My Sex is For-Profit, Just Not Yours
Our whole lives, women are taught to fear sex, sex work, and sexuality. Whether the message is given directly by our parents or indirectly by the society surrounding us, we learn it. Often, we don’t unlearn it.
Cautionary anecdotes tell us that a woman who enjoys sex as a form of liberation is nasty or somehow lesser. While folktales remind us that a woman who relegates sex and family life to mere duties is virtuous and reverent. These stories are told to indoctrinate us into a world that would rather use female sexuality for profit without compensation. The problem is whether we are getting paid or not; women are constantly partaking in sex work. Not because we voluntarily entered into that field or even consciously chose to be sex workers, but because businesses and individual men alike continue to profit from the female form. It is a part of the unmonitored “market for sex and affection.”
Our society doesn’t value female work; this goes beyond equal pay and touches on every aspect of women’s rights. The labor that goes into being beautiful, or even just presentable, goes uncompensated but not unutilized. This is the same with the work that goes into housekeeping and motherhood and speaks to why our society isn’t eager to pay for those tasks. They are a woman’s place - it is a duty, not a job.
In a capitalist society, women are like nature; we hold no value unless we are broken down for profit. This manifests in the unconscious competition that plagues the female psyche. On top of that, the lingering knowledge that men are free to consume and discard women at will pours fuel onto the fire of female insecurity.
Whether it is using women in advertising, free to enter clubs, or inviting us out to a party - the idea that women are products or currency is everywhere. This keeps us vying for attention and value at the expense of not just ourselves but for all women. In the eyes of the capitalist world that surrounds us, we are no better than a tree in essence. The only difference is that we can partake in the market, in so far as we can change ourselves to be more appealing - ripe for the taking.
Ashley Mears, a prominent sociologist, and former model, thought of bodily capital when writing her first book and developed it even further in her second book, Very Important People. It is the sum of all the potential value we have to offer to this market. In an interview with Tyler from the Mercatus Center, Mears makes it clear that we can only access that value with the help (manipulation) of a third party - usually a man. She writes about how this plays out in the context of the high-end party scene where promoters recruit young, broke models from the streets of New York to be pretty near rich men. But this concept of needing a third party to manage or reap the (minor) benefits available to pretty women spills over into every other part of life.
“Women can be gorgeous, but our society reinforces and maintains that beauty is worthless when she controls it. ”
We all need a “promoter,” someone who manages our beauty for us in some way, someone that unlocks its monetary value. If a woman is beautiful, she must pretend to be ugly or not comprehend her beauty. That way, a third party (a man, generally speaking) can explain to her the depth of her attractiveness. Not only does this put the man in control of her capital, but it distances her from understanding the underlying labor and value therein contained.
When we are merely submissive participants, lame objects in this market, we forget how much value there is in that bodily capital, which we do have.
That doesn’t mean we can’t reject this structure, but it does reframe how we can view sex and sexual relationships. Even if we can recognize all the micro and macro impacts of this invasion of capitalist logic on interpersonal, sexual, and friendly relationships, can our partners?
Understanding the subtleties of a market system should make us question what it means to have respectful and healthy sexual relationships.
Ornela, who works with the feminist organization FENA in Argentina, argues that we can’t be having good sexual relationships. Saying, when I spoke with her: “La relaciones sexo afectivas se han convertido en transacciones, sean capitalizado. Sean vuelto capitalistas”
“Sexual and emotional relationships have become transactions; they have been taken advantage of. They have become capitalist currency.”
Both in the sense that sex with powerful men gains women clout and in the sense that being seen with hot women gives men access, leverage, and power. The problem is that this power is not evenly distributed. Women don’t gain enough from these interactions for them to be fair, but oppression is built into the capitalist superstructure.
This extends beyond consensual sex. Part of the alluring nature of the superstructure is that it imbues the undeserving with power. When men hold all the tools to unlock the intrinsic value that is trapped within the female form, they are inclined to feel that they own it. That female sex, sexuality, and to an extent, labor is theirs for the taking. This leaves a gap in the system that turns sexual violence in all its forms into another malignant transaction. Yet another way that men can exert their unearned superiority.
In a way, capitalism has come to pervert the act of sex on a whole. Making it a perpetual form of structural violence that forces women into a subservient role. The unpaid laborers upon which this market is built. Much like the arbitrary use of a fair trade label, “consensual” sex is a rubber stamp that negates the oppression that is embedded in this market.
She goes on to say: “No estamos en relaciones sexo afectivas responsables y libres sino que las mujeres somos objetos de un mercado de consumo. Hablamos de un mercado sexo-afectivo donde los hombres son los que compran, los hombres son los que tienen poder, los que tienen la plata, son los que tienen mejores trabajos, [etc].”
“We are not in affectionate/sexual relations, responsible and free; instead, women are objects of a consumer market. We are talking about the market for sex and affection where the men are the ones who buy, the men are the ones that have the power, that have the money, that have better jobs, [etc.].”
There is an undeniable truth to what she says. Men have access to better salaries, better jobs, more money, all of these things from which women are deliberately excluded. Everything about our various cultural understandings of the role of bodily capital in society predicates on a system in which men are the profiteers in this market. They hold all the power.
When you apply this logic to relationships, as we have come to do, we can never have equal partnerships. Moreover, women are continually partaking in this unspoken sexual commerce - unwitting participants in this nuanced form of sex work.
Ultimately, your sex is always for profit because someone is gaining something from your implicit oppression.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley