[lbo-talk] Marriage and Prostitution

[Michael Dawson]

> snitsnat wrote:
> 
> >At 04:18 PM 5/9/2005, Michael Dawson wrote:
> >
> >>Joanna sees this.  Why don't you, Ms. Prole?  (What does an RN in SF
> make
> >>these days?  It ain't minimum wage.)
> >
> >
> >First of all, I'm not going to tell you Grace's story, that's her
> >prerogative, but I'll tell you this: I've lived on easy street by
> >comparison.
> >
> >So, SDSTFU for a change and _listen_. Her words were, you'll recall:
> >"(a line worker = prole = staff RN can't do this, you can if you're
> >a NP, CNM or MD)."  If you'd had half clue, you would get what she's
> >talking about in terms of the way the hierarchy of who can do what
> >and where in the health industry.
> 
> Yeah. Being a "prole" isn't just about your income - it's whether you
> give or take orders on the job, how much control you have, the kinds
> of decisions you make, etc. In that sense, nurses are echt proles.
> 
> Doug

Gee, thanks for schooling me on this.  I never realized this.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, it wasn't me who threw the word prole
around.  It was Grace, who apparently thinks in categories to avoid thinking
about how irrelevant her sex-play is to power and suffering.  My point was a
way of saying "quit posing."  Nurses in big cities make good jack, and the
whole "Whore College" shenanigan is so 100-percent upper middle-class it's
astounding.  Will their graduates be walking N. MLK Blvd. and accepting
tricks from drunken, pasty-faced white men in Buick Le Sabres who might chop
them into horse meat?  Somehow, I think not...  Will they be giving tuition
to crank-snorting sex workers from those streets?  Again, not bloody
likely...

This thread has exposed how far from making a political advance we are, for
apparently self-imposed reasons  Refusing to point out that abortion is
surgery and nobody wants to have surgery, and instead just talking about
abortion as if its really a cool process is a sure-fire way to hand the
political right all the ammunition it will need for the foreseeable future.
"Sex-work" talk is even worse.

Apparently, we just don't get it, and we're willing to sacrifice class
struggle by hitching it to hookers and people who love getting abortions,
whoever they may be.

The political right must be laughing its ass off.