Edited by Lynn el Masri and Bachar Bzeih
CW: mentions of sexual violence and assault
A popular rhetoric commonly used by liberal and sometimes radical feminst circles about sex work is ‘sex work is work.’ Such phrases provide a borderline lazy framework for the nuances that surround sex work. The phrase ‘sex work is work’ is often used to convey ‘sex work is empowering,’ a shallow analysis and excuse for the vehemently pro-sex work feminist ideology. In reality, ‘sex work is work’ should be interpreted as ‘sex work, similarly to other types of work under capitalism, necessitates proper working conditions and sex workers are entitled to legal protection.’ In her essay titled Gender, Consumption, and Commodity Culture, Mary Louise Roberts points out how feminism and capitalism are at odds and contrasts them by stating, “if the woman-as-consumer is a familiar figure of modern life, central to narratives of family and household, the woman-as-commodity, usually figured as a prostitute, is situated where capital and sexuality meet.” As such, Roberts highlights the fact that gender and power are central to the inner workings of modern cultures, specifically western cultures. Oftentimes, liberal feminists tend to enthusiastically defend sex work as it opposes reactionary or puritanical beliefs, inadvertantly (or purposefully for that matter) setting aside the profession’s consequences. This article is not about the moralities of sex work, but rather it aims to delineate a socialist and feminist analysis of sex work in our post-modern, late-stage capitalist era.
What is Sex Work and is it Really Like All Other Work?
Sex work is an umbrella term used to describe professions such as prostitution, stripping, escorting, being a cam-girl or a porn actor, and/or being a sugar baby. Liberal rhetoric– in an attempt to de-stigmatize sex work– often claims that sex work is equal to other kinds of work. Such a statement is meant to normalize and legitamize the sex industry, but this is problematic because it protects the pimps and the buyers/consumers more than those who are coerced into the industry. The reality is that sex work is not like a desk job or being a waiter because the type of labor (sexual labor) being sold or commodified is different. In their article A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of Sex Work, author Esperanza argues the following: if under capitalism one is expected to sell their labor-power in order to make ends meet, then the individuals cut from the formal economy are coerced into selling what they have left, which is namely their bodies. This is then followed by another argument: what matters is to study what the commodity being sold is and if sex work is socially necessary for its existence to be justifiable; it doesn’t matter whether it’s appropriate to define this labor as the generally understood form of work. This is further elaborated in another article by Esperanza titled The problem with the phrase “sex work is work”. In the latter article, Esperanza highlights that the workplace hazards that are part of the sex industry, such as the different forms of male violence and assault, deportation, arrest, and/or eviction are inherent and woven into the profession. This renders sex work deviant from other types of labor, and thus the phrase “sex work is work” becomes obsolete and devoid of any depth.
Pro-Worker, Anti-Industry: A Marxist Analysis
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist writer J. Moufawad Paul argues the following in his blog-post titled On Privileged Engagements with the Sex Industry: “those who argue for the essential liberating aspects of sex work––and thus that sex work is not part of patriarchy––are either people who have never experienced sex work, or people who possess the class agency to dabble in sex work without any of the repercussions experienced by the vast majority of global sex workers.” In other words, the pro-prostitution position that is adopted by so-called progressive feminist circles that preach the liberating potentials of sex work does not take the material conditions of the workers into account.
This is to say that there is a vast difference between sex workers who come from an upper class background and proleteriat sex workers: privilege and the right to exit. Upper class sex workers have the option to simply stop, without jeopardizing their means of income because there’s a safety net to rely on: either access to another job, savings, family money, etc. In addition, they have the greater privilege of setting more boundaries and picking clients to their choosing because their involvment in the sex industry is not a necessity, but rather a transgressive activity that they choose to partake in. Hence, the sex workers who posses class agency can afford to decline certain services if they wish to do so, so their boundaries are more likely to stay unviolated than the proletariet sex worker. On the other hand, proleteriat sex workers do not have that right to exit because their labor necessitates their income and thus their sustenance. In the words of Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”
Capitalism contains contradictions. One of which is between the capitalist class and the working class (this is manifested through the class struggle). Another contradiction is between the private ownership of the means of production by the capitalist class and the development of the productive forces (this is manifested through chronic unemployment and periodic economic crises). In reference to the sex industry, the capitalist class would be , the pimps, the johns, the buyers, and the traffickers who create the working and material conditions of the workers. In reference to Marx and Engels’ periodic commercial/economic crises of capitalism that threaten the bourgeoisie, author Esperanza asserts that these crises “necessitate more violent conditions for women in prostitution. This is especially true for those on the lower end of the strata.” It’s one thing when your labor is commodified, and another when your very body is the commodity. A dangerous consequence of that is that the line between consensual and non-consenual sexual labor becomes very blurred. In their book Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, Juno Mac and Molly Smith point out that a common misconception among the buyers and the johns is that sex workers are not only offering their bodies, but also their purchased consent. The fact that this dangerous belief “can be claimed about sex workers shows how deep the belief goes that women who sell sex give up all bodily boundaries,” and if these boundaries are meaningless then violence and assualt are inherent to the conditions of sex work.
Imperialism, Globalization, and the Sex Industry
In order to fully dissect the sex industry, we must look at it as a global industry. The current that preaches pro-prostitution and the liberations that the sex industry gives women and queer people is largely hegemonic in first world countries i.e. North America and Europe. The reality is that under modern globalization, feminist goals and the notion of women’s rights have fallen under an essentialist understanding of women. This essentialist understanding, in turn, provides an imperialist and ethnocentric feminist agenda that veils the cross cultural demands and experiences of non-Western or non-white women. In her Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction, Martha E. Giménez argues, “this polarization of views expresses, at the level of ideology, the uneven material development of the capitalist world.” As such, the global sex industry or sex trade has been especially exploitative and sexually abusive to women of color, but is guised by the argument that it was these women’s choice to travel for “better working opportunities.” The truth is, the global sex trade is most beneficial to upper class and settler men because it allows them vast access to the bodies of proleteriat women, and this is best exemplified through an analysis of sex tourism.
The general case is that sex consumer travels to poorer countries such as the Philippines or Thailand and visits massage parlors or sex clubs for a cheap price at the expense of working-class women. Working class women are coerced into cheap labor because, as previously iterated, their profession necessitates their wage, and in turn, their sustenance. This is explicit exploitation. And while it is true that it is mainly upper class men who are the consumers in the sex industry, men of the subordinated classes also partake in said consumption. Consequently, as Esperanza put it best: “when proletarian and petit bourgeois men get to buy women too, they develop a false consciousness and build solidarity with bourgeois men of their own gender rather than aligning with women of their own class.” Class solidarity is broken and the hegemonic social relations placed by the ruling capitalist class are maintained and reinforced. Esperanza also adds, “While there might have been some amount of sexual exchange in tribal communities prior to colonialism, it is imperative to understand that it cannot be understood as prostitution which started in the slave/master mode of production and passed through feudal Europe where it overtook the world.” Ultimately, settler-colonialism gave rise to the material conditions which coerced women to partake in the sex-trade.
Reformation or Abolition of the Sex Industry?
When faced with criticism, pro-sex work feminists who view themselves as sex workers’ defenders often retaliate with accusations of sex-negativity and other forms of puritan beliefs like being anti-sex or anti-sex worker. This is a tired rebuttal. The truth is, one can be anti-sex industry while being pro-worker. In an interview with Janice Raymond, the co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Raymond asserts, “people who turn this anti-sex industry advocacy into a kind of anti-prostitute philosophy should be honest about the fact that they really don’t want to see the buyers criminalized.” The liberal line of philosophy that vehemently upholds the belief that it is sex-workers’ choice to partake in the industry risks being reductionist and wholly apolitical. Esperanza expresses, “far from socialist, such sex trade positive feminists are actually deeply influenced by liberalism, an ideology marked by intense individualism and developed by the rising bourgeoisie in the revolutionary period from feudalism to capitalism.” As such, even if there are instances of sex workers being at the top and having their own agency, then supporting the sex industry on the pretense that every sex worker has the capacity for such success comes at the cost of proleteriat and colonized women. In addition, the notion that sex work is, in essence, radical by-and-large benefits the pimps, the johns, and the consumers.
While it is important to decriminalize and destigmatize prostituted people and those coerced into sex work, it is of equal imporance to hold accountable those who run the brothels, the sex clubs, and the parlors. It would be of no benefit to criminalize the individual women in the industry. The foundations upon which the sex industry lay upon make its reformation futile, because the industry essentially largely benefits bourgeois and upper class men, thus, there will always be a class struggle and the power dynamics will favor the buyer. Also, as long as womens’ bodies are commodified and centered about the industry, then the inherent working conditions will remain dangerous. It is imperative to note that the patriarchy and capitalism go hand in glove, mutually reinforcing each other. Therefore, by ensuring the right to exit, the protection of racialized groups of proletariat women, and increasing economic opportunities that facilitate the exit from the industry can we reach the abolition of the sex industry. In The Principles of Communism, Engels remarks, “prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.”
