Edit:
Here is a list of resources to learn about sex worker from actual sex workers who are engaged in the struggle for worker's rights:
- https://www.nswp.org/resources/types/nswp-briefing-papers-248
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/white-mans-burden-revisited/
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/from-brothel-to-sweatshop-questions-on-labour-trafficking-in-camb/
- https://titsandsass.com/the-massage-parlor-means-survival-here-red-canary-song-on-robert-kraft/
- https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
- https://medium.com/@katezenjoy/dear-esperanza-5aa7db4d501a
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/decriminalising-sex-work-in-new-zealand-its-history-and-impact/
- https://www.mayamorena.com/anti-equality-model-campaign/2021/5/22/pscegcnr680fh4oazlmwe8i5527o9j
Bigger repo of theory / resources:
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oWxx3yodCJJGxTmqgCeB6csVAeRkllSQq_VUe78MJA4/view
Books to check out:
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36224357-sex-lies-statistics
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From an non anglo perspective the sex industry , since it exists in almost every country , inevitably is comprised in almost all cases (beyond many sex workers in urban enviroments in rich western nations from a non poverty backgrounds having any semblance of power and dominion over their bodies and choices,especially through stuff like Only fans ) in its vast majority by very poor women forced from usualy a very young age into prostitution. As the only choice to make a living, in horrible horrible conditions with immense physical and psychological abuse . Vast networks of human trafficing,pedophilia and grooming interconnected with local mafia , cartels and horrible pimps dominate the sex industry in the vast majority of cases with the more "global south" you go the more despicable it becomes . What % "informed sex workers that are comfortable to concent and chose their life " exists in most of these cases?
How can any leftist living in lets say eastern Europe post USSR collapse "not be critical of the Sex worker industry" ? The sheer numbers and horror of the humanitarian disaster that is the "sex industry" in that and most parts of the world cant be excluded from critisism and strong opinions by EVERY leftist no matter how many individual exceptions of sex workers ,especially from western nations, that may have an experience with much more nuance and different dynamics and ability of choice for them . They will be an extremely small exception and the relatively comfortable upper crust in the midst of the millions of women forced into prostitution and abuse from very young age , utterly stuck now and scarred and groomed for life and as a FACT would have taken different paths, wished for a different life and prefered any ,yes still exploitative,trade
Extreme class warfare and the destruction or lack of actual institutionalised gender equality and opportunities was what created and creates the sex industry as a large scale thing and what pushed the majority into it. Proven by history when millions of women that just 5-10 years prior whould have been in the path of free education, housing ,healthcare and job of their choice were suddenly pushed into sexual abuse, grooming and scarring just to put bread on the table and not be homeless. Thats the reallity here and in most of the world and the vast vast majority of sex workers are helpless victims that didnt chose or consent to a life of abuse and destroyed dreams and didnt concent to the future and choice taken away from them. .
Im not against sex work, it will exist and has always existed . But the current sex industry and sex work in the reality around me has little to do with the personal experience and nuance of consent and freedom of choice and “its work like any other” of people like OP that will continue their sex work hopefully in a socialist society in the future
Yep, this is the correct take.
I squirm every time i see another post by US university students about how we need to stop demonizing sex work when it's a daily occurrence here that underage girls are disappearing from orphanages and no one says it but everyone knows that they'll end up in brothels in Western Europe.And these posts are always about how the people who criticise sex workers would love it if they were jailed and i'm like, no? Literally no one i know who would be considered someone like these people wants sex workers to be jailed, they want them to be freed.
But at the core issue is exploitation (but also yes, there is some privilege from anglo perspectives). One has to extricate the two problems and view them separately I feel. I dont think brazillian sugarcane collectors want to outlaw farming, but they do want to outlaw slavery of themselves.
with sex work it’s at least two pronged (or intersectional) problem: coercion/exploitation (worker rights and moral issue) and society’s disdain (brainworms long cultivated from bygone era) and privilege of more successful voices/global north being louder
Yeah that's a serious issue even in this thread it can be seen that no one is "criticising" sex work from a moral standpoint yet the whole premise of the post is that somehow people would do that. So we have two opposing sides that are screaming at each other despite the fact that they agree.
I won't be popular with this btw but there actually is a moral argument against sex work but not on the workers side.
what material measures are taken to protect the vulnerable from sex trafficking?
https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
I can only talk about Hungary, but there is virtually none. Where i live the victims of sex trafficking are overwhelmingli Romani girls and the cases i mentioned are the only ones that ever get reported. As you can imagine these people are mostly very poor and marginalized so no one really cares about it apart from the usual "yeah it sucks that happens, but..." bullshit.
Every once in a while these trafficking bands get busted and when it happens here, even though prostitution is illegal, if they are forced into it, cops don't harass them any further as your article suggests. Though what happens next to these girls is foggy, since there is an institutional abyss in this area so most of them end up as a streetwalker anyway where cops are way less lenient.
I'm going to quote part of an article written by a sex worker on this topic:
The vast majority of sex workers do not exist in a simplistic binary between "privileged" and "forced." The strongest sex worker unions in India are composed of the least privileged sex workers. It is unfair to dismiss the vast majority of these sex workers' efforts to create unions, create savings banks and microcredit to fund education for their children, and create exit strategies for each other, as "privileged" or "neoliberal". These are Indian women, living under the rules of this Capitalist system that we all have to navigate, who consider themselves Third World feminists too, who fight trafficking while supporting sex worker rights.
In reality, decriminalization is not as helpful for "privileged sex workers" as it is for the most vulnerable sex workers of color and migrants, who are most frequently targeted by police. The UN Development Programme reported after surveying 48 countries in the Asia Pacific to show that decriminalization is most urgently necessary for the poorest sex workers working in the most difficult positions. Under the Nordic Model in Sweden, Norway, France, Ireland, and Canada, which criminalizes the buying of sex, migrant and trans sex workers like Vanesa Campos are the ones most hurt by mass deportations in Sweden, evictions in Norway, doubling of violence against sex workers since the passing of Nordic Model in Ireland, and fatal discrimination against sex workering mothers at the hands of social services, also in Sweden.
Criminalization of any part of the sex industry, including the purchase of sex, hurts the least privileged sex workers most.
- Source
The video itself touches on this when she talks about the experience of being ignored when she brings up the good and the bad of her job.
From an non anglo perspective
There are many People of Color who work in the sex industry, including the woman in the video I posted.
“Sex Trade Expansionary Feminism” is not a thing and the concept is actively harmful to sex workers.
I'm linking it again because it's not SWERF material, it's the opposite . The main people the article is against are men who coerce women into sex by economic means, not sex workers.
The article also says a lot more than inventing the term you use. It cites studies that shows that decriminalization neither decreased trafficking (seeing that most girls i was talking about end up in Switzerland, where prostitution is legal since 1942, it checks out), nor decreases violence against them (but they can call the police who will still harass them for drugs or being an immigrant), it very explicitly calls for a system similar to the nordic model but not involving the police, it makes the very obvious observation that it's very easy for men not to pay for sex. It analyses what type of men can afford to use these services (which i see confirmed from when i was working at a place frequented by sex workers with whom i talked quite a lot), it correctly asserts that the main sources of violence against sex workers are men who pay for sex (again confirmed by sex workers i had the chance to talk with - cops were never involved) and it clearly asserts multiple times that the solution to the problem is not harassing sex workers but improving the material conditions of women globally so they actually have a choice in what trade they work in.
It's only my assessment of the situation but i find it weird that SW unions have to fight for the right to exit even in countries where it is legalzed. Like, train drivers can say at any time they don't want to be train drivers and go do some other shitty self-destructive job. What is the reason of that?
You are literally linking to an article praising a SWERF group that collaborates with pigs and the carceral state to abduct and kidnap women using their occupation as justification for state violence. Af3irm works with police departments on “alternative arrest” schemes. What the fuck.
If you want some context on this group:
https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
What is the reason of that?
Patriarchy, puritanical gender and sexual norms, classism.
I am sincerely begging you to please self-crit and maybe realize we don’t need a white knight to save us. All work under capitalism is exploitative, including sex work. It is just often less exploitative than other jobs available to a person. Not always, but often.
The comrade in the video talks about how she can’t acknowledge that because of the “suffering victim” vs “happy whore” complex society has. Not listening to workers results in them not engaging with leftists and writing off politics.
You generally post good shit and this is just gross. I’ve been assaulted by cops and authority figures that told me it was for my own good. Never again.
Also all the western sex pest tourists that flood these countries.
Check out my response to this:
https://hexbear.net/post/174757/comment/2158964
How is it so hard to understand that you can support sex workers as a valid form of labor while also treating it the way we treat other forms of work under capitalism (inherently exploitative) while also acknowledging that sex work doesn't exist in the same way in every part of the world either and many are slaves trafficked into it.
No reason to view it so black and white.
It sounds like we mostly agree then.
sex work doesn’t exist in the same way in every part of the world either and many are slaves trafficked into it.
The same thing can be said about agriculture, the fishing industry, cruise ship workers, manufacturing, etc. Slavery is a common method of exploitation throughout the global south because imperialism is evil.
Yep for sure, slavery exists in most industries. You should be expected to be against sex slavery and trafficking and anyone who uses that to delegitimize sex workers who aren't related to that shit should STFU.
No I did not watch the video, and yes I will be writing paragraphs on what I thought the video said :gigachad:
i think the hybrid phrase "sex worker industry" is pretty questionable, conflating criticism of industry with criticism of workers, but also i'm seeing a lot of secular christians on here whose opinions on the subject basically boil down to "it's a moral hazard that ruins the purity of femininity, so it must be banned."
also i think arguments like "sex work has always existed and it will exist under communism" really make very little sense. like, what part of a moneyless, classless, stateless society is tripping you up. when people fuck without getting paid, regardless of other motivations, that's not sex work, that's just sex.
still doesn't mean that it requires some special legal restrictions under capitalism because it icks people out more than other kinds of labor.
The argument seems awfully reminiscent of the arguments that "slavery has always existed and thus it is a fool's errand to attempt to abolish it". Like yeah, slavery has existed in various forms throughout history, from "natural" slavery (slavery to nature), to chattel slavery, serfdom, and now wage slavery, but that doesn't mean that it is given. With modern technology and industry, most labour is unnecessary, shown by the widespread prevalence of "bullshit jobs". In fact, it is probable that society can be run solely off of voluntary labour (communism) TODAY, abolishing all forced labour and thus slavery.
https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/communization-of-the-whole-world-in-five-years-or-less-a-practical-guide/
Ok but you realize that you're equating prostitution with slavery, which is like, the entire point of the video about how that's not fair unless you're equating all work with slavery, right?
Anyway, what about disabled people who still want to fuck? There will always be some form of sex work—whether that work is paid for by a wage or something else (social prestige, maybe?) is up for debate. Sex work is like farming. You're going to need somebody to do it in whatever society you set up.
What the fuck? If people don’t want to have sex with someone, you suggest to just coerce people into having sex with them with wages and “prestige”?? You do realize that coercion in sex is rape, right?! And no, sex work is not necessary! Nobody is entitled to sex!
Maybe I want to live in a society where people are entitled to things like sex and fulfillment. That's the whole point, right? You're entitled to a house, a good life, and maybe sexual fulfillment in some form should be a part of that.
Please ask a sex worker if they think their job involves getting raped every time they work. You're doing the very thing the video this post is about said not to do. Sex workers aren't stupid, they know what they're doing, and it's just labor.
Likewise re: the prestige point, you realize that even in a classless, money-less society there's still going to be hierarchy and people doing stuff for prestige and social standing, right? Some people want to fuck celebrities, even ones that aren't "hot", because of the story. Is that rape? If somebody wants to fuck somebody else that they don't find attractive but because it will bring them respect, is that rape either? At a certain point you just have to let people do what they want, and stop calling all things related to sex that aren't strictly romantic relationships or lust "rape."
No one is or should be entitled to sex. A fulfilling life doesn't require sex. This is just gross
I'm not wording this correctly, I guess. I'm not saying people are entitled to sex. I'm saying that I think we should strive towards a society where if somebody wants sexual fulfillment there are more than enough avenues to get it, much in the same way we should structure a society for intellectual fulfillment and social fulfillment.
I think your wording it fine. If people want to consent to doing a job, they should be able to do that.
Ok fair, definitely do not mean it in that way. Just trying to convey that in a utopic society that we're aiming for I don't think it's ridiculous to try and set up a society in which all needs, including sexual fulfillment, can be catered to. Not trying to force anybody into sex work or something like that.
Of course! In the utopic society it is best that everyone has sex, enjoyment, etc... What I take issue is the suggestion that people should be coerced into giving said sex, enjoyment...
Yes, I'm not saying people should be coerced. But I do think that a world where sex work as a public service or good, and something that brings prestige and increased social standing, isn't something out of the question or "bad" in any sense. I don't think doing something partially because of increased social standing is coercion, since that'll always happen. Some members of a community will always be looked up to, and will do things because they want to be looked up to. Tying that to sex work certainly wouldn't be the worst.
There are people who are professional masseuses and professional therapists so why not allow people to be professional sexy-time people.
Fucking thank you for this.
Edit: My only suggestion would be to rephrase your example of people with disabilities as it could be taken as ableist.
:sankara-salute: Quite a struggle session you've constructed here, comrade. Seems like there's still a fair bit of Puritanical brainworms around sex on this forum!
I told @Nakoichi this would trigger some reactionaries. Didn't anticipate it would have this much of an impact.
:oh-shit:
It's been a while since we had a struggle session of this magnitude tbh, so it was time. Surprised at the views that are getting upvoted a lot in this thread though.
Just wait until we get to the outdoor cat sex work struggle session.
In that scenario, there would still be people who want to have sex / companionship, but either cannot or do not want to maintain the kind of romantic or long-term relationship with another person that is "typically" required for that. Sex work provides people with that connection.
With modern technology and industry, most labour is unnecessary, shown by the widespread prevalence of “bullshit jobs”. In fact, it is probable that society can be run solely off of voluntary labour (communism)
Sure. I would hardly count sex work as a bullshit job considering it is one of the first forms of specialized labor that humans created.
Sure, we both agree that no one should be threatened with starvation or homelessness to work.
Most sex workers chose the job they do because it is the least exploitative occupation available to them.
Well yeah, sure. Most jobs people work are the least terrible choice they have. If everyone could get cushy tech jobs, then they would, but we all work with what we've got for now. Capitalism is hot trash.
also i think arguments like “sex work has always existed and it will exist under communism” really make very little sense. like, what part of a moneyless, classless, stateless society is tripping you up. when people fuck without getting paid, regardless of other motivations, that’s not sex work, that’s just sex.
Most sex workers will tell you that their work involves more than just fucking. Regardless, it's difficult to speculate on what labor in general will look like a post-scarcity society. We nee to leave that to the material conditions and struggle, otherwise it feels really prescriptive imo
Caring labor is going to be a thing regardless of the world we live in, don't understand how a) people on this forum don't see sex work as a form of said caring labor and b) think we can evolve into a world where people won't have to do such caring labor.
CW
I also think that there will be no wage sex work within communism, though what currently is close to the Nexus of what is sex work, sexual exploitation, violence etc. seems to be a network of many overreacting overlapping and separate things.
While sex in communism can be something that isn't work, we can expand the description of work to incorporate things like reproductive work - which isn't too say that sex work is necessarily reproductive work or is meant as reproductive work. The same we can do for sex work. When I introspect into my idea of communism we will have two realms, the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom.
In the realm of necessity we will have to produce to reproduce society and our bodily selves, in short we have to work, which is aimed human action, but part of that reproducing society is reproductive work. Sure we want to automate most of it and have nice queer parties, but there will be some amount of work in whatever form left. What I expect to be left after automation will be a good deal of reproductive like work.
Beyond the realm of necessity (of which the shortening of the working day is it's condition to bear the other) there will be the realm of freedom in which humans act and work according to them being humans for their own sake. How I understand your argument is that sex in communism is in that second realm and therefore wouldn't be wage work, nor work for necessity and maybe not even work as work for humans sake.
I'll think a bit about that.
It feels as if conceptions of what work is okay a role. Sex is definitive laborious even if done for it's own sake.
There is also the point of a lot what is close to the aforementioned Nexus is not really sex work but other social relations. For example krass exploitation of people in precarious situations or even with violence which take away the freedom to work somewhere else or for yourself is not really a kind of wage labourer and proletariat, and more a regressive way to extract profits and value from forced workers. Which is too say a lot of sex industry dealings aren't sex work and is one of the rifts in the discussion.
Sex work will very likely exist under communism to the same extent any other work will.
Sex work will not exist under communism as work will not exist under communism. Sex work becomes merely sex.
Are we talking about a post-scarcity economy? In that scenario, I'll leave it to the material conditions and struggle, otherwise it feels really prescriptive imo
Present society is already post-scarcity, it's just that it's not distributed equally.
Present society is already post-scarcity, it’s just that it’s not distributed equally.
That's a fun concept and likely more true than not. Do you have any writing on that I could look at?
Right, I've read that, but thanks. I was specifically talking about the statement that we've reached a point where we've developed productive forces enough we can fully automate things.
"Fully automate" is a bit of a tricky term.
We clearly have not, and it probably wouldn't be a good thing to, reach the point where all production happened without any human labour, oversight or direction.
One of Marx's core points, and a core tenet of Marxist Communism, is that productive forces had and have developed past the point we needed them to to fulfill all of humanities needs and most of our wants, and despite that, under bourgeois direction not only were increasing numbers of people suffering in abject poverty, productive forces were continuously being developed further, and workers made to labour at them longer and harder but turned only to wasteful overproduction that benefited humanity not at all. Even the bourgeois, taken as a whole making were less and less profit as they unswervingly spent the increasingly developed productive forces racing each other to the bottom. These were Marx's twin "crises of capitalism".
The concepts are developed throughout Capital, and almost all Marxist writers deal with it in some way. Anything involving "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall", "crisis theory" or "developing productive forces" is based on Marx's theories on automation, it's possibilities (the term post scarcity actually came from people talking about Marx's ideas) and the corrupt waste it was instead being turned to under bourgeois direction.
If it's something you can do, Capital is well worth reading. It was the seminal text on overproduction and even if following works don't agree with it they'll at be coming from a place of correcting or expanding on what is outlined in Capital. If 19th century German economics textbooks aren't really your cup of tea, the term you want to google to find out more is "crisis of overproduction".
I think I take issue here that sex work isn't "necessary labor." Sex work predates pretty much all other forms of labor, which implies to my mind that it's far more necessary than other jobs.
Not as long as seeking or building shelter, finding and preparing food, tending to the sick or injured, making clothes, keeping watch at night for dangerous critters. Y'know necessary labor
Which is why we need to be pushing for housing for everyone which is way easier to market to the public and way more effective for treating other problems. If people can't become homeless that's like the most vulnerable people solved right there. It also doesn't require we use liberal rhetoric to justify current wage labour.
Art is literally more important than agriculture. There are plenty of societies on Earth that have existed and will exist without agriculture. There's not a single instance of any human society existing without art. I think you could probably lump sex work in there as well.
Ah got it. Yeah did not mean to be so nitpicky! Regardless though I understand what you're saying in that if art stopped like tomorrow society doesn't immediately collapse, but I think in the long run no art definitely leads to societal collapse. And I think the same could be said of sex work.
Also yeah there were state mandated artists in the USSR. State funds were poured into things like books, art, movies, etc. Proletkult was a massive, state funded artists collective that tried all sorts of experimental art projects.
i’m seeing a lot of secular christians on here whose opinions on the subject basically boil down to “it’s a moral hazard that ruins the purity of femininity, so it must be banned.”
This is 100% what she is responding to and also one of my issues with SWERFs.
Internalized misogyny and resentment towards women, which is the gender SWERFs are mostly fixated on. The idea that a person could make a living by doing something a SWERF feels they should be entitled to and have been denied is triggering for them.
What? No. I'm trying to say that a lot of SWERFs totally ignore male and nonbinary sex workers and also typically think they are entitled to sex in general.
Please please please
listen to actual sex workers
read theory by sex workers
research praxis by sex workers
listen to what sex workers say will materially hurt them and what will not
this is basic mass line shit, I am so fucking frustrated
Great, yeah, I agree that theory is important and also that’s not what this is about.
You know what makes sure the working class doesn’t read theory? Using it to tear them down and belittle them.
if workers succumb to the liberal impulse of hyper-individualism, i.e. “I will always know what’s best for me.”
A woman asserting her right to bodily autonomy and owning the full value of her labor is not hyper-individualism.
“listen to x people” is always a stupid as fuck non-argument because there’s a wide diversity of opinions in any fucking group you can come up with. you just take the one you agree with and tokenize them so that their mere existence is your argument. casting the topic aside for a second, this a deeply frustrating thread and general (non-)argumenative line for that reason. one should learn to argue your points, and if you’re right you’re right, but until then you’re just being a rude condescending asshole that doesn’t even show an understanding of a given subject
“listen to x people” is always a stupid as fuck non-argument because there’s a wide diversity of opinions in any fucking group you can come up with
It is absolutely not a stupid as fuck opinion when it comes to theory and politics directly related to x people.
"Listen to trans people about trans liberation" is an obvious take. "Listen to women about women's liberation" is an obvious take. "Listen to the workers of a union about what the those workers need" is an obvious take. "Listen to sex workers about sex work" is an obvious take.
This video is a response from a woman who has been talked down to and ignored when she tried to "be polite".
you just take the one you agree with and tokenize them so that their mere existence is your argument
I am not tokenizing a woman for posting her own video articulating a very real problem in leftist circles, based on her lived experiences. This is sexist and demeaning.
It's interesting that instead of actually discussing the concept, you are resorting to attacking how the idea is presented and that it doesn't cater enough to SWERFs.
This is a bizarre line of argument. At what point can someone speak about their lived experiences? Do you need three sex workers? 5? 25? all the sex workers?
(i didn’t, there was 1 other comment, and i have 0 clue why a message that just said “look at the other comment” would get deleted)
It's important to read theory in order to learn that things like basic human decency and empathy are way more important than rote memorizing the words of dead people.
Mao:
Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world. From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin's statement, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.
On Practice
so glad you know more about the organizing efforts and the material reality of the person making this video than they do themselves :)
But the way she dismissed very critical theoretical works and then claimed virgins could not create communities as effectively as sex workers just makes me think she has fallen victim to liberal, individualist ideology.
You are extremely focused on a throwaway line about virgins. What do you think about sex workers and sex work?
Do you believe that sex work should exist outside of capitalism or that sex work is a worse type of exploitation?
I don't think the line is a throwaway, and I don't even think it's just explicitly talking about "virgins." She mentions sex workers are better at it then most leftists, which I just find divisive for no reason, and I highly doubt there's any factual basis to it
I would hope there is a factual basis. Sex work is labor, and by that standard, sex workers are a large group whose labor interests are at least somewhat aligned, which means they have more reasons to form community (until pressures of competition kick in). Leftism (or whatever that means) and Marxism, while incredibly powerful tools for economics analysis, are just ideologies. Good for some level of liberal understanding, but not sufficient in-of-themselves to naturally create widespread labor solidarity. And this is something I think Marx himself would agree with, even if he had some Victorian morels he couldn't get past in his writing. It is certainly something Engels would agree with. Maybe not Lenin, but Lenin basically turned the Bolsheviks into a labor organization so it would have some level of solidarity, though it became alienating to the workers because of that. Solidarity is difficult, if it weren't we would have anarchism or communism by now.
Isn’t this a complicated version of we need to improve society somewhat?
I just don’t get who are the people who are against Sex Workers who find it to be less bad for themselves.
Like I keep seeing posts all over about not attacking sex workers, but I’m not seeing anything attacking.
I’m just tired and going to go sleep.
We're monitoring this thread. Most of the conversation has been fine so far but please remember to keep it chill so we don't have to lock it.
One thing: Please remember to use content warnings for possibly triggering content. On that note, @HodgePodge can you CW this post for discussion of SA and sexual violence? Thanks.
Death to pimps since they're just bosses, all power to the sex workers. Brothel co-ops would be pretty lit. Totally agree with this video—the problem isn't "sex work," it's "work."
Meh, sex workers are either petit bourgeoisie or workers, depending on the arrangements. They have separate shit going on with society prudishness, which is a good fight. From my marxist POV when the arrangement of getting 100 labor hours (or 5000 of global south labor hours) for 1 hour of work (well with preparation it’s more hours, but the gist is the same) changes, suddenly it wouldn’t be as attractive, but who knows :shrug-outta-hecks:
also there is certain naïveté going there with fbi vices stated aims.
also there is certain naïveté going there with fbi vices stated aims.
Interested in what you mean by this
I think it went more like:
immigrants are getting uppity, we have to have more control, john.
What about the kids, cole?
No one will buy that we care about the kids.
What about fighting sex trafficking? (insert drug trafficking, diseases whatever)
You did it again, john, here is your medal.
Cynicism is probably about the only thing going for us at this point
"I want liberation from work. There's nothing revolutionary about this idea and I'm sick and tired of them getting Marxists philosophers who are bigots against sex workers and see us as different and as a problem that has to be “fixed”.
Quoting those people to justify their bigotry... like yeah you know what? You're right, I didn't go to college, I didn't fucking read Karl Marx. I don't read these academic Marxist people because honestly I don't give a fuck. I'm a fucking worker, I'm a fucking sex worker, and I don't need to read their bullshit. Period. End of story. I don't care.
It's so weird that [these marxists are] so ignorant that they'll literally quote them and then make fun of me because I don't know their names and I don't know what the fuck they write and I don't care about what they do.
They're fucking dead. I'm the fucking worker right now and I'm telling you what I need and I'm telling you to shut up about these issues because they're not your issues. They are my life, it's my livelihood. I should be the one leading this revolution.
It should be about the workers not about what some dumbass person who read Marxist theory thinks about my industry and my livelihood, like fuck you, you don't know what I want.
I should be the one deciding what's liberating and empowering for me."
Not a single point is raised in that whole speech, doesn't even mention what are her problems or what are those strawman of a marxists not addresing.
Do you know who else is "liberating themselves"? The Canada truckers.
"I didn’t fucking read Karl Marx. I don’t read these academic Marxist people because honestly I don’t give a fuck. I’m a fucking worker... I should be the one leading this revolution."
this 'apolitical insurrectionary' attitude is a great way to accomplish exactly 3 things:
- Getting shot by the state
- Infighting over goals and methods
- Getting co-oped by someone who did read "bullshit" political theory
am I supposed to praise someone for being willfully ignorant? what is this anti-intellectualism crap? sure every dumbass on twitter can pretend to be the next Karl Kautsky and spew shit takes all day but pretending that Marxists theorists have no relevance because "they're fucking dead" is just wrong. We read the old fucks because they have experience with confronting capitalism and identifying the structures that are used to hold us within it, so that we can better destroy them. One of the biggest lessons is that the communist revolution is going to consist of much more organizing than shooting. This blind insurrectionary attitude was tried by every group of pissed off peasants in the middle ages and all of them failed, and we've seen "pro-worker" movements in recent times be co-oped to serve capitalist causes, like Solidarity in Poland.
listen she has a right to be angry at every twitter dipshit who uses some random quote from the 18th century to justify their hot take about "the females." But going into a room full of communists shouting "fuck Karl Marx!" is just provocative, if someone did that in real life everyone would think they were a cop. being a self proclaimed leftist and doing that is just begging to get people fighting, which it seems to have done so pretty well.
Marx literally despised lumpenproles and sex workers, it's not surprising for braindead Marxist orthodox 'leftists' who push stupidpol nonsense to have dumb fucking ideas about sex work.
I absolutely love this whole quote. reminds me of when leftist swerfs try to point at Kollontai as a figure to read in this regard, as if her writings weren't highly tailored to the revolutionary moment in the nascent Soviet Union and those material conditions.
Yes! Similarly, pointing to Marx’s opinion on sex work as though he is the final word is also equally bullshit because Marxism has moved past Marx as its sole source.
Perfect example of this is the Lumpenproletariat being valued and respected by Black Marxists. Saw your comment on that earlier today:
one overview w quote https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/an-ideal-blueprint-the-original-black-panther-party-model-and-why-it-should-be-duplicated?rq=lumpenproletariat
Over the years, Marx’s assessment and discarding of the “lumpenproletariat” - a population that he described as “members of the working-class outside of the wage-labor system who gain their livelihoods through crime and other aspects of the underground economy such as prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers, and gamblers” - had been accepted by many on the Left. However, the BPP’s familiarity with Zedong and Guevara led them away from this commonly accepted notion, and their philosophy paralleled that of Frantz Fanon, who in his ongoing analysis of neocolonialism, deemed the lumpen to be “one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”
yessssss!! absolutely! to quote fanon on marx:
When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, yon are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.
We as leftists can't just take marx at face value, the material world marx observed is not the exact same material world we currently live under, and we need to adjust our analysis and internalize the lessons of the revolutionary struggles from the past century
Sex work is work. If you’re against sex work, then you’re a shitty socialist and are unable to self-crit your own internalized misogyny and classism.
Living in eastern Europe i can only think that Misogyny and classism is the reason the vast majority of the sex industry exists in the first place. Millions upon millions of women and kids even yes were pushed and resorted in a hellish mafia driven "sex worker" industry after the collapse of socialism (collapse of free eduucation till college, women equality in the work place, equal opportunity to freely chose your education and trade, job and home and heathcare to everyone as a right etc) in eastern Europe . People that in their own informed choice and through their own consent chose sex work as an occupation exist and will always exist under every economic system. But history and reality arround me is that for sex workers in my country and in countries around me that wasnt the case in 99% of the cases. Extreme class warfare and the destruction of actual institutionalised gender equality and opportunities was what created the sex industry, pushing millions of women that just 5-10 years prior whould have been in the path of free education, housing ,healthcare and job of their choice into sexual abuse, grooming and scarring just to put bread on the table and not be homeless. Thats the reallity here and in most of the world and the vast vast majority of sex workers are helpless victims of capitalism and didnt chose or consent to a life of abuse and destroyed dreams and what happened to their futures and life. Im not against sex work, it will exist and has always existed . But the current sex industry and sex work in the reality around me has little to do with the personal experience and nuance of consent and freedom of choice and "its work like any other" of people like OP
The many queer people who have done survival sex work because "legal" jobs wouldn't hire them are not privileged.
At no point have I said that and at no point have I said that sex work is just OnlyFans.
if their work weren't criminalized they wouldn't be as subject to coercion lmao
Amazon isn't criminalized and their workers pee in bottles and die in hurricanes.
yeah, that's what "sex work is work" means. work sucks. it's capitalism. you already know that, and you know i know that.
certainly they're abused, but they won't get imprisoned or deported if caught doing their job, and they have recourse to some labor protections (albeit constantly eroding ones).
yea i would agree with that. but my conclusion is always gonna be "decriminalize, destigmatize."
i'm poppin off in these comments i still haven't watched the video lol
Just like how black market marijuana completely disappeared immediately after legalisation?
that's a pretty bad argument for criminalizing drugs too
Where did I argue that marijuana should be criminalised? I merely stated that the black market doesn't necessarily disappear with the appearance of a "white" market.
and i didn't say they did, but they're significantly reduced and made less dangerous for people working within them
kind of a common trope about people talking about sex work being abusive making a rape joke. on the internet.
It is a dismissive joke. It's trotting out atrocity for shock.
Only someone too sheltered would believe there’s anything funny about it.
I roll my eyes at this.
Yes, the shit stirrer telling you to take serious subjects seriously.
That what theory predicts (or just observation of the world tbh), it doesn’t preclude sex work in itself.
It will be legalized, exploited and then they’ll be worse off than they started (in global north*). again not saying it’s not a work or whatever tho, if some say they like it I believe them :shrug-outta-hecks: also it’s not an act of abuse if two adults are consenting of their own free will. If you say they won’t eat if they don’t - congratulations, but that’s exact same for everyone. (I’m excluding abusive leeches on top here, who will coerce them otherwise)
