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        Ever since I read Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs I’d been trying to figure out how to go about perceiving sex work as something that is actually empowering in the midst of what she so aptly dubs “raunch culture.” Here’s the breakdown for me: on the one hand, of course sex work is inherently offensive and oppressive to women – it degrades them for the benefit of men. On the other hand, sex work can have an empowering effect: as Julia states in Live Nude Girls Unite, one way to fight the patriarchy is to subvert the system and take their money. I’d gone back and forth between the two and I think, in the final analysis, it comes down to the belief that feeding the bad habits of the patriarchy – even if it has a somewhat liberating effect for the women – is not the solution. Healthy expression of sexuality is not going to be possible when we are still living in constructs of certain century- or maybe even millennia-old power dynamics. The curious thing is that I can totally agree with the notion that on the level of an individual sex work – profitable sex work – can certainly be a big fat f*** you to the patriarchy and a legitimate, even respectable, and clever way of beating the system at its own game. But, on the level of the collective it only exacerbates the problem, strengthens the systematic oppression and subjugation tactics. If there is a supply for a demand that is driven so obviously (at least in my opinion) not by the desire for sex but a particularly constructed kind of sexual interaction, one teeming with gender-specific power dynamics, then the demand will continue to exist. And if sexist and misogynist views of sexual exchange remain well-stocked and well-fed then it doesn’t seem like the conditions in which sex work exists now is doing anything to solve the problem. Sure, it’s a source of income – for some (or many, depending on the region of the world) it’s the only source of income. But, until conditions improve – and that entails both some serious changes in the way society thinks, in addition to basic recognition of sex work as work – it seems legitimate but not just for lack of a better word. I can accept sex work as necessary but not as non-exploitative. After all, sweatshop workers in factories aren’t performing any less of a legitimate kind of labor. But that doesn’t mean I support it. Serious, mind-blowing change has to happen first.