I wanna shine a light on a recent celebrity prostitution issue that’s currently a trending topic in Indonesia because apparently people got shook that a celebrity can fall in a prostitution scheme, but somehow blaming them for falling into it rather than exposing the pimps

Victim blaming is indeed a problem but some liberal feminists use this momentum to justify sex work and say that it’s their choice to do sex work, hence we cannot blame them for it. WRONG everyone who got into sex work is a victim of coercion by capitalist system

The origins of contemporary sex work are rooted in the systematic oppression of women, yet the debate over the legalization of sex work continues to be at the forefront of third-wave feminist politics.

By supporting the legalization of sex work under capitalism, the classist, racist, and sexist character that prostitution was born from are ignored, leading sex work to be viewed outside of the oppressive context of its roots.

Sex work, was not created as a way for women to earn money and feel autonomous; it has been a way to enslave and dehumanize women, disproportionately working-class women of color. Yet, some still think that the legalization of sex work would be a step forward for women’s rights.

Marx himself wrote on this idea, by connecting the exploitative nature of wage labor to prostitution; “‘Prostitution’ writes Marx, ‘is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the laborer…’ cont—

Cont—- Forced to work in order to survive, the wage laborer produces labor which is not one’s own and thereby becomes alienated from the product of that labor, the act of production, and fellow workers” (Weisberg, 1996, 191-192).

sex work is born from and results in the same alienation and objectification from which capitalist wage labor is born. Since prostitution is a very particular form of oppressive wage labor that is used to keep women structurally subordinate under the capitalist patriarchy.

The central problem with contemporary sex work is that it exists within the context of market capitalism, meaning that it can never be separated from the capitalist system.

This forces people to participate in wage labor merely to survive, which relies on the subordination of women through care work and reproductive labor.

The problem with prostitution is not that women are prostitutes; it is that a market exists that allows this gross injustice to occur, all while shaming women for being subject to it

Another important point in relation to this is the legitimization of the commodification of women’s bodies by people in positions of power. Men with the financial means of hiring prostitutes are able to hire them virtually whenever they wish to

Thus, the male practice of hiring prostitutes is normalized. The irony in all of this is that women face the social, psychological, and legal repercussions for what men view as such a casual act.

The female body is not treated as a body. It is treated as a means of economic survival, since, in the capitalist patriarchy, sex work is often a woman’s last resort.

The argument that sex work is liberating because it allows women to choose their own hours, and work less for the same amount of pay as a traditional 40-hour a week job, highlights the inherent flaw in capitalism.

The women who use sex work as a way to escape this system teach us that it is the system that needs to be changed, as both men and the institution of capitalism work together to elicit coercion in this way.

Prostitution, to conclude, is used as a means of reinforcing the structural oppression of women. In order to overturn the capitalist patriarchy, prostitution must be decriminalized for the women who are forced and coerced into such a jobs, and being criminalized for the customers