Re: SEXPLOITATION? What is at stake in Cuba?

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mine:

>Nobody, as of so far, has argued that "sex work itself is bad" for
>the reasons you
>mention above (victimizing the victim). You are looking for "morality" in the
>bushes, dude! I have argued that sex work itself is exploitative
>because women (or
>others) mostly engaged in sex industry face all sorts of uncertainities,
>brutalities, beatings, rapings, humiliations, traumas, intimate
>violence, racism,
>and dangerous physical acts directed against them.

I'm afraid that you're saying that "sex work in itself is bad," since
in your mind *all* prostitutes  -- not just those held in bondage,
cowed by organized crime, kidnapped by armies of occupation, etc. --
routinely face "brutalities, beatings, rapings, humiliations,
traumas, intimate violence, racism, and dangerous physical acts
directed against them."  Unlike you, I think that testimonies of sex
workers & ex-sex workers reveal that the working conditions of
prostitutes really depend upon *class* & other determinants.  Some
women get paid for whipping men, for instance.  Both generals and
grunts may be in the same "profession" (armed forces), but working
conditions for generals & grunts are not at all the same.

In other words, it is not the fact that for sex workers providing
sexual service is work that is responsible for dangers that many male
& female sex workers face.  In fact, capitalism & imperialism are
responsible for making working conditions of many workers -- not just
sex workers -- brutal.  Soldiers who die on the battlefield, workers
who are maimed, diseased, & killed in factories -- the list is
endless.  Crimes (such as beatings, rapes, etc.) may be rampant in
this world, but the U.S. statistics tell you that what bourgeois laws
call crime poses a far smaller danger to people than *capitalism
itself*.  According to Jeffrey Reiman, one in four Americans
currently suffers an occupational disease, and "The national Safety
Council reported that in 1991, work-related accidents caused 9,600
deaths and 1.7 million disabling work injuries....This brings the
number of occupation-related deaths to 34,000 a year and other
physical harms to 1,850,000" (_And the Poor Get Prison: Economic Bias
in American Criminal Justice_, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996, p. 68).
These are conservative figures, in fact, and the higher estimates
provided by Reiman include "a 1985 report of the Office of Technology
Assessment (OTA) that estimated 100,000 Americans die annually from
work-related illness" and "OSHA's 1972 estimate of 100,000 deaths a
year due to occupational disease" (67).  This in a very rich nation
with better working conditions than in the Third World.  Numbers must
be much worse in many nations.  And we haven't *even* begun to
discuss deaths by famines & malnutrition, preventable diseases, etc.
here.

Sex workers are by no means alone in facing possibilities of physical
dangers, humiliations, trauma, etc.  As for rapes, women don't have
to become prostitutes to get raped -- most women are raped by men in
their lives, like angry & estranged lovers, husbands, acquaintances,
kins.  Or in prisons & other correctional institutions (like the
young Indian prostitutes who were "rescued" from prostitution and, in
the course of the "rescue," sexually assaulted by *cops* -- see
<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet/SAsia/repro2/comp
endium_on_child_prostitution.html>).

> > >(Sexism is part of the problem,
> > >but it is not just women who engage in sex work -- both before &
> > >after the rise of capitalism, many boys & men have engaged in
> > >prostitution; and sexism, too,
>
>Ohh yeah, there are capitalists engaging in prostutition; there are
>capitalists
>facing poverty; there are capitalists selling their labor power! In fact,
>capitalism is just a social construction! Yippie!  We are  living in a world
>unbounded pluralism with no systemic inequalities.

There are both male and female in the working class, but capitalists
do not belong to the working class, so your analogy is faulty.

*****   Sex isn't sold everywhere in Bangkok, but it's available in
enough places and enough kinds of places at a low enough price to
confirm the First World view that the whole city is an erotic theme
park.  In addition to traditional brothels -- many of them labeled
"teahouses" -- there are massage parlors, floor shows, and bars, some
of each type featuring boys rather than girls.   (Lillian S.
Robinson, "Touring Thailand's Sex Industry," _Materialist Feminism: A
Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives_, eds. Rosemary
Hennessy & Chrys Ingraham, NY: Routledge, 1997, p. 251)   *****

This is a consequence of capitalism & imperialism -- not of the fact
that sex can be work.  The point is to abolish exploitation, which is
to say, abolish capitalism & establish socialism.  In a possible
emancipated future under communism, with no exploitation &
oppressions based on gender, race, etc., it should be up to people
whether or not they would want to make sex work.

Yoshie