What are your takes on consensual sex work?
What are your takes on consensual sex work?
I recently made a post about this topic but it caused a lot of controversy. I did not specify and used the broad term of sex work which probably made the interpretations so varied. For the purposes of this conversation, I want to focus on work that is consensual because obviously human trafficking or coercive sex is inherently wrong and exploitative. Some people even said that sex work is not valid labor which I personally found strange. I'm personally not a fanboy of the sex industry at all, but most people involved would say that the illegality of it exacerbates the bad situation that they find themselves in, and I cannot personally find a reason to be going against what the people involved are saying. And yeah it probably wouldn't exist under socialism but at the same time, I think it is a huge mistake to go in with an iron fist and just say "I'm going to make everyone stop sex work right this instant because it's not socialist" because this does not treat the underlying causes of it, which will only make it spring back up anyway.
And I'm not just expecting one type of answer but if I am making an error in applying dialectical materialism or Marxism-Leninism please let me know.
I decided to remove my comment
21This reply didn't quite hit right. I was tired, a bit vexed, a little dazed and confused. I posted a revised version of this at the bottom of my comment chain.
3You did well in bringing your point across in the other comments, thank you comrade
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First off I'm not saying it needs to stop existing right now, we exist under capitalism. It cannot be abolished as long as capitalism reigns. However I am saying under socialism it WILL be abolished. We will not ask permission. We will give the victims resources, housing, food, stability, education, jobs. We will give those who try to do so in spite of that counseling, group therapy, theory lessons, re-education. Those who a third time in a situation where their material needs are met, where they have opportunities, where they've been given re-education and therapy choose to attempt to perpetuate it under that system however will get the iron fist. It will be merciless. As we are merciless as revolutionaries in our drive to abolish the old superstructure, to bring about a better world for all our children but especially in this context our daughters.
To address the question: There can be no consent under the influence of patriarchal liberal capitalism in which we live. Consent is born of ability to make a rational judgement informed by the full facts and with a real choice of options not compromised by external pressures.
Now, just as many pedophiles groom their victims, society grooms women and girls from a young age. A pedophile grooming an underage victim is one person that usually spends months to a couple years at most. Society grooms and indoctrinates girls from birth, years, not one person, the media, people all around them, including often their parents, siblings, their female friends as they grow up, their male friends as they grow up, etc. And it is a proven system, it's a set of shackles that has refined itself with help from society for centuries, a thousand years. It is clever, insidious, pervasive, and it invades the psychology of every girl and woman alive so despite us also being the victims we also often perpetuate it and enforce it on ourselves, on other women, on men.
Besides consent is secondary. That's a liberal, libertarian take, that says as long as both parties consent it's okay. Well I can find two parties that consent to overthrowing the revolution and coordinating a fascist party, but guess what? Vanguard party gets a fucking veto on things harmful to the revolution, the proletariat body, etc. Individual centered, selfish thinking.
The people themselves are saying it someone claims. Well in my previous response I pointed out what if theoretically you had a thriving industry of gay and trans people who were paid to give speeches at churches and spread homophobia and transphobia, flagellate themselves. I'm sure you could find among those doing that those who'd say wait a second, this gives me good money, it's not hard work, I enjoy it better than working in factory, why won't you let me do this when I say it's consensual. And the reason why is just as that person is spreading homophobia and enabling bigots, disharmony among the working class, division, crude hatreds. So too are women who "choose" to prostitute themselves and say they consent and enjoy it harming all women. Not just women but girls, children.
Another example, if slavery had evolved to have a class of paid, even very well paid, labor aristocracy, making the big bucks, black people who whipped and kept black slaves in line for white people, you would have those people with their perverse incentive to maintain the structure they profit off of without consideration to the victims and what they're actually doing who would speak out against abolishing slavery because it would hurt their livelihood.
See this is what is so insidious about patriarchy. It makes women oppress themselves, participate in it yet we're blind to it. It is a more complex form of slavery, it's mental slavery and bondage, it is the Matrix and a large amount of women have been convinced that they're not shackled, or that the shackles are good for them, that they need them, that it is the natural order. Or they have warped perceptions of what liberation looks like, they think how emancipated they are by commodifying themselves instead of just giving themselves to a husband or boyfriend (or doing both, commodifying themselves and their partner). Feminism itself has been hijacked to serve the capitalist system. Liberal platitudes and nonsense are offered up. We're told how empowering it is to be paid to masturbate on camera to men who tell us how they'd like to choke us or fuck us in ways that hurt us. We're told how empowering it is to profit off the alienation and isolation of men who are also victims of capitalism and patriarchy and are also kept in a certain role and misery by it. And how empowering it is to perpetuate that.
18When you call for normalizing (not decriminalizing, which is different) prostitution and sexual exploitation through digital means such as cam work you say to young girls, you say to teenage girls "hustle your body". You say to them, their p*ssy has a price tag, you say to them, their tits are their ticket to a new iphone, they just need to find some guys who will buy this product. You say to teen boys that they can fuck the hot girl or at least get videos of her masturbating and saying their name a few times if they make enough money to pay her, that sex, relationships are just a transaction. That these boys need to hustle to afford paying these girls for attention, for sex, for intimacy, for emotional support. What do you think all this does to young men and young women? To kids? And how they interact with the opposite sex going forward in their lives? How they perceive them? And if you can't see how this is a problem I don't know what to say.
It breeds contempt for women and girls. Men no longer see us as equals, as other workers. They see us as things to buy, a pussy to rent, emotional support for pay. I cease to become a person and instead become a commodity. It's not about an intimate, equal, sharing relationship with pleasure for both of us, with emotional labor and support for both of us, it's about paying me off for access to what the man wants.
Have you ever seen the spamming that goes on by "cam workers" on websites to try and try drive traffic to themselves? It's mostly removed on sites like reddit pretty quickly but it's a constant thing going on in the background. These so-called liberated women, these so-called "sex workers" push themselves on men who don't even want to buy, badger them just the same as a woman walking the streets, they call men the f-word, challenge their masculinity, badger them, try and entice them into paying them, plead with them. There is this idea, false that these women are just waiting around passively and all these men come to them and sure some of the bigger ones can perhaps afford to do that, but for the rest they must exploit themselves, they must slap men with patriarchy, they must perpetuate this structure to maximize their take, their income, their profits. Indeed in many cases when they are doing it to stay afloat, to avoid starvation and homelessness to just survive, to get enough to survive. They must indulge in more extreme kinks to stand out, etc.
Women and girls are not allowed to be full people like men. We are the sum of our pretty face, our societally deemed attractive body, our tits, our ass, our sexual organs. We are treated like cars, wrinkles or imperfections like dents on a vehicle that lower its value and drive a discerning owner to trade in for a new one the moment the chance arises. Our emotions, our feelings, our wants, our humanity is denied, rejected.
If sex work is just another form of labor, nothing special, nothing particularly exploitative or fraught about it as you claim then it shouldn't be a big deal for non sex-workers to occasionally do a little, right? It's just another form of low skill labor (yes it can take practice, some knowledge, but so does writing with a pen or typing on a keyboard none of us were born knowing how to do these things and in fact I had a class in elementary school to learn typing). Just as it wouldn't be a big deal for a manager to ask an employee to do some menial task that is not in their job description, move a box of finished product to the lab or front desk, go out and get some more coffee for the coffee machine, it should not be any kind of special or weird matter if that same manager asked his woman employee to give him a blowjob or let him finger her or just heck flash her breasts at him, it won't take more than 20 seconds and it'll really calm him down and help his day or whatever the excuse in vogue for why sex work is needed is. It certainly shouldn't be a big case of sexual harassment if she doesn't want to do it because well it's just labor, he's just asking for some labor. Right? That seems to me to be the world normalizers will to exist. If it's acceptable for women's bodies to be bought, sold, traded, then all are on seen as being on sale. Which leads to more harassment, more entitlement, etc.
I don't think it's a long-term career path which also sets it apart from other forms of labor. For most women once you get beyond your late 20s, early 30s you don't have enough of a customer-base to sustain yourself on as a sole means of income or probably enough to even justify doing it. The exceptions being those who do very extreme, dangerous acts that no one else would do. So the 'industry" incentivizes people being pushed out at a certain age. Even manual physical labor many people can do into their late 40s, 60s even if they stay reasonably in shape and that's another thing, you have to stay in a certain shape to get any reasonable amount of money from men.
It's a pedophilic industry. It preys on youth, uses you during your youth, then spits you out without a goodbye, don't let the door hit you on your way out. It isn't anything to do with skill. In any other industry more senior workers in a given field with more skill and talent have higher positions and income, with this it is the youngest performers for the most part while the old get very little and eventually are forced out.
AI specifically is probably going to blow most of these cam-girls out of the water. Once it can be done cheaply enough and convincingly enough and respond properly to chat prompts and verbal commands which is probably within 6-10 years, some company can spin up a service or invade existing services that charge (without even telling people they're doing it with AI) and just flood the market with very cheap simulacra that unlike real women don't tire of things, that don't balk at extreme or degrading acts, that do whatever the male wants. And to the eyes of men this will be better, because an AI cam-girl can be any combination of pornified personality you'd like plus any combination of hair color, style, breast size, skin color, eye color, and on and on.
The prevalence of sex work is itself a demand created in part by alienation. Under socialism we do not strive to perpetuate alienation, but to abolish it. We strive to have community, togetherness with our fellow workers. And this is division. It will not be needed, it will be seen as an aberration. The worst lie is the one that it is the oldest profession. That is false. It has not always been so and it need not always be so.
Honestly have nothing but contempt for the prostitution aristocracy. If you're doing it to avoid the streets or starving I understand desperation. But glamorizing it, saying it's a great "side hustle" (which itself is a vile phrase and should be a tell because those shouldn't exist), the damage it does in perpetuating the patriarchy, the damage it does to young girls. It makes me weep. Really. I really do cry. It is upsetting that people are saying this is a good thing and valid and should exist forever because you are saying you want girls and women to be second class forever.
Men in the GDR (East Germany) where women had an astonishingly high orgasm rate from sexual encounters were noted to complain they had to put in effort with women, in their relationships, in doing work in the home, chores, etc. That is actually what we want. We want men who have to put in the work for relationships with us. We want a society of boys who do not think they can just buy female attention, affection, and sex but must put in work to us, for us, with us. Together.
23One last thing, asking active "sex workers" for their input on it is not the end-all-be-all. People deny exploitation all the time. (Hello, where are we? Capitalism)
To go back to the grooming example, victims of pedophiles who have been groomed extensively can spend quite some time in denial despite society shouting at them collectively that it is wrong and despite being in counseling. How long can someone live in denial when society validates their denial and attacks those who question it? Probably their whole life. We live in a system where people deny they are exploited. Patriarchal gas-lighting of women is older, as or more sophisticated than gas-lighting of workers, because it predates capitalism let us remember. It hurts to think of oneself as exploited, it hurts your pride, your sense of self. You want to say, no I chose that, I had power, I wasn't victimized because that's scary. Because for many that makes you feel weak and helpless and awful instead of empowered. Denial.
Women are taught to lie. To not hurt men's feelings so they don't hurt or kill us, to spare boys for the sake of not being labeled nasty, mean, a dog. That includes lying to ourselves. Saying we're okay with something when we're not. Lots of women have stories of only realizing they were sexually assaulted years after the fact because society and their own desire not to have experienced that, not to confront it convince them it didn't happen. Aversion.
Maybe it doesn't always hurt all of these women themselves. But it hurts women as a whole and children, and men. And Marxists are concerned about the whole picture not your fucking individual liberty to do whatever the fuck you want and damn the consequences to society.
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I'm curious how many people that respond to these types of posts actually consider themselves sex workers. I feel like having this debate without the voices of the people who participate in it front and center is pointless.
16I have been and mostly enjoyed it, but what I don't enjoy is debate and paternalistic questioning of my personal agency, so I avoid engaging on this topic.
12Yeah, paternalism and stigmatization is usually what I see come out of these discussions within Marxist circles online. It's always that drugs and sex work are inherently problematic in any form and that they wouldn't be useful after the revolution, but there will always be a want and need if there are people willing or wanting to engage in the work to provide those things then why should it matter to anyone? Anyway that's where I stand on it, it's just when people start to infringe on others' bodily autonomy and leaning into puritanism I get the ick
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Consensual sex work?
Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does
12this is something i'm quite convinced you'll never produce a consensus on except in the most particular of crowds.
"work in nonconsensual, sexwork cannot be consensual" is a fairly impenetrable logic, and people decide from that from sexwork must be illegal because nonconsensual sex is wrong.
or you can separate an economic imperative a bit from sexual consent and concede that reality doesn't align perfectly with what we'd like. i'd never tell someone who believes their sexwork to be consensual that it actually wasn't because of the abstract construction of the economy, myself. i also won't advocate for hounding people selling sex with cops, even if they're Good Socialist Cops. if things are ever so good that sexwork need not exist, i don't think there'd be any reason to criminalize it, because nobody would partake. it was an exercise in obscene idealism for the Soviet Union to pretend prostitution couldn't exist so long as deficiencies existed in the economy, and it will continue to be until a socialist economy makes the fulfillment of everyone's needs a reality
10well...the issue with prostitution is that is very likely that something that should be a fringe fetish (having sex with unknown people) has become into a business. in capitalist society most of the prostitutes when they're not sex slaves, the ones that "do it consensually" is mostly because there's no other job available in their current condition, or their current level of education, or even then, wage labor gives them less money and even less free time than doing prostitution
10My thoughts exactly. As Marxists we don't care if you have sex with lots of people, strangers, or like showing off a bit among consenting adults. The problem is the toxic grindset, side-hustle mentality that says you should turn a hobby into a career. Among those who aren't pushed into it by bad economic circumstances there's this odd idea that sex (often specifically masturbation if we're talking cam stuff) should be monetized. This will make the world better these people think for some reason. Monetization of free things has yet to really improve anything but they're sure this time it will. Now I'm a fan of masturbation myself. I think everyone should do it from time to time as needs dictate. What I am not a fan of is turning what should be a nice private moment or an intimate moment with a loved one/romantic partner or an exhilarating act of free love and daring do showing off to strangers into something that's charged for and which you basically do what someone on the other side of the screen tells you to do.
And I have looked into this a little, read a little literature on it. Before a bunch of jerk men started screen-recording and capturing everything and everyone realized that oh shit the internet is forever and others will see this. There was a thriving bit of time where a certain amount of lonely women would show off for lonely men online and everyone had a good time. No money was exchanged, no goods were begged for, no like or subscribe buttons were smashed. It was just good old human horniness and a bit of mutual help between introverts. Strangely, though that died, what arose some years later was the practice of selling yourself in the same format. It arrived just as patreon and other things were springing up and people were tossing their little hobby projects they'd previously freely shared behind paywalls.
Socialism thusly should strive to bring back free love. Abolish gating hobbys behind micro-fees. Encourage sharing, cooperation, and the finer parts of being human that have been taken from us by capitalism.
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I did not specify and used the broad term of sex work which probably made the interpretations so varied
So why did you do it again?
"Sex work" does not exist. You are grouping a wide variety of very different things. Posting naked pictures on the internet and having sex with someone are not the same action.
9It's called a relationship.
9There's no such thing as consentual work under capitalism, let alone consentual sex work. You can't consent to something if it's under duress, and capitalism comes with the inherent threat of starvation, homelessness, and all the hardships that come from not having the means to pay for food, housing, healthcare, etc.
This does not mean it shouldn't be decriminalized (for the actual sex workers, pimps/pimping should obviously be illegal, and I think johns should probably see some penalties) since making it illegal to practice sex work just makes it all thw more dangerous for those who are forced to do such work.
In the future under socialism I don't see it being nearly as widespread as it is now. I just have a hard time seeing many people making the decision to undertake such work if they aren't under the stress of having to purchase food, make rent, pay for healthcare/schooling/childcare/etc
8I know next to nothing about it and therefore have no right to speak about it
7Sex work is work.
Just about any argument about the exploitative nature could be made about any other work under capitalism.
I doubt it would totally disappear under socialism. Some people would prefer to have sex, provide intimacy, or show off their sexy naked bodies. They just wouldn't need to choose that path to survive.
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