Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]

I think Gaia answered that question pretty well in the affirmative, as have countless communist sex workers before her, that yes, it absolutely can and does help people, including women. Anyone who says otherwise is discounting the voices of women and comrades. That doesn’t mean there aren’t terrible examples of exploitation in the sex industry and that it isn’t dominated by power imbalance. But so too are there terrible examples of exploitation and abuse in most other low wage work. From miners to service industry workers. Sex work is work, and it doesn’t deserve scorn or disdain any more than any other form of work. As communists, this should not be a difficult concept to grasp, but unfortunately patriarchal, reactionary brainworms still infect a not insubstantial subset in some leftist spaces.

You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s disgusting that bigoted prudes like JucheBot1988 worm their way into ML (or general leftist) movements and instigate this kind of unnecessary shame. You are a worker, you have every right to be proud of the real work you do, and there is nothing wrong, certainly nothing shameful, about enjoying your work to whatever degree you do. Just as all workers, sex workers can both find enjoyment in their work and rightfully lament the ways in which that work is exploited under capitalism. And like any other form of work, there is nothing inherently exploitative about sex work itself, but again, only how it operates under the capitalist mode. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but personally, I find that these kind of reassurances and solidarity from comrades can go a long ways in reminding me that I also have nothing to be ashamed of with respect to my own past work. Especially when sexist SWERFs start going off on their slimy tirades.

Please do not listen to fools like JucheBot1988. They have an agenda, and it’s gross, but that doesn’t mean you (or anyone reading) need to take their reactionary bile to heart. Notice how they weaseled their pet issue prudery into a completely unrelated post, and the outright sexist implication that women are incapable of enjoying expressing their sexuality online. lol. It really is laughable, actually. They have some weird fucking issues, but do not let that effect you or cause you to feel any shame whatsoever. They’re no more worth listening to than chud transphobes and racists are.

Meanwhile most of us, certainly myself, only want to express solidarity, empathy, and compassion for our fellow workers like you.

Not a bad post except for that you just had to throw in some sexist SWERF garbage in #7.

Thank you for extra information. If you’re the person I think you are, then I felt like the scrubbing of all your old comments/posts was a big loss to the collective information and wisdom that can be found by digging through hexbear. I rolled my eyes at the foolish decision to remove your informative comment here in this thread. I mean, agree or not, it’s great having an actual Chinese perspective, and then to see it get deleted on a pro-China thread as “ultraleftism” was very funny. But it was a gutpunch when I saw you had deleted all the comments on your old account! Keep posting, comrade, some of us really do appreciate it.

Tankies usually are bastions of political understanding though, whether you agree with them or not. They have to be to stand up to the mountains of propaganda we’re all fed that people are trained since childhood to accept as “simply how things are.” Many tankies only earn that title after developing a perspective that requires spending years reading, you know, actual books, on history and theory and working to honestly understand why things are the way they are, not how they wish they were, nor simply accepting what everyone is told for the sake of reinforcing existing power structures. Hexbear is way out there, yes, since the overton window is so ridiculously far to the right, by design, that it keeps most people from ever even understanding what leftism is. Hexbear is not divorced from reality so much as it is painfully hyper-tuned in to how dire reality actually is.