On the one hand, within the context of capitalism, we need sources of income to make a living and have access to necessities, not to mention luxuries and things generally needed for enjoying our free time, and sex workers perform emotional and sexual labour in order to acquire or supplement that income — labour which our society has made sordid and dangerous because of puritan taboos and patriarchal power dynamics — so I support the rights and safety of sex workers and the normalization of sex in general. The labour, autonomy, and humanity of sex workers all need to be respected, as with every other worker, and I feel like people (mainly men) in our society have been conditioned to not respect these things in women, sex workers, etc. So that obviously needs to change, and we should support sex workers as well as our own sexuality.
One the other hand, I find the expansion of capitalism and the omnipresent commodification and unequal social relations it engenders within all spheres of human life disturbing from a leftist point of view, and I wonder what the best way of balancing my support of sex workers with my desire to revolutionize capitalism and the ways it's shaped our world might be. The push to expand, protect, and normalize sex work in order for sex workers to make a living more safely is paradoxically a push to expand the commodification of our world and relationships and the general prostitution of labourers, thus making it that more difficult to create an alternative to the current state of capitalist wage labour and the exploitation inherent to it.
I find myself in the position, then, of supporting sex workers but not so much the industry they find themselves a part of, which transforms their bodies and emotions into the commodities being consumed. And not all sex workers choose to be sex workers, so they need to be taken into consideration too when discussing sex work in the aggregate. But obviously outlawing sex work isn't the answer since it'll still happen, just within an even more coercive and violent arena than that of the marketplace. So the question I'm pondering is, what's the middle way here? How can I best support sex workers while also seeking to dismantle the socio-economic system fuelling the commodification of people's bodies, attention, and labour-power?
I was curious if anyone else has had the same thoughts and has come up with a resolution to these antagonisms, so I mentioned this on a friend's FB page about sex work who's also involved in sex work hoping that someone in their large network might have some insights. And my friend's answer was essentially that sex workers are the foot soldiers of socialism:
You always approach everything from a "how do I destroy capitalism" standpoint: but you can't expect it to be destroyed from the bottom up. You can't expect the most marginalized classes to participate in the dismantling if they are simply trying to survive. The middle path here is to understand something important:
Sex workers are a major participant in the attack of capitalism from the grassroots; from the ground up. Support them as much as possible. Pump capital and fuel their work because they do something extremely important: They FUNNEL capital from the wealthiest and most privileged classes and, in general, fuel the economies of their own: they support each other, they support artists and revolutionaries and progressive politicians. They are an extremely efficient vehicle to funnel money from (generally wealthy, generally white) men into these marginalized areas. They are footsoldiers.
Definitely some provocative ideas that are worth considering. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea of marginalized people making a living and not struggling. And I'm also sympathetic to the way that sex workers cooperate and help support themselves, other artists, etc. But I'm not convinced that the expansion of the sex industry under capitalism is necessarily good or revolutionary. For one, capitalist social relations are still in effect, even if not always directly, so the wealthy (often white men) are ultimately profiting off of it as much as (or even more) than the sex workers. Here, it can be anyone from the owners of content platforms like OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. to sites like Twitter and Instagram where they advertise, owners of brothels and strip clubs, etc. So capital, landlords, etc. are taking their cut where they can even if many sex workers are independent performance artists with some level of personal control and freedom.
In addition, while web-based platforms have made it safer and easier for sex workers to work, that's just one subset of sex work. And creating larger markets for sex and sex work also helps to increase demand in the black market economy underlying capitalism that's also fuelled by the very same wealthy (generally white) men, which in turn finds support in other areas and side hustles, from the mild to the brutal/domineering (e..g., men working behind the scenes who are often not exposed; pimps and madams; sex traffickers; the concierge at the expensive hotel who knows where one may find a child prostitute, like the pedophile ring accidentally uncovered by Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.). Then there's the increased level of objectification and alienation of labour that sex work (and wage labour in general) entails, where the commodity being consumed is the person's body and emotions, and these are in some way divorced from the person, being sold to their consumer, not only normalizing and expanding sex work (which isn't inherently negative) but also transactional relationships and consumerism (which may not necessarily be good).
Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced sex work itself is a revolutionary form of labour that can instigate a transition away from capitalism and towards a more egalitarian and less exploitative alternative moreso than other forms of labour, nor am I convinced that the majority of sex workers are anti-capitalist and actively seeking to upend capitalism. In so far as expanding sex work can expand solidarity among different types of workers, I can see how it may contribute to this, as well as from the activity of radical sex workers. And I do think they have a current need and right to make a living. But on a broader, more theoretical level I still have issues with the appearance sex work takes under capitalism. I don't see how simply taking and redistributing money from the wealthy will do any more good than other means of wealth redistribution such as taxes, or how it's qualitatively different from other places the rich spend their cash. And my concern is still the same, that it's ultimately just making sex work more easily exploitable by capital while doing little to challenge current social relations and power dynamics.
Consequently, I support the decriminalization of sex work, as well as the bodily autonomy of sex workers, since it does no good to penalize people who are often already marginalized and struggling (although middle-class women are a growing demographic, as well) from making a living that doesn't harm anyone. And I support normalizing it in the sense of removing the stigma and shame of being a sex worker or enjoying sex, allowing them to be more open about it and utilize community resources, modern technology, and their social circles to advertise and work rather than seedier and more exploitative options. Hence, I'm cautiously optimistic about it improving from what it once was. But I'm not yet comfortable idealizing sex work as an inherently revolutionary occupation, nor one free from danger and exploitation. Just as the relative comfort and security of workers in more developed countries like the US is dependent upon more oppressive and exploitative conditions of labour in less developed countries, effectively subsidizing our higher wages and standard of living despite our own inequalities, the relative comfort and security of some sex workers likely comes at the cost of others who are less fortunate and more marginalized.
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