I cannot see why it is a less honourable form of wage labour than any other and I can't see the 'feminism' in trying to get it prohibited
Amen to that, sister. I have read and participated in enough debates suggesting that political and economic rights are the important issue and not the imposition some sort of cryptic cultural-moral code.
Excusing my old fashioned ideas, but I seem to recall that feminism is about ensuring political equality, furthering the standing of women in the economy, and even individual autonomy (especially wrt reproductive choice).
People who oppose prostitution in that context are not opposing the trade as such, but the form under which it occurs - namely, slavery.
Indeed. Nevertheless, the authors of said text will demand that the circumstances of literal slavery are also requisite however in other sexual acts - and specifically heterosexual acts*. They also don't have much time for transvestites or transexuals either. Oh, and women who do sex work voluntarily are "gender traitors".
I think it's very important your point that where sex work is not legal human trafficking is rife. Theoretically I imagine that said authors would be at a complete loss to explain why - because they don't understand political economy.
I actually expected you to make the comments that you have. You strike me as a pretty practical-minded person whose direct experience with the most dispossessed in this world would put your ideas in opposition to the interpretations of so-called "radical" feminism.
"...heterosexuality functions more effectively than oppressive systems such as apartheid or capitalism" (Shiela Jeffreys, Anticlimax)
no subject
Amen to that, sister. I have read and participated in enough debates suggesting that political and economic rights are the important issue and not the imposition some sort of cryptic cultural-moral code.
Excusing my old fashioned ideas, but I seem to recall that feminism is about ensuring political equality, furthering the standing of women in the economy, and even individual autonomy (especially wrt reproductive choice).
People who oppose prostitution in that context are not opposing the trade as such, but the form under which it occurs - namely, slavery.
Indeed. Nevertheless, the authors of said text will demand that the circumstances of literal slavery are also requisite however in other sexual acts - and specifically heterosexual acts*. They also don't have much time for transvestites or transexuals either. Oh, and women who do sex work voluntarily are "gender traitors".
I think it's very important your point that where sex work is not legal human trafficking is rife. Theoretically I imagine that said authors would be at a complete loss to explain why - because they don't understand political economy.
I actually expected you to make the comments that you have. You strike me as a pretty practical-minded person whose direct experience with the most dispossessed in this world would put your ideas in opposition to the interpretations of so-called "radical" feminism.
"...heterosexuality functions more effectively than oppressive systems
such as apartheid or capitalism" (Shiela Jeffreys, Anticlimax)