Such a complete misunderstanding of the industry is the result of a flattening of distinctions between all work and a misunderstanding of Marxist theory. Wage labor is exploitative because of the surplus value extracted from the workers’ labor. Prostitution is sexual exploitation because it feeds off of extreme vulnerability to maintain a class of prostitutes, coerces sex through money and power, and exposes those women to high amounts of rape and violence. Not all work involves coercive sex, not all work comes with the high risk of rape and male violence in whatever legal context it operates under. Not all work puts the body and it’s component parts on the market to be bought, sold, and rented at will to the highest bidder.
I read the article and my main contention is that it doesn’t establish why we must treat the performance of sex as morally different to any other form of service work. As I said in the other comment I believe that the way we are compelled to treat sex as “different” is a manifestation of patriarchal thinking - there is nothing fundamentally different between a woman who is coerced by poverty into prostitution and a man who is coerced by poverty into agricultural work, and the ways to solve the exploitation in both cases is the same: organization of the workers against the bosses, the abolition of bosses altogether and shifting control of that industry to the workers in it, and ultimately the abolition of the capitalist mode of production that incentivizes maximum exploitation of all who participate in it.
This is such a lib take that it pains me to read it. The whole post is worth a read, btw.
https://proletarianfeminist.medium.com/the-problem-with-the-phrase-sex-work-is-work-bdac613eb2f0
I read the article and my main contention is that it doesn’t establish why we must treat the performance of sex as morally different to any other form of service work. As I said in the other comment I believe that the way we are compelled to treat sex as “different” is a manifestation of patriarchal thinking - there is nothing fundamentally different between a woman who is coerced by poverty into prostitution and a man who is coerced by poverty into agricultural work, and the ways to solve the exploitation in both cases is the same: organization of the workers against the bosses, the abolition of bosses altogether and shifting control of that industry to the workers in it, and ultimately the abolition of the capitalist mode of production that incentivizes maximum exploitation of all who participate in it.
I feel like your completely glossing over the whole increased risk of rape and violence aspect that prostitution involves compared to wage labor.