Is sex work qualitatively distinct from other forms of wage labour...

Is sex work qualitatively distinct from other forms of wage labour, or is opposition to it rooted in social conservatism?

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

No, all wage labour is prostitution.

There's penor in pooper, but not much different.

I think I see what you're doing.

No. Yes & No; there's false consciousness.

I dunno. Cults often ritualised intercourse, and while it is called by more modern historical scholars as sacred prostitution it would rather be known as temple "fertility" because there wasn't a compensation in wages. I'm ambivalent about it all because while seemingly hallowing it did also lead to codified sexual unions in marriage law, harem grooming, et c. Is it not then unsurprising that, if you read intelligent religious propagandists, and if you really try to discern what deal they are offering you, which is not to prohibit, in this case libidinal pleasures, you find a much more cynical contract, as it were—between the church as an institution, and the believer, troubled with desire. It is this hidden obscene permission that you get: "You are covered by the divine 'Big Other'—you can do whatever you want. Enjoy." It is the logic of institution at it's purest, the key to the functioning of ideology. Not only the explicit message: Renounce, suffer, and so on — but the true hidden message: Pretend to renounce and you can get it all.

But I must digress, my heart is not in sex. I find it inherently disgusting, and it should be. Pessimistic about the possibility of love emerging or satisfactory sexual dynamic, what shall I say to him that marries, or fucks, again and again, "Stulta maritali qui porrigit ora capistro?" (Juvenal) I pity him not, for the first time he must do as he may, bear it out sometimes by the head and shoulders, and let his neighbour ride, or else run away, or as that Syracusan in a tempest, when all ponderous things were to be exonerated out of the ship, quia maximum pondus erat, fling his wife into the sea. But this I confess is comically spoken, and so I pray you take it (Haec in speciem dicta cave ut credas).

P.S. Be safe.

Technically no, but see next point


No, but whatever may be the case, whether it is culture or innate in these people, there's people who do not wish to sell sex. They think it is degrading, even more so than normal wage labour. Lots of people feel like it is the lowest a person could sink. It takes away the last bit of agency and freedom from a person without being full out slavery (and sometimes they are enslaved). There is a reason that unions, anarchists and communists fought so hard in the past to make it illegal for employers to sexually abuse their subordinates.

While all work where you sell your body and time for money is wage labour, there is a clear difference in working hard in a machine shop or being put on display, being made to do things that you consider to be below human dignity such as cleaning the floor with your tongue or being made to perform sexual acts.

While there are people who enjoy being a prostitute/porn star (and lets face it, its not the hooker in the bronx, but the rich people callgirl), so are there people who enjoy being made to do other things that are degrading. This minority is no reason to treat prostitution as if it is the same as being an office worker.

Sex work is oppression by definition

Ah, yes.

Sex workers must be liberated from sex work

The latter


Also this

We pay people to stand in shit-filled pipes and murder other human beings for us. There are many jobs which, like sex work, plenty of people would consider to be below human dignity. If people are willing to do them, then I don't think we should treat it as any different from any other labour. Ultimately, with prostitution, there should be an understanding that the prostitute is the one who decides what they will and will not do. A slave can't turn to their master and say "Nope, not doing that today", where a sex worker can.

An enslaved sex worker obviously can't, of course, and a sex worker who feels she can't turn to anyone for help when abuse occurs because their trade's illegal can't either.


Unions also fought hard to prevent all abuses from employers, not just sexual abuses.

Yea, just find another job you lazy prole its all voluntary.
.t Porky

I think the key difference is, recreational sex is primarily for fun/affection/etc, while stuff like machining or office work is already an inherently productive activity, even without additional compensation. So one of them is being "impurely" motivated to "unnaturally" do something that "shouldn't" need motivation under normal circumstances, while the other is simply an additional reward for something primarily done as material gain anyway.

Instead of normal wage labor, a better comparison to prostitution might be professional sports, or even professional art as a whole.

Those are also activities that some people would indulge in regardless of economic need, but the presence of money may be a perverse incentive for people who normally enjoy it to do it in unenjoyable ways, and for people who don't enjoy it to participate, both perversions lowering the undertaking as a whole.

Would anyone make excuses for someone who charged others rent to use their vacuum cleaner or their chainsaw? No, that would be viewed as the sort of thing petit bourgeois get up to.

Someone offering to rent you their vagina (or phallus) is behaving no differently.

Are you being paid a wage(or similar) for it? Then no it isn't.

Are you not being paid a wage? Then it's probably closer to petit-bourgeois or something that needs to be analyzed as part of modern capitalism.

I think it largely depends on the type of sex work and personal experience with it, but no not all opposition is because of social conservatism.

Which applies to every job so you just made your own counter argument

Some people get off on being used as a sex toy by others, if it was safe and regulated (and respected the same as any other job) we could just have those people do it.

Workers must be liberated from work.

I'd argue that while all labor is essentially exploitation and so prostitution in one way or another, the added dimension of actual 'direct' use of sex workers makes it even more humiliating. Without proper regulation or guaranteed safety, sex work is some of the most humiliating work out there without even mentioning more direct lumpen exploitation through pimps and human traffickers. The 'agency' argument I simply cannot understand unless you take the liberal stance that all labor under class society is simply a matter of choice, and seems to come from a liberal feminist strand I do not agree with at all.

No. Sex work is unproductive labor. Is it particularly degrading and oppressive? Yes, but it's still work.

Only if they work for an employer, though. A prostitute that lists her rates and keeps the revenue isn't being exploited, for the simple there's no firm or pimp to take the surplus.

What do you define productive as? Continue wealth creation?

Well, I'll explain it best I can.

1) Unproductive labor produces something that is consumed immediately.
2) Unproductive labor is exchanged with revenue not capital.

Sex work creates wealth but since the production isn't physical commodities but a service, it does not produce wealth as capital. Once the service has been completed, that's it. There's no way to extend the value chain beyond its immediate consumption.

So productive labor is exchanged with capital, and produces physical commodities. Capital comes from surplus value being appropriated and, yes, continues wealth creation beyond its immediate production.

Both forms or production produce wealth, but only one produces wealth as capital.

Ok mr ancap, let me just put on my job hat and travel to job land where jobs grow on trees. Im sure unemployment only exists because people are lazy.

...

I've actually mashed up Smith and Marx, while forgetting the latter's critique. Still partially right but not completely.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm

So sex work is productive work because sexual services have been transformed into a commodity for exchange on the market. A prostitute, as distinct from a sex worker, would be the unproductive laborer. She sucks revenue out of the capitalist and wages out of the proletarian, and produces no value beyond her immediate consumption.

This is what happens when I try to theory after a 10 hour work day.

I think using sex workers as an example of alienated labor is one of the most strongest and apparent modes of alienation you can give to any one out there

The sex worker is alienated from his physicality love and most impotent pleasure and dignity his or her labor force "sex" becomes totally commodified in the most brutal heart crushing way possible ;_;

Why did i sage ?
heh

Yep.
Shit's pretty spooky.

ITT: Existing is prostitution
>>>/fringe/