[I can read only so many posts a day before my eyes blur badly; if this post repeats others, my apologies, since I picked it out at random from some 150 posts to read.]
raghu wrote: > > That's because sex *is* special and not just another form of work. > This is so trivially obvious that I am surprised that it is even > necessary to point it out. > > Now I am beginning to understand why Michael doesn't like the subject. Well, I still don't see Michael's reasons for disliking the subject. Economics does involve judging what are ordinarily termed "values," and in addition the "sex industry" in all its various fomrs makes up a significant part of the economy. But, honoring Michael's fears/feelings I'll try to maintain a very low temperature in what follows. It is not obvious, to me, that sex _is_ different. One reason for not so feeling is that I do have very strong feelings in respect to the horror of a great deal of labor within capitalism. To regard sex as special tends to smooth over that horror of many occupations - many of which, incidentally, are obviously more corrupting than is most sex work. I am thinking, for example of the "greeters" at the entrance to Walmart stores. That labor corrupts both the laborer (who to survive _must_ begin to regard her activity as legitimate) _and_ the "customer," neither of whom can see the necessary falsity of the implied relationship. Personally, I simply can't imagine subjecting myself to the indignity of smiling in delight at a steady procession of strangners. But more. This isolating of sex as "different" is profoundly ahistorical, since it disguises the social/historical processes through which the attitude that sex is different has come into existence. Like all other attitudes, it is socially constructed, but when you say sex is different you give it a metaphysical existence which simply is not intelligible. And fiinally, the damage which sex work does, for some, constitute an extrme degradation (manifesting itself in drug addiction, etc) - that aspect of sex work is primarily created _not_ by the work itself but by the existence in society of such metaphysical understanding of the work as you express. In so far as that attitude (that sex is difrferent) is elimiante from society at large, to that extent the miseries associated with sex work will decrease. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
