No problem! First off, I’d suggest asking a sex worker because frankly this is something I’m figuring out for myself right now, and I have no experience in the area and very little research. So these are formulating thoughts for me too but I’ll share my general thoughts.
I guess the first half is what I’ll answer first. I think it’s work, first of all. I’ve seen a lot of feminist arguments that sex work is inherently demeaning and demoralizing and that the demand for it is based in misogyny. I think that may be partly (will get to the partly thing in a second) true, but these feminists overlook the fact that this is true of many industries. Is the demand for makeup not fueled heavily by anti-feminist understandings of what women should look like and how the form of women needs constant correction? Is that not external misogyny which affects the choices women make? Is the clothing industry not extremely dependent on the labor of third world women being paid terrible wages in subcontracted garment factories? Since when is this not because of the misogyny inherent in neoliberal economic policy? How many industries that got a foodhold in Puerto Rico were able to do so directly as a result of a US campaign to sterilize Puerto Rican women to get them “out of the home and into the factory” for their profit, like pharmaceuticals and manufacturing- again because of liberal economic policy involving opening the markets of Puerto Rico to exploitative forces? Things like this are important questions so I am suspicious of the drive to attack sex work individually- we live in a world shaped by misogyny, and there is absolutely no form of work where it isn’t found and MANY forms of work in fact are aided by misogyny, like the ones I just listed. So why attack sex workers individually? Since when is cultural misogyny and how they navigate it suddenly the world’s biggest feminist problem? Why would we make these women (who are largely poor, often women of color, often trans, often disabled in ways that make wage labor difficult or impossible for them) the target of our feminist efforts rather than industry?
Now on to the question of whether sex work is inherently demeaning- frankly, I wouldn’t know (this is, again, why I’d ask several sex workers and get a consensus since I don’t want to disclose things my friends in sex work have told me since they’re not my stories to tell) BUT I will say that alienation is inherently a part of MOST work under capitalism. Is it not demeaning to put money into the cash register at the grocery store when you know that YOU produced that profit and will see none of it? Is it not inherently demeaning and dehumanizing to be poor working 50 hours per week? Is it not dehumanizing to work in exchange for the “right” to a wage which is a fraction of the value of your labor? Alienation is real and major and inherent in most work. Though, again, I’m not a sex worker, I think it might in some ways actually alleviate alienation that comes from having others control your labor for you- you set your schedule, you set your prices and enforce them, you decide which clients to take and which not to. Is working for any kind of pay optimal? No, of course. But WHY attack sex work rather than literally anything else? I think that boils down to disgust that these women would make a choice that makes you uncomfortable because you don’t like the idea of women being able to use their sexuality in ways you haven’t approved. That doesn’t make you a prude or somehow a bad person. It does mean that your priorities might be slightly skewed because I am MUCH more uncomfortable with the daily exploitation of baristas and fast food workers than just the concept of sex work itself. As for the idea of choice, how many of us work out of choice? Almost none. We work because we have to- not even really for wages, but the goods and services that wages buy us.
This is where I’ll get to communism. I don’t know whether sex work would still exist. I’m prone to thinking no, but not because of some opposition to it. I think, ideally, workers would convene every so often to decide what things need producing, how to produce and distribute them, etc etc. I don’t think EVERYTHING we have now will exist under communism for sure. Lots of work will be considered nonvital to workers, and I don’t think that would have to be a value judgement so much as a call on where you wanna put your labor. I don’t think other work I see as related fundamentally to desire will exist: cologne manufacturing, though I LOOOOOOVE cologne, would probably not take precedence over building infrastructure for shipping, and advertising would cease to exist as we know it, and luxury car design (though I LOOOOOOOOOOVE looking at expensive cars) would also probably cease to exist. So every form of work won’t continue to exist, since workers will be trying to minimize the amount of work that needs to be done to have people live happily- that’s the idea of communism. 1- since people work for goods and services rather than wages, get rid of the wages altogether so all can partake of collective wealth, and 2- free people from the chains of constant work.
It’s definitely important to keep in mind that decriminalization would not just magically fix everything, since sex trafficking is a very real and very serious issue and lots of people who get trafficked into and around the country for sex currently seem, due to dishonesty by traffickers, to just have been travelers coming in according to their paper trails.
#shitcivilianssay, but in the good way.
as a sex worker, i agree with most of your reading of the situation, and i would specifically recommend checking out thepeacockangel for Sex Work And Communism™ (and general delightfulness), as i’m more of an anarcho-collectivist myself. 🙂
Basically yeah, sex work is no more demeaning than any other labor under capitalism, knowing you are dependent on the good will and fickle favor of others is demeaning. I think some people are happy doing sex work, I like seeing the diversity of human sexuality and getting subs to do weird shit, I wouldn’t do foot sessions anymore if I didn’t need the money, or take calls that make me personally uncomfortable
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 