kerryrenaissance:

Doing sex work isn’t about self-esteem.

It’s about making money.

If it is “empowering” it is because money literally equals power right now.

It equals food, shelter, clothing, medicine and medical care, entertainment.  For a lot of people – evidenced both on and off tumblr – it equals respect.  (It doesn’t matter whether or not it should.  It does.)  That’s what all your prattling about “real jobs” is about – the respect created by money earned inside the parameters of society.  Sex work earns it  outside of those parameters, so you don’t accord it the same respect.

However, having money can buy your way into things that being broke won’t.

It can also buy your way out of things.  There is a large amount of women still in marriages because they can’t afford to leave them.  There’s also a large amount of them still living with their ex-husbands because they can’t afford to split into two households.  People stay in abusive situations because they can’t afford to leave them

Our world is being shaped by corporations buying off politicians.

If you have some money in  your life, you have some power in your life.  Not a lot.  But it is there.  Money is a shield; money is a weapon; money gives you control over your life.

It could be wonderful if that wasn’t the case.  But no one is bringing in the revolution yet.  Utopia eludes us; we live in dystopias trying to pass as utopias. And no one deserves to starve and suffer while the idealists try to figure it out.

This is the power sex workers get from their jobs.

And I’ll bet it is the same power you get from your job.