Sex Is More Than Sex Work

A man from my audience writes: "Your arguments are valid and tight. All of the questions you asked can also be paralleled with anyone who makes a living with their body and talent. Performers, athletes, dancers, and porn actors all partake in the action and acts of fantasy for viewers as a spectacle. The primary keystone to the argument you present is held together by the underlying assumption that sex is or has to be something more meaningful than spectacle and entertainment."

He correctly identified the philosophical assumption beneath my argument. And there lies our problem: to view sex as economic versus erotic.

Craig suggests pornography is not the only industry that commodifies bodies, and that pornography reflects capitalism rather than causes social problems. He is saying that porn isn't unique — that it belongs in the same category as professional sports, dance, and acting, and that my concerns about exploitation aren't specific to porn.

He says, "Doing sex is one thing, viewing sex is another." He's separating the act of having sex from the act of watching sex. Two people can have sex as a private, intimate act, and recording or performing that sex for an audience transforms it into a spectacle or entertainment product. I get it. It's a solid argument.

But I say not all forms of labor are equivalent, because sex has unique social and psychological significance.

Yes, I view sex and the humanity of women and men as having a special status. My assumption is that sex is fundamentally different from other kinds of labor or performance.

My argument is that sexuality has an existential and spiritual component. It's different from dance and athletics because it involves intimacy, attachment, vulnerability, embodiment, identity, the formation of sexual scripts, bonding, and the creation of life itself. So yes, I hold it to a higher purpose than objectification and commodification.

On the point of meeting market demand — I argue that pornography is not merely reflecting desire. It actively produces and shapes desire, expectations, and norms. That moves it beyond being a passive market response. I am talking about a significant shift in phenomenology — where human beings change from being something with subjectivity, life force, spirituality, and meaning-making capacity into robots of sexual consumption and dissociative performance.

I can appreciate that a handful of sex workers want to advocate for less stigma and better working conditions. I can also appreciate performers who want to break social convention by being overtly sexual in public. But I am yet to be convinced that a small, arguably more privileged group represents the interconnected global sex trade, sex traffickers, and porn producers — and the men and women subjected to a type of exploitation that can annihilate their psyche and humanity.

As far as personal expression is concerned, I have always said there is a place for personal erotica and art. But pornography does not meet the standards of art. Art is a made thing that tries to show a truth, a feeling, a conflict, or a way of seeing. Good art gives form to human experience and asks the viewer to think, feel, or notice differently. If pornography's main point is to turn a person into an object for sexual use, then it fails the deeper test of art. I say that with my experience as a practicing artist and teacher for the majority of my life.

When you say "savior complex," I understand that as a valid argument. Critics of pornography do risk becoming paternalistic — many sex-positive defenders make exactly this claim. I hold that critique seriously. But acknowledging the risk of paternalism does not dissolve the evidence of harm. It simply asks us to hold both truths at once.