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Raymond Lotta writes:
The commercial sexual exploitation of women (and of young girls and boys) has reached massive proportions. What is euphemistically referred to as the “global sex industry” has evolved into a highly profitable segment of individual national economies and the world imperialist economy...
The scale and horror of this sexual exploitation is veiled by two major factors:
First, there are the complex and overlapping legal and illegal channels of supply, marketing, and monetization of globalized sexual exploitation.
Second, this sexual degradation and violent subordination of women has become increasingly normalized as fashion, as lucrative pornography, as “sex education,” as employment. And it has been poisonously rationalized as individual “choice” and “agency” exercised by women....
“Sex work” is, in its essence, the marketed degradation and organized sexual submission of women to male domination.
Want to talk about “agency”? Let's talk about the conscious, collective, revolutionary agency of millions rising up to overthrow this capitalist-imperialist system and put an end to this horror and to all exploitation and oppression.
—from Raymond Lotta's major research essay "The 'Industrialization' of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell"
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SOME RELEVANT FACTS:
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There are some 42 million prostitutes in the world, overwhelmingly women,13 to 25 years old.
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In 2021, 4.4 million women and girls were trapped in (trafficked for) commercial sexual exploitation...modern-day sex slavery!
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"Prostitution is not a choice but an absence of choice based on gender, class, caste, ethnic and race inequalities that the 'sex industry' exploits." —Apne Aap, women's rights/anti sex-trafficking organization
This discussion, this debate, needs to be had.
If you think 'sex work' is just another kind of work, or female empowerment, come to this program and make your case.
Raymond Lotta is a political economist, a spokesperson for Revolution Books in Harlem, and a follower of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian.
Save your seat here.
$5-10 donation requested.
This program is sponsored by the Revolution Books Educational Fund a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization. In-store program.
Masks required and provided.
Bob Avakian on: Under capitalism every job exploits you, so what’s the difference with sex work? There IS a difference.
—from The Bob Avakian Interviews