Aidonian's blog

I was reading a treatise of Alexandra Kollontai on prostitution and it got me thinking. This might be a controversial topic. Prostitution is frowned upon by society and the people who practice it are shunned. Some consider Onlyfans models also prostitutes because they sell their bodies for money. Prostitution is when people who sell their bodies for sexual services. I say people, because it isn’t just women who are doing it, but also men.

Is sex work wrong?

It depends on how you look at it. If you look at from a conservative point of view, you will denounce it as amorally and wrong. But is it, really that? Honestly, no it isn’t. Prostitution has existed for centuries. In the middle ages, they even had guilds as a way to protect girls from unsavory contact so to keep their virginity intact. In antiquity it wasn’t frowned upon because they had more open view to sexuality in general. Men and women were allowed to explore their sexuality outside of their marriages with hetairai or pornai, but only the family could produce legitimate heirs. They had means to abort the pregnancy if needed. There are unconfirmed accounts that in certain temples of Aphrodite or Ishtar or Inanna, women practiced a form of sacred prostitution. Whether it is true or not, the ancient world had a very different outlook on sex and sexuality than we do. This view was oppressed by Christians and later Muslims and replaced with a narrow minded view that sex was only for marriage and to produce children, nothing else. This has created a stigma that still exists today. Young men are becoming more and more conservative while younger women are the opposite it seems. But going back on prostitution. Someone with a conservative point of view will think its amorally and wrong. But there is a implied hypocrisy in this view. Its ok for the men to sleep around, but not for the women. They are viewed as sluts and whatnot. This conservative view regulates women as objects of lust and vessels for to bring out children, like that is all what they are good for. Its sexist and hypocritical to say the least. I recall that on Threads i was ridiculed for suggesting to treat OF models with respect as they are also people. I digress. Prostitution is about offering sexual services for money. Whether its short or longer, it doesn’t matter.

Is it any different from workers working in factories? Actually, not that much. the worker sells their strength, their mind, their body to make money and to produce wealth. So, one can see the similarities between the two sides. The only reason the prostitute is frowned upon because she litteraly offers her body for sexual favours for to be paid. Its the sex part that puts people off. Psychologically it could be hard, very hard for women who are forced into it. If you do it out of economically reasons, it is little bit different than if you are a sex slave who is forced to do sex work. Even if you are doing it for economically reasons, it is still a form of force being used to do it, but the difference lies in that the person doing it, has the choice whether or not she or he wants to do it or not. I respect sex workers for the work they are doing. I would imagine its not easy to do it. So no, there is nothing wrong with prostitution. We need to protect the sex workers from being forced into it and to protect them when being confronted by clients who stalk and harras them. We should provide them with the tools they need to be able to do their job: to be able to visit a doctor to have regularly check ups, provide them with condomns, etc… If we want to stop a epidemic of veneral diseases, we must ensure that the sex workers work safely and that they use and demand condomns. In Belgium a law was passed to make it legal for prostitutes, escorts to work but its more about been able to be taxed than anything else. The health of safety of the sex worker does not come into play here. Which is a shame. Its way better than to criminalise it where you forced it into underground where safety of the sex worker is anything but guaranteed.

Do we need sex work?

Unfortunately, yes we do. In our society we have groups of people who for one reason or another can not date or get married, but have needs. While these needs are perhaps not emotionally filled, their physical needs can be. Does this mean, we need to encourage people to go into that business? No, but it doesn’t mean we have to condemn and/or ban the ones that do. People in wheelchairs, people who are adults but emotionally, still have physical needs that they need to be met. The second group might be harder for them to express it, it doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Its a different kind of sex work that they need. Sex work is work, whether or not its escort, porn star, or OF model, its still work. So long as our society, our economic system profits from sexism and promotes the notion that sex sells, women will be steered towards it. I have heard stories of women on Threads complaining that men asking them if they are OF models and when they state that they aren’t, these men offer to pay them for nude photo’s. So in that sense, its easy for a woman to realise that they can make money off it by selling their photo’s or video’s. These same men condemn women who do OF but are the same who will pay women for giving them naked pictures of these women. Its demand and supply really. Most of them tend to do it, I think, to supplement their income with it. Which is not wrong when you take into consideration that women tend to make less money than their male counterparts.

Still we have to be careful because like OF, people are sometimes pulled into it thinking they will make a lot of money when only a top 1 % can get rich of it. At times OF models hire people to do the talking with fans for them. The down side of this is, that for a lot OF models, it means putting in a lot of time and work to build something where they can reap the financial benefits from it. So the question one would need to ask before starting one, is it something one would want to do? One can ponder that most OF models might not be aware of it and only see the wealth dangling for their eyes as motivation before reality sets in.

The same goes for porn. There lies a greater disadvantage for men because they are easily manipulated expendable than women which is why in porn women make more money than their male counterparts do. This is based on a documentary from almost 20 years ago. So I wonder if it still is true today that women make more than men with the rise of various videosites where you can watch all the content.

Conclusion

Is sex work wrong? No, it is not. People who do that work deserve respect. They are fulfilling a role in society. Here i’m talking about escorts more than porn stars and perhaps OF models. Still, all people deserve respect for the work they do. There are exceptions to it like when it involves abusing, hurting children, animals, people in general. Since most sex workers are women, it tends to become a feminist thing as well.

One thing we must be careful about is people being forced against their will in that sorts of work. Like with the Ukraine war, single women were more at risk to disappear into sex trade by human traffickers than anyone else. In those circumstances, women of all ages are forced into prostitution against their will as a way to pay of their “debts” to these gangs. So we need a legal framework where prostitution is legal so that sex workers can be protected against violence, abuse, and whatnot. Unfortunately for sex workers as for most women, the laws are not fully modernised enough to catch up with the times and offer them protection from abuse, stalking, violence. Not just our laws, our education also falls short to offer men and women an education where they are thought to respect each other and teach them about what consent is and what it means.

So long as women make less than men, they will find a way to supplement their income even though it might lead them to some kind of ways that are might endanger them in one way or another. As a society we need to talk with the people who do sex work as to why they do it and why the people do it who uses their services. We need to listen first before anything is done. Even if there are people who want to get rid of OF, sex work in general, they need to listen as to why and then listen to the experts on what they can do. Making it illegal is not going to work as it never has worked before. It only goes underground and the sex workers are more at risk than before.