[LAF] UPDATE: Post action statement from > no pretence

[steve ash]

This is very confused in my opinion (and most of my opinions have been informed by feminists). The most serious confusion is over the word 'commercial', which seems to be conflated with 'financial'. In a future perfect world porn and prostitutes will of course be free, or at the very least based on some kind of personal trade, but under a capitalist system money is often exchanged (though by no means always), as any service that takes up time will be diminishing potential work hours and therefore income. And we are talking about sex workers themselves here, not their exploiters and not people using their leisure time for fun. So I have no problem with sex workers charging a reasonable fee for their labour like any other.

The idea that this supports stereotypical sexual objectification is wrong, and is again based on the ambiguity of this word 'commercial', if profiteering is meant then yes I'd agree, all profiteering panders to the current ignorance of the masses, but this is not the case for all financial transactions, some of which are simply based on a fair wage. Beyond even this, for good or ill, many 'niche sites' now market 'ugly' or 'deformed' people, or those not considered conventionally attractive, for the fetish market and appear to be profitable (Capitalism is very sophisticated these days, at least when in boom). I don't like this myself when it involves exploitation as it then not only exploits but can reinforce 'unatttractive stereotypes', but again if sex workers are self empowering and are confident about their own 'attractiveness' to those who find them so I have no problems with it. Ultimately of course attractiveness should not be just about surface
 appearance, or fetishized images (though these will always be a factor in most people), but about the whole person. But that is an area of future psychological health we can only hope for in most people at the moment.

The final error in this is I believe its over emphasis of free will and moral abstraction over economic and psychological realities and their limitations. While I think both extremes are valid factors, I would never
privilege one over the other, to privilege material factors over ethics (the Marxian error) would be immoral, but equally to privilege abstract principles over material reality is oppressive and dangerous. The fact of the matter is people seldom have absolute free choice (even without coercion), and even if they did, free will itself is extremely limited in the psychological sense and may not even exist. To argue that people should behave in a certain way in order to be 'moral' or achieve some 'social good', is not only the kind of oppression normally associated with Christians, but is unrealistic and counter productive (turning the majority of people against their perceived oppressors), thus it does not help the feminist or anarchist cause one bit. A more sophisticated approach than this is called for. Similarly it seems to be privileging abstract society and the 'social good' over concrete individuals and so is another collectivist tyranny. Great if it
 worked and liberated us all in one social sweep, but it doesn't for the reasons given above, it is just another naive socialist fallacy that actually hinders the development of genuine free socialism. 

Steve