How about we work towards removing the material conditions that bring about sex work.
Yeah onlyfans and their ilk are 'independent' rather than 'industrial' sex work, but when there are externalities pressuring you to create five videos a week of you drinking your own piss or whatever to pay this month's rent the difference is moot. It's a race to the bottom like anything else in capitalism, and people are suffering.
yeah we can look at that when money stops being a thing and we achieve communism. in the meantime all state actions criminalising sex work will be used as a weapon against sex workers
Of course it won't, and I don't believe anybody here is suggesting or naïve enough to believe that. We should try to lift people out of situations where they feel pressured to engage in said work, and decriminalisation is one step of many that direction.
Legalisation is safer for everyone than just decriminalisation of course the whole industry depends on the material conditions in the nation and how much government has oversight
When a police department announces that they've made marijuana possession their "lowest enforcement priority" that's reported in the news as "marijuana was decriminalized," but that's of course nonsense. Possession of marijuana is still a criminal act.
"Legalization" always means a tax and licensing regime, or providing a path by which that thing can be legal, in which providing that good or service without a license is still a criminal act. Where the state has almost as much power to harass people as they did before.
But when a leftist says "decriminalize" they mean "made to be not a crime anymore." As in "the state should have no role in overseeing this." It's probably intentional that there's no word for this concept in the mainstream news.
legalization can give sex workers rights that they wouldnt have otherwise. if you just decriminalize it stays as a grey market in which sex workers are more vulnerable to abuse
That seems not to be the line taken by most sex worker activists, but it's a defensible position.
The idea is that by decriminalizing sex work, sex work is then just work, subject to normal labor protections. Of course there would need to be laws or at least case law clarifying specific rights to refuse things, etc., but I think it's rhetorically important to push the idea of decriminalization first. The fear is that a push for legalization will almost certainly end up with prostitution licenses, mandatory health checks, requirements to provide health papers to law enforcement on request, and all the other provisions you'd expect a bunch of Johns in government to write into a "how to be a legal prostitute" law.
It's a better rhetorical stance to stake out a position of "No. Hands off people's bodies." If that actually succeeds without compromise there will still be issues, but we'll be in a better place overall and a better place to handle them from. And if a compromise needs to be struck we'll at least have a fencepost to start from.
How about we work towards removing the material conditions that bring about sex work.
Yeah onlyfans and their ilk are 'independent' rather than 'industrial' sex work, but when there are externalities pressuring you to create five videos a week of you drinking your own piss or whatever to pay this month's rent the difference is moot. It's a race to the bottom like anything else in capitalism, and people are suffering.
Sex work wont go away
It will with the abolition of commodity production
yeah we can look at that when money stops being a thing and we achieve communism. in the meantime all state actions criminalising sex work will be used as a weapon against sex workers
Of course it won't, and I don't believe anybody here is suggesting or naïve enough to believe that. We should try to lift people out of situations where they feel pressured to engage in said work, and decriminalisation is one step of many that direction.
Legalisation is safer for everyone than just decriminalisation of course the whole industry depends on the material conditions in the nation and how much government has oversight
Don't get confused here.
When a police department announces that they've made marijuana possession their "lowest enforcement priority" that's reported in the news as "marijuana was decriminalized," but that's of course nonsense. Possession of marijuana is still a criminal act.
"Legalization" always means a tax and licensing regime, or providing a path by which that thing can be legal, in which providing that good or service without a license is still a criminal act. Where the state has almost as much power to harass people as they did before.
But when a leftist says "decriminalize" they mean "made to be not a crime anymore." As in "the state should have no role in overseeing this." It's probably intentional that there's no word for this concept in the mainstream news.
legalization can give sex workers rights that they wouldnt have otherwise. if you just decriminalize it stays as a grey market in which sex workers are more vulnerable to abuse
That seems not to be the line taken by most sex worker activists, but it's a defensible position.
The idea is that by decriminalizing sex work, sex work is then just work, subject to normal labor protections. Of course there would need to be laws or at least case law clarifying specific rights to refuse things, etc., but I think it's rhetorically important to push the idea of decriminalization first. The fear is that a push for legalization will almost certainly end up with prostitution licenses, mandatory health checks, requirements to provide health papers to law enforcement on request, and all the other provisions you'd expect a bunch of Johns in government to write into a "how to be a legal prostitute" law.
It's a better rhetorical stance to stake out a position of "No. Hands off people's bodies." If that actually succeeds without compromise there will still be issues, but we'll be in a better place overall and a better place to handle them from. And if a compromise needs to be struck we'll at least have a fencepost to start from.