The ethnographical data related below were collected by in-field participant observation by AUTHORS over the course of several different research projects, but most particularly and recently the Impacts of Mega-Sporting Events on Sex Markets in Rio de Janeiro Project, vetted by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Macaé’s ethics in research committee. In other words, although it is not essentially or necessarily liberating, can be relatively liberating when compared to other forms of labor. In this context, sex work can appear as an alternative that offers workers a notable improvement both in the conditions of toil and in the possibility of exercising their individual agency within the workplace. However, as Marx, Durkheim and Simmel (among many other sociologists) have recognized, the division of labor, the monetization of society, and urbanization have tended to objectify those engaged in work in general. It is our contention that this (ab)use of the concept of objectification within the debate on sex work has contributed to a situation in which the transformation of humans into objects to be exploited (often described as slaves) ends up being presumed (rather than proven) as a specific and necessary result of morally stigmatized sex work (prostitution, the production of pornography, erotic dance, etc.) and thus a morally distinct form of exploitation that needs must be repressed through criminal law. This allows them to imagine sex work as a special kind of exploitation, more generally distinct from labor exploitation. Meanwhile, however, we label the contemporary abolitionist and carceral feminisms ( Bernstein 2007) as prohibitionist feminism 1, 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. 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 thus no more or less necessarily objectifying than other forms of labor ( Da Silva and Blanchette 2017). As we shall show below, however, concerns regarding the transformation of human beings into things not only underpins feminist understandings of sex work as exploitation, but also classical sociology in its attempts to come to grips with labor exploitation under capitalist modernity. For a powerful wing of feminism that has heavily influenced many States in the confection of sex work laws-particularly 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. The article below presents our thoughts regarding exploitation and sex work ( Leigh 1997), centering on the concept of objectification. 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. 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. 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). 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 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.
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