Pornography should also be extinct. Consent under capitalism in porn is dubious at best and is still exploitative, and it objectifies the people in it mostly of which are women.
The solution is simply to improve living standards and worker conditions so that they have no need to go into sex work. Sex work should not be legalized period.
That's a bit economistic, there will need to be a massive cultural revolution in the west to fix the gender contradictions that goes beyond just improving living standards and worker conditions. Can't speak to the rest of the world although I know similar contradictions are present thanks in large part to Christian missionaries.
Totally agreed on pornography though, it is very harmful to women and queer folk (and men too, mostly in different ways). Society would have to be fundamentally different before sexual material like that could exist in a healthy way.
Is pornography still exploitative if no money changes hands? I figure if I want to put my ass on the internet for free, there's nothing wrong with that, right? I'm not sure how that specific kind of pornography relates to capitalism.
And what about drawn pornography? Are we coming after the furries? lol
Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, that is essentially filmed rape. However consensual the actors appear to be, if their livelihoods and ability to pay rent depend on views, then that goes against the very definition of consent.
I've got a spicy hot take: I think sex work freaks out Marxists because there is a fear that even in a post capitalist society, sex workers can still operate as petty bourgeosie capitalists, sneaking around and getting money, undermining the idea of an anticapitalist society. I think it just causes a deep fear of women's ability to 'exploit' the system of solidarity, because in reality most of these people are women, and even if not women most of the people consuming are men. It kinda begs the question, "how much regulation and force can and should be used in society to stop sex work or any other petty bourgeosie business endeavor. If its a streetside vendor - easy, shut it down. But shutting down sex work is much harder, much like drugs. It's a really hard one which leads to question like the limits of police powers in a communist society, and it makes us confront 'greed' and especially 'women want money' prejudices head on. This isn't an answer to the question of 'what are the alternatives' but just a musing about how it's so hard.
TBH I appreciate you OP asking about alternatives. What about sex bars much like milk bars? Just a thought. Or sex only for people who have game? I hope this isn't too controversial, just musing about why I think this question is really TOUGH
Step 1: Depose capitalism and liberate the working class.
That's it. You can do anything you like to abolish sex work, but if capitalism remains fhen economic coercion will remain and sex work will eventually come back. When capitalism is gone, the economic coercion that makes transactional sex exploitative/unethical is gone.
So I've guided (retired?) sex workers in the past. I wouldn't overreact if I said that out of a room of 200 sex workers, 1 or 2 would do it because they wanted to. The rest was either trafficked or forced into it.
I fully support sex workers and their orgs in protests, unionizing and activism and I fully support orgs trying to help them with the work or help them escape. Their struggle to change the industry is a thing they need to have control of, as they are the ones being a part of it.
Personally, I don't see a point in trying to regulate an industry that is filled with so much suffering. I always figured that if the people involved got the chances to do something else in life, 99.9% of them would. In a society where these people wouldn't have to rely on sex to survive, sex work isn't needed. That doesn't mean that a free sexual moral wouldn't exist. Quite the opposite, I think.
I'd also be curious as to what "wanting to" really means in such a misogynistic society that necessarily is internalized by everyone including (especially) sex workers. At best, "wanting to" engage in sex work really just means wanting to have sex anyway, and does not legitimize sex work in any way, IMO.
I personally only have met white, already well off women that wanted to do sex work. You know, people that were stuck in a job or got out of a long relationship and somehow became a high end escort, with a lot of freedom of choice. That´s the people I refer to that want to do this. They do exist (in very, very small numbers).
I didn't meant to use them to legitimize sex work.
Sex work is exploitation. It is the commodification of sex which, like all other commodities, was intended for use and not for exchange to make a profit from the exploitation of the sex worker. Sex workers should be treated the same as any other exploited worker. Still, it only differentiates in how they are exploited, i.e. a wage worker is exploited through the extraction of surplus value. In contrast, the sex worker is exploited due to the fact the sex worker and the buyer of the sex enter into a relationship where money is exchanged; therefore, due to money being the reason for the sex and not individual want, it can not be considered consensual, hence exploitative, you have other examples like this but on a bigger scale with the porn industry etc.
thanks for using Leebra!
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Legalize it, regulate it, address poverty, and have open access to educational and career change opportunities. Hit all of these and sex work will naturally fall away. Just banning it only drives it underground making the lives of those forced into by circumstance worse. Its important to keep in mind that sex work is a symptom of larger societal problems, not a direct cause in and of itself.
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