Right to Sex Work!

This article addresses the question of whether people should be categorically discouraged from buying sex. The Left often answers in the affirmative, arguing that prostitution is a particularly wretched form of labor. However, this argument is invalid.

In their book Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, communist sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith advocate for the full (i.e., bilateral) decriminalization of prostitution. Their reasoning is as simple as it is compelling: you do not help marginalized people by destroying their sources of income or by marginalizing them further.

First, a disclaimer: we are dealing here with prostitution that is “voluntary” in the same way as any other labor under capitalism. It is performed because, from the perspective of the worker and under the given circumstances, it represents the best available option. The alternative might be unemployment and resulting homelessness. You cannot help a person by taking away their best option; you can only help them by providing better ones.

Let’s illustrate this with an analogy: Imagine you hire me as a private cleaner. I scrub your toilet, and like the overwhelming majority of all workers, I do this job reluctantly—but I would rather do it than starve. Now an activist comes along who considers my job so wretched that it requires a different approach than all other jobs. This activist tries to persuade you to boycott me out of solidarity to me. Furthermore, they want to morally condemn, stigmatize, and in some cases even criminalize your hiring of my services. This does not help me; on the contrary, my fridge stays empty.

Every client and every employer exercises power over workers, mediated by economic necessity. In that sense, we are all “slaves.” Prostitution merely represent the special case of the “sex slavery.” In certain feminist circles, the client—unlike all other metaphorical slave masters—is decidedly perceived as a “perpetrator.” This moralistic perspective distorts our otherwise structural understanding of labor. God knows bourgeois society does not make it easy to think structurally, but if we do not want to waste our capacities on useless or even counterproductive activity, we must first learn and deepen this skill.