[lbo-talk] Marriage and Prostitution

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sun May 8 22:52:04 PDT 2005


ravi wrote:


>if i understand you correctly (and there is a good chance i am not), you
>are saying exactly the same concerns apply to prostitution as other wage
>slavery. is this correct?
>
Not entirely. When I choose to sell my intelligence rather than my pussy, it is because my intelligence feels more detachable than my sexuality. I don't know if this is culturally determined or sexually determined.... It seems that men have an easier time with anonymous sex than females...but then it is equally true that far fewer men prostitute themselves than do women.

Otherwise, yes we all come to the "market" (this disguised nexus of social relations) with something to sell for something we need. We all becomes our own pimps, marketing ourselves for the highest value we can get. We all put a price on our heads, on our integrity, on our bodies, on our sexuality and whatever remuneration we get back we spend on building back an "inner life" in the vacuum that this original dispossession has left behind. That's the basic strategy.


>if it is, what is the way out? revolutionary
>re-ordering of the [power] structure? would that work for prostitution
>also?
>
On the one hand, prostitution has been around far longer than capitalism.On the other hand, it is clear that the rate and need for prostitution in Eastern Europe and the FSU has skyrocketed since "free market liberation." So, it's more complicated than to say that a social revolution alone will end prostitution -- it won't. But it will help. Orwell remarked that in revolutionary Catalonia, waiters did not accept tips. They found them insulting. I am arguing that social revolution might have a similar effect on human beings demanding respect, dignity, freedom in general. There is no question but that socialist revolutions helped women make giant strides in Eastern Europe and the FSU; and it's not surprising that feminism and socialism grew up together in the west. (The identity politics that started in the seventies were not a good turn.) I AM arguing that prostitution is NOT a form of sexual liberation. It may be that there are individuals who must act out the fantasy of prostitution as a form of therapy. But that's a fairly rarefied thing.


>or, are you saying that prostitution, by its very nature, is
>exploitative (and requires something similar to the current structures,
>in order to exist), and any re-ordering of structure would wipe out the
>supply side, since no "empowered" (yes, i know you hate that word ;-))
>human is going to voluntarily take up prostitution?
>
See above.

Joanna


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