I think you’re right here… However, in all aspects of the economy (black, white, and grey), there exists all kinds of levels of exploitation. I’d imagine that even where sex work is legal, there is still trafficking and exploitation of women, simply because the nature of capitalism is exploitative. While legalizing sex work would indeed help with the trafficking issue, the trafficking issue still exists, and I found Kora’s view to be a bit dismissive of the experiences of other women.
While I can agree about using the term “prostituted woman” not being fair to sex workers, Sarkessian is talking about specific depictions of women who engage in sex work and how they are only portrayed in a particular context, not women who actually engage in sex work in real life.
I think this is likely true, especially among the 4th wave.
It’s kinda creepy though, that she has decided the best way to highlight this beef is by jumping into bed with a group who literally threaten to rape and kill women. I can’t even.
The, pardon the pun, money shot. Indeed. Cold hard cash trumps ethics.
Well, I don’t feel that’s really fair to her. I didn’t see anything in the interview where she actually denies the existence of exploitation. I feel like she deserves a lot of latitude to talk about her own experiences as a sex worker (and her experiences of feeling attacked for being a sex worker) without being responsible for the broader problems of society. I can’t imagine how exhausting it is to try to talk about your rights as a sex worker and have someone bring up human trafficking to you every single time (when most of those people are supporting restrictions on your work that make trafficking worse!).
At any rate, I think those will probably be the last words I expend defending someone who self-describes as “libertarian-leaning” Sheesh. Honestly, that part where she said there was a “good discussion”… I’d be interested to read that transcript and see how many people offered any dissent from the “Sarkeesian is bad” theme (except that, for obvious reasons, I would not want to read that transcript).
Unfortunately I think that’s a clientele that a lot of sex workers have to deal with to earn a living. To borrow from @anon61221983 above, I think that’s part of the exploitativeness of capitalism.
Maybe that’s really my problem with her, as that put me off, too.
Sure, and that’s totally fair, but then again, I don’t think that this was ever Sarkeesian’s point about the sex workers depicted in the games and Kora seems to be making it about that. But she has right to be frustrated as our society doesn’t respect sex workers.
Okay, maybe you avoid interaction with transgender issues, but sex workers? You don’t think that criminalizing their profession suggests that we’ve got some issues with them as a society? (If you just heinously misread me and think I was saying that sex workers and transgender people *are problems, then that just isn’t what I meant at all)
Like I said, I don’t encounter cogent explanations. Some people nervously wringing their hands and muttering vaguely about “certain moral implications” or such hasn’t convinced me. It just seems to me that many people are neurotic about sex for no particular reason.
Perhaps their society has such problems, but mine does not. I cannot allow myself to be implicated in treating people unfairly. I always give people some benefit of doubt when they complain that there are reasons why something is “a social problem”, but generally the reasons never come, so I disregard them.
The fallacy there is the assumption that people can truly hate something that they don’t actually know about. Who organizes social structures around mindless emotional reactions?
What on Earth? Pretty sure people can feel emotions that have nothing to do with reality or facts outside of their heads.That would include hating things that don’t even exist, let alone thing they don’t know about.
The parralels to Hell’s Angels are indeed fascinating!
“The Angels, like all other motorcycle outlaws, are rigidly anti-Communist. Their political views are limited to the same kind of retrograde patriotism that motivates the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan and the Americn Nazi Party. They are blind to the irony of their role… knight errants of a faith from which they have already been excommunicated. The Angles will be among the first to be locked up or croaked if the politicians they think they agree with ever come to power”
This is the quote you were referring to. I think another quote is even more illuminating:
“Their backgrounds are overwhelmingly ordinary. As people, they are like millions of other people. But in their collective identity they have a peculiar fascination so obvious that even the press has recognized it, although not without cynicism […] There is no talk among the Angels of “building a better world,” yet their reactions to the world they live in are roted in the same kind of anarchic, para-legal sense of conviction that brought the armed wrath of the Establishment down on the Wobblies. There is the same kind of suicidal loyalty, the same kind of in-group rituals and nicknames, and above all the same feeling of constant warfare with an unjust world.”
I think it also applies to basement dwellers who constitute the core of #gamergate. They are losers, and they know it, hence the hostility, and extreme cohesion, and ganging up on everyone who is thought to challenge someone from the group.
Of course, #gamergate people don’t actually rape or chainwhip people, and thank God for that!
This was my most favorite takeaway from this discussion so far. It explains a lot about US politics as well as the types of forums being discussed. Thanks for this tidbit to chew on mentally, i will ponder this idea.
