GenZedong

A lot of the conversation is predicated on western onlyfans independent owners, which are petit bourgeois (even if they don't make money). I'm much more interested in talking about the women in the global south who are being trafficked into prostitution and this is one reason I don't use the umbrella term sex work.

I feel you, OP.

At this point I'm convinced that a whole lot of the people defending the sex industry online -- those who aren't, as you indicated, feds -- are sweaty dudes sitting in their bedroom, and deciding to pen a manifesto in between rounds 2 and 300 of jerking it to violent porn. Call it the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism-Epsteinism.

Sex is much better when the livelihoods of the people involved aren't contingent on their ability to provide it or how well they can provide it.

I feel the same way about art.

It is a bizarre position to hold since sex work would be done away with under communism I can understand wanting to protect sex workers from exploitation but why would you want to maintain it under communism?

The really crazy thing is this "sex work is real work" trend that is said by people who simultaneously think sex workers aren't people.

I dislike sex work simply because it's unproductive labour at this stage of development.

I read a few articles by a socialist, feminist, transgender, latina, survivor of the sex trade (her words) called Esperanza Fonseca who goes by "Proletarian Feminist" on Medium that I found really insightful.
I think it would really help us in this conversation to critically examine and reflect upon articles such as these:

1. A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work”
2. The Problem with Sex Trade Expansionary Feminism, A Response to Kate
3. The problem with the phrase “sex work is work”

She also spoke about this topic alongside Brigid Ó Coileáin, a marxist feminist who hosts the "Probably Cancelled Podcast", on an episode of Rev Left Radio called "Proletarian Feminism, Women's Liberation, and the Sex Trade" from 2021.

I think I agree with most of what you say. Sex work is horribly exploitative and most sex workers are driven into sex work from precarity.

On the other hand, who am I to tell someone who finds sex work to be the lesser evil compared to a grueling minimum wage job that they're wrong?

I think it is important to be pro-sex worker. I think you can be this while acknowledging the harm of the sex industry. Personally I don't think bans and cops are the right response. You can compare this to how doing drugs is obviously bad for you but sending cops to arrest people with substance abuse disorders is only making things worse.

My personal belief is that the best way forward is harm reduction. Both when it comes to the actual sex work (unionisation, labour safety standards, legal protections) but also when it comes to the social factors that promotes sex work. Nobody should be coerced into sex work because the alternative is poverty or mistreatment, any moral society should help people long before they get that desperate. That help should also include adequate and compassionate responses to substance abuse, such as providing patients with free, safe drugs so that they are not forced into crime or prostitution. I also think harm reduction includes social attitudes to sex work, it doesn't make anything better that sex work is considered shameful and that terms for sex workers are used as misogynistic slurs.

I'm afraid that pushing for criminalisation acts as a bandaid that allows liberals to call it a day and avoid dealing with the harmful structural social factors that causes sex work and worse its outcomes

A 'normal' job that would require you to do the things a sex workers would do would require such drastic health and safety measures that it would make it obsolete in the case of sex work.

My job has for a large part now been in social work and I have to get tested for that just because I MIGHT come in contact with bodily fluids of others. I'm talking blood work, vaccines, all that stuff. I have to get coaching to deal with potentially agressieve clients. I have to be able to call police at all times in case I get in danger.

Sex work is hundreds of not thousands time worse even. That's what many of the clients I see who were trafficked into it also tell me. They would need basically a full hazmat suit to do their job in a proper and safe way. That alone should be concerning enough. But no, we have them out there with nothing.

Using your body to work is not the same as getting r*ped for work, multiple times a day. And getting beaten and whatnot.

I agree on most things, but I do think legalization is important. You might not call the cops on them, but its criminalization is a hanging sword of damocles that the state can use to increase surveillance/policing, keep people impoverished via criminal records, etc.

And while it probably couldn't be a "union" per se, and definitely shouldn't result in it being a permanent ficture of society, some form of support group that protects prostitutes from further abuse should be made. I always think back to when I read about a prostitute not being taken seriously by the cops after she was nearly killed by a serial killer.

Yeah and its incredible they've made it a global rule on hexbear you must adhere to saying sex work is good and should be upheld for all time as a wonderful thing or else you're a SWERF and liable for banning. Call themselves non-sectarian yet uphold a rule that goes against common sense and goes against the actual enacted policy and theory of every AES state in history and yet say they welcome Marxists (who accept this kind of perversion of theory by of all people the revolution-less, failure-ridden, navel-gazing, arm-chair western "left" who somehow know better on this than actual practitioners of workers' states). Same site that had a zionist admin btw who was only recently kicked out. Admits they have a misogyny problem yet let a few apologists sob into existence a ban on positions contrary to being pro-sex-work. The truth is there are a lot of male chauvinists there and they want their treats including their treats of access to women's bodies for pay.

One quip I love directed towards anarchists on this is that anarchists are people who abhor the idea of paying rent for a building yet would gladly justify renting a woman.

Their argument that sex work is just another kind of labor quickly falls apart. People might resent for example having a job doing data entry and being assigned to spend 10 minutes a day cleaning the bathroom or say it's beneath them but no one is getting sued for it or coming home with trauma or having their coworkers treat them like a piece of meat as a result. Yet even in bourgeois liberal society your boss for good reason cannot assign you the duty of giving him oral sex as "just another part of your job" if you're a woman because it's workplace sexual harassment, it creates an unsafe, misogynistic, horrifying environment for women.

I found this post https://hexbear.net/post/3739639 to be very illuminating in terms of why people want to classify sex work as work or more accurately the sex worker as a laborer. Most importantly, it's sourced from material written by sex workers.

edit: removed a sentence making a comparison to other peoples trauma.

What I read about sex work getting classified as work is along those lines, it's about giving the sex workers tools to fight for better working conditions. The idea being that by bettering their life, they are more likely to be able to make a free choice of where to work, which would include no longer doing sex work. A destitute worker with no free time is less likely to be able to improve their life than one with free time during which they can go job-hunting, building a support network etc.

I feel like your piece abour unionization is a bit pessimistic. "Non-essential" industries have unions and go on strike already (e.g. actors, writers, coffee shops, liquor sales come to mind from my view, maybe I'm biased bc I'm in the imperial core but this shows organizing sex work in the imperial core at least could borrow from these industries). Also, it's good to still have worker collectives even if they cannot directly make demands in cases of attempting general strikes, or if "essential" unions wanted to do solidarity strikes with sex workers to help their cause, no? Also also, I do think there currently exist various sex worker unions already, although they're small scale.

To be clear, sex work is like one of the worst things to be, but this doesn't mean that we should admonish the people most acutely affected by this precarity (sex workers) for their circumstance. If we acknowledge that sex workers are exploited on such an extreme level, we should support these workers in their demands.

True it’s complete commodification of a human being, objectifying on another level. I’m very critical of it, especially in a society so exploitative already to place people into desperate and precarious positions. I doubt most people doing it would choose to continue on if there was another way of having their basic needs met.

You seem to be confusing the idea of sex work and prositution they are not the same thing. Sex work can be prositituion but it can also be things like only fans or being a pornstar. It could techincally extend to further things but generally it tends to be used for prostitiuion and pornography. I think something you are confusing is this is not about sex work itself, but the misogynistic and exploitative ways sex workers are treated. Shaming sex workers for being sex workers is afurthering of the system of misogyny and patriarchy. Being pro sex worker is not about being pro sex work but about being pro sex worker. About being against discrimination against sex workers and wanting to reduce exploitation of sex workers.

You literally say you aren't selling your body despite literally selling manual labor direclty using your body. If prostituion is selling your body doing manual labor is selling your body too. Like if you were a programmer or something that is more aobut intellectual labor than physical labor you might be able to make an arguement here but you are very literally selling your physical labor.

Sex work is part of queer history is more similiar to the idea of bdsm bieng queer. It's not so much that it's inherently lgbtq, but like drag races, bdsm (and to a lesser extent kink in general) and sex work have goals that often align because the samea puritan reactinoaries who target one group tend to target the others. It's comparable to saying socialism is part of black history, it is not comparable to say cotton picking is part of black history. Socialists are a gruop who often fight alongside black people and black peopel are a part of, who often share the same goals as black people that being liberation from capitalistic imperialism.

Legaliziation of something definitley doesn't only benefit capitalists. I'm going to assume you are talking about prostituion cause generally in the west pornography isn't legal and considering your post history manuerisms and the place on the internet i am on, you probably are from the united states. In terms of prositution, things that are legal are easy to regulate because they aren't forced to the black market. in the same way that legalizing drugs makes it safer to use drugs legalizing prostitiuion woudl make it safer to engage in it cause it would be subject to regulation. Also, while it can ins ome circumstnaces be better ot be in prison than not be in prison generally speaking people rpefer to stay out of prison, a such umm. not being put in prison for prosittiuion definitley benefits sex workers.

I feel like there also definitely needs to be aline drawn between coercive sex work and willing sex work which you do not seem to be drawing line with. There is a real difference between doing sex work because you find it enjoyable, or doing it because you think it's a good way to make money, and doing it cause you are being forced to do it via sex trafficking or it being your only way to survive. The concept of sex-worker exclusionary reactionary feminsim is about excluding sex-workers from liberation from misogyny and patriarchal marginalization, by subjecting them to shaming and discrimination they are often faced with.

Adult film stars literally already have a federally recongized union in the us. There are sex worker unions all across the globe. So like your point that it's deranged to think they should unionize is a bit silly, because they literally already have unions. The Adult Perfomance Artists Guild. There's also unions for general sex workers including prostitutes. Sex work unions already are a thing and have been a thing for a while.

It's sex worker exclusionary reactionary feminism not sex-work exclusionary reactionary feminism. It is also oppressive and furthering the system of patriarchal misogyny to deny or ignore the women who enjoy sex work. And shaming the people who think sex work is an easier way to make money than a regular 9-5, is not really addressing the problems that cause them to feel taht way and is only creating an oppressive attitude towards those people.

most of things are pretty solid arguments, being trans, queer or w/e doesn't mean to check "prostitution" like the standard of life or an inevitability