this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Actually no, both have been normalized to a somewhat equal level, though being employed and selling your labor power is a bit more accepted given how essentially every prole has to do it, and how the entire early life is preparation for it.
The defenders of such concepts though are coming from the exact opposite sides though - exploitative jobs where you sell your labor power is seen as virtuous by the right, where it's the natural state of things or whatever. Porn industry, prostitution and whatever is seen as virtuous by the left, giving freedom to women to use their bodies how they want and self-expression, plus it's an easier way to make money.
The correct position here though is the centrist one - both sides are morons and should be killed with hammers.
For selling your labor power, you have no practical choice in the matter - you have to be employed for some capitalist to extract surplus value from your work while they actively fight against workers rights using that gained capital. If you don't, you don't get money which is a commodity used to buy other commodities to survive, meaning you're risking becoming homeless and without food if you have no support net holding you, and if you do then the wage you get is usually just enough for you to survive + thrive enough to reproduce, bringing more workers into the world. As edgy as it might sound, this is literally just slavery with an illusion of freedom.
Same applies to sex work - it's commodified labor like any other, surplus value is extracted by pimps, be it actual physical ones when it comes to prostitution or porn websites with their own cut. A major issue is consent - if what you gain for this kind of work is money which is necessary for one's survival, how can one truly be sure that what the woman does is out of her own will and would have done it regardless if concept of money didn't exist? What about tens of thousands of desperate women who aren't as big as the well-known porn celebs not having an option to say "no" to sex on porn, or being deliberately hooked on drugs to be dependent on their pimp? It's commodified rape.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Sex work is not exclusive to women. The dependency you speak of is like one step removed from health insurance provided by an employer imo.
You can ask them.
The problem isn't individual preference or whatever - there are definitely people who'd love to bang around, money or not. The problem is the structural coercion, the fact that you're doing it for an essential resource required to survive in today's society, so there's absolutely no way. It isn't done purely out of free will or for fun as some people would suggest.
? The post literally points out that this is true of every job. Sex work isn't some unique evil.
The post is ambiguous enough where it could very well be pro sex work, and there's a surprising amount of comments here having this reading too like sex work being some liberatory, empowering thing as opposed to a form of commodifying yourself
You almost lost me there! However:
OK, I guess?
But I still owuldn't want to put sexual exploitation on the same level as physical labor exploitation.
All in all I don't subscribe to the dualism you present here, even considering that's what OP suggests.