, you’re culpable, and its your duty to spread awareness, and not stay quiet just because you don’t have direct experience.
The “argument by position” quickly becomes liberal tokenism, and can easily be used to silence people who are against undeniably terrible things. For some reason too with the sex trade, its always the independently wealthy bourgeois “lifestylist” prostitutes, who can leave the trade at any time, and who in reality make up 1% of the people in the sex trade, who presume to speak for the 99% of people trapped there, who have no ability to escape for fear of starvation.
Absolutely. Personally I have considered it before because I’m nigh destitute. The fact that I’d let strangers do those things to me when my relationship with sex is otherwise very complicated and requires a lot of trust to get to that level in any normal relationship says a lot to me about how fucked it all is. I’ve had relationships fracture and disintegrate because my partners felt it necessary to engage with the sex trade. There is no comparable feeling to knowing your partner is being raped for cash, while you just sit there and wait for them to get home, just hoping they don’t get murdered. Telling your partner your worries yet knowing they’re an adult and you can’t and shouldn’t control them – them responding “I need the money.” Is this what liberation looks like? Is this what fucking feminism looks like??
However to your main point my experience with it doesn’t mean my opinions outweigh others’ on the subject either, of course. There is some truth to liberal idpol and laning discourse culture that kills fruitful conversation in its tracks. The problem arises when people who have done no studying, have no experience, and are not at-risk make shitty dehumanizing takes from no authority… “no investigation, no right to speak” as it were. But laning is not conducive to healthy conversation, either.
I know how you feel. I have dear friends who have recently started escorting. They say they feel “powerful” and “liberated.” They’re also relatively privileged people who don’t actually need to exploit themselves. They just like lonely rich men paying for their vacations and luxuries.
Which is just another example of how the people who “benefit” from this rehabilitation of the rape trade are often petite-bourgeois (sex entrepeneurs to be more correct, not “workers”) and how the rape trade actively exploits and harms men as well.
Meh I guess I’m reacting to the fact that ‘the sex work question’ is so often a theoretical debate completely detached from the people actually doing that work. Hopefully comrades have the self awareness to know if it’s not directed at them.
“Leftists” on “fake-reddit”, etc. It didn’t seem like a critique of a subset of individuals but rather a blanket condemnation of these discussions wholesale. I can understand your concerns but this is not reddit or twitter and most everyone here operates under the baseline that people in the sex trade are human beings and not ideological props as the so-called internet leftist likes to weaponize them as.
OK 🫶
I think the confusion results from liberals’ willful conflation of “supporting sex workers” with “supporting the sex industry.” In fact the whole language of support is probably so loaded and compromised at this point that it may be better to abandon it altogether. We don’t “support” sex workers in the sense of affirming their career “choice,” which (as you pointed out) in 99.9% percent of cases isn’t really a choice; rather, we support them as exploited members of the working class who are caught up in an inhuman industry. And a crucial part of that support is wanting to destroy the industry. Thus our messaging to sex workers should be the same as our messaging to the many people caught up in dead-end, unnecessary service-sector jobs: “we get that your job is exploitative, we want to take it away and give you something socially meaningful to do – something which you can be proud of as a human being and for which you will be properly compensated.” That, I think, is a much better way to reach people.
I agree with you. This community has such prude views of sex. It’s so weird.
Pornography and prostitution is not sex at all. The two are completely different and only resemble each other superficially.
Calling people prudes over this issue is something that I address in an essay I wrote some time ago (linked in another comment here). It effectively shuts down any possible discussion before it even happens because one can just say “oh you just don’t like sex!” and leave it at that.
The implied link to reactionary forces (missionaries, puritans) with this argument is intellectually dishonest to do to another comrade.
All of it is sex and people here do mental gymnastics for no other reason than cultural reasons and conservative behavior.
It actually degrades the sex worker and continues the same stigma towards sex.
All sex work between adults should be legal. Prudish beliefs really need to change.
A month later and giving me the exact same argument as before without having listened to any points :|
Cause your points are based on nothing but your feelings and cultural upbringing.
That’s it.
Also this site shut down for some reason.
I would sincerely reply to your (new) comments in this month old thread, but clearly you’re not interested in changing your mind or listening to anything anyone has to say. Tbh you haven’t really made any point, just said everyone else was prudish and conservative etc etc. Which I also told you back then was insulting towards comrades who are decidedly not conservative. Was anyone here saying prostitutes are loose women with low morals? Was anyone here saying that prostitutes should be jailed for accepting clients? Was anyone here saying that sex should only happen between two married people? Or even between a married man and woman?
No. And you know that, because you replied to most comments.
I think you’re just here to be a contrarian and a wrecker, and have no actual interest in this topic. I don’t understand how you can call yourself a Marxist and decide not to analyse the material reality of prostitution which has been laid out several times in this thread. Well, I can understand it in one situation – if your goal is to exhaust everyone in a pointless debate.
Clearly you display no comradely behaviour (even telling another user that they were “gaslighting”) and so I’m not sure what you expect to find on Lemmygrad. The only justification I keep coming back to that makes sense is that your goal is to stir up drama and pointless debates by making us do all the legwork of finding arguments and sources which you’ll just dismiss with a “I disagree lol”. Why else revive a month-old thread?
Consider this my complete reasoning behind your ban.