Legalize PROSTITUTION Because It’s BAD? OnlyFans. Anarchism And Other Essays 4: The Traffic In Women
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Newest Mindgasms Book Review that is my fourth in a series on a book by Emma Goldman called Anarchism and other Essays. This is a classic text on Anarchism. Goldman was a famous/infamous feminist American radical Anarchist from Russia. She was against the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and advocated for political violence, including assassinating politicians. This episode is about her interesting position on prostitution, which is essentially that she believes it should be legalized because it’s bad overall. Many Anarchists and Libertarians in popular culture today advocate for legalizing prostitution because they claim that it’s on balance, good. It’s the oldest profession on Earth. Prostitutes and madams who ran brothels were the world’s first successful entrepreneurs. Also, the government should not have the right to restrict what people do with their bodies, especially when it comes to exchanging money for sex. Goldman’s take on prostitution is surprising in the sense that her motivation for wanting it to be legalized is the opposite of most Anarchists and Libertarians today. The majority of people who want it legalized see it as good based on principle and/or pragmatism. Most of those who believe it to be bad tend to be the ones who want it to remain illegal. So, according to popular modern perspectives on the issue, hers sounds counterintuitive. She actually comes at the problem with a pragmatic solution though, BECAUSE she sees it as bad. She buys the line of those who are against sex workers, which is that it inherently exploits and harms women. However, since she is an Anarchist, she views this as exactly the reason that it should be legalized. If this happened, the government would control the industry rather than the people. But, she agrees with the majority of modern Libertarians and Anarchists that the situation is worse now because sex trafficking is controlled by black markets and unregulated corporations that give even less of a shit about women’s rights than the government. Like many of the earliest Anarchists, Goldman was against both the government AND capitalism; not just the former, like the historically brand new anarcho-capitalists such as Dave Smith and Michael Malice. With respect to the issue of prostitution, she sees the underground capitalistic control of it to be even worse than it would be if the government took over the industry.
Check out my last episode about Emma Goldman’s essay called The Hypocrisy of Puritanism, which examines how puritans follow their own values less than they claim, and often are just as hedonistic as those who they judge. Also, puritanical values are counterproductive because they make people fail to achieve their goals, due to the authoritarian nature of puritanism:
Check out my playlist with every video in my “Anarchism and Other Essays” series so far:
Check out my playlist with every Mindgasms Book Review so far:
