Re: SEXPLOITATION? What is at stake in Cuba?

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Comrades,
    Yoshie replies to Xxxx concerning the "Bad" content of Xxxx's ideation
about prostitution,

Yoshie,
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.

Doyle
I would want you to make a better distinction about what is moralism with
regard to Mine.  From my own perspective, not speaking for Mine, how does
one make a distinction then about sex work on class levels as you imply with
regard to what we want and don't want in a social system?  If one steals to
make a living, for example a high class jewel thief, do we then want to
decriminalize jewel stealing?

What is the work that sex performs in creating relationships?  Does the
prostitute really do the same kind of work as a sex partner?  Where the
partners in a really existing sexual relationship are same sex who is the
prostitute and who is the John?

A prostitute provides sex without regard to building other kinds of social
relationships.  Let us take the example of someone hired to whip someone.
That is a fetish.  Is Marxism about commodification of whipping someone?  I
thought fundamentally Marxist wanted to liberate the working class from the
tyranny of such arbitrary arrangements.

I would guess that the fetish of whipping someone is a product of compulsive
cognition.  Is that really serving the needs of the disability involved?
Put in a more common context, does smoking cigarettes serve the needs of
people who are compulsive smokers?  Is that necessarily a moral question?  I
would say it is not a moral question about smoking because the health risks
involved need to be addressed over whether or not something is "bad".  In
fact public health often clashes over morality, since libertarianism wants
to make a smoker safe from prohibition and government regulation.

But people who do reject smoking then go through a process of creating an
understanding about smoking in which they "feel" they don't want to do
something.  A value system is typically how people try to express that
without resorting to calling that a moral system.

The problem with that labeling is that it neglects what exactly goes on with
developing a "feeling" as a really existing labor process in building social
networks.  Therefore it can be lost in that as I think you do above in your
remarks what sort of work is it we want with regard to a future social
system that connects human beings in a vast global network of communism.

You propose if we have a revolution that human beings who provide sex
services would then be able to provide the labor without laws regulating
those practices, except you see a need perhaps for compulsory STD exams.
However, I see a clash in that between what people need in building social
relationships, and providing food in a cafeteria, sex in a brothel,
bathrooms in porta toilets.  What is the social connection that is being
made?  One then is looking at the difference between public and private
spheres of social production.  I don't think you really are trying to
understand how to unify those into a single social system, or else you would
more fully be addressing what is the difference between the two processes as
they exist within Capitalism now.  You are fixated on the autonomy of sex
workers in a public sphere when the work that matters for most human being
is how within the central social core of being their social relationships
are created as a whole of relationships to other human beings.   The work
process of social connection is more whole and different from sex sold in
the market and it is absolutely clear to everyone that different kinds of
labor are being produced with qualitatively different values being produced.

Mine raises important considerations by saying if someone has sex ten times
or more a night, in what sense can they develop social relationships with
other people?  What then is the purpose of creating social relationships
with other people?  What is it that a Marxist wants to see happen?
thanks,
Doyle Saylor