cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/265775

My opinion is that sex work should be legal. It would enable involuntary virgins to get a good sex experience for payment; they will be guaranteed a good sex experience with a sex worker: no harassment, good education, and a fun time.

Sex work gets shamed by people puritans because of payment for sex and it’s “sinful”; yet these same persons puritans get and have sex for free out of “passion” or marriage; they also discriminate against minorities in sec.

EDIT: Apparently there is an implied difference between sex work and prostitution. I mean sex work.

I also found out that the USSR and all AES made prostitution illegal. (I personally disagree with criminalized prostitution; it could lead to victims getting harmed.)

(There should be an ask community…)

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
    171·
    2 years ago

    ML’s reject the term “sex work”, we prefer the term, people in the sex trade, to refer to the 99% of women and children trapped in the sex trade, or forced into the rape economy by economic coercion.

      • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.ml
        31·
        2 years ago

        I don’t think your desire for the disabled to participate in sex without discrimination is at odds with Esperanza’s stance. While she forcibly rebukes the sex trade under capitalism, and rightly highlights the awful experiences most have under it rather than focusing on the “better” experiences of a much smaller group that “makes it big,” she also recognizes that sexual exchange itself predates the capitalist sex trade. I don’t think a socialist society would be without sexual exchange; it would be without the coercive capitalist sex trade.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
    111·
    2 years ago

    The general agreement seems to be that sex work should be abolished.

    I work with victims of (sexual) trafficking and I see the sickening shit they have to go through.

    I also had contact with sexworkers that did so because they wanted to. They had mostly respectful clients and were in full control of their own ‘business’. I asked them if there were situations in which they would not do this work, and most of them said they would probably continue doing this work in some form. They love doing their job.

    Should it be abolished for these people as well? I don’t think so. If you truly want to do sexwork you should.

    That being said, there needs to be a huge, huge reform of sexwork in that case. Human trafficking and forced prostitution make up the absolute biggest part of sexworkers and that’s not acceptable.

    Should sexwork be abolished? I don’t think so. But I do think most sexwork would disappear in a ML society, as most of the sexworkers right now are forced to do so.

  • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    2 years ago

    If you live under Capitalism you need to legalize prostitution because otherwise you are taking people under totally worst conditions that you can’t control, abolishing makes sense if you have the basis under which you can truly improve their lives and create a society where there is no need for something like that in the market.

      • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
        5·
        2 years ago

        Well, another term used by feminists on the subject is survival sex, so yeah, it makes sense. I don’t think it is only a matter of being in ownership of you house, though, there are a lot of other factors which are as complicated, but if you don’t accompany it with policies that improve material conditions you aren’t doing much, that’s true.

  • leninbian@lemmygrad.ml
    9·
    2 years ago

    “Prostitution is nothing but the microcosm of a society where exploitation is a general rule. It is a symbol of the contempt men have for women.” Sankara.

    the sex trade is male violence. virtually all sex buyers are male. they often become violent and request violent acts. they are not paying for an expert service in most cases, just to have an economically vulnerable woman (especially of the global south, refugees, and trans women) at what they perceive as their mercy. many sex buyers have incest, necrophilia or rape fetishes. many want to outright torture women.

    and even the ones who ask for fairly standard sexual encounters, the power difference is usually a very real turn on. men who can easily find women to hook up with fully uncoerced go to brothels in germany (cough, hasan) for the thrill of exotic eastern european women. i wish i had never read those quotes from berlin sex buyers.

    and yes, men can be sex workers too. they are almost exclusively marginalized gay men, then trans men, then some tiny amount of cisgender heterosexual men. women are sexual beings but don’t drive the sex trade. that speaks volumes.

    porn is also very bad. you don’t know what you’re watching in many cases, it fetishizes the marginalized, it fetishizes violence. porn is the teen boy brainrot they said video games were. 1/3 women in the UK report being unconsensually slapped, choked, or gagged during otherwise consensual casual sex. it’s why many of my straight and bi friends have stopped hooking up with cishet men despite otherwise enjoying casual sex.

    **decriminalization under capitalism so that police don’t interact with sex workers and they can screen their clients, who are extremely likely to harm them. under socialism, the creation of conditions where no one will find this necessary as a way to survive. perhaps some would still want to offer actual expert luxury services such as dominatrixes or arthouse porn or whatever. but that’s not what happens in brothels, on the streets, or on porn websites. **

  • DoghouseCharlie@lemmygrad.ml
    71·
    2 years ago

    I don’t totally have my opinions fully formed so I’m open to any kind of critique but… Working under capitalism is inherently coercive. And sex work is work. And when coercion is involved in sex that’s the definition of rape. So sex work is rape. I’ve seen plenty of people that say they enjoy it, and maybe people would keep engaging in it if they didn’t need money and fair enough. But to me that isn’t proof that sex work is some wholesome or freeing thing, that just tells me that most other work under capitalism is so bad that rape is preferable to some people.

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
      41·
      2 years ago

      I don’t know, calling it “rape” kind of diminishes people who uhh…get raped. Like you’re making a choice to and getting paid for it, yes not working = death and yes work sucks ass but if it really felt like RAPE rape I think people would choose McDonald’s. Are there people miserable doing it because they have a felony or drug addiction (etc.) and can’t get a normal job to keep up with the price of being poor? Yes, and that’s terrible. And certainly there are some people who probably feel terrible doing it and hate it. But “rape” is…that’s something else.

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
        7·
        2 years ago

        Hi, I work with victims of human trafficking. These victims make up most of all sexworkers. They are forced to do so, and get punished in various ways if they refuse. This is rape. They do not have a choice in having sex. Just because they get paid for it does not make the rape any less. It is absolutely as traumatizing as ‘standard’ rape.

        Edit: also, there’s a whole lot of reasons these people get in these situations. It’s not just addiction or felonies. Kidnapping, immigrante, people with mental illness, ‘normal’ people, victims of loverboys, rich people, poor people, the list goes on. Anyone can fall victim to forced prostitution.

        • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
          2·
          2 years ago

          Hello, thank you for the information. I knew that there were prostitutes that were sex slaves but I guess the ratio of free/not free wasn’t so severe in my head. I definitely would never suggest people in such a position weren’t be raped, I meant people who do it of their own accord, but if this is a relatively small portion of total sex workers then I have been misjudging the proportions.

      • redshiftedbrazilian@lemmygrad.ml
        6·
        2 years ago

        Considering that there are some researches showing that sex workers experience a high rate of depression and PTSD, I wouldn’t say calling it “rape” downplays the suffering of people who get raped outside of sex work.

        The 2 links I shared above are from South African and the other Australian sex workers. These are two very different countries but somehow the results are similar. I’ve also seen this kind of research about brazilian sex workers with similar findings.

        Also, I think Mia Khalifa’s recent fight against the porn industry, although it’s about a specific kind of sex worker, can help us understand better the overall problems with their working condition under capitalism

        this article is in portuguese but maybe using goo*le translate you can read it, its very good.

        Sorry for the shitty sources in the last paragraph btw

  • margbaramrika@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    I support sex workers (or whatever people call them), they are workers like the rest of us. but they are also more exploited than most of us, and their work contributes to the strengthening of patriarchy.

    my opinion is that pornography, prostitution and all other forms of sex work must be abolished and the people that gain profit from it must be punished. I dont want sex workers to be harmed, only their oppressors. under socialism, there will be no sex industry as it will just be called normal, consensual sex.