this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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well this is a delicate area because people have the right to be attracted to whoever they want to be. It's not racism to not be sexually attracted to a certain race. Just because a woman is a prostitute doesn't mean that she is required to say yes to every man.
But wouldn't that be an argument for not treating sex work as a form of labor like any other? I wouldn't have any problem saying a plumber or store owner or photographer or basically any other type of worker should not have the right to refuse service to people based on race or not being attracted enough to the person trying to get services. I agree that I wouldn't be comfortable applying that same standard to prostitution, but that feels like an argument that there's a fundamental difference between sex work and other, more typical, forms of wage labor.
If you can't see that these two different types of labor are apples and oranges, then I don't know what else to tell you. If a prostitute is forced to service anyone they DO NOT WANT TO, then it becomes sex trafficking, which is exactly the conundrum we're trying to solve here.
I wasn't arguing that sex workers should be forced to have sex with anybody. In fact, I was saying that the way sexual labor involves these conversations about consent and bodily autonomy in a way that no other form of labor does suggests that it's not a form of labor like any other and conversations about it shouldn't start from the premise that it's a conventional forms of labor if treating it like one would lead to horrific consequences like arguing that sex workers should be forced to take on clients.
I guess I was half replying to your post, and half tying it back to the OOP image to say that given the concerns about sex and consent, I don't think I agree with the "all work is degrading, so sex work is no different" position.