Estimated reading time: 35 minutes
The war on women has expanded and mutated once more; it’s recruited our fellow women to its ranks and has turned feminism into something sexy, and therefore subverted and submissive. It has undermined its revolutionary potential. Liberal feminism has poisoned the well, and too many young women are drinking from it, still believing it’s a path to salvation. We are told by these liberals that sex work is something empowering and inspirational, that it’s a mechanism of elevation to become financially liberated. We are told that porn can be educational and feminist, that it’s a celebration of bodies and sexuality. We are told prostitution is liberating and freeing, that it’s a reclamation of sex and women’s sexuality. We are told lies.
This is the failure of reformism. Reformism is an insidious poison. It trains the oppressed to celebrate the leg room in their prison cell. We are taught that the few women who can reach high levels of success are enough to ignore the millions of women and marginalized genders suffering. We are taught that success makes up for oppression, and that the gilded cage negates its essence as a prison. We are taught that the commodification of the cunt is feminist if you can make enough money off of yours.
Sex Work and Consent
Sex work is a large umbrella, and one that describes a wide variety of ways to make money. For example, OnlyFans, cam girling, sugaring, escorting, and prostitution. Many liberal feminists will use this umbrella term to flatten the lived experiences of the marginalized people within them. The lived experience of the petty bourgeoisie OnlyFans creator who is not a part of the prostituted class’ labor reserves has a very different lived experience from the women who are prostituted on the street or in the global south. The sugar baby who dabbles in the sex trade is very different from the prostitute under pimp control, which an estimated 65-80% are, depending on where you look.
There are attempts to equate prostitution with any other form of labor, for example, cashiering. There is a key difference between the two. One is exchanging your time and labor for currency, the other is exchanging your body as a commodity for currency. In cases of prostitutes under pimp control, which as we know is a majority, the pimps do not own a business, they own the women in the same way a slaver does. Moreover, it is not just because rape, violence, and sexual harassment are part of a sex workers job description that seperates it from wage labor. Rather it is because a prostitute, in the words of Marx, is a part of the “ruined proletariat” Not as a moral condemnation, but because the trade lays bare the elements of slavery, dehumanization, and alienation present in all wage labor. The prostitute is alienated not just from her profits or her work, but from her body and the most intimate parts of her mind. She is often forced to remain in the prostituted class via coercive forces, even if she, as a majority do, would like to leave the trade. This is true even for women who take on “safer” or “less alienating” forms of the trade such as digital sex work. There is a neurosis that must occur, as you are alienated from your most intimate self, forced to split, forced to become commodity and person in the rawest sense. When asking if sex work is a legitimate form of work, we need to reframe the question at hand.
Instead of asking if she wants it, instead of asking if the conditions are ideal, and instead of asking if she has legal protections, we should be asking who, or what, is being bought and sold. Interviews and resumes are intended to screen for your productive capabilities, prostitution ignores this and prices you based on your parts. Each act you’re willing to do and each body part is tagged and priced, you are sold as an item with certain functions, not as a worker. You are turned from person to cunt, from human to sex doll.
Often, pro sex work individuals will ask if the prostituted woman enjoys her work. Andrea Dworkin defines this stereotype as the chattel whore: a woman predisposed to sexual slavery, a woman who enjoys sexual service, a woman born to be a cunt. We do not ask this of other forms of work, however. Why? Because we understand that under capitalism, nearly all work is dreadful, alienating, and isolating. We understand that the employee and the boss have opposing interests and are at odds with one another. We understand that under capitalism, labor is coercive, and work is coercive. That you have two choices, work or die. One can enjoy their job whilst still being financially coerced to engage in wage slavery.
Many fail to apply this logic and thinking to prostitution. When we say that sex under coercion— especially financial coercion— is rape, but not in the case of prostitution, we say that when a woman is prostituted she hangs her humanity on the hook. She leaves it at the door. We can dress this up in feminist language, but by insisting she is not being raped we insist she is subhuman, a mechanism, a tool, a cunt. It is the most explicit and reified form of gendered labor, it lays bare the brutality of male defined sexuality and domination. Of a system and culture that demands the rape and ownership of marginalized genders.
Consent becomes a commodity, something purchasable. In the words of a sex buyer in an interview study, Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don’t Buy Sex, “Where there is prostitution, men will generalize from a small selective group, if I can buy sex from these women, then I can buy sex from all women. If they don’t accept money, then I will have sex with them anyway. It will allow a sense of entitlement from a guy.”
Alienation in wage labor is well understood by Marxists. The antagonistic relationship between boss and employee is as well. However, when it comes to sex work, many Marxists suddenly become mystified. These well understood concepts become foreign ideas created to dehumanize and divide, rather than illuminate the oppression we face and create political and class consciousness. A marginalized individual’s alienation from their sexuality, from their body, and from their consent is something many liberal feminists and Communists refuse to contend with. A proletarian may have the capacity to internally rebel, but a prostitute’s internality is consistently invaded, via penetration, sexual and physical abuse, and a total dehumanization of their personhood.
When we fuse the sex worker’s interests with that of the buyer, we deny her of her humanity two-fold. First, when we deny them of their personhood, turning them into a commodity with functions rather than a human. Secondly, we deny them their mind and voice. Despite being antagonistically aligned we fuse them with the buyer, the same buyer who seeks to own and control them, to euphemistically get the most “bang for their buck.” We position them under the John’s boot and insist this is exactly where they want to be, that this is actually a mutually beneficial and egalitarian situation.
Sex work turns bodies into commodities, into public property. It turns human beings into vessels of pleasure or objects made for penetration. Anyone, not just the prostitute, can be penetrated, anyone can be turned into a cunt, anyone can be dehumanized and alienated from their sexuality and their body. While there are degrees of severity to this, depending on your gendered class, economic position, and other class positions, anyone can be slated to be consumed and used by cis heterosexual men. Social sex is a power dynamic, and heterosexuality is a regime. Marginalized genders and individuals are disproportionately represented, are disproportionately corralled into the misogynistic and patriarchal sex trade.
On Pornography
“If we give up now younger generations of women will be told porn is good for them and they will believe it.”
Andrea Dworkin (Bindel 2015)
The notion of feminist porn is a particularly insidious invention. It is a perfect synthesis of the sexual revolution and glass ceiling feminism. It is a hope and a promise that if only we could do it this way, with this intention, and with this messaging, surely everything would change, surely then porn could be feminist.
This ignores the reality of porn under the current mode of production and why men consume it. Men do not consume porn to increase their sexual connectivity with women, to appreciate the art form, or to appreciate how actors navigate conversations around sex and consent. Nearly all studies point to sexual gratification and similar feelings as the motivating forces for porn consumption by men. Stoya, in her New York Times article “Can There Be Good Porn?” is convinced that incorporating content such as pre and post scene consent, and actors’ explanations of why they want to perform particular scenes and content can create “good porn.” This seems to be a naive belief at best. The idea that men will not simply skip these scenes to get to the good part, to get to the fucking, is unrealistic. Perhaps the idea that these scenes exist at all is meant to be a method of reassuring consumers that they are watching the good stuff, the feminist stuff, the ethical stuff. However, conversations around consent and testing still don’t account for the possibility of an individual being economically coerced to perform and still don’t negate the objectifying and degrading essence of porn. All this so-called good stuff does is help the cognitive dissonance of “good men” who only watch “good porn” and would never degrade women.
Moreover, Stoya is a former performer herself. Stoya has been very open about being raped by fellow performer and ex-boyfriend James Deen. He has also been accused of misconduct by a plethora of other performers and ex-girlfriends. He seems to have been known for enjoying scaring, degrading, and violating women in the industry. After the allegations hit, he was ostracized. He was barred from performing for 3 years. Until he wasn’t. His debut back was slated to be titled “Consent.” Content of the film includes: hardcore sex, behind the scenes footage, and conversations around consent. In the end, his return was sidelined as an owner of Evil Angel, John Stagliano, faced allegations himself. We can surmise he wanted less attention on himself, especially concerning consent, or a lack thereof. James Deen is still active in the industry today. What exactly would be the point in showing behind the scenes conversations around consent in an industry where predators and rapists are allowed to continue working, no matter how many allegations they receive? What would be the point of showing behind the scenes footage of conversations around consent when rapists upload them too? The female performer in Consent specifically asked to work with James Deen. Does her willingness to consent to sex with a serial rapist change the situation? Does consent remove all other questions and implications?
The desire for reformism doesn’t stop at just behind-the-scenes content, though. Platforms like Pornhub also receive calls for reform on multiple fronts. All criticisms seem to lie in users’ being able to upload content as individuals. For example, pro-porn proponents like Stoya criticize how users can rip content and upload scenes devoid of context. Others more critical of the industry are rightfully distraught over the sheer amount of child sexual abuse material, revenge porn, and snuff films that are uploaded to the site. Many push back on this, citing the fact that most CSAM and revenge porn is distributed via platforms like Facebook and Telegram, but this idea of “consensual” porn also ignores the entire point of pornography. Moreover, arguing about what platforms illegal content is being distributed on ignores the core problem with the industry that makes uploading illegal content to Pornhub possible.
The issue isn’t just that peoples’ rapes are being uploaded on Pornhub, the issue at its core is that it is nearly indistinguishable from “regular” pornographic content. Someone reading this likely has or knows someone who has unknowingly viewed such content. Porn implies consent, always. When she is screaming, crying, vomiting, being beaten, choked, or restrained. She wants all of it. The viewer believes that no matter what they see, she wanted it, and it’s all just a part of the scene. The issue isn’t just that the content is uploaded, the issue is that it’s hard for Pornhub to distinguish videos of rape versus regular porn, if not impossible. There is a financial incentive for rapists to upload their crimes, for individuals to upload revenge porn, there is a demand for the violence created by consumers. No consumer wants to watch a woman say “I consent” beforehand, and no consumer would assume she hadn’t in the first place. There is no feminist porn that centers female pleasure, because no matter what you watch, the woman is “enjoying it.” Moreover, she isn’t enjoying it because the male viewer truly cares about the female orgasm, statistically we know they don’t, she’s enjoying it because it strokes men’s egos and makes them feel sexually capable and successful.
This presumption of consent and enjoyment does not exist within a vacuum, and every time a man chokes a woman without consent or treats it as something regular or vanilla instead of the violence that it is, you feel the effects of it. Regardless of if you watch porn, you experience the effects of porn. You are punished by the existence of porn. A study of over four thousand young people in Melbourne found that 59% of men had reported strangling their partner during sex, with 61% of women reporting being strangled, and 78% of trans or gender-diverse individuals experiencing strangulation. Importantly, 61% reported that they had learned about strangulation via pornography. A study out of the UK found that nearly half of respondents believed that girls expected aggressive acts like slapping and strangulation during sex. That girls enjoyed rough sex, that girls wanted it more than boys did. Over half of the respondents said that pornography affects individuals’ behaviors towards one another.
Pornography is the objectification of women. As MacKinnon writes in Pleasure under Patriarchy, “It constructs women as things for sexual use and constructs its consumers to desperately want women to desperately want possession and cruelty and dehumanization” (p. 327). Women become objects, things you can see in any state of undress, any position, any act, at any time. Flesh-lights you watch get penetrated by a man you can pretend is you. Vulvas become slits made for penetration, vulvas become cunts, cunts that you can see and have anytime you want. In pornography, anybody can be reduced to a penetrable object, a cunt. Anybody can have their personhood destroyed for the sexual gratification of the consumer.
Shannon Gilreath argues in “A Feminist Agenda for Gay Men” that in pornography, gay men are feminized, and the prototypical masculine man is coded as straight. That in pornography, and then in life, gay men are often feminized by straight men and therefore turned into objects for domination, objects that want to be dominated. He cites the case of Joseph Oncale, a gay man who was subjected to sexual torture by coworkers and supervisors on an oil rig. Those who said this did not constitute sex discrimination, did so by arguing that he must have wanted it as a gay man, he must have wanted this pornographic fantasy. MacKinnon, in her brief on the case, stated, “men perceived not to conform to stereotyped gender roles [are] the targets of male sexual aggression.” (Amicus Brief, supra note 20 at 9, 14)
Gender is a power dynamic, so even in gay porn there is often an effeminate or submissive individual, and a masculinized or dominant individual. Gilreath says, “Gay pornography reinforces the idea that the man who does the fucking is not gay. The man who gets fucked or ‘owned’ or ‘hazed’ is feminized and treated like property.” Language reveals meaning, and our language around sex is clear. “Thats fucked,” “get fucked,” “I’m so fucked,” and more. Getting “fucked,” or receiving is understood as degrading, debasing, humiliating, something to be avoided. He expands on the notion of hazing, that the man who does the fucking is not engaging in sex, but rather punishment. This adds to the degradation of the receiver, it increases the powerlessness, and therefore increases the sexuality. The receiver, the gay man, is therefore reduced to a cunt as well, an object made for penetration and degradation. Everybody is capable of being penetrated, everyone is capable of becoming a victim of male defined sexuality, everybody is capable of being reduced to a cunt.
Pornography reduces, often, the penetrated individual to an object. Pornography reduces, often, a woman to an object. This is often the rhetoric surrounding porn, but in actuality the dehumanization runs deeper. The man, in pornography, is the object. He is the phallus in POV pornography, he is the vessel the viewer can imagine themselves to be. He is present, but not a person, and exists to be projected onto. Therefore, the penetrated individual, often a woman, is less than an object. We must expand our minds and language. We must imagine something below an object, thing, vessel, and understand that this is the nature of the cunt. This is the ultimate construction of patriarchy. We must come to terms with the horrifying reality that, in the words of Dworkin, “This is what men want, and this is what men have had, and this is what men will not give up.”
Studies vary on how much of pornography is degrading, verbally and physically, to women and marginalized genders, but as we see rates of strangulation rising, we can rest assured that it is a significant portion. Moreover, a meta-analysis of studies has found that porn consumption is linked with an increased likelihood to commit an act of sexual aggression, even if the pornography was considered non-aggressive. The exploitation of sexual labor, the dominance, the control, the constant access, all go beyond explicit acts of sexual violence and establishes a base for acts of sexual aggression to be launched off of. The commodification of the cunt establishes this base, even when the porn is homemade, even when the porn is posted on OnlyFans, even when she wants it. Pornography is sex. It constructs and reinforces a male defined conception of sex.
“How [we’re] treated behind the scenes… is how we’re treated on screen is how we’re treated in the world.” – Rose McGowan (Farrow, 2020, 13:45)
On Prostitution
“This demoralization arises from the fact that the open flaunting of the cash nexus does not spell freedom for the woman who sells her sexual services.”
Malini Bhattacharya (2016)
Prostitution has always been the oldest form of slavery, not of work. Engels tells us that the future of the woman is bound up in that of the man, that her fate is determined by him. Engels touches on how prostitution was formed in tandem with the formation of marriage, of forced, one-sided, monogamy. The wife, chaste and pure, was the opposite of the prostitute, whore-ish and impure. One satisfied the need for a clean lineage for inheritance. One satisfied the man’s sexually depraved appetite. The wife and the whore are bound up together, reinforcing each other’s existence, filling in the gaps of men’s needs. The wife as private property, the prostitute as public property. When we understand that marriage was created and enforced as a means of transferring ownership of women, we must not shy away from maintaining that prostitution is another method of obtaining ownership over people.
This does not mean that an individual in the sex trade is the equivalent to a park bench or some other form of public property. Rather, that they are available to all men, of all classes. While there may be degrees to this, as a privileged or petty bourgeoisie sex worker may be able to decline clients more freely, it’s still present. That would also still be a minority of women in the trade, it still defines the trade broadly. All a man has to do is leverage a certain amount of financial and social capital and find one and he can have one. There is an accessibility that may waver in degrees but will never be absent. The prostitute has been corralled into a class that is designed to be difficult to get out of, as a ruined proletariat, and is slated to be accessible to all men. The state may punish different classes of men more commonly than others, but she is still available to all men.
Prostitution is seen in nearly every society, but has almost always been understood as a form of slavery that is distinctly female. Even in Athens, where prostitutes were generally respected, male prostitutes were looked down upon for fulfilling a “female” role. Historically, regardless of how wealthy or well-positioned a prostitute, she is still a prostitute. She is bound up in this class and is unable to leave; her cage may be gilded, but she is still imprisoned.
Malini Bhattacharya, in her text, “Neither ‘Free’ nor ‘Equal’ Work: A Marxist-Feminist Perspective on Prostitution,” talks about the history of prostitution in India, “In ancient India, the practice of males from the monogamous family buying sexual services from women outside the family probably became systemic in the later Vedic Ages… Nonetheless, the patriarchal boundaries within which such traditions operated could not be flouted with impunity. The legend of Ambapali in Buddhist literature tells us that, however attractive and talented, the ‘ganika’ could not enter her profession of her own will, but was chosen for it… But others such as the ‘rupajeevas’ operating at the lower levels of society must have been in a much worse condition. In Buddhist literature, the ‘kumbhadasi’ has been said to belong to the wretched of the earth whose body as well as her labour power were completely at the disposal of her masters… The question of choice for the actual service-providers in commercial sex has always been extremely limited.”
Women’s entry into prostitution being forced, rather than chosen, is incredibly on theme, and is maintained throughout history. Moreover, Athens similarly had a tiered hierarchy for prostitutes, as have most institutions of prostitution, and we can see that even those at the highest position possible are still vulnerable to violence at the hands of men. And, as we can surmise from this hierarchical structuring, a majority of the prostituted women are at the bottom and subject to inhumane living conditions. This trend continues today.
Even in its modern iterations in the first world, prostitution remains understood as a method of maintaining white supremacy and slavery. The FBI before it was called the FBI, in the early 1900s, waged a war against prostitution, calling it “White slavery.” Oddly, the term white slavery has been watered down, with many resources claiming it has no actual connection to race and simply refers to trafficking broadly. In both the UK and the United States, white women were portrayed as victims of foreign men who sold them into sexual slavery. In the UK, we saw increased antisemitic and xenophobic immigration laws, such as The Aliens Act. In the United States, we saw an increased crackdown on brothels in particular, but not for everyone. This was a specific and focused effort on getting white women out of brothels, and because of this, we still see racial divisions along the prostituted class today. Prostitution is a continuation of chattel slavery, it is the white man ensuring that Black Women remain poor, remain sexually available, remain for sale. In the words of Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary, in her talk titled Post Traumatic Slave Disorder, “…Where do you think that went after slavery ended? It didn’t go away, because guess who’s the number one [demographic] buying them? Same middle-aged white males between 35-60, married, with children… These are the Johns, still are the Johns, and still getting a hold of some of that.. Black body… It just mutated into something else.”
Further, studies that look at sex buyers who have been arrested, such as this 2007 DOJ report, show that those who are arrested more often than not are men who live in the areas prostitution occurs and who are of the same socioeconomic demographic as prostitutes. This study incorrectly came to the conclusion that this must be because prostitutes gather where demand exists, or that men must move where it occurs. However, interview studies of Johns correctly identify that they are majorly white men with access to education and some level of financial success. The institution of policing alone is white supremacist, to be sure, but at least in America, we can see that there is a clear effort to ensure that prostitution manifests as marginalized individuals sexually available to white men.
Prostitutes have also historically been used as morale boosters in times of war and colonial efforts, indeed, institutions of prostitution were pivotal in the westward expansion and colonial efforts of America. Mao was notably progressive in his refusal to use prostituted women as morale boosters in their war effort, correctly seeing prostitution as the barbaric form of slavery that it is. Prostitution must be understood as a tool for imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. This is without expanding on the topic of the sex trade on the global scale, which is a further reification of imperialism and white supremacy.
But why see prostitution as enslavement? Mac and Smith come to the conclusion that sex work is like all work, and therefore should be treated as such. This isn’t an atypical conclusion, and in conversations around prostitution, there are also attempts to tie prostitution to jobs like that of a masseuse. Perhaps initially, the connections make sense, both require touching another person, and may both be seen as some sort of physical service. However, the real reason we jump to relate massage parlors and brothels is because we know that trafficking occurs in massage parlors. We know women are being imported and abused here. You are not purchasing the masseuse for an hour, you are paying to have hot stones on your back or knots worked out. You are not paying to be able to touch the masseuse. You are not paying based on what her body looks like, or if she ejaculates, or if she will swallow your ejaculate, or if you can use her in ways you’d never use your wife.
The cognitive and instinctual ties between brothels and massage parlors reveals the understanding that human trafficking is at the core of sexual exploitation, and the idea that all marginalized women who touch your body, even in a non-sexual context, are up for grabs is a byproduct of bodies being marked as “for sale” which results in real life danger. We feel the effects of prostitution, even if we don’t directly engage with it.
Anyone can be reduced to a penetrable object for sale, anyone can be reduced to a cunt. In the words of sex buyers, “The relationship has to stay superficial because they are a person and you’re capable of getting to know them. But once you know them, it’s a problem, because you can’t objectify them anymore… She is just a biological object that charges for services… If someone is addicted to going to prostitutes, he might lose sense that a woman has feelings… Being with a prostitute is like having a cup of coffee, when you‘re done, you throw it out.”
Disgust for the sex trade, for flesh as a market, is far different than disgust for the sex worker. The Marxist is not against the sex trade for moralist reasons. No person should be for sale.
The Men Know.
Choice and liberal feminists will attempt to sanitize the rape industry, the sex trade. They tell us that Johns are progressive men, men who see sex work as equal, men who paint their nails and listen to Mitski and Clairo and love women like lesbians love women. The ultimate frankenstein of progressive politics plastered onto a slavering wolf. We are told that sex buyers, that consumers of pornography, of any form of sex work, are actually feminists.
In the words of Wittig in The Straight mind and Other Essays, “…one can scarcely talk of domination over what one owns.” (p. 4) Men know what they are doing. The only people who are in the dark seem to be women, and we have to stop telling each other to be quiet about it. At some point the wool is no longer over our eyes, we are simply keeping them tightly shut. We see it in the way they speak about prostitutes, about porn actors, about strippers. We see it in the way that a meta analysis of porn consumption and aggressive behaviors showed that there is a connection, and that other meta analysis referenced in its abstraction showed similar findings. The men who sneer and say it’s a “woman’s choice” while he rapes her, the men who sneer and say pornography is all about pleasure while they turn it into a billion dollar industry, the men who sneer and say we are the ones who hate women. These men are expressing a hatred for women in the truest sense of the word. These men are expressing hatred for anything that isn’t cis and straight and man.
Pornography emboldens preexisting attitudes towards women, towards sexuality. Women and men navigate sexuality in different ways, because we have been socialized to. For example, Audre Lorde’s insistence in Uses of the Erotic that porn is not erotic as eroticism is love and the life force of women. This is in contrast to Georges Bataille’s conception of the erotic in Death and Sensuality, in that it is centered on violation and domination. It’s shown in highschool boys sweaty palms as they pass along flash drives filled with revenge porn. Or how in middle school I watched highschool boys airdrop each other the leaked images of a classmate, how they screenshotted them to try to ensure there was no trace of them receiving it. The secondary market drives the primary market which drives the secondary market again. These social practices reinforce and reify men’s control over women’s bodies, their entitlement.
Any man can be a John, it’s where the name came from. Just a regular guy, a regular Joe, a John. The sex buyer could be a socialist, or a violent wife beater, or a porn obsessed consumer, or all of the above. The social conditioning begins early, and it seeps in quickly. Though it is true that the deeper into the sex trade a man goes, the more the mask is pulled back, and the more violent and degrading he becomes.
Many wonder why people will harass others for nudes, or will try to hack and sneak and find photos they weren’t meant to find. It’s because they are used to it. They are used to having access to any woman they want. It is because they recognize that some women are deemed public property, which causes them to believe all women are public property. Entitlement to women and marginalized gender’s bodies is ultimately what drives the sex trade.
The development of AI pornography is not shocking to those who have been paying attention. The messaging is clear, even if you have not turned yourself into a commodity, even if you would never take those images or send them to me, I’ll do it for you. Because even if I can’t buy you directly, I can buy the software that will allow me to de facto buy you. Because you are below an object, you are below a commodity, you are something to derive pleasure from, and that is it. You are a cunt, and I can make you one even if you resist. This is male defined sexuality, this is patriarchy. Put a name to it. The men know.
Choice Feminism
Choices do not exist in vacuum’s. We know several things; in times of economic crisis prostitution rises, the prostituted class is disproportionately made up of marginalized genders, most prostitutes want to leave the prostituted class but are unable to, and most prostitutes have experienced some form of child sexual abuse before entering the trade. If prostitution was a liberating and empowering tool to gain wealth, power, and class mobility, then we should wonder why the most disenfranchised, downtrodden, and oppressed are pulled into the prostituted class. Liberal feminism has made a deity out of choice, and it must be combated. Not all choices are good, and we are conditioned by the white-supremacist colonial bourgeois establishment to make certain ones. In the words of Françoise Hériter, “Arguing that women have the right to sell their bodies is an attempt to hide the argument that men have the right to buy women.” There’s a reason men are a majority of sex buyers and marginalized genders are a majority of prostitutes. We should name it, patriarchy.
Decriminalization is the start, and it is a goal, but it is not the end. Abolition is the end goal. Full decriminalization is praised because it can lead to things like being able to hire security and protection, but in practice, it simply creates classes within prostitution. Those who can afford to hire security, and those who cannot. Those who can say no, and those who cannot. Those who can afford nice buildings in nice areas, and those who cannot. It also does not remove the market forces that attempt to make prices lower and increase optionality due to competition. This will only push middle-class white women who enter the sex trade for personal benefit, not survival, to the top, while climbing on the backs of marginalized and minority women.
It is also important to note that even if someone is entering the sex trade as a petty bourgeois worker, who has control over who accesses them and how, they are still being commodified and dehumanized. The cage may be gilded, but it is a cage nonetheless. These commodified individuals are surviving under patriarchy, under capitalism, and under oppressive forces. Until they engage in traitorous behaviors such as, but not limited to; promoting an OnlyFans referral code to 18 year olds to make money off of their content, dressing in children’s clothing, dressing in ways that contribute to the sexual violence minority women and those in the global south face, and/or glamorizing the industry, they are our comrades in the struggle. It is correct to identify sex workers as members of the lumpen proletariat class, or more aptly put, the ruined proletariat, but it is a mistake to use this categorization to deny their revolutionary potential.
Our war is not against sex workers but against johns, sex buyers, and consumers of pornography. Our war is against the structures that slate the most vulnerable of us for sexual slavery. The forces at play that reduce people to objects made to derive sexual pleasure from. Our war is against capitalism, patriarchy, white-supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism. We must give uncritical support to the Aileen Wuornos’ of our world. Our goal is not decriminalization, it is the abolition of class struggle through the achievement of communism. Our goal is not an expansion of choices. Our goal is liberation.
Leave a Reply