On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 6:41 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]>wrote:
> Perhaps, but I fear that the cure is worse than the disease. It's a > horrible thing that women are incarcerated in the United States for > prostitution. One can acknowledge this without being pro-prostitution, just > as one can acknowledge that it's horrible that people are incarcerated in > the United States for minor marijuana crimes without being pro-marijuana. > The bar for using incarceration as a means of punishing and deterring > non-violent behavior which is judged to be anti-social should be much > higher in the United States than it is. This is much more important than > whether some academics have gotten carried away with irrational exuberance > about "sex work." > Well, see you are arguing with a strawman here. I don't think there is anyone (at least on the Left, broadly defined) who thinks that criminalizing sex work is a good thing or supports punitive incarceration of prostitutes. And that's the problem: a lot of people on the Left arguing with straw-men, and then coming out on the other side with this claim that sex workers are just workers. If they are exploited, they are no different from any other worker, who by definition are exploited by owners under capitalism. Differences if there are any between sex work and other work are minor and a matter of degree rather than of kind. I say nonsense, and I am glad to see someone like Politt weigh in on this. -raghu.
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