What would a “properly regulated and supported” sex work industry look like then, @Springsoda?
The evidence from countries that have tried this suggest a regulated sex industry makes things less good for the women and less safe, rather than more - cf. Germany.
It’s very touching to put such faith in capitalism to “regulate” dangerous or immoral or exploitative industries. A bit like saying that trafficked Chinese workers picking cockles would be just fine if we could get Amazon to take over managing their employment rights.
And tell me, if an industry is exploitative, wrong and commodifying of our basic humanity, why is it we need to ask sex workers anyway? We don’t ask the employees of Shell to dictate policy on climate change, nor the cleaners at a tobacco company if we should ban smoking, or child sweatshop workers what employment rights would make child labour a bit better. We decide that some things are unhealthy and wrong for us as humans, and we restrict what can be bought and sold accordingly.
We’d rightly ignore it if the Chinese cocklepickers’ collective agitated for the right to be paid half the minimum wage on the grounds that they freely chose to be treated illegally at work. But notice that only when men’s ability to dehumanise women’s bodies is involved, that everyone’s so keen to talk about hearing “voices” that legitimate prostitution by claiming it as a “choice”.
And particularly, on the left where so many useful idiots have lost their heads about this issue, you will find nothing more right wing, individualist, capitalist and market-obsessed than the “SWIW” lot on this issue. All leftist thought flies out the window when it’s a woman’s body that is getting commodified and corporatised, and all the shrieky “progressives” are suddenly all for the idea of sex work as gutsy little small business operations - for all the world like so many tinpot Maggie Thatchers in defence of the small time paid rape “industry”.
Marxism for bros, capitalist oppression for hos - quite quite literally.