File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 1088


Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:52:42 -0500
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Rob's perfectly nice hooker friend




>>> Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au> 03/30 2:37 AM >>>



Cheers,
Rob.

PS  I think I agree with Yoshie that clients of sex workers are buying
something just a little different from sex.  That's not to say all of them
would be doing so happily (if they even dwell on the matter), but I think
the exchange relation does do something to sexual relationships that robs
the 'seller' of status-as-subject - this is a good thing for some (who are
a bit of a worry - and should save money in the long term and get
themselves a love doll) and no doubt a bad thing for those for whom
loneliness is a decisive motivation.  Objects don't cure loneliness ...


-------

    I think Rob is saying something similar to what I was trying to get at a while ago regarding the use-value ("you's-value" ) of the commodity sold in sex work. The consumer buys a sort of virtual subject.
    Also, a  while ago Yoshie asked me what I meant by sexual objectification of women. I said sex should be with another subject with self-determination and agency, not as a relation with a object.
    In sex work, although the sex worker poses as a subject , in general s/he seems objectified by the overall circumstances to me, not to say that in some rare cases a sex worker might not somehow "be in control" and be substantially a subject.
     Since we Marxists are about abolishing the objectification of all workers, which objectification occurs through alienation and exploitation by captialist production, it isn't old fashion moralizing to include sex workers in that project. And as with other workers, we wouldn't advocate unemployment for sex workers in the meanwhile in capitalism. Nor are sex workers the target of this critique of  capitalist prostitution.
      Yet, although there will be no commodities in the new form of society we seek, there will still be objects, useful things. I would think that humans as sex objects (virtual subjects) would not be included among those objects.  So, in a sense the commodity produced in sex work under capitalism will be doubly abolished by marxist revolution: decommodification and whithering away of this "object" as an object at all. All sex in communism will be between subjects, mutually respecting each other as subjects.

     Charles Brown

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