The ‘crime’ of sex work

I liked this summation:

In a capitalist society most people are compelled to sell themselves to someone else and, short of ending the wage relation, the real questions are over the conditions in which one works and the degrees of autonomy and workplace control one has.

Echoing socialist-feminist analyses of intersections of exploitation and oppression, arguments that sex work objectifies women and reduces them to bodily characteristics is met with the response that similar reductions are suffered by construction and farm workers or anyone involved in manual labour.

Excellant summation fortunate.

Sex work isn't a crime. You don't sell your soul, you simply use your body in exchange for money, much like any other worker. And much like any other worker sex workers are exploited in the same way.

It is hard for me to see sex work as a crime -  marrying someone for money in exchange for the occasional romp is pretty much the same thing isn't it?

If grown people wish to engage in sex work I see absolutely no problem with it. It is their bodies, their choice. It isn't mine to make for anyone, nor is it fair for me to cast my own morality of what others chose to do with themselves. I like to think we are all adult enough to realize there is a difference between rape, forced marriages, human trafficking etc. and choosing to engage in consensual sexual acts.

For certain there will be some workers who don't really like their job. There will be some who enjoy it, and some who can take it or leave it. Either way the choice is theirs to make.

From the article linked in the OP:

Legislation and policing practices that deal with the sex trade are guided by assumptions that sex work is deviant and that those who sell sex are morally impaired, whether through birth, socialization or socio-economic status. In labeling the women working in the sex trade as “criminal,” society sidesteps the obligation to deal with underlying social inequalities that impact the work and shape working conditions. Instead of addressing the roots of exploitation, the criminal justice system is used to contain or “cleanse” cities of the unwanted manifestations of the capitalist market.

Disrespectful?

If one cannot call comments from an article strawmen, when they are, and have it labelled disrespect at babble, it is time to close up shop and lock the doors because there ain't nothin progressive happening here.

But, you don't get it do you, Stargazer?!?  Choice is only good if people make the "correct" choice.  Otherwisel, choice is "bad" -- and must be prevented.

And, who determines if an individual makes a "correct" choice?  Well, those select individuals who have the gift of divining what the "correct" choices are which everyone should be making, of course!! 

Are you being serious remind? Am I advocating violence against a discernable group? If so, what does that group look like? Are they all drug addicted? Perhaps too drunk/high to make a choice themselves? Are they all poor? Are they all victims? Do they see themselves as victims? Do they all troll the streets cracked out and unable to make decisions for themselves? Do they all have the same socio-economic profile?

You don't need to be a libertarian to want choice to be left in the hands of the ones with agency. Calling anyone who supports choice to participate in sex work a "right wing libertarian" is a weak argument that doesn't even address the reality that many if not most sex workers are grown adults who can make choices themselves.

Not only is it weak, it is divisive and an attack on those babblers who post here in support of choice. It is uncalled for and wrong. Not much better then calling the your group "puritans" and "prudes".

Is there a better group out there who can make or take this choice away from them? If so, please tell me what gives them such a greater moral and/or social latitude to do so?

Sorry remind. I'm glad then I missed what was going on yesterday.

Well that's the thing huh Sven?

The people posting in favour have been called supporters of traffickers, complicit in exploitation etc. but the other side has just as much validity (minus the taking away choice factor) as they see it as endorsing exploitation. A valid point.

I'm not going to speak for remind but I don't think she is talking about taking choice away, as I don't think that is what she is concerned about, and I can understand and sympathize with her concerns - who wouldn't?

I think it is a lot easier for both positions to let go of the name calling. Simply because it is divisive and not correct.

The people on Babble against sex work have been pretty explicit in their posts that they see it as exploitation so I wouldn't call them so-cons, although for certain abolishment is what so-Cons want (REAL Women come to mind here). So calling them so-Cons isn't quite productive either.

I think both sides of this issue need to realize there are areas in which we will disagree without calling each other names and assuming the worst.

Love that name Susan

As long as there is capitalism and civilization there will be exploitation, you wipe one out when you wipe all of them out, as it stands I find sex work to be a preferable form of self-managed exploitation if you simply want to make money, particularly for someone like me who is a derailed artist working at a fucking food store, I envy those sex workers who can pull in thousands a week something I am looking into right now myself.

I would still repeat that a truly progressive thing to do would be to write sexuality out of the law all together. The ancient foundations of sex laws were always tied to property and control be it women or the human body in general.

Get off the single issues and start economising demands, how about absolute freedom for the body on paper, AHEM...

"Parliment barring coercion or force shall make no laws on the recreation and utility of the human body"

12 interviewees, IMO, does not constitute real research. A couple of those men are real sweethearts though.

What's the follow up plan?

Gah! I just realized my grave sin of double postery. Very sorry my fellow babblers.

Then you obviously haven't read bloggers like factcheckme or columnists like The Guardian's Julie Bindel. (BTW they are just as wrong despite being correct on whether the tax system should be progressive and whether cis women should have access to abortion... dunno how they feel about trans men having a right to abortion, as it hasn't come up.)

Though I certainly agree with your comment.

This merely adds to your awesomeness, Stargazer... yes, all of it.

rttgirl makes an obvious point about the multiplicity of objectification, which begs an obvious question, why do people zone in on sex? Could it be that over the past 2000 years and particularly the past 200(the victorian era) there is simply an inherent bias to anything sex to begin with. Feminists to a large degree have been complicit in this as the ideological prefigurations coincide with victorian mores of the time. The suffragettes weren't exactly oozing a dionysian dynamic, it wasn't untill the likes of Emma Goldman and  Voltairine de Cleyre came onto the scene that this began to change, and emma hated the suffragettes. Gay liberation movements were more authentic in this regard and from that it was people like foucault who called for the end of sex laws altogether.

Why not zone in on the relationships that create all forms of prostitution, beyond the sexual component. I don't actually consider sex work to be the worst form of alienated/forced labour when compared to all the others in this day and age. In terms of modern prostitution, if you go back to the victorian epoch women were begining to realize that prostituting themselves was a very viable way of gaining financial independence seeing as they lacked all the rights they have today(property political representation and the like). What victoria did was to demonize that profession as much as possible. The Suffragists at this particular time could not exactly be called authentic enemies of victorian ideology(like say Oscar Wilde).The innability to take on victorian mores as a whole is perhaps the great failing of classical feminism as far as I'm concerned. This isn't to say that the good they did do should go unnoticed, however I find that the reactionary feminist atitudes on issues like porn and prostitution go back to those ideological origins, there's just way too much traces of judeo/christian morality to not notice. The 3rd wave to a certain degree(mostly in Canada/USA) has tried to deal with these issues, however I think that a complete reboot is nessesary.