Your Body is Not a McDonald's
Why "sex work" isn't "work"
I recently saw an article that women are more opposed, in general, than men to prostitution.
File that under the most obvious headline ever to exist. Men, who buy sex, are more supportive of prostitution than women, who are bought for sex.
(There are, of course, men who are prostituted. But best estimates put men at about 20% of sex workers—and this newsletter is called the Catholic Feminist. So I’m focusing on women for the purposes of this essay.)
As I read the article and felt myself getting angry, as I considered the ways sex has been stripped of its unitive and procreative natures, as I heard about yet another book from yet another feminist claiming that sex work is just as valid as any other type of work, as I saw the audacity of a public-facing Catholic figure claiming sex work can be a valid occupation, I felt my fingers start to itch and an essay start to form but as I sat down here to write it: I’m still frustrated.
While I’ve written before about whether or not sex work is consensual, I wanted to dig even deeper. Because the more research I do, the clearer the conclusion seems.