Sex work

[Thunderbird is the word]

To look at the arguments of the pro-prostitution liberal left is to enter a strange and frankly kind of gross world in which treating sex as an in principle separate sphere of life from employment--surely a novel and incomprehensible distinction to make!--is just one of 'society's hang-ups', consent to sex and consent to employment should be held to directly equivalent standards, and 'sex-negative' is a non-joke concept.

Reality and rationality may seem strange and gross to those living in a moralistic world of delusion and nonsense, yes.

Again somebody has used 'moralistic' as an insult as if caring about right and wrong when making policy is in some way a bad thing. I think this says more than I could.

This. This, so much.

They keep retreating to attacks on feminism. I swear, half the time it seems like I'm debating with conservatives.

TNF's self identification as a "communist" means that he gets to identify as part of the 'far left' even though he's actually on the far right in this debate.

Feminism has always been a petty-bourgeois movement that is most interested in making sure that women have the same opportunity as men to enter that milieu. The fact that feminists have hitched themselves to the Democratic Party and reject even the mildest demands that would actually empower working class and poor women is evidence enough of that. The petty bourgeois feminist is not out demanding free abortion on demand, he or she is instead demanding only a defense of the existing regime on abortion rights, which works well enough for people who have money (who compromise, of course, the vast majority of members of organizations such as NARAL, NOW, etc., etc.).

Genuine Marxism rejects feminism in favor of women's liberation. We don't think that the only women that should have the right to live full fledged lives are those of the petty bourgeoisie and the big bourgeoisie. We demand that women have the right to free abortion on demand and access to things like socialized daycares, laundromats, etc, etc. And most of all, we don't subsume our politics to petty bourgeois moralizing. There are certainly pseudo-Marxists who embrace every bit of the anti-sex, petty bourgeois moralizing that has come out into the open again in the last few decades or so, sure. But they lack an elementary understanding of Marxist theory. One can be for the liberation of women while not subscribing to an ideology that is fundamentally anti-worker at its core (because of its denial of the class struggle and attempts to build a cross-class 'sisterhood' of women that has never and will never exist).

And no, I'm not taking the 'far-right' position on this. That would be male chauvinism. I'm not a male chauvinist, and I find it funny that you can't seem to distinguish between a position that calls for trusting women to make their own decisions about what they do for a living and support for women being chained to the kitchen. You have some real issues with discernment, be it on this issue or your inability to distinguish consensual sexual activity from rape, as was the case in the thread about the father who beat up his son's rapist.