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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
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.
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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.
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I think your wording it fine. If people want to consent to doing a job, they should be able to do that.
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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.
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Stop shouting
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.
Patriarchy and cultural Christianity are a blight.
Just wait until we get to the outdoor cat sex work struggle session.
Excuse me, what?
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
That's a fun concept and likely more true than not. Do you have any writing on that I could look at?
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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".
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State issued gamer gf vibes
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
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Aww shucks
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We're comrades here, it's assumed. :stalin-heart:
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i'm being a both-sides baby speaking out loud sry
10/10 phrase
This is 100% what she is responding to and also one of my issues with SWERFs.
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