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sexual exploitation of women in regards to Marx's alienation of labor.

Most men make the mistake of looking at pornography only in terms of the women being beautiful (usually artificially, or with staging) and therefore in terms of competition, an unattainable goal for women feeding into low values of self-esteem.

This drive of competition among women pushing towards market capitalism is true of course in advertising in the selling of products, and in the garbage that passes for "popular culture" according to the media.

However, in looking at the sexual exploitation of pornography, prostitution, and sexual roles of women there are many other factors of far greater impact:

1. Transmission of visual reference of women as sexual tools subservient to men. ( Look at most pornography and it reduces women to objects rather than subjects, this dehumanizes them into a product not to admire, but to abuse and use.

2. Abuse of sex workers in general. This is alienation of labor in the extreme where the workers become psychologically detached from their own bodies. Studies have shown that sex workers predominantly tend to be victims of child abuse and mostly childhood sexual abuse. Their ability to "detach" from their physical bodies allows them to allow their bodies to become objects of consumption.

Many people have a rosy idea of sex work, sex work tends to involve mass production, the mass production in this situation involves either repeated intercourse in such a fashion that it can cause physical repercussions, or "dancing" with a great number of "customers" that causes alienation from the means of production, aka the dancer's body.

3. Abuse of workers in terms as a labor market with few rights. There are members here promoting organizations such as Exotic Dancers Union. The reality is there is a great deal of corruption and organized crime involved with the sex industry. These organizations threaten and kill women and sometimes men that try to stand up to them. Over 1 million women, some men, and children go missing each year in the global sex trade. These individuals are essentially sold into slavery. From a Marxist perspective this is a huge labor issue, from a humanist perspective this is a huge moral issue, in that we regard ourselves in many ways beyond the age of slavery. As Marxists we know that this is not true and there are many subtle levels of exploitation. But the kidnapping of women and children for the global sex trade, as sanctified by the U.N. in locations such as Bosnia for service of global troops is the lowest form of human indignity.

4. Many global 500 companies make a huge profit on the sex trade figures such as $500 million annually just for single companies such as Clear Channel and GM have come up, with no public reprocussions.

From a Marxist perspective this kind of exploitation of sex workers could not continue, we are speaking of billions of dollars in stolen labor. There needs to be a radical departure from the status quo. The present state of the industry would have to be entirely dismantled and restructured in a completely different form, not money based.

Lily Burana who wrote "Strip City: A Strippers Journey Across the U.S." said that as long as stripping is connected to money, that is earning a paycheck it will always be a tool of exploitation of women, no matter how you slice it.

If women chose to dance erotically, and explore this form of dance in a public arena this is fine, it is even fine to receive tributes of affection from admiring men, this has been going on back to John the Baptist, however, these gifts need not be monetary, and if these women had availability to education you would see a system very different, perhaps closer to Geisha or Indian Temple Dancers where skill and intelligence were required rather than just sexual servitude.

Some of these dancers in ages past, it might be remembered became very powerful heads of state, especially in India. It may be that the current frame of prostitution and subjecation.