Happens about February-March of every election year (the, ahem, independent media goes out of its way to induce it). Get ready for the next lib wave, and a bunch of iterations of the following script, which they’ve been practicing since like 1999:
-
- “Eh, I disagree with [Democrat candidate] on a lot of things, but to pretend he’s not better than [Republican candidate] is just delusional.”
-
- “Yeah, I know [Democratic candidate] is a war criminal and complicit in a genocide, but have you considered that [Republican candidate] is a war criminal as well, plus he said rude things about [minority group]? In the interest of harm reduction for Americans only, I have a duty to vote Democrat.”
-
- “Your vote actually does matter.”
-
- “The only reason the Democrats aren’t Wholesome Progressive Scandinavian Model Chungus is because they have to play politics with the Republicans. You have to recognize the reality of a two-party system.”
-
- “We can push the Democrats left.”
-
- “Such-and-such Democratic policy (usually the Affordable Care Act) was actually really progressive.”
-
- “My [minority group] partner, whom I’ve never mentioned up to this point and very possibly just made up, is voting Democrat.” (This tactic also gets used by libs defending porn and/or prostitution, e.g. “my totally-real girlfriend loves it when I post videos of us having sex online”).
-
- “If even one less person dies because [Democratic candidate] is in office, it’s my moral duty to vote for [Democratic candidate]. I am a mature, compassionate person who absolutely understands socialism.”
Not a bad response, except you had to throw in some western liberal garbage about SWERFS and SWERFiness. Opposition to the sex trade is the standard line of every Marxist-Leninist country; perhaps anarchists have a different perspective, but since their most successful revolutionary efforts to date have been CHAZ and that one commune in Catalonia that lasted all of two weeks, we can safely disregard their opinion as irrelevant. We Marxists support sex workers, in that we see them as hyper-exploited by capitalism and wish to remove their exploitation. We do not support sex work as such. We aim to do for sex workers what the CPC has done: namely, give them jobs and vocational training, and extend to them the opportunity for a dignified, human life. Orgasms do not increase the productive forces.
The disingenuousness of the liberal defense of sex work lies in the fact that the average woman involved in the trade is not a middle-class kinkster selling videos on OnlyFans. The average sex worker is much more likely to have been trafficked, to have been raped, and if she has actually taken up prostitution of her own free will, to have done so because she had (or felt she had) no other options. Working-class people know the reality of the sex trade, that it is an ugly, horrible thing. I challenge you to defend prostitution to the typical worker. You will not get very far. Liberals know this, which is why they don’t even try; rather, they are content to smugly call the average worker “patriarchal,” “sexist,” “traitor to women,” and so on, when all that worker wants is not to be trafficked, or to keep their wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, friend, out of the clutches of a predatory industry.
But seriously, I thought we had left this debate behind on reddit? Fix your attitude toward women, and get a girlfriend, ya horny losers.
This is the crux of my problem with the language around this topic on this site. I don’t think you’ll find anyone here that disagrees with empowering workers and fighting workplace exploitation. I do disagree with the idea that women’s “sexual purity” is something to be owned and protected by men, and it’s very easy to infer that motivation from some of the emphasis often used around this topic.
I’m not accusing you of that motivation, but I think people are right to be sensitive to it. You can very easily find “real workers” and “real Marxists” whose hatred of “prostitution and pornography” specifically manifests as a hatred of women that have sex outside of a heterosexual monogamous relationship for the purpose of procreation. From there, it’s a pretty short jump to “the LGBTQ movement is Western liberal bourgeois decadence”, “abortion is antinatalism depriving the Party of future revolutionaries”, and other reskinned conservative opinions.
Just as it wouldn’t be fair of me to assume the worst of you, I don’t think it’s fair of you to assume that anyone sensitive to language that most often precedes a call for more police are straight men that want a Revolutionary People’s Prostitution office.
You seem to be arguing in good faith, so I’ll provide I detailed breakdown.
I hear this language from a lot of leftists who are pro-sex work, and it always seems to me a little nebulous. There are societies where men “owning and protecting a woman’s sexual purity” means something; they are generally pre-industrial societies, or societies ruled by a religious authority, not modern western societies. There is certainly sexism in the modern west, but it expresses itself in a different form: often as women experiencing social pressure to become, as it were, common sexual property. The women who give in are then shamed for not being the ideal autonomous individual of liberalism. This, not religion or any leftovers of religion, is the real root of the modern phenomena of “slut-shaming.”
I am suspicious for this reason even of things like OnlyFans. While they provide some agency for sex workers, and some modicum of protection, their long term tendency or goal seems to be turning women into luxury commodities for the wealthy. This is not liberation.
Please note also that, when I spoke of workers’ concern that their “wife, girlfriend, mother, sister” fall into the clutches of a predatory industry, I spoke also of the workers concern for themselves – i.e., I was including female workers. Furthermore, there is nothing inherently patriarchal about a straight male worker being concerned that a female worker is being sexually exploited. It is class solidarity, though it may be expressed in terms that we as Marxists should strictly speaking disagree with – most workers have not gone to college, and do not know the latest trendy lingo.
In Marxists, this is the result of bad education; in workers, it is false consciousness. (Though in my experience, the number of Marxists who hold such views is minimal, and dwarfed by the brocialists whose idea of women’s liberation is “shut up and suck my dick while I talk to Tyler over here about Trotsky”). But this false consciousness is not totally at odds with reality, in that it reflects, as if in a distorting mirror, certain mechanisms of capitalist oppression. Abortion in capitalist societies is often a tool of eugenics. Western governments often “pinkwash” austerity policies, thus throwing queer people under the bus, but also deliberately presenting to workers the LGBTQ+ movement as something opposed to their interests. And so on.
This is fair criticism, though I have run into a whole lot of pro-prostitution brocialists in real life.
Didn’t have the sense to save it but there was this hilarious meme where it was like the IQ bell curve with conservatives on the low IQ end “Sex work is bad because it is deg----ate” then the top of the curve were the liberal “No sex work is good” and at the end were the high IQ marxist “Sex work is bad because it is work”
I’m not trying to argue or anything here
But I’d like to say that I do enjoy the part of like Giving a person an orgasm or like, getting to know their body
And I know that it doesn’t actually produce anything
But I’d like to feel like ive done something more helpful for the world than survive a little longer I guess
And I guess I didn’t realize that some people dont mean what I mean when I say legalize the sex industry which is that the individual women should be making decisions about it and protected by law or like, safe houses, whereas any pimping is imprisonable. That being said though, I do want the industry to dwindle, cuz like just having enough money and doing orgies would obvs be much better than this.
I wanna give people love and pleasure, and some part of me feels like that has value, but it feels like the money truncates those feelings for them. I guess the best way to give back physically would be like a sex-worker only hotel they could live in semi-permanently. I tend to help people with sexual trauma, so it would be nice if I could still do that.
I suppose that would suggest I might make a good therapist, so that would be a nice career path outside of the industry if I didn’t have so much tech education already.
Sorry for the ramble, I just felt like a bad leftist for doing this kind of work
You are not a bad leftist. There is no criticism we should give sex workers while we live under capitalism, only in a system that has already guaranteed much greater amounts of economic equality can the idea of abolishing sex work be tackled, and anyone who says otherwise kind of sucks.
And yes, your work is honestly incredibly similar to therapy (I’ve had to hear so many stories from friends in sex work) and is actually very real work, and can be very personally rewarding. Just stay safe!
I really appreciate that
I get a lot of “you’re bringing women down” so I appreciate knowing there’s support out there
I just wanna make ppl happy and I don’t mess around with married men or like “advertise” myself so it every strange when those accusations come in (though I fully support putting the goods on display and tbh don’t blame the ladies who take married men)
I will stay safe! I’ve been invited to go out to the country but that’s sketch as hell so I keep it local lol
Thanks for validating me
It’s definitely not your problem to deal with people’s marital status, although if you have personal moral qualms that’s fine (I personally refuse to involve myself with people who are having relationship issues and have turned down a number of people over it (I’m not a sex worker)). In the end it’s work and you getting by, and whatever positives can be taken from it are cool and good.
I’ve definitely seen the toll sex work has taken on others, though, and it sucks. I often think about it in terms of the damage my own labor has done to me, and that fuels a lot of desires to upend the system. I have a friend in the business that cannot help but shame or critique whatever interactions I have with women, and constantly fluctuates between hating men and returning to dating them, and I feel awful for her knowing that it’s very related to not only her personal history but also the work that she now does to support herself. I mostly worry for her overall safety and her future.
It’s all very complicated, and in a better world at least we could ensure that the women doing this work are not being economically coerced into it. But so many of us are forced into a similar trade off anyways
On the subject of the damage, I kinda feel like mine was kinda this overwhelming and encompassing pressure to make me sexual property, so now I tend to think men feel that way as default.
Like…I appreciate that the non weirdos are being polite and keeping their distance cuz they’re stunned by my beauty or some shit but it means that the only guys who approach me in person are dangerously horny, where I definitely don’t want them as a client. People like that are going to argue with me on price and try to do stuff I haven’t agreed to so no thank you
This is a valid perspective, and I appreciate you bringing it up, and also the fact that you do not want to argue. But you must realize that – and let me repeat, the orthodox Marxist position is not, and never has been, against sex workers – the form of sex work which exists under socialism would be so different from sex work under capitalism as to virtually be an entirely different industry. Indeed, I have a hard time seeing how it could come about under anything but the final stage of communism, where money and class distinctions have been entirely done away with, and labor becomes, in Marx’s words, “life’s prime want.” I recognize, however, that material reality is greater than I am, and perhaps there is a way to square the circle. Though the fact that nearly all, if not all, AES countries are opposed to the sex industry makes me somewhat dubious.
Most people do enjoy giving someone an orgasm, and getting to know their body. It is a valuable part of the human experience. But to be a industry, a non-exploitative industry anyway, it would have to be something like art, or (as you’ve mentioned) therapy. And neither of these can be the backbone of an economy, since real wealth comes from production. Socialist countries obviously have their artists, like David Oistrakh and the great pianist Yudina; and of course they also have therapists. But they are always a minority, even if what they do benefits many people. This is against the tendency of the sex industry in the in the west, which capital is now pushing into aggressive expansion.
I don’t think you will find any serious communist who really disagrees with this.
No worries at all, I thought it was coherent and well-thought out.
There is absolutely no reason you should be feeling that, and if my post gave off that tone, I apologize. I do admit to having, based on some things I have seen and the experiences of certain acquaintances, a burning hatred of pimps and johns, and I probably express this immoderately at times.
I mean I would love to give people orgasms as a form of art
That sounds amazing honestly
I mean this is like, really stupid but when I was way too young to be thinking of these things I kinda wanted to known as the person who could help people with sex in almost a spiritual way? Like where I’m seen as highly respected for my skill and care? I already kinda get the stares that I’m like, ethereal or some bullshit but I’d also like that gaze to include some reverence I guess since I feel like my aura is more tantric and calm than anything salacious.
Anyways, I know that marxists support sex workers but I guess I interpreted your tone as militant and prohibitive, rather than protective. I do appreciate and accept the apology you gave, and I also respect your commitment to ideological soundness. This is gonna sound pretty dumb but I wish I had the mental energy to do the same but reading theory puts my material condition in such sharp relief that I tend to dissociate or cry? I feel like such a waste of potential but also such a fucking whiner cuz I don’t take the tools people are shoving into my hands but maybe it’s just cuz I took my estrogen shot an hour ago.
Also, thank you for calling my writing well-thought out. I really do pore over the things I say when I preface a comment with a promise of genuine care, but I struggle to keep my emotions to myself, clearly. 🤧😛
Removed by mod
I repent, and denounce the other disgusting bigoted prudes who have wormed their way into the socialist movement! Prudes like
and so on. It is true that most of the leaders on this list have built their countries into economic powerhouses with full worker control, and one of them (Xi Jinping) leads the country that is the economic engine of the entire world. But that nothing, I suppose, compared to what western Marxists have achieved sitting in the comfort of their easy chair. All hail comrade Dirt_Possum, who leads the glorious People’s Republic of the WestTM! (Free Taiwan and Slava Ukraini, and let’s put up yet another version of the map showing China as “East Turkmenistan”).
While can make an argument this is true, it is at this point in time extremely academic, since the sex trade is not in any sense necessary, and it is hyper-exploitative. Generally the only people I hear making it are out-of-touch liberal college professors, and johns who want to justify their buying of sex: “dude, when I’m paying this homeless transwoman trump change for a bj, I’m really no different from a regular small business owner! It’s capitalism, baby, not me! Rad!”
And yet you were the one who felt the need to derail a thread about electoralism into a conversation about sex. Nice work, Mr. Freud.
I’ve been marinating on your response here. There’s something off about it that I’m having trouble putting words to. I think maybe the “offness” that I’m sensing is that your comment sort of treats men as humans and everyone else as potential trafficking victims. I don’t think you meant to do this, I suspect (hope) you don’t actually believe that non-men are not human in the same way men are, but this comment of yours still kind of reads like that.
For instance, you end it with the following line:
This line really rankles, for two reasons. One, there are women who have read your comment and it just feels weird to tell a woman, especially a marxist woman, to fix her views toward women. Two, there are people who have read your comment who don’t want a girlfriend, because they’re not into women, because they have a long-term partner already and are monogamous, or because they’re ace or aromantic. (Probably other reasons too.) And yet, here you are, implicitly acting like everyone reading your comment is a straight man. But we aren’t. I’m not. The people arguing with you in this thread about sex work aren’t. You’ve made an incorrect (and sexist) assumption about the people reading your comment.
This reads slightly like concern trolling, but I will respond anyway. The issue is important.
I do not assume that everyone reading my comment is a straight man; rather I assume that most people defending sex work will be straight men. Long experience with The Online Left has made me very cynical in this regard; as Deng Xiaoping said, “seek truth from facts,” and a whole lot of pro-prostitution rhetoric is eerily similar to arguments incels make. You cannot seriously tell me you’ve never run into a straight, cismale “leftist” whose “support” for sex workers was ultimately about getting (as someone else in this thread put) a “Revolutionary People’s Prostitution Office;” such individuals are a plague in our circles. Genderwise, this thread may be an exception to the general rule – it is hardly a total exception – but it does not disprove said rule. Any experience with the internet or (indeed) real-life left will show you that.
But neither are women and queer people automatically immune to this nonsense. Just as you have right-wing trans people like Blaire White, and other women who support MAGA and “redpill” philosophy, so you get plenty of women and queer people on the left who support sexist positions ultimately not in their interests. (I remember, not too fondly, when Merrick DeVille’s reinvention of comfort women was a hotly debated topic in leftist forums). The assumption that identity always equals ideology, and that being part of an oppressed minority leads therefore, always and in every case, to a correct interpretation of material reality, is wrong and ignores the existence of false consciousness. But only Marxists-Leninists seem really to talk about such things.
I am perfectly aware that men can be trafficked as well. However, the vast majority of trafficked people are women and girls. To ignore that, or to say that protections for women and girls should not be the main focus of anti-trafficking policy, is to engage in a sort of leftist reskinning of an infamous right-wing talking point: “You spend all this time talking about how Black people are victims of racism in the US, but did you know that white people can also be victims of racially-motivated crimes?” Certainly they can, but the problem is not anywhere near comparable, or anything like so institutionalized. Similarly, to focus on protections for women and girls, from a problem that they disproportionately face, is not in the least to deny them agency.
Lastly, the institutionalization of sex work is far more characteristic of fascist regimes than socialist ones. Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-Sung abolished prostitution and pornography. Mussolini’s Italy was content to regulate the existing the brothel system. The Nazis similarly had military brothels, from which women of “impure blood” were excluded. We know about Imperial Japan and “comfort women”, and there have been reports of similar things happening in today’s Ukraine. South Korean “democracy activists” have tried to smuggle porn into the DPRK, apparently under the belief that it is a social rot which will help undermine society from within. Are we to believe that these regimes, regressive in every way, were progressive and better than socialist states on this one issue? That seems dubious, to put it mildly.
Thanks for the response, legitimately. I haven’t done enough reading and thinking to have a principled position on sex work. I really don’t know where I stand. I really should read more about and by sex workers, because these issues are indeed important.
I do want to say that I haven’t actually seen leftists wanting prostitution for the same reasons as incels. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, I’m sure it does in some circles and I’m certainly not trying to cast doubt on your assertions that you’ve seen it. I believe you have. But I haven’t, not from people I’d class as reasonable leftists. Part of this, of course, is I just don’t go out in public much or talk to very many people, and when I do, the topic of sex work doesn’t come up. So you and I have very different experiences with the types of people we’ve seen defend sex work, and I think that difference is relevant here. I think I’m much more likely than you to assume that someone I see arguing a pro-sex-work position is doing so not because they’re reactionary or misogynist, but actually from a place of genuine feminism. Because those are the kinds of defenses I’ve seen most often, including in this very thread. Also, and this is a small thing, but unless I’ve missed someone, none of the people talking to you about sex work in this thread are cis men. So yeah, this thread is a total exception to the general rule that people defending sex work are mostly cis men.
Another very small thing I disliked about the first comment of yours I responded to is the line “Orgasms do not increase productive forces.” I don’t believe labor must necessarily exist for the sole purpose of increasing productive forces. Art, conversation, hell, even cooking a nice meal are all examples of labor that doesn’t increase productive forces. So to say that sex work is bad because orgasms are unnecessary, well, I just don’t think that follows. I don’t really see how that argument is any different to the argument that says a barista isn’t really a worker just because they’re not producing something.
Ultimately, I don’t know if this conversation is worth continuing much longer. I haven’t done enough thinking and reading to say anything beyond what I’ve said, so I think I’ll probably bow out here. I mostly commented to point out the unfortunate reality that so many people on the internet make the (shitty, sexist) assumption that everyone they’re interacting with is a straight man. And I want that assumption to die already. I admit I did slightly misread your initial comment and I see now that you weren’t exactly making that assumption, I just read my own shit into what you were saying. You’re also proudly ML (I can’t fault you for that), but since I’m coming from hexbear, the fairly extreme anti-anarchist sentiment in your first paragraph was a bit off-putting. But hey, that’s fine, this thread is on lemmygrad, not hexbear.
Sorry, much of this response is me trying to work through what I found off-putting about your initial comment. There’s likely not a lot worth engaging with here. Still, I’m going to post it because I’ve spent 10 minutes writing it. (I need to stop procrastinating the actual work I need to be doing today! Life is hard!)
Have you seriously not noticed that most of the people arguing against lemmygrad users on this are fem or fem-presenting people? I even know some who quit the site over it because they became disillusioned with the masculine chauvinism and prefer hexbear’s pro-feminist pro-queer stance instead.
People arguing against lemmygrad users in this thread? A mix.
People arguing the pro-sex work position elsewhere on the net, and in real life? In my experience, almost always straight dudes, with an incel mentality and a terminal case of porn brain.
But honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. This is a Marxist-Leninist community which supports AES states; you are going to find people supporting the ML line on sex work. That shouldn’t be any kind of surprise. Just as it shouldn’t surprise you to find that people here support state authority, rapid industrialization, limited role for markets within a centrally-planned economy, and a police force and security apparatus to fight against counterrevolutionaries. The old meme “You mad? Grow a community garden about it” somewhat applies.