Being paid for normal sex is akin to USURY

[bropasaran]

I guess I could open a thread for it, maybe it's more likely that people will comment it. I can't post links, so here's the text by Valentina Nappi, the porn actress, it's from her site.


I’m a porn actress and I fight against female sexual power. I swear that I’ll give a handjob to anyone who’ll ask me for it.

Power is not what constrains someone to do something. That’s force. Power is what induces people to intuitively recognize implicit social hierarchies. The language of power consists of gestures, poses, glances, coats & ties, nearly imperceptible bows, linguistic codes, etc.; communitarian links are the essence of power. Power isn’t a formal matter, so freedom from power is a different thing from formal freedom of choice. Power is based on habits, common sense, education and all that contributes to shore up what is perceived as “normality” through implicit (or “obvious”) social codes. To fight against power is to fight against any implicit idea of normality.

Inter alia, gender discrimination is a consequence of power. It’s not based on law; it’s based on habits, common sense, education and all that contributes to shore up what is perceived as “gender normality” through implicit (or “obvious”) gender codes. Sexual power is a form of power based on a common-sense idea of “normality” about gender-differentiated sexual approaches and behaviors. A specific form of sexual power is female sexual power. Female sexual power is a form of power based on gender differences on receptivity to sexual offers. An obvious consequence of female sexual power is the ease with which an unskilled woman can succeed in being paid for normal sex.

As any other form of power, female sexual power isn’t a formal matter, so freedom from female sexual power is a different thing from formal freedom of choice. If a man “freely” decides to pay an unskilled woman for normal sex, in fact he is a victim: he is a victim of female sexual power. Freedom of choice is irrelevant in this issue. Usury is often based on free-choice agreements, but it’s considered immoral and it’s illegal. Then we can say that being paid for normal sex is a sort of usury. Taking advantage of gender differential in access to casual sex is disgusting.

Female sexual power is not the only form of sexual power. There are forms of male sexual power, too. Anyhow, male and female sexual power are two sides of the same coin. We have to fight against the idea that gender differences are naturalistically justified and do not have to be razed. As a porn actress, I try to propose a model of perfect symmetry between male and female availability for casual sex. I believe that casual sex is everyone’s right and should be an effective right. Coherently, I swear that I’ll give a satisfying handjob to anyone who’ll ask me for it (circumstances permitting). And it’s not a matter of charity!

What do you think about it?

[Rafiq]

Female sexual power? Or rather, the power of male domination which enreaches even the sexual identity of women: As objects of male desire.

[synthesis]

Am I just ignorant, or did that all seem kind of nutty?

[Rosa Partizan]

Am I just ignorant, or did that all seem kind of nutty?

guess then we're both ignorant.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

guess then we're both ignorant.

You must be.


Anyway, I'm off to collect my effective right, who knows, maybe get victimized. :rolleyes:

[Bea Arthur]

I can't believe anybody would advocate prostitution! Women's sexuality is corrupted by male domination!! Any sex that transpires within that context is pure rape!

[BIXX]

I can't believe anybody would advocate prostitution! Women's sexuality is corrupted by male domination!! Any sex that transpires within that context is pure rape!


Am I to understand that you are saying any heterosexual sex is rape under patriarchy? Or do you mean just prostitution?

Also, what if prostitution is a job a woman wants to do? Who are you to stop her? (I'm not saying all prostitutes wanna be a prostitute, but I'm sure some people are able to enjoy the job)

[Sea]

I can't believe anybody would advocate prostitution! Women's sexuality is corrupted by male domination!! Any sex that transpires within that context is pure rape!1. Stop trolling.
2. Stop cheapening rape.
5. Stop trolling.

[Bea Arthur]

Am I to understand that you are saying any heterosexual sex is rape under patriarchy? Or do you mean just prostitution?

Also, what if prostitution is a job a woman wants to do? Who are you to stop her? (I'm not saying all prostitutes wanna be a prostitute, but I'm sure some people are able to enjoy the job)

No, I don't think that all heterosexual sex is rape. I do think that rape encompasses far more cases than is covered under the patriarchal dictionary definition.

So what if a woman wants to be a prostitute? You are ignoring the conditions that drive a woman to make that decision: a patriarchal society that teaches women to value themselves only as sex objects, and a racist imperialist system that deprives women of the same economic opportunities that men enjoy.

[Bea Arthur]

1. Stop trolling.
2. Stop cheapening rape.
5. Stop trolling.

What is it about a genuinely independent thinking woman that drives so many men through the roof?

[Quail]

I think it's a bit patronising to talk about sex workers as a kind of homogeneous group of victims of the patriarchy. The sex industry is obviously operating within a patriarchal (capitalist) society and therefore is problematic, but I wouldn't call sex for which a woman is paid inherently rape because doing so takes away the agency of the women in question. Many women "choose" sex work because they have no other options, but many women have other reasons and I think there has to be more nuance than "prostitution is rape" or "prostitution is fine".

[ed miliband]

I think it's a bit patronising to talk about sex workers as a kind of homogeneous group of victims of the patriarchy. The sex industry is obviously operating within a patriarchal (capitalist) society and therefore is problematic, but I wouldn't call sex for which a woman is paid inherently rape because doing so takes away the agency of the women in question. Many women "choose" sex work because they have no other options, but many women have other reasons and I think there has to be more nuance than "prostitution is rape" or "prostitution is fine".

you're treading carefully here, but i've seen a similar defence of sex work ("agency", bodily autonomy, etc.) taken to the point where it ultimately amounts to a defence of wage labour in general, imo. i think it's perfectly possible to take a position of saying that yeah, sex work is work and sex worker's struggles should be supported, but the focus on the fact that some "choose" sex work sometimes ends up as a defence of sex work (and, as i said, work more generally) rather than sex workers.

i know you aren't doing this, i just worry the argument strays into dodgy territory. like, "sex work abolitionist" is now a slur in some quarters, but when we aim for the abolition of work, of course sex work is included in that. i don't think saying so removes anyone's agency, and tbh i don't really understand a focus on agency in general.

[ed miliband]

someone once pointed out to me that there's a certain sort of anarchist / ultraleft male who'll go on about the abolition of work but then treat sex work as something special that needs to be protected.

changed my perspective a bit.

[synthesis]

So what if a woman wants to be a prostitute? You are ignoring the conditions that drive a woman to make that decision: a patriarchal society that teaches women to value themselves only as sex objects, and a racist imperialist system that deprives women of the same economic opportunities that men enjoy.

Up until a couple months ago I was in a sort of relationship with an escort, of the high-price Eliot Spitzer variety. I don't know exactly what she did day-to-day; I never asked her about the details of her occupation. She had a very wealthy "sugar" who paid for her apartment and her whole lifestyle, really. (He killed himself a couple weeks ago, but that's not relevant to the story.) In fact, he reluctantly paid for her to go to Vegas for a week out of every month to continue escorting because apparently he wanted to "support whatever [she] wanted to do."

I think, if you're able to set aside patriarchy and capitalism and all the other external factors that generally drive people to do things they'd rather not do for money - not a particularly easy thing to do, mind you - there's something very validating about someone being willing to pay you thousands of dollars for an activity that you enjoy doing for free. Many people who have sex for money have complete discretion over who they take on as clients. There's a world of difference between coercive child sex trafficking and someone who makes a thousand dollars an hour and has total control over what s/he will do and not do. This is sort of a general response to the issues you've raised; I think you're generally a troll, but more or less benign as such, so I'm hazarding an honest response to your post.

[Quail]

I can barely string a sentence together tonight. I wasn't trying to defend sex work, more just pointing out that the way in which some people tend to talk about sex workers paints them as helpless victims of the patriarchy rather than actual human beings with the ability to organise.

[tallguy]

I think it's a bit patronising to talk about sex workers as a kind of homogeneous group of victims of the patriarchy. The sex industry is obviously operating within a patriarchal (capitalist) society and therefore is problematic, but I wouldn't call sex for which a woman is paid inherently rape because doing so takes away the agency of the women in question. Many women "choose" sex work because they have no other options, but many women have other reasons and I think there has to be more nuance than "prostitution is rape" or "prostitution is fine".I agree, it's not black and white.

At one end of the continuum, a woman being directly coerced into having sex with strangers for money by a violent pimp may be relatively easily identified as someone who is a victim of rape. At the other end, a woman who has no easily identifiable direct or indirect coercions impacting her behaviour and who states freely that she has chosen to engage in sex with strangers for money may not be identified anywhere nearly so easily as a rape victim. In between these two extremes will be every permutation of circumstance imaginable.

I do consider that the number of women falling into an absolute position of non-coerced, free-choice will be vanishingly small. But logic dictates that their existence must be accounted for, no matter how unlikely. What is also unequivocally the case, however, is that there are a large number of women who are subject to direct or indirect coercion by pimps. For some of such women, it is perfectly possible to describe the sex they must engage in as rape. For others of them, it is more difficult. But what happens to them lies not far from a definition of rape in my opinion.

Where it gets far more problematic is where the coercion is more amorphous and indirect. For example, if a woman "chooses" to engage in sex for money with someone because this is the only means by which she can feed herself/her family. She may not be subject to the obvious coercions of a pimp. But she is arguably compelled in her actions no less for that fact. The problems arise when, if she is asked whether she has chosen this behaviour and she replies that she has chosen it freely, at what point is her answer to be disregarded in favour of a macro-analytic explanation of the socio-economic conditions which she is subject to?

I think the only way to deal with the above (assuming direct coercion cannot be clearly identified) is to deal, on a personal level, with the women involved as if they are freely choosing to engage in such behaviour. However, at the policy level, the underlying assumption be that their behaviour is the result of a long and indirect coercive chain of economic/cultural phenomena and that is is the job of policy makers to break that chain.

[ed miliband]

I can barely string a sentence together tonight. I wasn't trying to defend sex work, more just pointing out that the way in which some people tend to talk about sex workers paints them as helpless victims of the patriarchy rather than actual human beings with the ability to organise.

oh don't worry, i didnt think you were. i was mostly thinking aloud (well, publicly) about arguments i've encountered recently regarding sex work which start off with "choice" and "autonomy" and end up defending sex work - and then, taken to their logical conclusion, wage labour in general. the worst thing is it comes from supposed anarchists and communists.

but nah, i didnt think you were doing that.

[Ele'ill]

I also think this conversation is embarrassingly meaningless without actual sex workers participating in it

[ed miliband]

I also think this conversation is embarrassingly meaningless without actual sex workers participating in it

idk, marx was not a wage labourer, should he have not written capital and waited for a factory worker to do it? we can talk about things with meaning whether or not we have first-hand experience with them.

and you're assuming that, by the way.

[Ele'ill]

idk, marx was not a wage labourer, should he have not written capital and waited for a factory worker to do it? we can talk about things with meaning whether or not we have first-hand experience with them.

and you're assuming that, by the way.

I'm not trying to stop a conversation I'm just pointing out that folks are homogenizing a group of people, speaking on their behalf, visiting their intentions, visiting their personal lives, and basically proposing actual decision making (although a bit LARPy) on what should be done without talking to said groups of folks who have actual experience in it. I'm not saying I will agree with everything a 'sex worker' will say but I want to know what their experience is and I want to know what they think of what I'm saying within this dialogue we have. I am not some all enlightened all seeing and knowing revolutionary cuz I read books

[ed miliband]

I'm not trying to stop a conversation I'm just pointing out that folks are homogenizing a group of people, speaking on their behalf, visiting their intentions, visiting their personal lives, and basically proposing actual decision making (although a bit LARPy) on what should be done without talking to said groups of folks who have actual experience in it. I'm not saying I will agree with everything a 'sex worker' will say but I want to know what their experience is and I want to know what they think of what I'm saying within this dialogue we have. I am not some all enlightened all seeing and knowing revolutionary cuz I read books

drop the "sex" bit and does this apply to work / workers in general? a far bigger group that's homogenised, spoken on behalf of, etc.? should we drop communism if we talk to proles and find out that actually, they rather like capitalism?

i'm not saying experience isn't important, but as i said, i think it's entirely possible to not have first-hand experience of something and to take a position on it.

e: ugh, "take a position", lol, larpy as fuck. but you know, it applies across the board, not just with reference to sex work.

[ed miliband]

talking about following things through to their logical conclusions and that, you take this focus on "experience" to its logical conclusion and you basically can have no politics whatsoever. oppose national liberation movements? 'cos you dont have experience of "national oppression" you can do that, sorry.

[synthesis]

I guess I agree with Mari3L's assertion that it would be helpful to have the perspective of an actual sex worker in this discussion, but I'm not sure how you go from that to the discussion being "embarrassingly meaningless" without that perspective. I could understand if we were discussing some aspect of privilege theory or whatever, but this seems pretty different, since "actual sex workers" can come from any background and be of any gender or orientation.

[Bea Arthur]

I think, if you're able to set aside patriarchy and capitalism and all the other external factors that generally drive people to do things they'd rather not do for money - not a particularly easy thing to do, mind you - there's something very validating about someone being willing to pay you thousands of dollars for an activity that you enjoy doing for free. Many people who have sex for money have complete discretion over who they take on as clients. There's a world of difference between coercive child sex trafficking and someone who makes a thousand dollars an hour and has total control over what s/he will do and not do. This is sort of a general response to the issues you've raised; I think you're generally a troll, but more or less benign as such, so I'm hazarding an honest response to your post.

Why, yes, if we set aside patriarchy, then patriarchal activities don't seem patriarchal! How insightful of you to point this out!! As a starting point, you need to understand the kind of society that constructs the enjoyment that a woman might derive from participating in pornography or selling her body to men. Just pointing out she enjoys something explains nothing. Some women will claim they enjoy being in physically abusive relationships, but that doesn't stop the context from being a highly unhealthy one that we should oppose.

[synthesis]

Why, yes, if we set aside patriarchy, then patriarchal activities don't seem patriarchal! How insightful of you to point this out!! As a starting point, you need to understand the kind of society that constructs the enjoyment that a woman might derive from participating in pornography or selling her body to men. Just pointing out she enjoys something explains nothing. Some women will claim they enjoy being in physically abusive relationships, but that doesn't stop the context from being a highly unhealthy one that we should oppose.

This all strikes me as the same school of thought that dismisses leftist high school students as "brainwashed by the liberal/secular media" - you're completely ignoring people's capacity to think for themselves, in a highly reductionistic and patronizing fashion. You're also conflating "patriarchy" with "something that is negatively influenced by patriarchy."

edit: I also think the phrase "selling [one's] body" reflects a deeply conservative way of looking at the issue. Sex workers don't sell their bodies, they sell sex.

[Lily Briscoe]

idk, marx was not a wage labourer, should he have not written capital and waited for a factory worker to do it? we can talk about things with meaning whether or not we have first-hand experience with them.

and you're assuming that, by the way.


drop the "sex" bit and does this apply to work / workers in general? a far bigger group that's homogenised, spoken on behalf of, etc.? should we drop communism if we talk to proles and find out that actually, they rather like capitalism?

i'm not saying experience isn't important, but as i said, i think it's entirely possible to not have first-hand experience of something and to take a position on it.

e: ugh, "take a position", lol, larpy as fuck. but you know, it applies across the board, not just with reference to sex work.

Personally, I don't think in general that people necessarily have to have first-hand experience of doing something in order to make an accurate analysis of it. But with most things, people have some level of exposure to whatever they're making an analysis of (I mean, it's not like Marx was completely cut off from the movement of wage laborers and was putting forward his theoretical work in perfect isolation from his subject; surely his experience with such a movement deeply informed his analysis). With sex work, though, most people on here really come across as having no idea at all what they're talking about, relying on all sorts of offensive tropes, and basically just pontificating. I don't get why there are so many threads about it, really; they are all pretty cringe-worthy, IMO.

[synthesis]

With sex work, though, most people on here really come across as having no idea at all what they're talking about, relying on all sorts of offensive tropes, and basically just pontificating. I don't get why there are so many threads about it, really; they are all pretty cringe-worthy, IMO.

What do you think should be done about this?

[Lily Briscoe]

What do you think should be done about this?

What should be done about what, the cringeworthy threads? I don't think anything "should be done". Ultimately it's a discussion forum, and no one is forced to read them if they don't want to. I mean, it would be nice if people would consider whether or not they really have any idea what they're talking about (or whether they are instead relying on a combination of bad 'conventional wisdom', stereotypes, and moralism) before authoritatively asserting their opinion on something, but, you know.. Not gonna hold my breath.

[Rosa Partizan]

Why, yes, if we set aside patriarchy, then patriarchal activities don't seem patriarchal! How insightful of you to point this out!! As a starting point, you need to understand the kind of society that constructs the enjoyment that a woman might derive from participating in pornography or selling her body to men. Just pointing out she enjoys something explains nothing. Some women will claim they enjoy being in physically abusive relationships, but that doesn't stop the context from being a highly unhealthy one that we should oppose.

you make some very good points. Actually, I wrote a lot about all this here on this board, and I'm becoming fed up with it, but one more time, I'd like to point out that in spite of all protective laws and stuff (female) sex work will still be, ignoring your own sexual desire and giving in to someone else's desire, no matter if you like it or not. Well yeah, we can now go like, but when I go to the office, I ignore my desire of wanting to chill out in my bed and having second breakfest. But let's not be ignorant about the fact that female sexual autonomy means a lot more, especially in the context of a patriarchal society, than just not being into waking up in the early morning and go to the office.

(I'm sorry for this shitty English of mine, it's almost 3:00 am here and I wasn't into thinking too deeply about grammar and stuff. Anyway, you should all learn German!!)

[Sea]

What is it about a genuinely independent thinking woman that drives so many men through the roof?No clue, but so far, genuinely independent thought is off-topic to our conversation.

[FSL]

there's something very validating about someone being willing to pay you thousands of dollars for an activity that you enjoy doing for free. Many people who have sex for money have complete discretion over who they take on as clients. There's a world of difference between coercive child sex trafficking and someone who makes a thousand dollars an hour and has total control over what s/he will do and not do. This is sort of a general response to the issues you've raised; I think you're generally a troll, but more or less benign as such, so I'm hazarding an honest response to your post.

People don't simply enjoy sex. They generally enjoy it with certain people at certain times.

You don't have total control. The moment you're payed for sex, sex becomes a commodity. It might be a commodity with specified characteristics but a commodity nonetheless. Something that was yours is taken from you and given to other in exchange for money. This is alienation 101. It happens when you build houses or serve coffees and it happens when you sell sex.


"But don't women enjoy sex?"
Yes, they do and they should be free of having safe sex with anyone they choose to. Just take the money out of the equation.
Or, if the money is still a part of it, don't pretend this is anything other than a trade.


And lastly, no I don't care nor should anyone really that many women are totally comfortable doing that. Many workers are perfectly comfortable with being employed to enrich others. Historically, many slaves were delighted they had their wise masters to take of them. People in eastern ukraine welcome the russian troops and peoplein western ukraine welcomed the nazis.
It's these attitudes that should change. They're not eternal and they're not right just because they are. They're born under a very specific set of conditions, the existence of an oppressive society being No 1.


It might not be rape but it's certainly not "good" either.

[FSL]

I can barely string a sentence together tonight. I wasn't trying to defend sex work, more just pointing out that the way in which some people tend to talk about sex workers paints them as helpless victims of the patriarchy rather than actual human beings with the ability to organise.

Replace patriarchy with capitalism and cross out the word sex in what you wrote. Then reread.


And please, don't focus too much on patriarchy. It's also a symptom, can't be fought by itself.

[synthesis]

People don't simply enjoy sex. They generally enjoy it with certain people at certain times.

You don't have total control. The moment you're payed for sex, sex becomes a commodity. It might be a commodity with specified characteristics but a commodity nonetheless. Something that was yours is taken from you and given to other in exchange for money. This is alienation 101. It happens when you build houses or serve coffees and it happens when you sell sex.


"But don't women enjoy sex?"
Yes, they do and they should be free of having safe sex with anyone they choose to. Just take the money out of the equation.
Or, if the money is still a part of it, don't pretend this is anything other than a trade.


And lastly, no I don't care nor should anyone really that many women are totally comfortable doing that. Many workers are perfectly comfortable with being employed to enrich others. Historically, many slaves were delighted they had their wise masters to take of them. People in eastern ukraine welcome the russian troops and peoplein western ukraine welcomed the nazis.
It's these attitudes that should change. They're not eternal and they're not right just because they are. They're born under a very specific set of conditions, the existence of an oppressive society being No 1.


It might not be rape but it's certainly not "good" either.

The problem here, I think, is that I don't think anyone is actually defending sex work in its entirety. I mean, of course nobody is, but my point is that the case is against sex work being intrinsically worse (through whatever mechanism you want to make that value judgment) than other forms of labor exploited by capitalism.

Of course, I don't even believe that, not 100%, and I'm not sure anyone else here does either. The difference between sex work and other forms of labor may be socially constructed, in terms of conservative (patriarchal) attitudes towards sex, but that doesn't make it any less harmful - especially so - to many of the people who participate in it. I think the people who can be said to enjoy it, relatively speaking, have simply come to accept that many people will judge them.

I just think that a lot of people I know who have worked in this field would take offense to the argument that they've gravitated to it completely owing to societal programming, having working minds and all. Nobody wants to be thought of as an automaton. (Others would probably be open to the argument; I'm not trying to speak on behalf of all of them.)

Finally, I'd also argue that some - certainly a minority, but some sex workers could be considered petit-bourgeois in strict materialist terms.

[FSL]

The problem here, I think, is that I don't think anyone is actually defending sex work in its entirety. I mean, of course nobody is, but my point is that the case is against sex work being intrinsically worse (through whatever mechanism you want to make that value judgment) than other forms of labor exploited by capitalism.
People are separating sex workers from victims of sex trafficking (who are essentially slaves) and concentrate their criticism only on the existence of the latter. That means, even indirectly, that sex work is A-ok.
Does one need to be in a progressive forum to get a rejection of downright slavery? I'd hope not. When someone speaks out against women being tortured by pimps he isn't doing anything really remarkable to be honest.




I just think that a lot of people I know who have worked in this field would take offense to the argument that they've gravitated to it completely owing to societal programming, having working minds and all. Nobody wants to be thought of as an automaton.
In how many areas do you apply this reasoning though?
Are religious people led to believing by the inhumane state of their society? Maybe they just like god. They have working minds after all.
So do nationalists and racists and workers who love their bosses and housewives who love their husbands and don't mind taking a beating every once in a while, reminds them their place.


All these people have working minds. Neither of them wants to be thought of as an automaton.
Does that change your view on their beliefs? Are you wondering whether they may have a point? And if not, why? You do realize there is some sort of inconsistency here.



I got reminded of this:

All knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is true. But the question arises, does objective reality “belong to perception,” i.e., is it the source of perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no, you are inconsistent and will inevitably arrive at subjectivism, or agnosticism, irrespective of whether you deny the knowability of the thing-in-itself, or the objectivity of time, space and causality (with Kant), or whether you do not even permit the thought of a thing-in-itself (with Hume). The inconsistency of your empiricism, of your philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the objective content of experience, the objective truth of experimental knowledge.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/two4.htm#v14pp72h-122

[ed miliband]

This all strikes me as the same school of thought that dismisses leftist high school students as "brainwashed by the liberal/secular media" - you're completely ignoring people's capacity to think for themselves, in a highly reductionistic and patronizing fashion. You're also conflating "patriarchy" with "something that is negatively influenced by patriarchy."

edit: I also think the phrase "selling [one's] body" reflects a deeply conservative way of looking at the issue. Sex workers don't sell their bodies, they sell sex.

[sex] workers may "choose" [sex] work, but they do not "choose" it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

bit wanky, but my basic point is simply that individual choice, autonomy and agency aren't grounds for communists to approach the question of sex work. it's pretty clearly liberal, and i don't mean that in a "boo! liberal" sorta way, it just is. yes, sex work may be a choice that's freely made more often than not, but it's pretty basic isn't it - in a society where the only option is to work or starve, any choice of work isn't all that free. what choices are truly freely chosen? we're on entirely different ground here, but it all follows.

that said, i understand the focus on choice and autonomy, etc. it's an understandable response to conservative approaches the sex work that see all sex workers as passive victims who need to be liberated via, say, changes to the law and so on. by stressing that some in fact "choose" sex work, it changes the way people approach it. i don't think it should change the way communists do, however.


Personally, I don't think in general that people necessarily have to have first-hand experience of doing something in order to make an accurate analysis of it. But with most things, people have some level of exposure to whatever they're making an analysis of (I mean, it's not like Marx was completely cut off from the movement of wage laborers and was putting forward his theoretical work in perfect isolation from his subject; surely his experience with such a movement deeply informed his analysis). With sex work, though, most people on here really come across as having no idea at all what they're talking about, relying on all sorts of offensive tropes, and basically just pontificating. I don't get why there are so many threads about it, really; they are all pretty cringe-worthy, IMO.

i think this is pretty fair.

two things i'd say though:

1. i don't think i'm saying anything particularly controversial or questionable, or which requires a deep understanding of sex work: i'm not making any proposals or moralistic statements, i'm just saying communists a) should not frame things in terms of individual choice, etc. and b) communists should be consistent when treating sex work as work, not acting as if it's some separate sphere that is somehow - in some narratives - purer than any other (and yeah, i've encountered this).

2. experience becomes useful most especially when we're thinking about organising and struggle. like, i'm not gonna come on here and say how sex workers should do that, at that point it would definitely become an "embarrassingly meaningless" conversation. but something like workers inquiry for the sex industry would be interesting, no doubt.

[Quail]

Replace patriarchy with capitalism and cross out the word sex in what you wrote. Then reread.

I don't think I understand your point.


I can barely string a sentence together tonight. I wasn't trying to defend work, more just pointing out that the way in which some people tend to talk about workers paints them as helpless victims of capitalism rather than actual human beings with the ability to organise.

I've indulged you and changed the words, and I don't see anything wrong with what I said. It would be equally patronising to treat the working class in general as a homogeneous group of victims who need us to liberate them from capitalism. I don't see why that should be controversial.


And please, don't focus too much on patriarchy. It's also a symptom, can't be fought by itself.
Don't patronise me. I'm well aware that we can't dismantle patriarchy in a capitalist society, but fuck anyone who expects me not to struggle against it in the meantime.

[BIXX]

Don't patronise me. I'm well aware that we can't dismantle patriarchy in a capitalist society, but fuck anyone who expects me not to struggle against it in the meantime.

This is incredibly important to note. I hate the "once the economic foundations for X oppression are abolished, then X oppression will be abolished" line. It strikes me as fairly fucked up, and it seems to try to hide all struggle behind class struggle. It also replicates the structures of domination inherent in civilization, which is qualitatively worse for me and, I would argue, everyone else. I think we should struggle equally on all fronts. You may focus yourself in one area, but amongst leftists, anything that isn't class struggle seems to go completely ignored (however, it isn't as bad as it could be here).

[FSL]

I don't think I understand your point.



I've indulged you and changed the words, and I don't see anything wrong with what I said. It would be equally patronising to treat the working class in general as a homogeneous group of victims who need us to liberate them from capitalism. I don't see why that should be controversial.


Don't patronise me. I'm well aware that we can't dismantle patriarchy in a capitalist society, but fuck anyone who expects me not to struggle against it in the meantime.
Oh, reading again what you wrote I see I didn't understand it the first time.

By that
the way in which some people tend to talk about sex workers paints them as helpless victims of patriarchy rather than actual human beings with the ability to organise
I got that sex workers (or workers) are not victims but people able to organize their lives as they would want.
Thanks for clearing that out for me.




Don't patronise me. I'm well aware that we can't dismantle patriarchy in a capitalist society, but fuck anyone who expects me not to struggle against it in the meantime.
You can't really struggle agaist just patriarchy though, the same way all the affirmative action in the world won't stop racism (it might even reignite it in the form of an anti-wellfare stance etc). In a similar way feminism is ridiculed because the material conditions that put the weaker person in that position (whether in a brothel or in the kitchen) still exist.

It isn't just a wrong opinion you can argue against and no amount of identity politics will have a real lasting effect.

[synthesis]

People are separating sex workers from victims of sex trafficking (who are essentially slaves) and concentrate their criticism only on the existence of the latter. That means, even indirectly, that sex work is A-ok.
Does one need to be in a progressive forum to get a rejection of downright slavery? I'd hope not. When someone speaks out against women being tortured by pimps he isn't doing anything really remarkable to be honest.

You're referring to the EU thread, right? I wasn't aware of that thread until a couple hours ago, and reading it and gathering the context changed my attitude towards the dialogue in this thread.


In how many areas do you apply this reasoning though?
Are religious people led to believing by the inhumane state of their society? Maybe they just like god. They have working minds after all.
So do nationalists and racists and workers who love their bosses and housewives who love their husbands and don't mind taking a beating every once in a while, reminds them their place.


All these people have working minds. Neither of them wants to be thought of as an automaton.
Does that change your view on their beliefs? Are you wondering whether they may have a point? And if not, why? You do realize there is some sort of inconsistency here.

Well, I'd argue that while nationalists don't have to be nationalist, and racists don't have to be racist, sex workers do in most cases have to work; nobody chooses to be exploited, but there are a select few who are able to choose how they are exploited, and to apply the idea of a lack of free will specifically, exclusively but categorically to the sex trade strikes me as reductionist.


bit wanky, but my basic point is simply that individual choice, autonomy and agency aren't grounds for communists to approach the question of sex work. it's pretty clearly liberal, and i don't mean that in a "boo! liberal" sorta way, it just is. yes, sex work may be a choice that's freely made more often than not, but it's pretty basic isn't it - in a society where the only option is to work or starve, any choice of work isn't all that free. what choices are truly freely chosen? we're on entirely different ground here, but it all follows.

that said, i understand the focus on choice and autonomy, etc. it's an understandable response to conservative approaches the sex work that see all sex workers as passive victims who need to be liberated via, say, changes to the law and so on. by stressing that some in fact "choose" sex work, it changes the way people approach it. i don't think it should change the way communists do, however.

I agree with the idea that we shouldn't challenge conservative ideas on liberal grounds; it just seems very easy to cloak conservative ideas in communist rhetoric in situations like this, and if the response does overlap with what liberals would say, that's not a reason to avoid those points entirely. (I'm not applying this to anything you've said here.)

[FSL]

This is incredibly important to note. I hate the "once the economic foundations for X oppression are abolished, then X oppression will be abolished" line. It strikes me as fairly fucked up, and it seems to try to hide all struggle behind class struggle. It also replicates the structures of domination inherent in civilization, which is qualitatively worse for me and, I would argue, everyone else. I think we should struggle equally on all fronts. You may focus yourself in one area, but amongst leftists, anything that isn't class struggle seems to go completely ignored (however, it isn't as bad as it could be here).

Where do you live to see leftists caring solely about class struggle? I don't see them caring enough.

Women make bad employees because they need to take breaks to give birth and look after the children. Laws that protect women by ensuring their right to a maternity leave are thought to be too restrictive. Children wellfare costs so states don't provide it, leaving no options to women but either focusing on raising their children and thus being financially dependent on others or not having families at all and trying to emulate the "success" of men.

Is that not class related? What can you do to stop having women being dependent on men other than stopping the judgement of people based on their profitability for the employer?

[FSL]

Well, I'd argue that while nationalists don't have to be nationalist, and racists don't have to be racist, sex workers do in most cases have to work; nobody chooses to be exploited, but there are a select few who are able to choose how they are exploited, and to apply the idea of a lack of free will specifically, exclusively but categorically to the sex trade strikes me as reductionist.

The whole discussion revolved around sex workers who are not forced to do their job by traffickers, I think everyone agrees that's bad and not just leftists. And even if a sex worker has to work they might willingly accept to do this job, just like any other person who also has to work and who also without further coercion, agreed to do theirs.

The free will might be there, undoubtedly. Does it change anything? The nationalist and the racist and the religious person and the worker and the sex worker, all have some other options available and they all choose to be what they are. Does it mean everything's ok?

Someone said "sex workers should have a say".
Do you ask random workers their opinion on communism or anarchism and simply accept it?


This is a contradiction. There is an objective truth in this. They're selling sex, in essence their labor and receiving money. It doesn't matter how they perceive this transaction. It is what it is, in the same way the universe is what it is regardless of how religious people freely choose to see it.


They are alienated from what they sell, just like any other worker is. And I'd say whatever enjoyment they draw from this profession is pretty shallow, just like the enjoyment their clients draw, compared to the actual human relationship parts of which they're trying to mimick.

[Ele'ill]

drop the "sex" bit and does this apply to work / workers in general? a far bigger group that's homogenised, spoken on behalf of, etc.? should we drop communism if we talk to proles and find out that actually, they rather like capitalism?

I think the actual analogy would be the specific work in the specific industry.


i'm not saying experience isn't important, but as i said, i think it's entirely possible to not have first-hand experience of something and to take a position on it.

But what is happening here is that nobody has actually put forth any effort in this thread to pull up interviews, articles, essays, from sex workers on what their position is.

[Rafiq]

There should be no reason for anyone to believe that sex workers are more oppressed, and sexually enslaved than housewives.

[tallguy]

There should be no reason for anyone to believe that sex workers are more oppressed, and sexually enslaved than housewives.
Please elaborate.

[Geiseric]

Up until a couple months ago I was in a sort of relationship with an escort, of the high-price Eliot Spitzer variety. I don't know exactly what she did day-to-day; I never asked her about the details of her occupation. She had a very wealthy "sugar" who paid for her apartment and her whole lifestyle, really. (He killed himself a couple weeks ago, but that's not relevant to the story.) In fact, he reluctantly paid for her to go to Vegas for a week out of every month to continue escorting because apparently he wanted to "support whatever [she] wanted to do."

I think, if you're able to set aside patriarchy and capitalism and all the other external factors that generally drive people to do things they'd rather not do for money - not a particularly easy thing to do, mind you - there's something very validating about someone being willing to pay you thousands of dollars for an activity that you enjoy doing for free. Many people who have sex for money have complete discretion over who they take on as clients. There's a world of difference between coercive child sex trafficking and someone who makes a thousand dollars an hour and has total control over what s/he will do and not do. This is sort of a general response to the issues you've raised; I think you're generally a troll, but more or less benign as such, so I'm hazarding an honest response to your post.

So your argument is basically if you didn't like it, quit. I'd like you to pull a statistic about the "most sex workers are able to choose their clients" line you pulled out. Also you can't just "pull aside patriarchy" since sex slavery has only existed as long as private property. Unless you think sex slavery doesn't develop along with private property, there is no base to your argument since were in the highest stage of private property.

[Geiseric]

There should be no reason for anyone to believe that sex workers are more oppressed, and sexually enslaved than housewives.

Are you stupid? Why would you try to create a dichotomy like that?

[synthesis]

They're selling sex, in essence their labor and receiving money. It doesn't matter how they perceive this transaction. It is what it is, in the same way the universe is what it is regardless of how religious people freely choose to see it.

They are alienated from what they sell, just like any other worker is. And I'd say whatever enjoyment they draw from this profession is pretty shallow, just like the enjoyment their clients draw, compared to the actual human relationship parts of which they're trying to mimick.

What if nobody profits financially from the sex worker's labor except the sex worker him- or herself? Wouldn't that mean that s/he is petit-bourgeois? I think it would take a pretty strong argument to convince me otherwise. People are not automatically considered proletarian simply by virtue of being compelled to do something by their conditions; in many parts of the world, the rural petit-bourgeois live in much worse conditions than their urban proletarian counterparts.

(I'm not suggesting that worldwide this type of situation is anything but an exception to the rule, if that. But in wealthier societies it is becoming more and more common for sex workers to not have anyone else who directly profits from their labor.)

[synthesis]

So your argument is basically if you didn't like it, quit. I'd like you to pull a statistic about the "most sex workers are able to choose their clients" line you pulled out. Also you can't just "pull aside patriarchy" since sex slavery has only existed as long as private property. Unless you think sex slavery doesn't develop along with private property, there is no base to your argument since were in the highest stage of private property.

The first two sentences are an amusingly dishonest reading of that post. It's like you only read every other word or something. The last two sentences again reflect a misunderstanding, but this doesn't seem as intentional; to "set aside patriarchy and capitalism and all the other external factors that generally drive people to do things they'd rather not do for money" is just a thought experiment, not an argument for or against anything.

[Rafiq]

Are you stupid? Why would you try to create a dichotomy like that?

In the bourgeois family, women are property, this is recognized by any Marxist. Just before a few decades ago, marital rape retained legality, women are just as enslaved by the family, the point is that the act of prostitution is not "morally condemnable" in the sense that women are "selling themselves" any more than the act of marriage, or the existence of the bourgeois family. Am I stupid? Maybe you should divulge into the most elementary Marxist understanding of sexual relations and drown in your own fucking stupidity, maybe it it will be enough time to reflect about being quick to attack people because of your own ignorance.

[FSL]

What if nobody profits financially from the sex worker's labor except the sex worker him- or herself? Wouldn't that mean that s/he is petit-bourgeois? I think it would take a pretty strong argument to convince me otherwise
You mean like a maid?
The small bourgeois has capital. Not a large capital but capital nonetheless. A sex worker would fall under the non-productive labor, ie labor that does create surplus value. Even in that case, their income is weighted to every other worker's income, some at the "top" of the profession will be doing better than others but all in all it won't be a huge break really.




People are not automatically considered proletarian simply by virtue of being compelled to do something by their conditions; in many parts of the world, the rural petit-bourgeois live in much worse conditions than their urban proletarian counterparts.

(I'm not suggesting that worldwide this type of situation is anything but an exception to the rule, if that. But in wealthier societies it is becoming more and more common for sex workers to not have anyone else who directly profits from their labor.)
That's the whole problem and this is its solution? That sex workers become independent service-providers?

Even if their reward financially was completely unrelated to the income required to reproduce the working class, everything else, that they are selling a commodity, that they're alienated from it, all this is unimportant to you? Why couldn't a sex worker be a sex volunteer who does what they want with whomever they want? Do you find the notion offensive in some bizzare way?

[FSL]

In the bourgeois family, women are property, this is recognized by any Marxist. Just before a few decades ago, marital rape retained legality, women are just as enslaved by the family, the point is that the act of prostitution is not "morally condemnable" in the sense that women are "selling themselves" any more than the act of marriage, or the existence of the bourgeois family. Am I stupid? Maybe you should divulge into the most elementary Marxist understanding of sexual relations and drown in your own fucking stupidity, maybe it it will be enough time to reflect about being quick to attack people because of your own ignorance.

That would mean that both situations are equally morally reprehensible from the viewpoint of the working class' wellfare.

Which in turn means that in this particular thread dealing with the issue of sex workers, you of course recognize that it is a condemnable form of exploitation.

[Luís Henrique]

Are you stupid? Why would you try to create a dichotomy like that?

Because, er... it is true?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

The small bourgeois has capital.

But the petty bourgeois... is not a small bourgeois.


Not a large capital but capital nonetheless.

"Capital" is self-reproducing money. It isn't a secret that only considerable amounts of money can perform such a jinx, and that the amount of money that is able to function as capital systematically raises with concentration and accumulation of capital.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

someone once pointed out to me that there's a certain sort of anarchist / ultraleft male who'll go on about the abolition of work but then treat sex work as something special that needs to be protected.

I don't doubt they exist, and that they may even be a huge number of people (as in, more than 37. In the whole world, I mean).

But I am more worried with the few people (as in, some 4 billions of them) that earnestly think that "work" is a noble thing, that working is the right thing to do, that labour is the origin of property - provided that it is the non-sexual variety of work, because sexual labour, on the contrary, is vile, should (and actually could) be forbidden, and has nothing to do with property.

Those are the ones who have changed my perspective more.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

it is a condemnable form of exploitation.

Is there some form of exploitation that is not condemnable?

Luís Henrique

[FSL]

But the petty bourgeois... is not a small bourgeois.



"Capital" is self-reproducing money. It isn't a secret that only considerable amounts of money can perform such a jinx, and that the amount of money that is able to function as capital systematically raises with concentration and accumulation of capital.

Luís Henrique

That's exactly what the petty bourgeois is and any amount of money can function as capital. It's how you get interest on deposits. For most people these amounts are negligible though.

[synthesis]

You mean like a maid?

Ah, no. Maids have employers.


That's the whole problem and this is its solution? That sex workers become independent service-providers?

Ah, no. It's not a solution. It's a fact. It doesn't mean anything except sometimes people's assumptions are wrong.


Even if their reward financially was completely unrelated to the income required to reproduce the working class, everything else, that they are selling a commodity, that they're alienated from it, all this is unimportant to you? Why couldn't a sex worker be a sex volunteer who does what they want with whomever they want? Do you find the notion offensive in some bizzare way?

I think you should really revisit your understanding of the term "alienation of labor." And I'm not suggesting that we have any less sympathy with them than we do with the rural petit-bourgeois in impoverished areas. Communism isn't about "sympathy," however, and all I'm saying that lumping all sex workers under the umbrella of "the proletariat" is reductionist.


That's exactly what the petty bourgeois is and any amount of money can function as capital. It's how you get interest on deposits. For most people these amounts are negligible though.

Okay, then by this definition any sex worker who has "any amount of money," and no employer or pimp, is petit bourgeois.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

So apart from the usual moralizing about prostitution going on in this thread - because of course women are never forced to become childcare providers or anything like that, only to offer sexual services and sex is yuck, isn't it? - the article is an amusing example of the usual radical-liberal rigmarole gone off the rails, positing some sort of "female power" in a murderously misogynistic capitalist society. But that is what happens when one divorces power from material circumstances and reduces it to cultural assumptions etc. Also, the reference to "usury", a term that should be dead by now, is interesting. Pound'd be proud.

[tallguy]

In the bourgeois family, women are property, this is recognized by any Marxist. Just before a few decades ago, marital rape retained legality, women are just as enslaved by the family, the point is that the act of prostitution is not "morally condemnable" in the sense that women are "selling themselves" any more than the act of marriage, or the existence of the bourgeois family. Am I stupid? Maybe you should divulge into the most elementary Marxist understanding of sexual relations and drown in your own fucking stupidity, maybe it it will be enough time to reflect about being quick to attack people because of your own ignorance.
Oh do fuck off. In some marital arrangements in some cultures in some places at some times the above will undoubtedly be true. In other places and times it will not be true. My wife is no fucking sex slave and neither is she my property. If I so much as dared to suggest that she was, she might well be inclined to throttle me if only she could stop laughing at me for long enough.

[Lily Briscoe]

While linking approvingly to anything on the AWL's website kinda makes me feel like I need to take a shower, I think that - despite not agreeing 100% with everything in this article (http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/03/29/marxism-versus-moralism-marxist-analysis-prostitution) - it's actually a pretty good piece of writing on the subject, by someone who apparently has some level of exposure to what she's actually writing about (and it touches on some of the stuff being discussed in this thread, e.g. the "class structure" of different kinds of sex work, the relationship between monogamy and prostitution, etc.):


'Marxism versus moralism': a Marxist analysis of prostitution

“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the universal prostitution of the worker”.(1) This quote from Marx might suggest that prostitution is a relatively straightforward issue for socialists, but instead it has proved a real challenge, with leftist positions ranging from advocating repression and abolition on the one hand, to decriminalization and union organisation on the other. Much of the current debate centres on whether prostitution can really be considered as work or whether it is best dealt with as a form of violence against women.(2)


The two positions lead to diametrically opposed strategies. If prostitution is work, then fighting for self-organisation and rights are a key part of the socialist response. If, on the other hand, prostitution is violence and slavery then the participants are victims who need rescuing. Kathleen Barry, organiser of an international feminist conference on trafficking in 1983, expressed the latter view when she refused to debate sex worker activist Margo St. James, arguing that “the conference was feminist and did not support the institution of prostitution . . . (it would be) . . . inappropriate to discuss sexual slavery with prostitute women”.(3)


More recently writer Julie Bindell has echoed this view, writing about the GMB decision to start a branch for sex workers, she argues, “how can a union on the one hand campaign against violence against women, but unionise it at the same time? Rather than society pretending it is a career choice, prostitution needs to be exposed for what it is – violence against women. Unionisation cannot protect the women in this vile industry”.(4)


Most recently the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) has entered the fray and declared that prostitution is violence against women. A Marxist position on prostitution Prostitution is the exchange of sex for money. However, since there are other situations in which such an exchange occurs – in some forms of marriage, for example – most dictionary definitions go a little further. In the Oxford English Dictionary a prostitute is “a woman who offers her body to indiscriminate sexual intercourse especially for hire”.


A more extensive definition is offered by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, where prostitution is the “practice of engaging in sexual activity, usually with individuals other than a spouse or friend, in exchange for immediate payment in money or other valuables.” These definitions add “indiscriminate” or “other than a spouse” to try and encapsulate what we all intrinsically understand – prostitution is sex outside of those relationships where sex is usually permitted. The term prostitution appears to unify many different people and relationships over time. The hetaerae of ancient Greece, the Japanese geisha, the European courtesan, the street walkers of Soho and the brothel workers of Mumbai, all share the label of prostitute.


This appearance of a timeless occupation, contained in the cliché of the “oldest profession”, shields many different social relations. The thing these women share is that they perform sex outside of the private family sphere where sex is linked to reproduction and maintenance of a household. This is important since it gets to the heart of the matter – prostitution can only be understood at all in relation to monogamous marriage.


As Engels put it, “Monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society”.(5) Bebel, writing on women and socialism in the 1880s explained, “Prostitution thus becomes a necessary social institution of bourgeois society, just as the police, the standing army, the church and the capitalist class”.(6) To understand this dialectic, the “interpenetration of opposites”, we need to look first at the essence of prostitution in capitalism, consider how it varies according to the mode of production, and then return to explore the relationship between private and public sex and the oppression of women.

Prostitution: the commodity


Like most commercial transactions under capitalism, prostitution is based on the sale and purchase of a commodity. In common parlance, a prostitute “sells her body”. But this is a misnomer, since at the end of the transaction the client does not “own” the prostitute’s body. What the client buys is a sexual service. Some feminists and socialists object to the idea that the women sells a service rather than her body, but, recognising that it is temporary, describe it as the sale of the use of her body for their sexual pleasure.


But even that is misleading. If you go to any place where prostitution takes place, whether it is on the streets, in a brothel or through an agency, there will be a tariff. It is not generally written down because of legal restrictions, but it is clear: there is a price for masturbation, usually higher prices for oral, vaginal or anal sex. Some escorts will charge by the hour, but will also clearly state what sexual services are, and which are not, included in that fee. The commodity is sex – or rather a particular sexual service.


Turning sex into a commodity is regarded by many people as the fundamental “sin” of prostitution. Mhairi McAlpine from the SSP writes, “prostitution is the commodification of sexual relations, taking it out of the sphere of mutual pleasure and into the domain of the market.”(7) I have had similar discussions with many comrades over the years – surely such an intimate behaviour should never be turned into an alienable thing to be bought and sold? This rather romantic view of sex as mutual pleasure is itself an abstraction from social relations. Under capitalism, and previous class societies, sex is highly regulated and has an economic dimension. The regulation is based on the need to defend private property through inheritance.


In the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels outlined how monogamy (for women) arose alongside private property. The monogamous family “develops out of the pairing family . . . It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs.”(8)


The exact form of the family has changed through different forms of class society, but the centrality of female monogamy has not, which explains the extensive and consistent laws, religions and customs that ensure its defence. It was not prostitution that took sex “out of the sphere of mutual pleasure” but the monogamy required to defend private property. Daughters became property to be bought and sold for their capacity to produce heirs in return for deals of land, cattle or cash.(9) Prostitution emerged from the same process, since no society yet has been able to enforce monogamy for men as well as women. Demosthenes, a Greek orator, summed up the attitude to women in the slave society of Athens, “We resort to courtesans for our pleasure, keep concubines to look after our daily needs, and marry wives to give us legitimate children and be the faithful guardians of our hearth.”(10)


But is this view not outdated? Surely in the 21st century sex is predominantly for mutual pleasure rather than production of heirs or transfer of cash? There has been considerable sexual liberalisation over the past 40 years, due to changes in the social position of women and the development of effective contraception, and prostitution is not the only form of non-marital sex. However, social structures still favour monogamous heterosexual relationships in relation to property, and women worldwide are still condemned as whores and sluts if they openly seek non-monogamous sex.

The class structure of prostitution


On the surface prostitution does not appear to fit into standard economic categories. One historian writes:


“. . . the prostitute does not behave like any other commodity; she occupies a unique place, at the centre of an extraordinary and nefarious economic system. She is able to represent all the terms within capitalist production; she is the human labour, the object of exchange and the seller at once. She stands as worker, commodity and capitalist and blurs the categories of bourgeois economics in the same way as she tests the boundaries of bourgeois morality . . . As a commodity, therefore, the prostitute both encapsulates and distorts all the classic features of bourgeois economics.”(11)


While it is wrong to suggest that a single prostitute can represent all the elements of capitalist production, it does point to the many different roles that prostitutes can play. They can indeed appear as worker, commodity, seller and even capitalist, but this is because different prostitutes can have different relationship to the commodity they sell.


Commodities have both a use value and an exchange value. The use value in prostitution is satisfying the client’s desire, the provision of sexual pleasure. The exchange value is the social labour embodied in that commodity, that is, the physical and mental labour involved in providing the sexual service. This is equivalent to what the sex worker needs to reproduce herself under socially average conditions for the industry.


Like many service and some productive industries under capitalism, prostitution takes place in a variety of ways, with the prostitute having a different relation ship to the means of production and to the purchaser in each. Many prostitutes are wage labourers: they are employed by an individual or business and required to work certain hours. This is the case for millions of women working in brothels, saunas and bars across the world. They are paid a wage based on the hours worked or on the numbers of clients seen.


In this case they are not selling the sexual service directly to the client – they sell their labour power to the boss. This boss (a pimp, madame, brothel or bar owner) takes money from the clients and passes a proportion back to the sex worker (or requires a proportion of the sex workers’ fee to be handed over to them). It is actually in this sense that the sex worker, like all other wage labourers, can most be said to “sell their body” in that they sell their capacity to labour. However, as Marx explains in Volume 1 of Capital, this is not the same as selling oneself: “. . . the owner of the labour power [worker – HW] should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity.”(12)


There are indeed sex workers who exist in such conditions of slavery – where they are sold and bought as commodities themselves, and then put to work for the slave-owners. The revival of this modern slavery, mostly reported in relation to trafficking of people, is not exclusive to prostitution but exists in domestic work and other menial tasks. The fact that slavery exists in some parts of the sex industry should not blind us to the fact that far more prostitution takes place in the more common condition of wage slavery.


Most sex workers are neither slaves nor wage labourers – largely because legal restrictions on prostitution have impeded the expansion of a “legitimate” industry and have kept it in the shadows of the black market and criminal economy. Many sex workers are direct sellers; they do not work for anyone but trade directly with the client. In this situation they are still selling a commodity, but this time it is not their labour power but the commodity in which their labour is incorporated, i.e. the sexual service, and they sell this directly to the purchaser. They are, in effect, self-employed, although in most countries they cannot be legally registered as such. Some have resources and own or rent their means of production – the premises, phones and other tools of the trade. They are classic petit bourgeois.


But most women in this situation are far from the image of the middle class, self-employed business person. Most of them are poor with few resources, and for some the trade is more akin to a primitive form of barter. For example when sexual services are traded directly for subsistence, such as food and shelter, or for drugs. These people are only peripherally involved in the capitalist economy – they are part of what Marx would have called the lumpenproletariat. And then there are prostitutes who employ others to work for them. Some sex workers go on to run their own businesses, as madames and brothel owners. As bosses they own the means of production and exploit the labour of others, while often continuing, for a while, to sell sex themselves. Thus some prostitutes are workers, some are slaves, most are petit bourgeois, and a few are capitalists.(13)

Exploitation or oppression?


It is at this rather high level of abstraction – of commodities, use values and exchange values – that Marx identified the nature of exploitation. Workers are exploited by capitalists not through deceit or trickery, but by the nature of wage labour itself: workers exchange a commodity for a wage. The commodity is not the product of their labour but their capacity to labour, their labour power.


The exploitation exists in the difference between the value of that labour power and the value of the commodities they produce during the time their labour power is used by the capitalist. Exploitation results from the fact that the worker does not own the product of their labour but merely their capacity to labour. Even when the wage is paid at the full value of the labour power, a fair exchange in capitalist terms, the worker is exploited.



Roberta Perkins, writing about the sex industry in Australia, provides a useful description of how this operates in sex work businesses:


“Brothels, or parlours (bordellos, bagnios, stews, seraglios) are the equivalent in structure to a small to medium sized factory, a hotel, or other building used solely as a workplace, involving large capital expenditure, high overheads and a large regular profit. The ‘owner of the means of production’ may be an individual, a partnership, or a company of shareholders, who employ auxiliary salaried staff, such as managers, receptionists, barmaids, or cleaners and commissioned staff, or the prostitutes.


The prostitutes here work in the proletariat tradition in which their labour is hired and exchanged for cash. The prostitute’s exchange-value is usually half the exchange value of the goods (sex) purchased by the client (customer or consumer). This is her commission [or wage – HW] in a shared arrangement with the owner, whose share is a surplus value from which wages for auxiliaries, rent, power, telephones, advertisements and other overheads, and capital for re-investment into the business (for example, improvements or expansion) must be extracted. The balance of this surplus value is the profit for the owner(s).”(14)


As with other wage labourers, exploitation and profit lies in the difference between what it costs to employ the sex worker and the income she can generate through the commodity she delivers. For the petit bourgeois there is no exploitation in that sense, and profit comes from raising the price above the costs of the business.


This analysis is rejected by feminists who argue that the client also directly exploits the sex worker. Certainly in the prostitute-client relationship, the client is almost always in a privileged economic position, but he is not exploiting the prostitute. His role in the relationship is that of consumer. There are many others who exploit her – the employer who may be a pimp, a business or a madame – but in economic terms it is not the client.(15)



Here Engels’ analogy about prostitution and monogamy is relevant. In the family the husband has many advantages over his wife in terms of power within the household, disposable income and freedom from many mundane tasks. But he has not in general achieved this through economic exploitation of his wife – he has “inherited” this from the general position of men and women within capitalism.(16)


To say that prostitutes are not exploited by clients is not the same as saying they are not oppressed by them. Many sex workers are brutally oppressed by clients who treat them in a degrading and often violent way.



The state also treats sex workers in this way, often denying them basic human and legal rights. For example, until recently in the UK, a woman who had previous convictions for soliciting was labelled a “common prostitute”.



Once this was on her record she had fewer rights that anyone else. Future convictions did not require the evidence of two witnesses but could be obtained on the statement of a single police officer, and her previous record was brought up in court.


In many countries, women with prior convictions for prostitution have restrictions on their rights to travel, they are often denied custody of their children, and today in England street working women are served with anti-social behaviour orders which lead to effective curfews for an activity that is not actually a crime. More extreme examples of the oppression of prostitutes include the high rate of murder and violent assault, and the vicious way in which prostitutes are treated in the press. Women who are “outed” as prostitutes can find themselves cast out by families and friends, can lose their children and can never move into “straight” jobs. They become outlaws.


These legal and social sanctions not only affect women working on the street; they extend to any woman found to be a “whore”. But it is clearly the most vulnerable women – those with no money, poor education and little social support – who suffer most. They are reviled from all sides. It is unsurprising that many of them develop drug or alcohol addictions and other mental health problems. But the popular stereotype of women who were abused as children being driven into prostitution to “feed” a drug habit is not the most common story.


There is usually a combination of circumstances that lead women to start sex work, and the common denominator is not drug addiction or abuse, although these are factors, but lack of money. The lack of money may be absolute or relative – many women find the sex industry to be a better option than the low paid, highly exploited jobs available to them in the formal sector.


The situation is no different in other countries. Sex workers in India produced a manifesto in 1997 that includes this statement about why women take up sex work:


“Women take up prostitution for the same reason as they may take up any other livelihood option available to them. Our stories are not fundamentally different from the labourer from Bihar who pulls a rickshaw in Calcutta, or the worker from Calcutta who works part time in a factory in Bombay. Some of us get sold into the industry. After being bonded to the madam who has bought us for some years we gain a degree of independence within the sex industry. [We] end up in the sex trade after going through many experiences in life, often unwillingly, without understanding all the implications of being a prostitute fully. But when do most of us women have access to choice within or outside the family? Do we become casual domestic labourer willingly? Do we have a choice about who we want to marry and when? The ‘choice’ is rarely real for most women, particularly poor women.”(17)

Public and private


This Marxist analysis demonstrates that prostitution developed as the other side of the coin of monogamy which exists to defend private property, and that sexual relations cannot be fully separated from economic relationships in class society. Women’s oppression is rooted in the separation of private domestic toil and reproduction from social production and social life.
Prostitution poses a threat to society because it threatens to blur this sharp distinction – taking sex out of the home and into the market. Secondly it shows that under capitalism prostitutes are not a single class. Our programme on prostitution should reflect this understanding, and be based neither on our own romantic ideas about what sex should represent, nor on our horrors at the most extreme exploitation of sex workers.

Sex workers organise


Over recent years there has been a huge growth in organisations of sex workers. In North America and Europe many of these organisations grew out of women’s groups and other social movements, but have had to break with feminist positions on sex work in order to campaign for their rights. Many feminists want to abolish prostitution, regarding it simply as violence against women. They argue that it must be eliminated through sanctions against managers and clients and rescue missions to save prostitutes. Indeed many will not talk of prostitutes, let alone sex workers, but use the term “prostituted women”. This particular form of patronising language reveals their attitude – they regard sex workers as dupes, and accord them no role in liberating themselves from any oppression or exploitation they endure.


So sharp is this dispute between the feminist saviours and the sex workers’ rights groups that they will rarely share a platform. The Women’s Library in London recently organised an exhibition on prostitution, and did not allow any representations from sex workers’ organisations, leading to protests outside from the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW).(18) The most extreme position is taken by the writer Julie Burchill, who wrote, “Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground.”(19)


Sex workers’ organisations have been criticised for romanticising prostitution, and representing only the middle class “professionals”. But in India, a mass organisation of sex workers exists and takes exactly the same positions. The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (or “Durbar”, which in Bengali means unstoppable or indomitable) is based in West Bengal, India, and grew out of the Sonagachi AIDS prevention initiative. Durbar has 65,000 members, working in some of the poorest areas of the country:


“Durbar is explicit about its political objective of fighting for recognition of sex work as work and, of sex workers as workers and for a secure social existence of sex workers and their children. Durbar demands decriminalisation of adult sex work and seeks to reform laws that restrict the human rights of sex workers, that tend to criminalise them and limit their enfranchisement as full citizens.”(20)


Their 1997 manifesto, cited earlier, reveals an understanding of sexual oppression that would put many *socialists to shame:


“Ownership of private property and maintenance of patriarchy necessitates a control over women’s reproduction. Since property lines are maintained through legitimate heirs, and sexual intercourse between men and women alone carry the potential for procreation, capitalist patriarchy sanctions only such couplings. Sex is seen primarily, and almost exclusively, as an instrument for reproduction, negating all aspects of pleasure and desire intrinsic to it . . . The young men who look for sexual initiation, the married men who seek the company of ‘other’ women, the migrant labourers separated from their wives who try to find warmth and companionship in the red light area, cannot all be dismissed as wicked and perverted. To do that will amount to dismissing a whole history of human search for desire, intimacy and need.”


Organisations of sex workers are a key to fighting exploitation and oppression. Given the class divisions within prostitution these organisations need to be run for and by those sex workers who are employed or who work for themselves, and not be left to be recruiting grounds for those who want to employ and exploit others.


The unions and community organisations of sex workers need to have strong links with other workers’ organisations – as part of a united and strong workers’ movement they will be better able to fight against widespread prejudice.


Over the past decade several unions have agreed to organise and represent sex workers. In the UK, the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW) persuaded the general union the GMB to form a sex industry branch in Soho, and it has successfully unionised a brothel and negotiated recognition agreements in lap dancing clubs. Sex workers are also included in general unions in German (Verdi) and the Netherlands (FNV).(21)

Prostitution and socialism


The life of sex workers is often hard and dangerous, not least because it is criminalised and repressed exposing sex workers to abuse from pimps and clients. Many sex workers are unhappy with their work and would like to leave if there were realistic alternatives. But is a form of alienated labour like others under capitalism.


Prostitution, in this form, would not exist in a socialist society, neither would the family nor work in their current form. There may well be specialist sexual entertainers and experts, but freed from the links with private property and state sanctified or enforced monogamy, sexual relations will evolve in ways that we can only speculate about. The key thing is that the distinction between public and private, in the sense of public social work and private reproduction, will have to dissolve and in that process women will be truly liberated.

About the author


Helen Ward, a PR supporter, is a public health doctor and researcher who has worked with sex workers in London and Europe for over 20 years. Together with anthropologist Sophie Day she has researched HIV and other health risks, occupational mobility and life course in sex work, and established one of the largest projects for sex workers in the UK. She is a supporter of the International Union of Sex Workers.

[FSL]

Ah, no. Maids have employers.



Ah, no. It's not a solution. It's a fact. It doesn't mean anything except sometimes people's assumptions are wrong.



I think you should really revisit your understanding of the term "alienation of labor." And I'm not suggesting that we have any less sympathy with them than we do with the rural petit-bourgeois in impoverished areas. Communism isn't about "sympathy," however, and all I'm saying that lumping all sex workers under the umbrella of "the proletariat" is reductionist.



Okay, then by this definition any sex worker who has "any amount of money," and no employer or pimp, is petit bourgeois.
Maids have clients, I don't mean the in house maid but the person -usually a woman- that comes and cleans every week and does the same thing for a bunch of other people.


I think you should visit the term alienation for the first time so that you may at least see what it's about. Just like you should have made an effort to understand materialism before starting all this "the truth is subjective" agnostic nonsense.
By that definition most people who don't have tens or hundreds of thousands in long term banking accounts, aren't petty bourgeois because what they earn in deposits is meaningless. If a sex worker has that amount and is receiving a sizable chunk of interest back then she has become petty bourgeois but that's irrelevant to her profession.



So apart from the usual moralizing about prostitution going on in this thread - because of course women are never forced to become childcare providers or anything like that, only to offer sexual services and sex is yuck, isn't it?
Indeed the same nonsense every time.
You are against something or you are for it. You bring something else into the discussion and you're probably for it and embarassed to admit it.
For example you can be against the US and Russia's imperialism or you can be for it. If in a discussion about one of those you mention "oh but Russia does this", "oh but the US do that", then guess what.

No, womens' only problem isn't being prostitutes. Is it one of their problems? Is it condemned? Or you'd rather start a conversation about something different and avoid answering?


And seriously you people are suggesting that "sex is yuck" since you consider it reasonable to expect women to be materially rewarded for "offering it" instead of enjoying it and willingly participating in it.
How disgusting is that on your behalf?

Sex isn't something that's given and taken, it's part of a relationship that happens between two people. Your view of it is disgusting, not to mention downright reactionary. I guess in some people's view if a woman sells sex to five regural clients that's totally alright and progressive but if she sells it to her husband, then that's fucked up.

No, both cases are equally fucked up and anyone who hesitates to admit it is equally fucked up himself.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

You are against something or you are for it.

Well, I am "for" prostitution in the sense that I am opposed to efforts by moralistic radical liberals, sometimes posing as socialists, to outlaw it, and I treat sex work as, well, work.


No, womens' only problem isn't being prostitutes. Is it one of their problems? Is it condemned? Or you'd rather start a conversation about something different and avoid answering?

Actually, I think the notion that women have "sexual power" over men, in the present society, is more interesting than the same old back-and-forth with liberals, partly because it illustrates how fucked-up the liberal analysis of power is. And of course I can't but notice the talk about "usury", the favorite trope of the rightist who wants to be a socialist.


And seriously you people are suggesting that "sex is yuck" since you consider it reasonable to expect women to be materially rewarded for "offering it" instead of enjoying it and willingly participating in it.
How disgusting is that on your behalf?

People can willingly participate in something they do only for the purpose of being materially rewarded. Of course, since this takes place in class society, they are constrained by the mode of production. But this goes for plumbers as well as prostitutes. Yet no one seems to be forming political pressure groups to outlaw plumbing, arrest plumbers, shame people who pay others to poke around in their shit etc. etc.


Sex isn't something that's given and taken, it's part of a relationship that happens between two people.

Why thank you, pope FSL. It never ceases to amaze me how quick socialists are to pontificate on private matters. Sex is sex. Skin rubbing against skin. If it's consensual - of course, once again capitalism complicates matters, but it complicates all matters, not just sex - it's none of your business. Yes, even if people are having sex in a way you find incorrect, for reasons you find incorrect, with people you find incorrect in poses you find incorrect.


Your view of it is disgusting, not to mention downright reactionary. I guess in some people's view if a woman sells sex to five regural clients that's totally alright and progressive but if she sells it to her husband, then that's fucked up.

Or maybe I don't think marriage is necessarily fucked up, although its origins certainly are fucked up, and again, het marriage takes place in the context of a deeply misogynist society.


No, both cases are equally fucked up and anyone who hesitates to admit it is equally fucked up himself.

So how many Hail Mary's did I get this time, Father?

[Rosa Partizan]

this whole discussion has reached a point that it makes me wanna ignore these threads in general. I made the very essential statement that prostitution will always mean that the one side prostituting themselves will have to fulfill the buyer's wishes while having no right to claim their own sexual preference. How can it ever, ever, ever be okay to compromise one's own sexuality? I'm not like "well, sex is only fine in combination with love, in a long relationship blah blah". Fuck this shit. However, it IS a give and take. Yeah, I mean, there can be situations like, one side is not in the right mood, but still doing it for their (sexual) partner. However, in prostitution, the side that compromises will ALWAYS be the sex worker side.

This side can NOT stand up and claim their sexual satisfaction. This view has nothing to do with moralism, with hating female sexual autonomy (LOL!!!! :laugh:), with prudery, with telling people how to have sex and how not to. I feel like I'm repeating all the time (which is actually what I'm doing) because I kinda don't get how this argument of sexual subjugation can be ignored. I have read NO post that has an answer to this. How the fuck will it ever be okay, in an enlightened society, to not give a fuck about if your sexual partner really wants to sleep with you or not.

[synthesis]

But isn't it up to the individual women whether or not they are setting aside their own sexual desires? Again, I think what you are saying is true in the majority of instances, but it's not categorical and it's speaking on behalf of people who might not want to be spoken for.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

this whole discussion has reached a point that it makes me wanna ignore these threads in general. I made the very essential statement that prostitution will always mean that the one side prostituting themselves will have to fulfill the buyer's wishes while having no right to claim their own sexual preference. How can it ever, ever, ever be okay to compromise one's own sexuality? I'm not like "well, sex is only fine in combination with love, in a long relationship blah blah". Fuck this shit. However, it IS a give and take. Yeah, I mean, there can be situations like, one side is not in the right mood, but still doing it for their (sexual) partner. However, in prostitution, the side that compromises will ALWAYS be the sex worker side.

This side can NOT stand up and claim their sexual satisfaction. This view has nothing to do with moralism, with hating female sexual autonomy (LOL!!!! :laugh:), with prudery, with telling people how to have sex and how not to. I feel like I'm repeating all the time (which is actually what I'm doing) because I kinda don't get how this argument of sexual subjugation can be ignored. I have read NO post that has an answer to this. How the fuck will it ever be okay, in an enlightened society, to not give a fuck about if your sexual partner really wants to sleep with you or not.

I think there is a dangerous equivocation going on here, concerning the term "want to".

The prostitute might literally not want to engage in sex with her client, in which case it is her prerogative to stop everything, and anything else is rape.

Likewise, the prostitute might not have chosen to sleep with her client if the situation were different, but does so anyway - of her own free will - because that's her job. (Obviously I'm not talking about forced prostitution here.)

Now, you might find the latter sort of situation to be distasteful - but it goes on in all kinds of service work. That plumber probably wouldn't want to poke around a dirty toilet outside his job. Maybe the guy who works at the suicide hotline really wants to tell his client to jump off a ledge. And so on, and so on. But people take these things in stride.

I really do think "give and take" is what works for most people. Yet I have seen relationships that worked on other principles - as long as there was no coercion and everyone who was involved was happy, I really don't think it is any of my business to condemn them. As for prostitution, it would be ideal if the prostitute, male or female, man or woman, would derive greater enjoyment from her material rewards than the small annoyance of sometimes sleeping with clients they would not normally sleep with - that is probably how it would happen in the transitional period, and probably in the communist society (with "need for work" replacing "material reward").

[synthesis]

I think you should visit the term alienation for the first time so that you may at least see what it's about. Just like you should have made an effort to understand materialism before starting all this "the truth is subjective" agnostic nonsense.

The petit-bourgeois are not alienated from their labor in the same way as proletarians; that's the whole point. Through their labor they create surplus value and then they are not separated from that value by their employer. If a sex worker has to surrender any of their income to a pimp or madam, then of course they are still proletarian. But if they don't, they can be reasonably considered petit-bourgeois, in the same way that an independent hairdresser or journalist could be considered as such.

And I'm sorry, but you're going to have to help me understand what subjective agnosticism or agnostic subjectivity or whatever has to do with anything I've said. Maybe something got lost in translation. And materialism deals with relationships to modes of production and that's exactly what I'm talking about with regards to the possibility that some sex workers are not proletarian by the very nature of class analysis.


By that definition most people who don't have tens or hundreds of thousands in long term banking accounts, aren't petty bourgeois because what they earn in deposits is meaningless. If a sex worker has that amount and is receiving a sizable chunk of interest back then she has become petty bourgeois but that's irrelevant to her profession.

You're really becoming dishonest here and I'm not sure it will be productive to continue discussing this if you're going to continue with this sort of circular reasoning. You're the one that introduced that definition of petit-bourgeois, and I pointed out that your criteria would still fit some sex workers.

Look, you said part of being petit-bourgeois is owning capital. Then you said that having "any amount of money" can constitute owning capital. (I really have no idea where you've arrived at this conclusion that earning interest on money in a bank account can change someone's class.) So by that logic, a sex worker with "any amount of money" owns capital and is therefore eligible to be considered petit-bourgeois. This is just my response to what you said and is not a factor in my own analysis.

[synthesis]

Now, you might find the latter sort of situation to be distasteful - but it goes on in all kinds of service work. That plumber probably wouldn't want to poke around a dirty toilet outside his job. Maybe the guy who works at the suicide hotline really wants to tell his client to jump off a ledge. And so on, and so on. But people take these things in stride.

If I understand Rosa's argument correctly, she would say that sex work is different from other forms of service work because of the nature of female sexual autonomy in patriarchal capitalism. Where I think she's wrong is that unless we're talking about coercion or manipulation, it's up to each individual sex worker to decide how large a part this plays in what they do day-to-day. If a woman doesn't perceive sex work to be different from other forms of service work (maybe this is what FSL meant by "subjective agnostic" or whatever) then for her it is the same as other service work.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

If I understand Rosa's argument correctly, she would say that sex work is different from other forms of service work because of the nature of female sexual autonomy in patriarchal capitalism. Where I think she's wrong is that unless we're talking about coercion or manipulation, it's up to each individual sex worker to decide how large a part this plays in what they do day-to-day. If a woman doesn't perceive sex work to be different from other forms of service work (maybe this is what FSL meant by "subjective agnostic" or whatever) then for her it is the same as other service work.

Alright, but gender also plays a none-too-subtle role in non-sexual work under capitalism as well. Take secretaries, for example, who are generally female, underpaid, and often have to preform services for their boss they would generally not do were it not their job.

Of course this doesn't mean that I think prostitution, as it stands, is great. But I don't think secretarial work or plumbing is great either. Of course gender needs to be taken into account, and so on. But talking about gender divides within the proletariat is a far cry from the sort of "sex may take place only in following situations for following reasons" moralism that FSL advocates.

[synthesis]

This discussion seems like the equivalent of a bar fight between two different groups of people, except instead of a bar they are in a cornfield and everyone has blindfolds on: half the time people don't know who they're swinging at and much of the rest of the time a bunch of straw men are intercepting the punches. (Fittingly for the analogy, this is aimed at nobody in particular.)

[Rafiq]

Oh do fuck off. In some marital arrangements in some cultures in some places at some times the above will undoubtedly be true. In other places and times it will not be true. My wife is no fucking sex slave and neither is she my property. If I so much as dared to suggest that she was, she might well be inclined to throttle me if only she could stop laughing at me for long enough.

This is the wider social function of marriage, women as property. After the sexual revolution, obviously it is more complicated now, no one is suggesting that you dominate your wife or that all wives are subjugated to their spouses without exception, simply that within the context of capitalist relations in their purest form, women are enslaved by the bourgeois family. Through decades of long feminist struggle, obviously things are more complicated, but the archetypal and pure (perhaps a better word is subconscious) form in which marriage within capitalist relations take is inherently a form of sexual slavery, you don't understand what I mean because you're a moron, yet I feel content with stating it anyway. You think because of these postmodern, 'progressive' developments that somehow women are emancipated from the sexual relations that oppress them? What we have today is unspoken violence, violence that is enforced not through physical means, but through coercion and so forth. You just don't get it. You're a waste of time, and as far as I'm concerned, a waste of life.

[Rafiq]

But isn't it up to the individual women whether or not they are setting aside their own sexual desires? Again, I think what you are saying is true in the majority of instances, but it's not categorical and it's speaking on behalf of people who might not want to be spoken for.

No, it isn't up to them. Just as it's not up to proletarians as to whether they are setting aside their class interest. They simply are.

[synthesis]

No, it isn't up to them. Just as it's not up to proletarians as to whether they are setting aside their class interest. They simply are.

What is an example of a piece of evidence that could convince you that in some (as I've said repeatedly, very few) cases, it is up to them?

[tallguy]

This is the wider social function of marriage, women as property. After the sexual revolution, obviously it is more complicated now, no one is suggesting that you dominate your wife or that all wives are subjugated to their spouses without exception, simply that within the context of capitalist relations in their purest form, women are enslaved by the bourgeois family. Through decades of long feminist struggle, obviously things are more complicated, but the archetypal and pure (perhaps a better word is subconscious) form in which marriage within capitalist relations take is inherently a form of sexual slavery, you don't understand what I mean because you're a moron, yet I feel content with stating it anyway. You think because of these postmodern, 'progressive' developments that somehow women are emancipated from the sexual relations that oppress them? What we have today is unspoken violence, violence that is enforced not through physical means, but through coercion and so forth. You just don't get it. You're a waste of time, and as far as I'm concerned, a waste of life.
So , to paraphrase..."blah blah bah"

Numb nuts like you are putting women in real danger by conflating that real danger, where it occurs, with a more general, ideologically-driven hatred of all relationships between all women and all men and, in doing so, are trivialising that danger. The only consolation I take is that ordinary folks will never let you near the reigns of power since they can see your idiotic pseudo-religious zealotry for what it really is.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Numb nuts like you are putting women in real danger by conflating that real danger, where it occurs, with a more general, ideologically-driven hatred of all relationships between all women and all men
I have no idea how you get any of that from what Rafiq wrote.

[FSL]

Well, I am "for" prostitution in the sense that I am opposed to efforts by moralistic radical liberals, sometimes posing as socialists, to outlaw it, and I treat sex work as, well, work.



Actually, I think the notion that women have "sexual power" over men, in the present society, is more interesting than the same old back-and-forth with liberals, partly because it illustrates how fucked-up the liberal analysis of power is. And of course I can't but notice the talk about "usury", the favorite trope of the rightist who wants to be a socialist.



People can willingly participate in something they do only for the purpose of being materially rewarded. Of course, since this takes place in class society, they are constrained by the mode of production. But this goes for plumbers as well as prostitutes. Yet no one seems to be forming political pressure groups to outlaw plumbing, arrest plumbers, shame people who pay others to poke around in their shit etc. etc.



Why thank you, pope FSL. It never ceases to amaze me how quick socialists are to pontificate on private matters. Sex is sex. Skin rubbing against skin. If it's consensual - of course, once again capitalism complicates matters, but it complicates all matters, not just sex - it's none of your business. Yes, even if people are having sex in a way you find incorrect, for reasons you find incorrect, with people you find incorrect in poses you find incorrect.



Or maybe I don't think marriage is necessarily fucked up, although its origins certainly are fucked up, and again, het marriage takes place in the context of a deeply misogynist society.



So how many Hail Mary's did I get this time, Father?
The disagreement here isn't between a pope and a sinner but between a communist and a libertarian who can only repeat the pseudo-progressive nonsense he heard on southpark or the daily show.


You are for prostitution in the only sense that can be possible, ie by being for prostitution, fullstop.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

The disagreement here isn't between a pope and a sinner but between a communist and a libertarian who can only repeat the pseudo-progressive nonsense he heard on southpark or the daily show.

You are for prostitution in the only sense that can be possible, ie by being for prostitution, fullstop.

How about you go make meaningful love to your lawfully-wedded wife in the missionary position for the purposes of procreation?

See, I can write stupid near-one-liners that contribute nothing to the discussion, or what passes for discussion. And the discussion is not between a communist and a(n American) libertarian but between a communist and a moralistic liberal prig who wants to be a communist, but can't quite manage. Do yourself a favor and at least read Engels's "On the Origin..." - it's quite old, but it's an effective antidote to the sort of workerist moralism one encounters in ostensibly socialist groups. I would recommend some more modern texts but you'd probably have to whip yourself and take cold showers to drive the sinful thoughts away.

Also, South Park hasn't been relevant... in forever. I actually don't want to think about the dates because that'd remind me of how old I am.

[FSL]

The petit-bourgeois are not alienated from their labor in the same way as proletarians; that's the whole point. Through their labor they create surplus value and then they are not separated from that value by their employer. If a sex worker has to surrender any of their income to a pimp or madam, then of course they are still proletarian. But if they don't, they can be reasonably considered petit-bourgeois, in the same way that an independent hairdresser or journalist could be considered as such.

And I'm sorry, but you're going to have to help me understand what subjective agnosticism or agnostic subjectivity or whatever has to do with anything I've said. Maybe something got lost in translation. And materialism deals with relationships to modes of production and that's exactly what I'm talking about with regards to the possibility that some sex workers are not proletarian by the very nature of class analysis.



You're really becoming dishonest here and I'm not sure it will be productive to continue discussing this if you're going to continue with this sort of circular reasoning. You're the one that introduced that definition of petit-bourgeois, and I pointed out that your criteria would still fit some sex workers.

Look, you said part of being petit-bourgeois is owning capital. Then you said that having "any amount of money" can constitute owning capital. (I really have no idea where you've arrived at this conclusion that earning interest on money in a bank account can change someone's class.) So by that logic, a sex worker with "any amount of money" owns capital and is therefore eligible to be considered petit-bourgeois. This is just my response to what you said and is not a factor in my own analysis.
What I said is this:

That's exactly what the petty bourgeois is and any amount of money can function as capital. It's how you get interest on deposits. For most people these amounts are negligible though

Instead, you chose to ignore most of what I said to make the point that some sex workers are petty bourgeois (despite not owning capital) and are thus not financially exploited, because that's the whole question here.


When something you create becomes a commodity you're alienated from it. Alienation is what you have when the exhange of commodities, ie sex and money in this case, masks a social relationship ie two people having sex. It doesn't only happen in this case and it does concern "independent service providers" as well. For example what does a doctor do? He treats sick people.
But what he does in capitalism is produce a commodity, treatment, which he then exchanges for another commodity, money, that he gets from his clients, the sick people that can afford his services.

Imagine the different attitudes cultivated in these cases. How different is the mentality of the doctor who treats sick people and the mentality of the doctor that exchanges treatments for money. This is alienation, this is the difference between the "new man", the man as he actually is without commodities clouding everything and the selfish man as he is today, under capitalism.

The exact same thing applies to any worker or laborer who produces commodities, sex workers included.


What you've said basically is that many sex workers like and accept what they do. That therefore their subjective opinion is what matters. After all these are "private matters" aren't they? At least that's what any capitalism apologist would be sure to say.

What actually matters is the material truth, the truth stemming from the material reality and the social relationships born from it. What matters is that predominantly women sell to clients something they should be sharing with the people they choose.


In any case, if a sex worker has the opinion you put forward here, I'd say that's a sad case of her having a misguided view on the matter. Just like when a worker believes he needs bosses to have work.
But you? You have that opinion from a place of power. Same when a capitalist believes he's needed and he is in fact the reason why workers have jobs!
So unlike I was accused before I'll never make an attempt even at shaming sex workers. Shaming those that defend the status quo though? Of course I'll try to shame them cause they deserve no better.

[FSL]

How about you go make meaningful love to your lawfully-wedded wife in the missionary position for the purposes of procreation?

See, I can write stupid near-one-liners that contribute nothing to the discussion, or what passes for discussion. And the discussion is not between a communist and a(n American) libertarian but between a communist and a moralistic liberal prig who wants to be a communist, but can't quite manage. Do yourself a favor and at least read Engels's "On the Origin..." - it's quite old, but it's an effective antidote to the sort of workerist moralism one encounters in ostensibly socialist groups. I would recommend some more modern texts but you'd probably have to whip yourself and take cold showers to drive the sinful thoughts away.

Also, South Park hasn't been relevant... in forever. I actually don't want to think about the dates because that'd remind me of how old I am.

Very bad use of the strawman argument against someone who is against marriage and sees no purpose in it.

Of course it's what you need to resort to when you're having trouble defending your opinion, that women should sell sex to men and that that is perfectly progressive because after all that's what many women choose to do.


Yeah, you're not at all a chauvinist.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Very bad use of the strawman argument against someone who is against marriage and sees no purpose in it.

Good for you. Of course, whether you "see purpose" in something is perfectly irrelevant. I never cease to wonder at the sheer amount of people that think their preferences should be forced on other people so that they might be good and happy (before the bogus charge of "libertarianism" is raised again, you would do well to remember things like Lenin's opposition to religious prosecution etc. - of course, "seeing no purpose in religion", maybe you think religion should be banned as well).

Marriage is actually quite relevant to this discussion. As most people probably realize, man-woman marriage is an institution with a deeply fucked-up history, and takes place, even today (especially today!) in the context of a deeply misogynist society. Yet no one, except the extreme ultralefts, thinks marriage should be banned or that wives should be jailed.

Now why is that? The thing is that most people, communists and those who would like to be communists, are still under the influence of bourgeois sexual morality, which sanctions marriage and condemns prostitution, which is of course inseparable from marriage.


Of course it's what you need to resort to when you're having trouble defending your opinion, that women should sell sex to men and that that is perfectly progressive because after all that's what many women choose to do.

Why of course. I also support pirate raids on coastal settlement to supply the prostitution market with a steady supply of female slaves. Our own Vox Populi could be the captain of the Blackdick Pirates, for that is how this ragged band of chauvinist ne'er-do-wells will be called.

Of course, I do actually think that, if a woman wants to be a prostitute, she should have the option of being a prostitute. The arguments for the criminalization of prostitution all fail because they imply too much - if prostitution needs to go before capitalism (and of course, prostitution as it stands today would go with capitalism, although if in the dictatorship of the proletariat some people want to preform sexual services to fulfill their quota of socially useful labor, good for them), so does secretarial work, marriage etc.


Yeah, you're not at all a chauvinist.

I really am not surprised at the charge, given that you seem to have absorbed the sort of radlib feminism that considers anything short of outright prudery to be chauvinism.

[FSL]

anything short of outright prudery
Having sex with the people you choose to is prude. Heard that girls?
You'd better start setting appointments as soon as possible, there are many dicks with money waiting and you don't want to be labeled a prude, do you?

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Having sex with the people you choose to is prude. Heard that girls?
You'd better start setting appointments as soon as possible, there are many dicks with money waiting and you don't want to be labeled a prude, do you?

Of course, "women sex workers should not be jailed by the bourgeois state or harassed by moralistic liberal 'socialists'" means "all women should become prostitutes". Just like being opposed to the criminalization of drugs means that everyone must shoot gallons of cocaine up their eyeballs.

Not to mention that excepting coercion (which exists, of course, and is a problem, but is not necessary in prostitution) prostitutes do choose who to have sex with - it's just that they don't do so for reasons you find "adequate". Again, though, no one really cares what you think are "good" reasons for sex.

[FSL]

Of course, "women sex workers should not be jailed by the bourgeois state or harassed by moralistic liberal 'socialists'" means "all women should become prostitutes". Just like being opposed to the criminalization of drugs means that everyone must shoot gallons of cocaine up their eyeballs.

Not to mention that excepting coercion (which exists, of course, and is a problem, but is not necessary in prostitution) prostitutes do choose who to have sex with - it's just that they don't do so for reasons you find "adequate". Again, though, no one really cares what you think are "good" reasons for sex.
You were the one to say that every other action but prostitution means you're a prude. I'm wondering what made you think that simply not giving money is so restrictive.


I don't think sex workers should be jailed, I think sex clients should.

Come to think of it, jail the sex clients' supporters as well, you know the people who say things like "she wanted my money". It's already a tough thing making the world a better place, no reason to be timid about it.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

You were the one to say that every other action but prostitution means you're a prude.

No, that's something you invented and then ascribed to me, much like the rest of your rigmarole.


I'm wondering what made you think that simply not giving money is so restrictive.

Because it literally restricts what women (male prostitutes have been erased from this discussion) are able to do? It's not a difficult concept to understand.


I don't think sex workers should be jailed, I think sex clients should.

Of course, that works so well, doesn't it? It's not like sex workers themselves oppose this, since it gives the police - but hey, didn't you know, the police are your friends now! - reasons to raid their establishments, detain them etc.


Come to think of it, jail the sex clients' supporters as well, you know the people who say things like "she wanted my money". It's already a tough thing making the world a better place, no reason to be timid about it.

A~nd that's the real issue. Socialism means changing the means of production, smashing the bourgeois state and abolishing government over men - it doesn't mean "making the world a better place" according to some arbitrary moralist standard.

Not to mention that, not being telepathic, I don't really know who "people who say things like 'she wanted my money'" are. Rapists? Who knows. Of course, if they'd raped someone, I imagine they should be punished - for rape, not "supporting sex clients", whatever that means.

[FSL]

Because it literally restricts what women (male prostitutes have been erased from this discussion) are able to do?
You're adding being a prostitute to women's rights? How bold of you.



Socialism means changing the means of production, smashing the bourgeois state and abolishing government over men - it doesn't mean "making the world a better place"
Socialism is doing all these things because they are the prerequisites for freedom.
Among the prerequisites is the abolition of commodity production, sex work being one example.

If you have a problem with freedom because that would mean women having sex with the people they like and not with the people that pay them, it is only reasonable that "freedom" will have a problem with you.




Yeah, you're not at all a chauvinist.
I really am not surprised at the charge, given that you seem to have absorbed the sort of radlib feminism that considers anything short of outright prudery to be chauvinism.
I've only spoken out against prostitution here. You must therefore consider prostitution the only thing that isn't outright prudery.

There remains the opportunity for women to have sex with as many men as they'd like. But no, because they wouldn't have sex with clients, because this is restricted their whole sex life is ruined.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

You're adding being a prostitute to women's rights? How bold of you.

"Rights" are, broadly speaking, liberal nonsense, but yes, I don't think women should be punished, by the good bourgeois state or its bureaucrat-conservative "socialist" analogon, for being prostitutes, wives, childcare workers, plumbers, secretaries, and so on.


Socialism is doing all these things because they are the prerequisites for freedom.

No, socialism is doing all those things, period. The "reason" (as if historical processes bend to the will of lone intellectuals) is irrelevant. And, of course, "freedom", like all such terms, can mean a lot of things. I don't think I would find the "freedom" you advocate worthwhile.


Among the prerequisites is the abolition of commodity production, sex work being one example.

Ah, so now prostitution is to be abolished as work? Good. I don't think anyone disputes that - of course you've convinced yourself that everyone who doesn't follow the sexual prescriptions of McKinnon, Koba and Kollontai is secretly a supporter of capitalism, but that's not our problem. But the same goes for plumbing, pizza-making, painting nails and professional pelota.

Of course, the possibility of prostitution as a service remaining would be open, and some women and men would probably want that, both as providers and as clients. Now, how is your Freedomship to stop them, if the government over men has been abolished?


If you have a problem with freedom because that would mean women having sex with the people they like and not with the people that pay them, it is only reasonable that "freedom" will have a problem with you.

I imagine "freedom" would mean women having sex as they desire, no matter what reason they give (and the notion that they should give reasons in the first place is naff).


I've only spoken out against prostitution here. You must therefore consider prostitution the only thing that isn't outright prudery.

Or maybe radical liberal feminists - and their "socialist" allies - have a history of violently attacking everything from homosexuality (let's not forget the curious case of comrade Xha-Xha and the Albanian Fun Police) to BDSM.


There remains the opportunity for women to have sex with as many men as they'd like. But no, because they wouldn't have sex with clients, because this

Because what? Oh, I suspect some weak psychological guessing was in order. Do go on. I love to see people fail miserably at that.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It's odd to see supposed revolutionaries who suddenly advocate the power of the bourgeois state when it comes to sex work.

[Rafiq]

So , to paraphrase..."blah blah bah"

Numb nuts like you are putting women in real danger by conflating that real danger, where it occurs, with a more general, ideologically-driven hatred of all relationships between all women and all men and, in doing so, are trivialising that danger.

Cases of domestic violence and physical abuse are not to be trivialized, I am well aware, nor are they identical to the existence of the oppression that is inherit to sexual relations to a whole, remember that they are a result of this though! In modern bourgeois democracy, proletarians do not live as they did during the industrial revolution, do I trivialize the "real oppression" in third world countries because through decades of struggle, workers here have earned a better standard of living?

There is no reason to have a hatred of "all relationships" between men and women, it is still important to recognize, in the greater scheme of things, the existence of patriarchy, which thus pervades in relationships which we all engage in. There is nothing we can do but attempt to, in the best way we can, avoid reinforcing them (that is, on a personal level).

[Ember Catching]

It's odd to see supposed revolutionaries who suddenly advocate the power of the bourgeois state when it comes to sex work.
I haven't been following this thread at all, but, in line with my post here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2720866&postcount=81), I'd raise no objections to a reallocation of existing police resources to crackdowns on pimps who coerce prostitutes into work (labor which, in this case, must necessarily be unfree).

[synthesis]

What you've said basically is that many sex workers like and accept what they do. That therefore their subjective opinion is what matters. After all these are "private matters" aren't they? At least that's what any capitalism apologist would be sure to say.

It matters when people are trying to divorce it categorically from other forms of service work.


In any case, if a sex worker has the opinion you put forward here, I'd say that's a sad case of her having a misguided view on the matter.

That's still not up to you.


So unlike I was accused before I'll never make an attempt even at shaming sex workers. Shaming those that defend the status quo though? Of course I'll try to shame them cause they deserve no better.

Again, you are being incredibly dishonest when you say that people who disagree with you are just "defending the status quo." All I and most others in this thread have argued for is some nuance in people's understanding of what is intrinsic to being a sex worker. Of course this point would be lost on you, because to you "you're either for it or against it," a child's way to perceive the world.

[synthesis]

Article:

Shut Up About How I Should Talk About My Sex Work

Often, when I tell someone new that I’m a phone sex operator, they say, “Oh! How long did you do that?” Notice the the use of past tense. The assumption is, of course, that my time in phone sex was in the past, that I am no longer doing it, that I have left it behind and moved on to my obviously successful and lucrative career in playwriting and solo performance.

Pause for laugh break.

Yes. I find that hilarious, too.

I am glad that my profile and branding and visibility is high enough at this point that people think I must doing well, but really … it’s mostly PR. I need to make people think that I’m already big news, so they don’t want to miss me, so they want to book me. This isn’t marketing hyperbole, as much as it is simply my M.O.: I fake it ’til I make it. I am sure a lot of emergent performers do this, putting out their hype just slightly ahead of their performance curve, and stepping up to the plate with a prayer on every slightly shallow breath.

I am also quite sure that my colleagues in performance, those of us hovering around the same level of visibility and exposure and gig income -- most of us have second jobs. Maybe even third jobs, but definitely second ones. Whether it’s the time-honored food-service position, or consulting gigs in tech writing, or office jobs, or arts administrators at various levels, or yes, phone sex, we have to make money somehow while we are striving to make money in some other way.

But not all of these second jobs are treated the same way. People accept without comment that actors might perform and continue to wait tables, or that playwrights would write in the evenings, after they’ve left the office. What is it about phone sex, and sex work in general, that makes it so hard to reconcile with other aspirations?

I don’t have all the answers, I never do. I just have thoughts, and they are these:

First of all, it is a not-unheard-of approach for writers to dip into some exotic field or lifestyle and then dip right back out when they’ve got enough material. I wonder if people assume that naturally I’d have followed that trajectory, because my first play Phone Whore is about phone sex, and, you know … Why would I still be doing phone sex, if I got what I needed from it, i.e. grist for the mill?

Oh, wait. What if I wasn’t doing it for the research? What if I needed the actual money? What if I still need the money? What if this option is, in fact, preferable to other paying-the-bills options?

OK. It has become kind of OK to say, in some circles, that you did a little sex work, if you put it down to fun or research or empowerment. If you did sex work strictly for the money, you can only really admit it if you put it in the past, and remove any element of choice about it, as much as possible. To buy nice clothes? Not desperate enough. We’re talking paying for college, making money after a layoff, getting off the streets. In the past. In the popular cultural understanding, sex work is a last resort, and if it happened in the past, it means that you boot-strapped your way out of a terrible situation and props to you, and now you can leave that all behind you. We can only talk about “degrading situations” if we’ve triumphed over them, or if we’re actively working on getting out. That is the way a feel-good narrative works.

But saying out loud, in a broad-daylight way, that one does sex work for money, that one is currently doing it, that one has no immediate, focused, near-future plans for not doing it… that looks, to the outside eye, suspiciously like “giving up on ourselves.” “Undervaluing ourselves.” Obviously “not motivated enough.” Bleah. You know what? I felt a lot less valued in the office job I got laid off from in 2009, and I was getting a lot less of my own creative work done. But people think “sex work” = “unmotivated”, which doesn’t mesh with how they see me. Not that I need to break stereotypes, but…

POW. Did that hurt when your brain blew out sideways?

The truth is there are many reasons why sex workers are doing the work we do, and as with any profession, some of us desperately want out, some love it, or are just fine with it, and some are doing it, with greater or lesser degrees of enthusiasm, until our other plans pan out.

I fall in this last category, for sure. I do want to make my living writing and performing. But I don’t see what I’m doing as “rescuing myself”. I’m working toward success in performance, not away from some tragically wasted life in phone sex, boo hoo. No. I still do phone sex, and I’m really, really good with doing phone sex right now, and I’m in no particular rush to leave it, BELIEVE IT.

When I “make it,” when I get to the point that I make all my living in performance, I will tell people the periods of my employment in phone sex, if it’s relevant, but I won’t hide this life, or refer to it as a wacky little phase, or a terrible time that I got through. This is a decent fucking job that I’ve held for four years. It can be isolating as hell, and it’s a little marginal right now, but it’s easier on my feet than food service. And doing phone sex does more than pay the bills. It inspired my first play, and feeds my soul and my mind in a way that no other job ever has.

So my question to you is: Why should I be so eager to leave that?

here (http://www.xojane.com/issues/shut-up-about-how-i-should-talk-about-my-sex-work)

[Luís Henrique]

That's exactly what the petty bourgeois is and any amount of money can function as capital. It's how you get interest on deposits. For most people these amounts are negligible though.

I can of course put 10 dollars in a bank account, and the bank will use them (together with thousands of other small deposits) as capital. Anyone can do that, and if we reason that because the wage of a garbage collector is "capital" until s/he actually spends it if the bank pays an interest for it (or even if it doesn't, but just doesn't impose fees on it)... then the categories of "bourgeois" and "proletarian" make no sence at all, and we are all capitalists, just bigger or smaller.

But that would belong in OI.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

My wife is no fucking sex slave and neither is she my property.

Next, we will start banning married people from revleft. After all, we don't want slave owners here, do we?

And so the left goes on, ever perfecting its absolute irrelevance...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I don't think sex workers should be jailed, I think sex clients should.

Thus forcing prostitutes to either starve or engage in "honest" (and, coincidentally, cheaper) work such as growing potatoes, cleaning loos or collecting waste. Much better indeed.

How on earth do you mount a prosecution case against a "john" without in some way cop-harassing a prostitute?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Among the prerequisites is the abolition of commodity production, sex work being one example.

But is it one example, or the example?

Because bread or internet access are other examples of commodity production, and yet it doesn't seem reasonable to pretend that we are going to abolish commodity production by criminalising the purchase of bread or internet access. So if sex work is just one example of commodity production, why is it such an special example that the world can be made better by jailing its buyers, while jailing buyers of bread or internet access can't make the trick?


If you have a problem with freedom because that would mean women having sex with the people they like and not with the people that pay them, it is only reasonable that "freedom" will have a problem with you.

It is a huge problem to determinate that women will only have sex "with the people they like" - as opposed to "with the people they want to have sex with". What is the protocol to determinate whether a woman likes someone else, in order to allow her to have sex wich such person? Is the bourgeois State involved in it, and how? Or does she just need an authenticated certificate from a licensed psychologist? Or a notarised declaration perhaps?

Luís Henrique