>>483781The whole thing of hating on lumpenproles is stupid now, and was always stupid. And no, sex workers aren't, generally, petit bourgeoisie… like you could say that about a
pimp, but if you're selling sex, images, etc.
directly that you yourself have to
do, then you're a lumpenprole. Being a
particularly well-paid lumpenprole (which is actually pretty rare in sex work ftr) is still being a lumpenprole if what you're getting paid for is sex work.
Lumpenproles are literally just proles who didn't have an "in" to the conventional labor market. Marx himself gets weirdly moralistic when talking about them, as though
everything else was a product of material conditions except these folks who just needed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Sex work isn't
empowering, with the caveat that it at least often involves direct exchange between customer and worker (IE it
can be less "alienated" than waged labor, but so is washing dishes at a commune for 'free')… and it is also usually "off grid," meaning the worker has more control over their revenue in general, even besides not having to deal with middlemen employers. So, in these senses
there is a case for empowerment through sex work.
However, it is also genuinely degrading for most, pay is irregular, most make fairly little, and as you get older it rapidly becomes more difficult to keep doing it, even psychologically. Even though plenty of folks enjoy it when they start, it is rarely the 'first choice' - if sex work is all you're doing, you most likely have been rejected from even being considered at any conventional job you applied to, and this is very common. If it's
not the only thing you're doing, then you likely do other service work which simply doesn't cover basic expenses. It's not the thing some people try to glorify it as, the average sex worker is not wealthy.
Sex work
is real work, but it also becomes more common as a result of society both devaluing other forms of labor and keeping unemployment artificially high. There is no reason to shame or punish sex workers, nor is it necessary to alter the system to
disincentivize sex work specifically. All you have to do is reduce cost of living and unemployment, and you will reduce the amount of sex work in the long term. As it is, though, the US has become a society where being a whore
actually can be more dignified than being a retail worker, and the problem isn't that our
whores are too dignified, it's that our retail workers are treated & paid like absolute dogshit.