Some of us do this job to take back the power that patriarchy owes us.

Sara Brown makes her debut on Lustery POV with a thought provoking piece shows just exactly why sex work can be the ultimate fight against patriarchy

Why sex work can be the ultimate fight against patriarchy

Why Sex Work Can Be The Ultimate Fight Against Patriarchy

Most people think of sex workers as dumb puppets in the hands of powerful men, “selling themselves” (“the purchase of women’s bodies” is often compared in the media to “the purchase of packaged meat from the supermarket”) as if that wasn’t precisely what capitalism wants everybody to do, whatever they do. 

People of all genders are involved in sex work

, although in most countries, most clients are men with money, and most sex workers are women and queer people without.

If sex workers had time and energy to give you their expertise (spoiler: they don’t), they would have the best advice for women and queers on how to be fierce individuals under an oppressive system that systematically undermines their independence and rights to safety, free speech, and basic health.

Abolitionists (those who’d rather abolish the whole sex industry) usually portray sex workers as inevitable victims, 

 part of sex work (men), hiding behind a supposed fight against human trafficking while 

doing absolutely nothing for actual trafficking victims

While these people (often feminists) get praise for “protecting” women and other marginalized communities, their anti-SW agenda is what really makes millions of women more vulnerable to stigma and institutional violence, leading to unsafe work while drawing attention away from industries where traffic is predominant, 

"They get used to understanding that boundaries need to be taken into account and that women aren’t here for men’s free entertainment and use."

they can’t decide what they do with their bodies

, can’t choose for themselves, and can’t have power in sex… While teaching men that they must be the ones in charge, making the decisions, and controlling women’s bodies. Women are patronized, victimized, silenced, censored, sexually harassed on the street and in the workplace, and abused at home.

Women's demands for equal labor rights are overlooked everywhere

 in their private and public lives, while most of the power and money in the world stays in the hands of men who maintain the social and economic privilege they were born with. Sex workers navigate a world dominated by capitalism, labor exploitation, and patriarchy by dictating their own rules and earning money precisely from those gender-based unequal power relations that underlie patriarchal norms…by reverting them (or should I say, balancing them).

We manage our businesses and clients according to our rules and have men paying for our time - that’s labor and our money. We own the power in these relationships, and that power is a fundamental part of our incomes. That, for many of us, is also about reparations.