EcoMaoism: Animal Liberationist, Environmental Mao Zedong Thought

This theory is for mature audiences only. I avoided saying anything graphic and touched on this from a purely economic angle since other aspects are irrelevant to this discussion.

Marxism-Leninism historically sees sex work as something women, men, or whatever other gender identities are forced into. This does happen, but the term sex work has evolved and it means so many different things to so many different people. Especially in the modern world where people are willingly and voluntarily deciding to partake in this kind of work. There are some very bad things happening with sex work, but human trafficking and coercive practices exist in any type of work. In Dubai their economy has a backbone of people from rural parts of the third world that have no rights or payment due to them. Despite this, people do not put the same emphasis on trafficked labor as sex work.

So why does sex sex work have this huge asterisk on it when communism is being discussed? Trafficking is a lot less likely once people are given education, means to survive and the wealth they produce, as well as democratically control the economy. However to imagine sex work disappearing entirely is to have a very narrow 19th century understanding of sex work. Attractive women or men can engage in this type of labor as a hobby or to make a bit of extra money. Communism historically had many great philosophers and revolutionaries who wrote theory, but to be honest they did not have exposure to the world of sex work that we exist in now. We don’t even have brothels anymore, and everything is online where people are independently deciding what kind of content to produce and where to show it. Content websites under capitalism are inherently exploitative in our current economy where people need to produce content to make money just to survive, but without the element of economic necessity to engage in that, the element of exploitation no longer exists.

If we take away the stigma or the sexual element of this, modern sex work (In most cases) is just content production. It is like being a Youtuber or being a person that posts content online. This kind of interpretation that all sex is exploitative makes me think people get lost in the sauce of upholding orthodox Marxist ideas and they’re viewing it as a matter of ideological purity. Nothing exists in an ethical way under capitalism so sex work under capitalism is unethical, but we can say that for any kind of work under capitalism as well. The fixation on sex work also rings of social conservatism. Why don’t we consider adult films a kind of product that is produced just like music or cinema? Are we upholding a double standard due to our own judgements and societal stigma of some types of media? You do not need to promote the consumption of it, but you also do not need to ban it entirely because it does not fit neatly into your idea of what society should look like. You need to take a level-headed approach to the issue. In modern society, only radical bible thumpers would be happy with such a decision anyway.

The solution to sex work, just like any other type of work, is to unionize those involved in it and defend them from exploitation. Why are we unionizing the masses and abandoning the sex workers, many of whom are trans, BIPOC, or unable to make a living in other ways for various reasons? It would even be logical to take things a step further and keep representatives from the party around in those establishments to make sure no person is exploited or being mistreated in this type of work. Stop looking in old textbooks for solutions to problems that did not exist back then. The best thing you can do for sex work is to stop being so unwilling to touch it as a subject, and fight for the rights of the workers in that industry the same exact way you fight for the rights of any other kind of worker.