John Young on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:08:01 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at @transmediale |
The main missing topic of sex work is marriage. No other institution promotes as fiercely and mercilessly -- and religiously blesses by god -- the subjugation of women to men for work in sex, house, reproduction, child care, health, education, second job for less pay, name change, financial dependency, social stigma of the unmarried and unchilded, forebearance of adultery, prostitution and disease inheritance, workplace and taxation bias, the list is easily extended and has been by feminists to little avail against male (wife-stroked) conceit as seen here. Focusing on paid sex work has always diverted attention from marital exploitation, even to the extent of persuading women that marriage provides safety from bugaboo prostitution. What goes on inside officially legalized households, dominated by males as if a birthright (and a singular responsibility), with societal affirmation of domestication of women is despicable despite worldwide abuse typically sanctified by male-dominated institutions -- philosophy, theology, language, education, military, government, medical, charitable -- across the gamut of societies in which the physically strong reign by male-privilege inheritance, by hook and crook of male favoritism and perquisites, by physical assault and femicide and by ingrained contempt for the male-flattering "weaker" sex except for sado-masochism bought and paid for in every case of marriage. Love and marriage go together like horse and carriage. So young women are force-fed from the beginning to dress, to speak, to behave, to attend charm school and college for marriage solicitation, to consume beautification products, to develop an alluring vocabulary and mindset, to pretend men are heroic and brilliant, to dream of princesses and princes, to masturbate in loneliness or with a similarly abandoned neighbor while the stud has to be allowed freedom to fornicate, how else to survive and raise kids (wanted or not, loved or not, her own or not). Fortunately the hatchet, the poison, the fire, the garrot, the cancer, the heart attack awaits. And the nubile youngsters delivery groceries, mowing the lawn, singing the choir, how they offer delicious solace from the intumescent bulls demanding sodomy, prowling for pedophilic targets in all the dominant institutions. At 07:22 PM 2/15/2012 -0500, you wrote: > >Dear Margaret and others, > >I have been following this thread with interest and feel, that despite >some very insightful comments, something important is missing. >Something that still makes this discussion very abstract and far from >the real issues about sex work and consent. This is because we are >working from a very reductive definition of what sex work actually >is. I believe Dymitri's post on the importance of seeing sex work as >labour started a more nuanced discussion but probably did not go far >enough, leaving us to discuss the role of consent and violence on the >body (and/or mind). # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org