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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