Talking point:
As a Leftie, I'm torn on prostitution.
I want to support a person's right to bodily autonomy, but under Capitalism all selling of labour is exploitation... it's hard to justify the selling of sex as anything other than rape when the other choice is to starve. I would also be concerned about the commodification of bodies and intimacy/relationships.
But I suppose I'm a pragmatist over idealist and I would support any laws that I felt would protect sex workers and their interests.

@Cocoron If you read what sex workers are saying, you'd know that this point is well dealt with.

sex workers can be raped - to say that sex work itself is rape denies sex workers the autonomy to distinguish between their experiences of rape and their experiences of sex work.

further - all work is exploitation, as people in poverty, we have no more bodily autonomy working in a supermarket or a side street.

@fxck Yeah, my original point was that I don't think full sex work is necessarily rape, but since ALL work under Capitalism is coercive, would that mean full sex services constitute rape, given the coercive element of "work or starve"?

But the arguments I'm seeing on here is that whilst sex work under Capitalism may be exploitative, it is not necessarily any worse than any other form of work, particularly blue collar work. Am I understanding this correctly?

@Cocoron @fxck yeah. What's coercive is that we have to work. Some types of work are more coercive than others, and wealthier people do not bear the brunt of the of the work. Calling sex work "rape" because work is coercive turns sex work into an exceptional case, when it is not. I'd much rather we judge cops for the work they do than sex workers.