I’ve seen some very heated debates by leftists on both sides of the argument that have left me very confused.
Yeah, everyone (on the left) opposes human trafficking, child sexual exploitation etc. I think they can be safely removed from the “sex work” category because they’re just rape. No one supports it.
How do you deal with the question of sex work being inherently coercive (due to capitalism) and, as coerced sex = rape, thus all sex work is rape?
Obviously, there is a contradiction there as many sex workers choose that profession, and thus either:
A) they are consenting to rape, which is absurd.
B) or coerced sex = rape is not the right label.
I’ve gotten into several arguments with this on here. As someone who has been involved in the past and firmly sides with the “it’s rape” category.
In my experience people currently doing it side with the “it’s not rape” side while people who are out of the industry have much more critical views that more often lean into “yeah it’s pretty fucked up” or like me, “it’s rape”.
I think that people whose current survival relies upon sex work are unreliable judges of its character, their survival being tied to being able to perform it causes them to defend it from all adversity and “it’s rape” it’s definitely an adversity that affects their survival. This is why there is such a significant difference in tone between people currently performing the work vs people who have left that industry behind them.
I don’t think that we look at the proletariat in other work who defend capitalism and say “it’s not coercive and there is nothing wrong with my work” as being correct, we look at them as victims who are riddled with :brainworms: that are incorrectly analysing capitalism’s exploitation of them. I feel this way about sex work also.
I agree and I oppose those outcomes while standing pretty firmly by my assessment of what it is.
If socialists were in power we would acknowledge that it is problematic but allow it to continue while aiming to address its root causes. Capitalism doesn’t want to address the root causes in poverty, education and so on, so instead it takes the worst approach.
I don’t want people imprisoned for stealing food from supermarkets, but I also can’t change my language around what stealing food from a supermarket is. Instead I simply say “these people should not be punished and instead we should address the causes, stealing from a supermarket when you’re starving is moral and good and I have no problem with it”. I don’t view these people as doing something they would do if they had any other choice, I have stolen from a supermarket myself when starving, was that a consensual act by myself or one I was absolutely pushed into performing because I had no other choice in order to survive? It is obviously the latter.
Yeah, that’s valid.
Since you brought up the proletariat in general, do you think there should be terminology that is similarly evocative and effecting for all coerced labor under capitalism as we have for coerced sex (ie rape)? Or is there something inherent in sexual labor that separates it from other coercive forms of labor?
Good question, I haven’t thought about it… A kneejerk thought (I stress that) would be that a lot labour we do isn’t tied to significantly degrading the mind, body (and spirit?). Whereas sex itself is layered inside lots of unique issues, christianity’s influence on it as a special act, and so on and so forth probably plays a role here in the way anything other than treating it as special is viewed as degrading or damaging to the mind, body and soul of a person.
I really want to stress that this is a kneejerk initial thought as I have not thought about this particular difference very heavily. After letting it stew for some time I might come to different ideas about it.
Do you think that sex work can exist as non-coercive labor in a socialist society, and therefore not be rape?
I think it stops being work once you take out the need to do it for survival, it would instead become something like an enthusiast hobby that exhibitionists do.
Ultimately the real question of importance here is to ask a person whether they would be doing sex work if they weren’t being paid for it. If the answer is no and the money is the driving force of the decision then something is wrong.
the umbrella includes stuff like onlyfans and strippers, so there’s not necessarily sex happening there to be rape.
if you want to focus on johns and prostitutes, i’d explore lines of reasoning like “the customer isn’t the one doing the coercing and the pro-SW position includes being able to turn down clients” or “if you think capitalism coercing sex work is bad that should lower your evaluation of any ‘regular’ job that takes a physical and mental toll on the workers”
I don’t know if this is a useful distinction but in sex work it is the work that is coerced, not the sex. The capitalist system forces you to work or die but it doesn’t care if that work is building houses, flipping burgers or having sex.
Some forms of sex work is obviously rape but it feels wrong to call it rape if say a trained nurse would rather do prostitution than work at a hospital. I recognise that there is a lot of gray area there. At what point does the alternative to sex work become so bad that it is no longer voluntary?
