Sunday, February 24, 2008

Why do you have such a beef with anarchist sex workers?

Because they are exchanging their labor and their bodies for money and then turning that around to somehow present as a part of their anti-capitalist radicalism. Sex work is just another form of exploitation and should be seen as such even by the people who think it's no different from working retail. After all, aren't you fighting for a revolution after which nobody has to work retail either?

Also, the anarchist movement on the whole tends to be very good about women's issues and very pro-feminist. It pains me to see well-read radical people who identify as anarcha-feminists and feminist allies doing something so highly anti-woman and pro-patriarchy as supporting and endorsing sex work.

2 comments:

Dykonoclast said...

Are you then making no distinction between 'radical' sex workers who think sex work is awesome and radical sex workers who fucking hate the shit out of it, but do it because it's temporarily more practical/accessible or perhaps less repulsive than telemarketing, retail and food service? Leave us not forget that Valerie Solanas Herself repeatedly resorted to sex work to make ends meet.

A. Nonny Mouse said...

You know, this is a good point. I think what I am discovering as I write more and more is that for so many people "radical sex worker" is an identity. "Sex working feminist" is an identity. And I was addressing to the identity rather than to the radical who happens to be a sex worker. I should make this more clear.

Finding sex work repulsive, but somehow less repulsive than retail is little more than absorbtion of pro-sex work propoganda which tries to blind women to the downside of sex work and over-emphasize the negative aspects of alternative jobs. However, holding this view would excuse some of the apparent conflict between being a sex worker and an anarchist, and my paragraph does need some tweaking because of your point.