Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 12:55:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-FEM: Prostitution


Yoshie, 

I found the post in which you indulged my desire to abstract from issues
of morality very wonderful.  I have, BTW,  no doubts about the fact that
under capitalism sex work is very alienated labor.  One way in which I found
your analysis wonderful was the way this abstract, bare-bones explanation  
of the alienating factors of sex work turned out to be, mutatis mutandis,
similar to how one would describe the alienation of doing commercialized
art under capitalism -- or of doing any work that in its essence, so to
speak, is erotically charged (as perhaps all worthwhile work is). 

I have some performance-art friends who have, in recent years, increasingly
gotten into doing performances for one person at a time (they are probably
not the first to invent this concept).  These performances are completely
different for each person; they are a form of individual, private gift.
I find that this somehow connects to the sex-work thread because it is an 
attempt to reconstitute the artist/recipient relationship along the lines of 
how we think of sex -- as an intense private encounter between two people.
It seems to me a declaration of a perceived impossibility of connecting 
to art's erotic core (if it has such a core) under the present conditions 
of public performance.  


-m