this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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GenZedong
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This entire thread smacks of weirdly sexist brainworms to me
I’m not even talking about this because I’m believe in that “feminism is only about individual choice!” bs, but because it’s weird to imply that wanting to be a prostitute instead of a medic or a cook is some kind of mental degradation, and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross
...Is it? I do not think it is a stretch to say that the despersonalization of a human being into a sexual object is indeed pretty degrading.
Helping the wounded and the starved are the main tasks that volunteering organizations play in any warzone, be it either men or women. It is the kind of thing one volunteers for unless they are in the very small minority of people who are either dense enough or who have enough of a death wish to go there to fight and get blown up by an Iskander missile (RIP Reddit battalion).
I mean, yeah, wanting to have sex is a pretty normal desire for a lot of people, so it’s not a surprise that some people would choose to do so professionally. There are definitely systemic issues at play that coerce people into becoming prostitutes, which makes the industry very bad altogether, but if removed from that context it’s pretty reasonable (and neither of the comments in the chain really seemed to have been complaining about the context)
Good grief. I am sorry, but that stances like this one come from the mouths of comrades is the reason why I always object when a communism study guide for beginners does not include texts from Alexandra Kollontai.
Sex under coercion is rape. Work under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is done by proletarians under economic coercion as they have to work to be able to fulfill their basic needs. Therefore, sex as a means of living, or in other words, prostitution, is rape.
You have four options at this point: you can either accept this fact and move on; you can deny that work under a bourgeois dictatorship functions by placing working class people under economic coercion, a point at which you should consider why call yourself a communist anymore; or you could either deny that sex under coercion is rape or, heavens forbid it, that rape is acceptable under any economic system, both actions that would get yourself immediately kicked from any minimally respectable communist party. The choice is yours.
I mean... that's why I said "removed from context". All of this is context, context that was missing from previous comments (which read more like "how dare this woman not be traditional" to me). I agree that prostitution is coercive and wrong in every current implementation.
We are in a communist space. You have plenty context to work with: the last thing you have to expect of a critique of prostitution in a place like this is to be done from a point of view of religious puritanism and not from a perspective of principled marxist feminism, which is where @KommandoGZD 's comment and those following them came from.
The bourgeois state promotes the idea that all critiques to the existence of prostitution itself comes from conservative or reactionary perspectives. You are not immune to propaganda: before attempting to write a critique basing on the gut feeling that you get from reading something, try to read what is it that it is actually being said.
Current or otherwise. Prostitution is not defensible under socialism or communism either, and to know why I once again redirect you to Kollontai. I was writing here the bullet points of the text, but I have decided not to as no summary can substitute the proper reading of an original theory text.
As it says in the text, and as it was said in the first All-Russian Congress of Working Women: “A woman of the Soviet labour republic is a free citizen with equal rights, and cannot and must not be the object of buying and selling", and to this day we should still strive to build a proletarian society where this remains true.
“We are communists so we can’t reproduce brainworms on accident” is not a valid defense and you even point that out in this very same comment. I’m not immune to propaganda, but you aren’t, either. Here’s an important question: What about a male prostitute? Do any of these supposed critiques of prostitution as a concept independent of other social context (something that is already blatantly impossible, because no action has any measurable value when removed from all context) hold up if talking about a man selling sex? If it doesn’t, then it indicates the issue is patriarchy, which is a social context.
That aside, because the morality was of prostitution in general is kind of off topic here,
The belief is that this women is an idiot, or some sort of brainwashed fool for deciding to… well, they’re not even selling their body for sex in this case, they’re just having a lot of sex “for free” as far as I can tell. This is so blatantly dehumanizing it’s absurd. It is not idiocy to decide you want to support a military you like by fucking them. It’s weird, and it is not a good idea, especially with how blatantly evil the Ukraine military is and the extremely suspicious power dynamics at play in any military, but lots of human beings enjoy having sex and it isn’t really indicative of someone being brainwashed or being especially stupid for wanting to do something like this.
You could at least acknowledge the wording was a little weird, or anything other than immediately jumping to accusing me of being a brainwashed stooge. I am providing light criticism of the phrasing and tone of a thread, a tone which I think is indicative of a certain kind of brainworms. You can do some self-introspection or not, I don’t really care.
Edit: you are downvoting me far before you would be able to finish reading this comment. I can only assume you’re just pissed about being called out
Are we immune to brainworms? No. Are there low chances that the three people that you have replied to were all suffering from such, when the only thing you had against them was the gut feeling devoid of analysis that you had because of "the wording being a little weird"?
I do not think I am exposed in my day-to-day life to a substantial amount of propaganda pushing for a marxist perspective of the exploitation of women and its abolition. Both of us are, however, exposed to a fairly large amount of propaganda that attempts to promote the prostitution (that you defend) as an act of liberation. These two are not the same.
I am not defending prostitution as an act of liberation? I think even getting into this subject was a mistake, because I only cared about it because of the word “prostitute” being used to refer to something that I don’t think really counts as prostitution.
I was defending the abstract idea of someone having sex for reasons besides direct sexual attraction to their partner, not prostitution as we know or in any form our current definition would work with. Like, I don’t think prostitution would even be possible in a communist society, there wouldn’t be any goods or services to really bargain with if everything, including luxuries, was collectively owned
Like I know it looks like I’m moving the goalposts here, but I legitimately just think that the way I was explaining myself was incorrect
I was thinking of what the woman in the article was doing as prostitution, but thought that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it wouldn’t be wrong. I realize now that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it isn’t actually prostitution in the first place
It might be possible she is getting payment but the twitter post of her complaining about not getting with someone kind of makes me think she was just trying to get with people there? I mean, let’s be clear, being a weird war-sexpat is extremely gross, but it’s more horrifying and cynical than it is idiotic.
Added parenthesis to clarify.
Even if it was possible, it would still imply a form of labor desertion (in other words, social parasitism) by performing and obtaining benefit from an act that brings no productivity to the worker's state, not to mention that it is still an act of objectification. More on that text of Kollontai that I have linked before.
I mean, i think i agree with what you’re saying here, but in the context of communism specifically,
Wouldn’t communism not have a worker’s state anymore? Isn’t productivity kind of just a toxic hold over to be excised once the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary?
Also, what counts as production? Isn’t something produced just anything with a use-value? Isn’t sex technically a thing with a use-value? (Pleasure, or reproduction). Where’s the difference between it and, like, being a baker of sugary goods? Is this suggesting that people who specialize in making desserts should just stop doing that after we achieve socialism because it wouldn’t directly contribute to general production (and their products would disappear immediately after being consumed?)
Not defending prostitution under a communist or even socialist system, especially because i don’t think it’s possible, but I think it not being possible (or being somewhat coercive to the person doing it) would be the issue, not social parasitism (also, where’s the line between social parasitism and just being disabled? If someone can’t work, wouldn’t that mean that by this framework they deserve to either live without anything except bare necessities, or die from starvation?)
People still need to eat, drink and fulfill their other basic needs. "Productive" here does not mean to produce much of something with the least amount of resources possible, but to contribute to the fulfillment of society's needs.
No. The commodification of human relationships is one of the worst blights that exists in this world, and whoever aims to prolongue it is an enemy of socialism. As long as one sees human interactions as something to bbe bought and sold, they will be unable to understand what the liberation of the working people entails.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. You are comparing (in a frankly offensive manner) those who cannot work to those who are not willing to work.
In response to the edited message: I have not downvoted you, nor have I done so in any message of yours other than the first one.
I can assure you, this woman didn't go from Texas to Kiev and got her own apartment plus a covering of its maintenance and of her own life needs with money that appeared out of thin air, with savings or by somehow landing a job as an accountant in warn-torn Ukraine: she is with no doubt charging soldiers for sex.
This woman saw a humanitarian crisis developing and her first choice to help was offering sexual services to soldiers in exchange of money. Yes, that someone develops this way of thinking is absolutely brainwashing done by liberalism.