Sex work as commodity fetishism? - yeah maybe
http://cornellsun.com/node/22711
This is an interesting story but it's funny how people can have different responses to sex work. Carolyn Byrne has written a book about her experiences as a prostitute and comes to the conclusion that
“The difference between the ugliness of me not seeing the fry-guy [at McDonald’s] as a human being and a guy who gets jacked off by me not seeing me as a human being ... [is that] it enters such an intimate, sexual realm, which is, by definition, something you do to get close to another human being. I think sex work is a really efficient way of alienating human beings from each other.”
Well that's true if sex is "by definition, something you do to get close to another human being". I think it's the reverse - one, by necessity, has to get physically close to engage in sex. This view about sex being "about love" etc. is so feminine - young males don't have a problem with sex for sex sake, sex as exercise even - are they perverse?
She also says, “I started thinking about love and started thinking about what sex really is. I started thinking about what that was actually for, and I thought: it’s to communicate love, it’s to communicate affection, it’s to communicate lust, it’s to communicate trust ... And it occurred to me that the sex industry was this disturbing perversion of that.."
Well that might be true for her but she can't just go around making absolute statements about what sex is "really for.. to communicate love" etc. It can do that, but it's really to make more humans. Sex is for reproduction. So if you are going to get funny about only having sex for it's 'real purpose' you've got to come to the fundamentalist conclusion that you shouldn't have sex unless you want to reproduce.
I'm so sick of this bullshit! I personally don't like to have sex with anyone that I don't love or have strong desire for - that's me and I've made a decision about that, so I don't work anymore. But I can't go around saying what suits my psychology, which is partly a result of my social conditioning and my gender, is the absolute truth about sex between humans.
I wouldn't want to be a psychologist and have everyone pour their heart and soul out to me either. Wouldn't want to be a hairdresser or nurse for similar reasons - too close, too intimate. Are all those jobs commodity fetishism too? Well maybe.