OK so everyone is coerced to perform labor under capitalism, which means anyone performing sex work is in some sense being coerced into having sex. The question is why is that worse than being coerced into any other labor?
It seems to me that this position is disingenuously conflating the, shall we say, passive coercion everyone faces under capitalism with the kind of active coercion that takes place in e.g. sex trafficking. In the latter, people are literally kidnapped and forced to have sex against their will. In the former, people have to choose some way of making money, and for some people they find their best option to be sex work.
Sex trafficking and any other directly forced sex is quite obviously abhorrent. But when we say that any sex work, even when it is chosen by the worker, is similarly unconscionable, we have to either agree that under capitalism, construction work, data entry work, and food service industry work are also just as immoral and must be abolished, or else explain why being coerced by the system into selling one’s body to perform labor, say, building a community center or coding a video game is different than labor that involves sex.
If you believe that sex is inherently different than any other physical or mental activity, why?
Now, I could see an argument that it is difficult to be sure that people starring in pornography aren’t being forced to do so as sex slaves, so for practical purposes it’s best to just ban it outright. If that’s the position, I’d say it’s somewhat reasonable, as long as it wouldn’t be illegal for my wife and I to continue making and watching our own videos of ourselves. This position doesn’t really work for illustrated or animated pornography, though.
OK so everyone is coerced to perform labor under capitalism, which means anyone performing sex work is in some sense being coerced into having sex. The question is why is that worse than being coerced into any other labor?
It seems to me that this position is disingenuously conflating the, shall we say, passive coercion everyone faces under capitalism with the kind of active coercion that takes place in e.g. sex trafficking. In the latter, people are literally kidnapped and forced to have sex against their will. In the former, people have to choose some way of making money, and for some people they find their best option to be sex work.
Sex trafficking and any other directly forced sex is quite obviously abhorrent. But when we say that any sex work, even when it is chosen by the worker, is similarly unconscionable, we have to either agree that under capitalism, construction work, data entry work, and food service industry work are also just as immoral and must be abolished, or else explain why being coerced by the system into selling one’s body to perform labor, say, building a community center or coding a video game is different than labor that involves sex.
If you believe that sex is inherently different than any other physical or mental activity, why?
Now, I could see an argument that it is difficult to be sure that people starring in pornography aren’t being forced to do so as sex slaves, so for practical purposes it’s best to just ban it outright. If that’s the position, I’d say it’s somewhat reasonable, as long as it wouldn’t be illegal for my wife and I to continue making and watching our own videos of ourselves. This position doesn’t really work for illustrated or animated pornography, though.