people are like “I support sex workers” until they actually have to support sex workers by critiquing their ingrained ideas about sex and work and then they're suddenly like “we need to rescue girls from thinking selling their bodies is okay!1!!”
when sex workers say that “sex work is work” it means sex work, like all work, functions in a capitalist framework. yes, you can be exploited as a sex worker. but you can also be exploited as a garment factory worker, in retail (!), as a teacher, as a games developer. capitalism is exploitative at the core and making this out to be a trait unique to sex work—often solely due to the sexual aspect, like it's okay for someone to be objectified and overworked and abused but only if they're no sex in the equation, or as though it's especially bad if there's sex in the equation—harms sex workers and harms critiques of capitalism at large by distracting you from the core concern of workers' rights, which are rights for all workers including sex workers.
?? I don’t get this post. This whole argument is based on the idea that prostitution is a result of capitalism and that critiques of prostitution and critiques of capitalism are mutually exclusive, which is completely false.
Also, I’m sorry, but the sentiment of this post is gross. Being penetrated in all orifices by countless men you don’t know nor desire, and complying with all of their desires while completely ignoring your own and pretending to enjoy it, is NOT the same as doing manual labour, dealing with loud kids, or serving rude customers in a grocery store. And if you really need sources to believe it, there are plenty of studies and testimonies from survivors of prostitution out there that shed light on the devastating impacts that prostitution has on the self-image, mental health, physical health, and social integration of prostitued people. We absolutely need to protect girls who think that selling their bodies is okay. I’m gonna be honest here: denigrating and mocking people who want to prevent girls from going down a path that promises to traumatize them and scar them for life is incredibly cruel and ignorant.
I can’t believe I have to say this, but consent can NEVER be bought. The human body, in part or in whole, is not - should not be - a commodity. Human beings are not objects that others can pay to use for their own sexual gratification. And sex is neither a resource not a need. Pretending otherwise directly harms some of the most vulnerable people in our society, like runaway or homeless kids, Indigenous girls and women, poor women, women of colour, and women with drug addictions - just to name a few.
For all its talk about critiquing capitalism, this post is just peak neoliberalism (not to mention ahistorical, misogynistic rape culture rhetoric).
