thoughts on porn and women in sex work?!

Hi! I think this is a really complex issue and there's not really one answer. Personally I morally disagree with sex work as a business mainly due to the treatment of women within these fields. For the sake of simplicity I'll only be focussing on women in sex work. 

Porn and sex work rely on the consumer seeing sex workers as objects to be bought, these women are not seen as people but rather their bodies and what they can do, I believe there is no ethical consumption of pornography or participation in prostitution due to this. However this does not mean I do not support women within the industry.

The idea that lots of us have of sex workers are rich and famous porn stars who can survive solely off of their content, however this is a flawed belief set. The average only fans creator makes just $150 a month so around $2000 a year, obviously this is not enough to survive on. These woman are often forced into sex work due to finical issues, in a society where women are continually objectified sometimes the only option for those in need is turning to sex work, this adds an extra level of complexity to the idea of sex work ever being morally okay. 

Recently I read a very interesting academic journal on the morality of sex work, it's called A Moral Analysis of Prostitution, if you search it up it should be the first result. The journal comes to the conclusion that any sex act that takes place between two freely consenting adults is morally acceptable. I disagree with this notion due to the fact that sex work involves some sort of monetary trade, whether that be money, housing, food, etc, because the existence of a monetary trade for access to a woman's body affects the woman's right to freely consent. She is swayed whether through necessity and often desperation to consent to sex acts, therefor by definition this makes sex work morally unacceptable.

However, touching on my previously point, if woman are forced into sex work due to the results of capitalism and the patriarchy why should we as feminists diminish them as fellow woman and not support them. This is why personally I support individual sex workers, however I do not support the industry. 

If you're interested in reading up on this I suggest Pornography by Andrea Dworkin.

I realise this is a very long winded answer to your question but I hope it interests you! def msg me if you want to talk more I'm trying to link with some more feminists on here and so far Ive only found incels lol.

totally agree with the other reply!

i used to not see the problem with sex work because i believed that it was a choice and that the women in the sex industry chose of free will to be on there, however my belief has shifted quite a lot in the past 3 months. 

i wanted to add some historical context to the other reply too.

historically only very recently since the 1st world war has women been able to take on jobs traditionally held by men. During the 1st world war a lot of women needed to take on jobs primarily worked on by men such as work in factories, offices and other jobs important to keep running a functioning society while men was being sent into war. After the war ended there was a lot of 'propaganda' pushing women to return to traditional domestic roles. 

During this post world war time and before, one of the only jobs a woman could get was to become a prostitute. 

For a long time (ofcourse depending on where you live!) women weren't even allowed to own money for themselves, it either had to be tied to their father or their husband. Meaning that for one of the only "jobs" a woman could get - was to become a prostitute - lies in a deeply misogynistic belief that the only thing of value from a woman is her body.

That's another reason why I simply can't support the sex *industry*. However i will say i have a distaste for women who tries to advertise sex work (ex. OF) as an empowering or feministic choice.