Edit:
Here is a list of resources to learn about sex worker from actual sex workers who are engaged in the struggle for worker's rights:
- https://www.nswp.org/resources/types/nswp-briefing-papers-248
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/white-mans-burden-revisited/
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/from-brothel-to-sweatshop-questions-on-labour-trafficking-in-camb/
- https://titsandsass.com/the-massage-parlor-means-survival-here-red-canary-song-on-robert-kraft/
- https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
- https://medium.com/@katezenjoy/dear-esperanza-5aa7db4d501a
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/decriminalising-sex-work-in-new-zealand-its-history-and-impact/
- https://www.mayamorena.com/anti-equality-model-campaign/2021/5/22/pscegcnr680fh4oazlmwe8i5527o9j
Bigger repo of theory / resources:
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oWxx3yodCJJGxTmqgCeB6csVAeRkllSQq_VUe78MJA4/view
Books to check out:
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36224357-sex-lies-statistics
People don't need sex.
Ehhhh... That's a kinda bad take. Sex and intimacy can be important to some people and their sense of wellbeing. "Need" may be a bit of a conflicted term here (does need mean "will die without it"? Or does it include things like my allergy meds, which I won't die without, but which massively increase my quality of life?), but a charitable reading of the post you're responding to seems to be reasonable - sex work has existed throughout history for a reason, after all.
So, hunter gatherer societies had sex workers?
Really? That is what you're gonna focus on?
Recorded history, then.
So, after the development of agriculture leading to food surplus creating a population of more specified laborers and around the same time we developped debt slavery?
Yes, prior to the existence of professions, the world's oldest profession didn't exist. I'm not going to play stupid games about things that aren't relevant. Spare me the bad faith nonsense.
So that just means one of the first things someone did with their grain surplus was use it to get laid. I don't see this as a positive.
That's nice, dear. "Professions didn't exist before professions" is not the killer argument you think it is.
You are saying it is necessary labor. I have just shown that agriculture, organized civilization and a relatively sendentary life is a pre requisite to sex work. This, it isn't necessary labor because civilization has to exist already for it to be a thing. If the currency of the time is grain as it was and the rich had a surplus then the oldest profession probably came from women having sex with a rich dude so she can eat. Just cause something is relatively old doesn't mean it's good.
Very likely, yes. Sex work has been a trade for thousands of years.