Sex, Commodification, and Labour

FM that was not his point.

a:  This is so dumb even I can tell it's dumb.

b:  babble banter??

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Actually, Michael, Albatrosses aside, while I think I'm sympathetic to your larger point, capitalism doesn't commodify our labour: it purchases labour in the interest of changing it into commodities. When we say that prostitution "commodifies" the female body, it's not the same thing as when I sell my labour to produce an ipod, or whatever. A woman's body is a "commodity" in that it is actually the "thing" up for sale. While both instances remain examples of alienation, there are different forces at work. If your construction worker sells her labour to build a house, she is alienated from the product she produces, her labour itself, the capitalist to whom she has sold her labour and, since labour, according to Marx, is "the" constitutive human trait, from her humanity. A Marxist like Georg Lukacs would call this reification, or the process in which relationships between humans become relationships between things. However, a sex worker (if we agree that sex work does, indeed, "commodify" the female body), has used her labour to render her own body a commodity--which is to say, that she has effaced her "worth" and submitted her body to commodity exchange. This is a very different kind of alienation than the kind a worker submits to.

I'm largely in favour of decriminalization to protect women and sex workers, but Marxist commodity analysis of sex work remains a stone in my shoe wrt to my conviction.

I think it was. Here: "it's rather difficult to define the commodification of the female body and mind in such a way that doesn't automatically exclude every form of labour in a capitalist system ... Are women who so scientific research for corporations, nonprofits, and governments commodifying their minds?"

That seems exactly his point.

Snert, if you're in earnest, we can discuss this. But please don't try the same contrarian games you use with remind et al. with me. I can assure you I won't be as fun.

To answer your question briefly, we haven't discussed the continuum of commodification. I was using specific examples (i.e. "full-service" sex worker vs. construction worker) where the distinction is clear. I would include glamour mag models in the department of commodified bodies (hence my "sympathy" with Michael's larger point). But to address your slippery example, it depends. If a woman rubs my penis, it's not just the friction that is turning me on--it's the sexually-charged image of female sexuality. That's why heterosexual men seeking heterosexual pleasure usually don't ask male prostitutes to rub their penis. Similarly, if I am going to an "exotic" massage parlour in which I am recieving a libidinal thrill, well, that too would be commodification to some extent imo. On the other hand, if I was at the Ritz and the house masseuse gives me a thorough massage, the boundary is a bit more blurred. It could be solely labour, but there would likely be, also, an element of commodification--what am I "buying" when I buy a backrub? That's the nature of capitalist patriarchy--it f's up our relationships with women.

Thank you Catchfire. So, again, can one be a feminist and still support the commodification of the female body (for clarification I had included the mind because I don't think it is possible to separate the female mind from the female body)?

Of course there is.  It's the reason why adultery is grounds for divorce and it's the reason why rape is a special category of assault.

Only impossible because I'd rather not freeze to death.

You make a good point, Snert.  The thing is, though, that in this society, we do consider sex to be a special case and that's not going to change any time soon.

Well, I'd agree that the taboos and mythologies surrounding sex are socially constructed, but I don't think that makes them any less tangible--it certainly doesn't make them any less binding. It's like language: we could, theoretically, speak any combination of sounds to communicate. But we happen to speak the languages that we do and so, we are stuck working within that framework--even if we think that "Vin Diesel" should never, ever be considered as a viable pseudonym.

Two points: when I use the term "commodity" or "commodified" I am referring to chapter one of Capital. I am not using it as a synonym for "objectified." This means that your soldier metaphor doesn't hold up. A "commodity," in Marx's terms, is a "phantasmagorical" image where the 'exchange-value' of a product is confused for its 'use-value.' That is, its posession of value as a tradeable item in a market economy instills it with an abstract value derrived from abstract labour, unrelated to its material, sensible properties. But, its 'exchange-value' is presented as if it is 'use-value'--this is what Marx means when he calls the commodity 'a strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtelties and theological niceties.' All this is to say that if a soldier was a commodity, his 'commodity-ness' wouldn't prevent him from being eaten, or from having his organs transplanted, etc.

The commodity-based market under capitalism is bad enough, but the reason we might find commodifying a woman's body particularly egregious is that while commodified labour (in the casual sense you're using it) is alienating enough, the commodification of a woman's body effaces the very identity and selfhood while offering an image in its place. In this instance, the subject is not only alienated, but eradicated.

This leads to my second point, which addresses this quote:

We not only live under a capitalist system, we also live under a Patriarchal system. One argument goes that the ability to reproduce labour is critical in any economy, but especially in a capitalist one. Therefore, it serves masculine hegemony to own or control the reproductive system of women. We see this in any number of examples--abortion and choice should spring to mind most saliently--but this dynamic, and the various strategies employed by our culture and its ideology to keep it in place, can be read equally in sex work as it can in fashion, beer commercials and nymphette pop stars. So, it's not merely an "aesthetic charge"--it's a power play intentionally enlisted by capitalist and patriarchal ideology.

The difference is inherent. It is inherent as a result of our self-consciousness which goes to our sense of worth, dignity, and freedom to engage or not engage in sharing our bodies with others.  Does a bonobo have a concept of rape, for example? Are bonobos sold into sexual bondage? If they were, would they be conscious of it? Do bonobos carry an economic, moral, and social burdern, including but not limited to stigmatism, if their sexual "sharing" results in offspring?

For you it is not impossible "to imagine a society where, for example, people have sex freely in public", which is good for you, I imagine, but can you point to an example of such a broad based society? And can you recognize the difference between what people do "freely" and what people are coerced into doing either through threats of force or economic sanction?

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