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4 months agoYou are not a bad leftist. There is no criticism we should give sex workers while we live under capitalism, only in a system that has already guaranteed much greater amounts of economic equality can the idea of abolishing sex work be tackled, and anyone who says otherwise kind of sucks.
And yes, your work is honestly incredibly similar to therapy (I’ve had to hear so many stories from friends in sex work) and is actually very real work, and can be very personally rewarding. Just stay safe!
It’s definitely not your problem to deal with people’s marital status, although if you have personal moral qualms that’s fine (I personally refuse to involve myself with people who are having relationship issues and have turned down a number of people over it (I’m not a sex worker)). In the end it’s work and you getting by, and whatever positives can be taken from it are cool and good.
I’ve definitely seen the toll sex work has taken on others, though, and it sucks. I often think about it in terms of the damage my own labor has done to me, and that fuels a lot of desires to upend the system. I have a friend in the business that cannot help but shame or critique whatever interactions I have with women, and constantly fluctuates between hating men and returning to dating them, and I feel awful for her knowing that it’s very related to not only her personal history but also the work that she now does to support herself. I mostly worry for her overall safety and her future.
It’s all very complicated, and in a better world at least we could ensure that the women doing this work are not being economically coerced into it. But so many of us are forced into a similar trade off anyways