by davidrobertlewis -

ACDP MP reveals life as whore’s daughter

CHERYLL DUDLEY of the ACDP has revealed her life as the grandchild of a sex worker. In an open debate last night between various members of SWEAT moderated by Judge Dennis Davis, Dudley spoke of her turmoil growing up as the child of a sex-worker’s daughter. “This was before I found Jesus Christ”, she said. “Since finding Christ, life had been better” and this conversion had allowed her to “speak openly about prostitution”.

The ACDP does not support the decriminalisation of sex-work, despite research published by the Insitute for Security Studies, showing that the lives of Cape Town’s 1200-plus sex workers could be improved if they no longer feared prosecution from the police. According to Benicia September of Sweat, “police are the one thing we fear”, and many sex workers fell victim to abuse which they could not report for fear of prosecution.

In a lively debate held at Cape Town’s Castle, the problem of child-prostitution was raised, in particular the impossibility of policing in an environment where such practices were swept under the carpet. Bringing sex-work out into the open, would help alleviate suffering and contribute to health in the face of an epidemic which has affected single and married South Africans alike.

 

by davidrobertlewis -

Revisiting Sex Work in the light of Capital and the Pleasure Principle.

PROSTITUTION is considered the world’s oldest profession. The entry of which marks the beginnings of capitalism as an ideological construct through which all labour is differentiated.

 It has been argued that women’s work is sex work, and therefore sex workers should be free to charge for their services, and in effect to gain a living wage.

I will argue that far from being an exchange of labour, the sex act is one of the focal points of human existence, and should rather be seen as vital to the well-being of our species, in effect, an important part of the medicamentum through which all of life is constituted and thus stripped of secondary meanings which various philosophical and religious traditions may attribute it. 

While the recognition of the crucial link between the exchange of labour, on the one hand, (for which very little gained), and the pursuit of pleasure on the other (through which most of humanity has been constructed), is an important part of the equation, a just and equitable work week necessarily includes p-leisure –the pursuit of wealth, health and happiness –, there is however something terribly ironic in attributing all acts of p-leisure to the exchange of labour.