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sex work is work
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Any form of physical labour is selling your body sex work is selling your right to refuse sexual consent. I think that makes it a worse situation for the person doing the sex work than other work
If you are doing only fans or similar how are you not consenting? It's fully on your terms.
I doubt most people in the military would consent to getting their dick blown off by a mine if given the opportunity.
There's a reason why people who join the U.S. military are disproportionately poor.
You're describing a problem that is common across "industries" as if it were unique to sex work, when it's not.
It's unreasonable to posit that somehow Onlyfans models have less bodily autonomy or more coercion than members of the U.S. (and probably any other) military.
I encourage you to take some time to interrogate why you were so easily able to make this leap of logic, because to me it seems (consciously or not) motivated by moralized "disgust" of sex work rather than rational consideration.
This isn't true, theyre wealthier on average.
You keep on making points that I know you must know don't apply to capitalism in practice.
There are so many jobs that don't NEED to exist, and yet they do. And chances are that you'll be coerced into doing at least one of those jobs in your life, especially if you're poor.
I guess I am also coming at things from the practical perspective of:
There will always be sex workers. What can we do in practice to keep them safe?
"Solutions" based on moralizing sex work as inherently "bad" end up being things like:
Making directly providing sexual services illegal, which is "intended" to stop "sex trafficking" and punish "pimps" but in reality forces transactions underground and in the dark, facilitating sex trafficking and leading to victims being harassed and prosecuted far more than perpetrators.
Sex workers of all kinds want sexual services decriminalized because they understand that criminalization makes everyone less safe:
Providers of sexual services need to advertise on shady websites and meet in non-public spaces, rather than openly using Craigslist on their own terms. Is Craigslist a good example of a safety-focused platform for sexual services? Absolutely not! But providers of sexual services were much safer before Craigslist cracked down than they are, by far. Police regularly harass street workers, very much including sexual assault.
Clients risk getting arrested, and are similarly forced into more dangerous situations.
All people, especially poor and marginalized women, are less safe. The large underground market for sex work makes it much easier for humans to be trafficked. Children sexually abused (child sexual abuse absolutely must be criminalized, and CSAM a long with it). Undocumented immigrants trafficked for sex work, as well as non-sex work.
I believe that the moralization and criminalization of sex work is absolutely fundamental to institutions like the Catholic Church being able to facilitate the sexual abuse / rape of so many children, for so long. And it's not like its over, especially in fundamentalist Christian churches but also in all major institutions and parts of our society.
So, I mostly care about the unique moralization and criminalization of sex work because I regularly listen to sex workers themselves talking about what needs to change to make them, and everyone else, safer.
And they regularly use analogies to other physical and emotional labor.
I'm not sure that I can defend that notion to you articulately, but I also very much don't care.
I support listening to and learning from marginalized people. I support the notion that marginalized people generally know what is best for them better than the random old white dudes that declare themselves to be experts without any real connection to, or respect for, those communities.
I know that policies decisions led by those that are most vulnerable almost always end up helping everyone else too.
it's not fully on your terms because if you refuse to provide sexual content for the only fans subscribers you stop getting paid which means that with the coercion of the market you stop having full and uncoerced control over your ability to refuse to give sexual consent to sharing provocative images of yourself
In the same vein are you not selling your right to consent of your bodily autonomy by being a laborer?
yes but your right to refuse to consent type out emails, or stack boxes is less intimate and personal than your control over your sexual consent
it is for example perfectly socially acceptable to pressurize and even insist that people do various chores which would be deeply immoral in the case of sexual consent. For example your roommate could insist that as a condition of your living arrangement you have to clean the house (which is a bodily autonomy sacrifice as you have to use your body to work potentially against what you want) but they would be out of bounds if they insisted you do sexual favours for them
Onlyfans models generally have the option to apply for a job at McDonald's instead.*
People working for the military generally do not.
* Ok, there's actually more nuance here because a large percentage of sex workers are disabled, and lack of accessibility and general ableism prevents them from working most other jobs. But while that's important to understand, it's a different discussion.
While this is currently true, there isn't any logic in one of these activities being treated significantly differently than the other, except where risks are concerned. If the sexual favors entail no additional risk (for instance, if they do not involve bodily contact, but merely putting in a show) then although society treats them differently, I would argue it shouldn't.
This is why we are socialists and want to disconnect labor from work
No different than any other job at that point.
I think if you look at it that way, you could also say working for the military is selling your right to a safe workplace. Like, a lot of other jobs (including sex work) can be dangerous, and often are due to a lack of care from those in power. But the military is necessarily dangerous by its very nature.
yeah which is why I wouldn't join the army and would advise anyone not to
although sex workers are far more likely to experience PTSD than soldiers
also sex workers are substantially more likely to be killed in a violent attack than soldiers are at 112-225 per 100,000 for sex workers and 51 out of 100,000 for the branch of the army with the highest mortality rate so being a sex worker is more than twice as dangerous as being a soldier
Yeah those sorts of facts are unsurprising to me, and they're why I brought up the fact that other jobs often are dangerous in practice.
you still have consent during sex work.
I'd also add that even desk jobs are selling your body. All labor is. The brain and fingers are part of the body.