I’m a queer trans woman, and consequently I exist in spaces where positivity about “sex work” is compulsory. It is very tiresome. God help you if you decide to point out that being a sex slave for rent as a day job seems dehumanizing or horrific, because that’s not very progressive of you!
Kind of shocking and ridiculous that these so called feminists fret endlessly over misogynistic messaging in media, the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, and sexual exploitation in workplaces, but turn into free market libertarians over the distillation of this violence into an industry apart.
All jobs involve selling your body!
No they don’t! I work in a factory. It’s not always pleasant, but when we say “corporate is really bending us over on this overtime,” this is at least a metaphor. My legs hurt from working twenty days in a row, but no one raped me. Are we living on the same planet? Yes, I am using my body to work. This is actually an extremely superficial similarity. I cannot believe this needs to be litigated.
Sex work is part of Queer history!
I find this offensive. Picking cotton is part of Black history, too. Wholesome!
Criminalizing sex work only hurts sex workers!
This is true, but legalizing it won’t help anyone but the existing capitalist class within the industry. The only way to help sex workers is to give them ways to escape. You won’t see me calling the cops on them.
Sex workers should unionize!
A statement dreamt by the utterly deranged. How are they gonna strike? How are they gonna prevent scabbing? Is the economy gonna collapse if your demands aren’t met? Please show your work.
Genuinely, this might be a psyop.
I think I agree with most of what you say. Sex work is horribly exploitative and most sex workers are driven into sex work from precarity.
On the other hand, who am I to tell someone who finds sex work to be the lesser evil compared to a grueling minimum wage job that they’re wrong?
I think it is important to be pro-sex worker. I think you can be this while acknowledging the harm of the sex industry. Personally I don’t think bans and cops are the right response. You can compare this to how doing drugs is obviously bad for you but sending cops to arrest people with substance abuse disorders is only making things worse.
My personal belief is that the best way forward is harm reduction. Both when it comes to the actual sex work (unionisation, labour safety standards, legal protections) but also when it comes to the social factors that promotes sex work. Nobody should be coerced into sex work because the alternative is poverty or mistreatment, any moral society should help people long before they get that desperate. That help should also include adequate and compassionate responses to substance abuse, such as providing patients with free, safe drugs so that they are not forced into crime or prostitution. I also think harm reduction includes social attitudes to sex work, it doesn’t make anything better that sex work is considered shameful and that terms for sex workers are used as misogynistic slurs.
I’m afraid that pushing for criminalisation acts as a bandaid that allows liberals to call it a day and avoid dealing with the harmful structural social factors that causes sex work and worse its outcomes
Just run trades programs exclusively for former and current sex workers who want to leave the industry for good