Young Writers Society

capitalism is? How so? I agree with patriarchy being exploitative though

So, capitalism in its simplest form requires you to have money in order to buy food. Some people lack the kinds of skills and experience it takes to get various other kinds of (usually better paid) jobs, and so sex work jobs are some of the only kinds available to them. They have to be able to function in this industry if they are going to gain any resources, under capitalism that is.

Obviously more left wing systems can have unemployment benefit and jobseekers' allowance and stuff. But these are often means tested and can be extremely difficult to access, as the government's interest is in spending as little money in this area as possible, since it's rarely a vote-winner. Plus, this money is often simply not enough, with rising house prices, landlords being jerks, cuts to these benefits (as the UK Conservatives rumble on with austerity even thought it's not even helping the deficit).

As a result, people often need a job. And often times that will meant that they require sex work. If capitalism is going to require you to produce something in order to gain resources just to stay alive, then I think it would be unreasonable to try to remove one of the only industries that people have access to.

I do think it's work, a very old line of work at that. I see it like this though: it's not the kind of work one would like to see one's parent, a sibling one grew up with, a child one raised to be engaged in. One would try one's best to see if they're vulnerable or need an alternative way out. One would be perplexed day in and day out about whether they need help. One wouldn't be at rest.

I don't mean to sound simplistic, insensitive, or undermine the struggles of sex workers. I know it's a sticky debate, it's a difficult conversation. It involves livelihoods of people. I'm just sharing my thoughts, I hope you don't mind. I mean well when I say this. Anyone who knows how this line of work works in real life (as opposed to ideally or theoretically) knows that it's not a wholesome place to be in, no matter how much one tries to normalize it. It's no secret that the industry is very intimately linked to steady streams of human trafficking, or that it, for the most part, capitalizes on the desperations of the vulnerable. But that's not what disturbs me the most. What disturbs me the most is that consent is often contractual in sex work. This is no secret. Which means that a sex worker often signs up with the intermediary, agreeing to do the work for a period of time, or for a number of clients. Once that agreement is reached, it doesn't matter whether they really want to do their job in the moment or not, which means that oftentimes, sex workers are actually violated very legally, and on a case-by-case basis consent itself becomes a very vague thing. It may not always be dehumanizing, but oftentimes it tiptoes into that territory.

I hope I don't come off as agressive, I'm not. It's a line of work that'll always be around. I just don't think it's okay to oversimplify the matter in a manner that makes sex work sound free of exploitation, or to glamorize it. It's important to protect the human rights of the workers involved in this line of work. But I don't think the line of work is all-in-all wholesome in and of itself. I hope you see what I'm trying to say. Very few people go into this line of work thinking of it as a dream career, and anyone who knows how it works on the ground understands this very well.

You are correct about all the ways in which sex work is currently exploitative. However, it is not inherently so. Ethical sex work does exist, especially when it's created by women, sometimes explicitly for women, sometimes not. I do not think there is anything inherently un-wholesome about sex work. The reason why one would be worried about a family member is because of the state of the current industry.

That industry needs to be improved, but the best way to do that is to consume ethical porn (I don't actually consume any porn, but that's because of the particular kind of asexual I am) and support good practice.

I understand that you're not being aggressive, but I do think it is quite insulting to many sex workers to call the work itself un-wholesome.