Re: [Pen-l] supply & demand at work

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 19, 2009, at 3:48 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
> On May 19, 2009, at 2:35 PM, ravi wrote:
> > On May 19, 2009, at 2:06 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > > On May 19, 2009, at 1:54 PM, raghu wrote:
> > >
> > > > I mean, doesn't it bother you that there are women in such  
> > > > desperate
> > > > poverty that they are forced to sell their body to survive?
> > >
> > > This is a long debate, and not for PEN-L, but there are a lot of  
> > > women (and some men) in the sex work business who would disagree  
> > > vehemently.
> >
> > But disagree with what? Surely they wouldn't disagree with the fact  
> > that "there are women in such desperate poverty that they are  
> > forced to sell their body to survive"?
>
> Everyone with any sense would disagree that performance of an erotic  
> service for pay amounts to selling one's body (rather than one's  
> labor power).
>
> But who would disagree with that there are women--and men, and  
> children--who are forced to sell their labor power to owners of  
> intensely polluting factories (under conditions worse than those in  
> most any brothel) in order to survive?  So why the extraspecial  
> outrage when that terrible word "sex" is mentioned?
> >



Joanna wrote about this distinction here or on LBO, a long time ago,  
and I doubt I can put it more elegantly than her, so I will find and  
forward a link.

In addition:

That other kinds of human rights violations occur is no justification  
for one type -- the one type under discussion here. It should be  
obvious to all that this is the same *kind* of outrage that marks us  
as leftists. We can, each of us, calibrate our outrage to suit our  
valuations of the violations under discussion. I have no beef with that.

	--ravi


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