My opinion is that sex work should be legal. It would enable involuntary virgins to get a good sex experience for payment; they will be guaranteed a good sex experience with a sex worker: no harassment, good education, and a fun time.
Sex work gets shamed by ~~people~~ puritans because of payment for sex and it's "sinful"; yet these same ~~persons~~ puritans get and have sex for free out of "passion" or marriage; they also discriminate against minorities in sec.
EDIT: Apparently there is an implied difference between sex work and prostitution. I mean sex work.
EDIT 2: I messed up the writing of my post. My real opinion is located in this comment:
Oof. I didn't realize there was way more exploitation than just sex traffickers. It totally makes sense though; sex trades are a product of capitalist exploitation and the existence of private property. (Naturally under communism, the prevalence of sex trades would be heavily reduced.)
It seems like I couldn't communicate my ideas properly beforehand. I don't want people in the sex trade to be criminalized; I want pimps and johns to be criminalized.
Only a few hours ago: I wanted to support a sex trade industry that didn't involve rapes or rely on economic coercion. I just wanted disabled people, who keep getting discriminated out of sex,^[Sexual Ableism]^[Dating With Disability: How to Rise Above Sexual Ableism]^[Dating with Disability: Choose Your Dreams Over Sexual Ableism] to be able to feel better about their lives; a lack of sex can cause mental health issues in some people (even though this shouldn't happen). (However, having sex probably won't fix the issue, it will just hide the problems until later). Now I feel like shit...
I was thinking of consensual sex work (sex work that is not done by neccessity, but by people who want to do sex work); but I agree with you that sex trafficking is rape.
There is nothing consensual about having to sell your body to make a living
People sell their bodies everyday to make excel spreadsheets for 10 hours straight under fluorescent lights in a cubicle that's smaller than my bathroom or work in factories where they risk their safety because of old machineries, chemicals and hazardous environments in general. How all of this is considered better than having sex with someone in a controlled environment, where people get checked for deseases before going in, where security guards can keep you safe against violent clients and where you get to pay taxes and work for a pension?
You have no problem understanding the lack of agency of the worker in their workplace. you just don't want to call it rape because it makes you uncomfortable.
You know, I used to work for this big company that exploited me like a slave (making excel spreadsheets for 10 hours straight under fluorescent lights in a cubicle thatβs smaller than my bathroom, as a matter of fact). I called that job "rape" everyday for three years and when I quit I had no problem telling that straight to my employer's face. I'm doing the exact same job self-employed now, do I still call it "rape"? Of course not, because now I'm in control of how I do it and there's no more exploitation.. And I think it should be the same for sex workers, but as long as there's no legalization and regulation it cannot happen.
You can call your job whatever you want. But unlike prostitution it's not literal rape. What makes your job exploitative is not the working conditions or the size of the company, it's the necessity to sell your labor to get your means of subsistence. You had no choice but to keep working because you would starve and freeze to death if you didn't. That's why I quoted the literal definition of rape. Prostitution is literally rape.
So nothing we do, as a species, is consensual?
There are alot of things we do as species that is consensual capitalism isn't one of them.
that still applies, nothing about any of this work is consensual, because they cannot change anything about their situation, even though it is horrible, and must keep doing it in order to live. You are right about it being legal under capitalism though.
I don't like to put it in a socialist vs. capitalist context, I think it is stretching the topic a little bit. I prefer talking about the individual: I don't think that every people has it's "dream job". Sure some people wish to be doctors, lawyers and other professions, but a lot of other people don't. So in this latter cases, how is it that prostitution in a regulated environment is worse than anything else?
I see prostitution as it is a product of capitalism. Most of those people do want to become scientists, discovering new things, writers, or something more than basically the toy of the dollar. Many countries were able to eliminate prostitution entirely after eliminating the harmful requirements for people to use it. If it is still wanted post capitalism, then something can be worked out, or they can just have sex with random people like they would anyway if they were a prostitute.
Of course, but the same principle can be applied to people that work retail or pull a lever in a production chain. Of course prostitution is a product of capitalism, but the same is true for every job. I agree with you that capitalism generates exploitment of people, but that's the focal part I think we should focus on to make the discussion go further and not making it sterile in the end: TLDR is the exploitment of any kind of work wrong or just prostitution in particular? IMHO it's the first one...
those jobs are eliminated by the automation that our society strives to introduce into this place.
Not necessarily, to my understanding as of right now, these jobs could exist regardless, it is just the circumstances being the result of capitalist exploitation that is causing the issues with it. Sex work is entirely existent only because of worker exploitation and resource scarcity.
It is both. I could be wrong, but as my views stand right now in this society, prostitution is not a good thing, and is a special sort of worker exploitation. Not that it should be criminalized under capitalism, as that would just cause those workers to struggle in their situation even more. Under Capitalism they should be legalized for the purpose of protection and regulation, because the exploitation will still exist regardless, and all workers must have protection in every sector of work.
This sort of reminds me of the whole drug legalization debacle (they are very different and I am not comparing the respectable worker to something like drugs, I am relating the job itself) . In our current system I agree they must be legalized, and they should even in the early to middle stage of a socialist society. But this is because drugs (I am not talking about shrooms or weed, more heroin and cocaine) are bad in general, and could fall into the wrong hands. Their legalization is to simply protect the users and the dealers. It is so that the roadways under capitalism for this product are clean and sterile, with none of the uncertainty of street purchasing. It is to make accessible ways of therapy and clean ways of use as to mitigate its human damage. Under transitory socialism all things would be under state control, so that it could slowly work at all edges of the problem to de-escalate the problem, and remove such drugs from humanity forever.
Although I would never call myself an expert or well read on this, just someone with an opinion on the matter.
What if both parties (including the sex worker themself) agree and consent to sex? Is that not consensual?
no work is consensual under capitalism, especially sex work
Nobody gives a fuck.