I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’m curious what others think. Some people argue that sex work gives women autonomy over their own bodies, their income, and their sexuality — that it can be empowering, liberating, and even feminist.
Others say it’s the opposite: that it reinforces objectification, exploitation, and unrealistic power dynamics, and that it ultimately harms women and the feminist movement by turning empowerment into a commodity.
So I’m wondering — where do you stand? Do you think sex work for women is empowering and liberating, or do you think it’s destructive and demoralizing for women and the feminist cause in general?
The only thing wrong with sex work is the fact that it is work.
I think we’re way too weird about sex in general tbh
Individuals engage in sex work and it has whatever impact it has - positive or negative - on them alone. A feminist approach would be to support an individual’s right to self determination. Someone who extrapolates a woman’s lived experience to make a judgment about feminism is likely doing so in bad faith.
I’m not sure it’s helpful to generalize. Sex workers run the gamut from trafficked slaves and the desperately poor, all the way up to very expensive escorts who have full control over who they take on as clients.
I’m just disturbed that transphobic, sex-negative, and sex-worker exclusive “feminism” is becoming so popular again - I thought we already got past in the 60s and 70s - yes, lesbians are women, yes trans women are women, no we shouldn’t align with right-wing movements and throw sex workers under the bus.
ContraPoints covered this in her video on the topic, it’s long but probably worth the watch (short of going and reading Dworkin yourself).
