[lbo-talk] Marriage and Prostitution

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Mon May 9 08:45:36 PDT 2005


On Sun, 8 May 2005, joanna wrote:


> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> Also, perhaps I'm full of myself, but I think I made a valid point
>> earlier: moralizing about one particular kind of wage labor is
>> divisive (e.g., saying sex work "isn't peachy keen" rather than
>> emphasizing that all wage labor is alienating). Am I full of shit?
>> Is that trivial?
>
> Let me explain. The thread got started by my objecting to Leigh pointing LBO
> readers to some kind of cannabis URL that was a collection of about-to-suck
> spreadeagled women sporting joints or marijuana plants. Now, I have nothing
> against the female body. I think naked women are beautiful. I go swimming
> every day for an hour and part of the pleasure is gazing at naked women in
> the shower. Also, Leigh and I have worked things out.
>
> But as for everyone else....this isn't about naked women and it's not even
> about porn. It's about how over the years, the peddling of women-as-whores
> has simply taken over the airwaves, MTV, advertising, you name it. My eleven
> year old daughter is growing up in the middle of this -- this infinite
> proliferation of images that says whore, whore, whore, whore, whore, whore,
> whore, slut, chick, bitch, trick, whore..... this is the image of woman that
> she's growing up into. (If she were growing up in a world of multiplying
> images of nuns and saints, I'd be equally outraged.)

Okay--mass media representations of women tend to support patriarchy. I think most of us agree on that. You did deftly change the subject, though; you didn't really respond to the content of my post. Again, accepting the cultural definition "sex work = bad person" reinforces capitalism by discouraging alliances among sex workers and other types of workers. Is that proposterous? Nonsensical? Naive?

Miles



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list