1. From what I know, I would wager heavily that the big majority of people now doing "sex work" do it for reasons other than free choice. Take away drug addictions and poverty, and create an economic system that guarantees health insurance and regular, non-sex jobs at livable wages, and how many folks will choose sex work?
2. Are we willing to jettison our philosophical talk about alienation? Isn't there something objectionable about purchasing sex, at least in a substantial proportion of the cases? Who do you know who's a well person who wants to go buy a hooker?
3. Contrary to Cadet Cox, I think Freud hit on a few big things, one of which is that sex is existentially linked to primordial feelings and needs that must be protected in order to maintain healthy individuality and social connections. Somebody else fucking my girlfriend (not that I have one right now, mind you!) makes me feel like major, major, major shit. Her going off to her hooker job would do the same. I think that's quite normal and inescapable, though I don't attach any condemnation to people who claim they don't feel that way (though I've never seen even the most extreme libertine not get upset when it hits them). I think non-commodified sex is best, and that it is actually a wired-in and situtational need for the human animal.
4. Isn't sex work always peachy keen for OTHER PEOPLE? Being bossed into flipping burgers or packing window shades sucks. Being bossed into sucking or fucking people I don't know and/or who repel me is many, many times worse.
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: alt-porn & explicit content
>
> >
> > I'm sticking to my point: leftist prudes dredge this stuff up to make
> > generalizations about pornography, which is a genre of fiction, not
> > some monolithic "industry."
> >
> > Chuck
>
>
> Apples and oranges. Fiction is also an industry: Borders, Doubleday, the
> publishing houses, etc. Pornography is one of the biggest money making
> industries on the planet.
>
> Joanna