I'll say it again: “Sex Work is Work” is a terrible take that ignores the colonial and imperalist nature of the sex trade.
Sex trade is at its core hierarchical, classist and racist, with an inescapable connection to trafficing: 90% of the women and children in the sex trade in the US is bipoc and poor, and most of them are in the trade out of economic desperation and/or being forced, not of choice.
To quote the historian Gerda Lerner: “The exchange of women was the first form of trade, making them seen as less than human. This division is the beginning of women's subordination at the hands of men.”
With colonization came seing women's bodies as an open resource. In order to conquer the land, colonizers had to conquer the women. This is a model that has been replicated all over the world. Imperialism, colonialism and the sex trade are intimately linked together, to ignore that is to buy into imperialist lies.
Everywhere the US brings their soldier to war, the sex trade follows, along with rape and murder of local women and girls.
This is a tradition older than US (and Canada), it began from day one of European colonizers arriving on Native land. Rape, murder, kidnappings and trading of Native women and girls is so perwasive it has its own awareness campaigns MMIW and organizations working to end it.
That's because the sex trade is a part of dehumanising women into a commodity, a thing. Rape is a result of that same dehumanising of women.
And just to be clear: The sex trade is the world's oldest OPPRESSION, not “The world's oldest profession. “The world's oldest profession” is a term coined by the racist Rudyard Kipling in “On the City Wall”, 1909, to defend British colonial rule over India.
The oldest professions actually held by women: Hunting, gathering, midwifery, toolmaking, medicine and healing, food making and more. Prior to the formation of private property and the creation of patriarchy, women held equal status and roles in caretaking, hunting, farming and many more professions.
Such levels of prostitution in any society is a clear sign of huge income and wealth inequality, and a lack of social security. It's a warning sign!
How does reinforcing colonial systems of oppression like the sex trade lead us to liberation from capitalism?