Edit:
Here is a list of resources to learn about sex worker from actual sex workers who are engaged in the struggle for worker’s rights:
- https://www.nswp.org/resources/types/nswp-briefing-papers-248
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/white-mans-burden-revisited/
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/from-brothel-to-sweatshop-questions-on-labour-trafficking-in-camb/
- https://titsandsass.com/the-massage-parlor-means-survival-here-red-canary-song-on-robert-kraft/
- https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
- https://medium.com/@katezenjoy/dear-esperanza-5aa7db4d501a
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/decriminalising-sex-work-in-new-zealand-its-history-and-impact/
- https://www.mayamorena.com/anti-equality-model-campaign/2021/5/22/pscegcnr680fh4oazlmwe8i5527o9j
Bigger repo of theory / resources:
Books to check out:
But the way she dismissed very critical theoretical works and then claimed virgins could not create communities as effectively as sex workers just makes me think she has fallen victim to liberal, individualist ideology.
You are extremely focused on a throwaway line about virgins. What do you think about sex workers and sex work?
Do you believe that sex work should exist outside of capitalism or that sex work is a worse type of exploitation?
I don’t think the line is a throwaway, and I don’t even think it’s just explicitly talking about “virgins.” She mentions sex workers are better at it then most leftists, which I just find divisive for no reason, and I highly doubt there’s any factual basis to it
I would hope there is a factual basis. Sex work is labor, and by that standard, sex workers are a large group whose labor interests are at least somewhat aligned, which means they have more reasons to form community (until pressures of competition kick in). Leftism (or whatever that means) and Marxism, while incredibly powerful tools for economics analysis, are just ideologies. Good for some level of liberal understanding, but not sufficient in-of-themselves to naturally create widespread labor solidarity. And this is something I think Marx himself would agree with, even if he had some Victorian morels he couldn’t get past in his writing. It is certainly something Engels would agree with. Maybe not Lenin, but Lenin basically turned the Bolsheviks into a labor organization so it would have some level of solidarity, though it became alienating to the workers because of that. Solidarity is difficult, if it weren’t we would have anarchism or communism by now.
