“I Will Not Be Dona Maria”: Rethinking Exploitation and Objectification in the Context of Work and Sex Work

Thaddeus Blanchette,Ana Paula Da Silva,Gustavo Camargo

doi:10.3390/socsci10060204

Thaddeus Blanchette, Ana Paula Da Silva + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10060204

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Abstract

In many feminist and sociological accounts of sex work, the concept of exploitation resides on the subjacent notion of objectification, codified in the omnipresent belief that the sex worker sells their body. Sexual objectification supposedly indicates the peculiar and particular effect that sex work is supposed to have on the bodies of human beings involved in this form of toil, being one of the keystones for the belief that sex work is inherently exploitative. In the present article, we intend to investigate the canonical concept of objectification and its (ab)uses in the light of a comparative ethnographic study of sex work and other jobs in the service economy in the cities of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and New Orleans (USA). Our argument is that the concept of sexual objectification has its roots in pre-capitalist morality, encoded in Kantian philosophy, that is hardly applicable to real life in the 21st century. A more general and intersectional understanding of objectification and agency in the broader field of engendered labor relations is necessary for us to understand why people choose to engage in sex work, why laws which see sex work as synonymous with exploitation and slavery must be rethought, and how they might be rethought.

Highlights

The article below presents our thoughts regarding exploitation and sex work (Leigh 1997), centering on the concept of objectification
For a powerful wing of feminism that has heavily influenced many States in the confection of sex work laws— those States that have adopted the so-called Swedish Model of client criminalization (Hernes 1987)—objectification has become a shibboleth indicating the inevitable and particular effect that sex work supposedly has on the women involved in this form of labor
As we shall show below, concerns regarding the transformation of human beings into things underpins feminist understandings of sex work as exploitation, and classical sociology in its attempts to come to grips with labor exploitation under capitalist modernity

Summary

Introduction

The article below presents our thoughts regarding exploitation and sex work (Leigh 1997), centering on the concept of objectification. A significant portion of Marxist-informed feminist sociology has moved on from Marx’s initial understanding of prostitution as essentially lumpenproletarian, situating sex work as work and no more or less necessarily objectifying than other forms of labor (Da Silva and Blanchette 2017). We label the contemporary abolitionist and carceral feminisms (Bernstein 2007) as prohibitionist feminism , rooted in the works of Dworkin (1989) and MacKinnon (1985), which harken back to the idealism of Immanuel Kant in their understanding of sex and work.

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