Sex work and exploitation: where should socialists stand? Part 2 with Dr. Harriet Fraad

“On the Barricades” s06e22

On the question of sex work, why is there so much division in the feminist camp? On this second episode of a two-part release of “On the Barricades,” host Dr. Maria Cernat and Harriet Fraad discuss the opposing class perspectives that exist on this question of prostitution-- beginning with the malignant role of corporate feminism, which sees gender as the only issue involved and ends up on the side of the bourgeois woman, that is for greater inequality between women within the profit-driven system. Also ignoring the reality of economic coercion involved in the prostitution industry are the libertarian feminists, who tend to argue for legalization and imagine that introducing contracts make a free-market of empowered sex workers-by-choice, who are on a good standing in such work, even liberated from the feudal family’s traditional organization of sex. Again, this purposely overlooks the class factor, that prostitutes enter the field not by choice but by desperation for economic opportunity. The socialist perspective must be based on facts, information and a rich understanding of the problem without disregarding the dignity of the exploited.

Dr. Harriet Fraad has published numerous books and articles, and two podcasts It’s Not Just in Your Head and Capitalism Hits Home, in which she looks at the close connection between capitalism and the social and psychological dimensions of our lives.