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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Sex positive feminism maintains women should be free to engage in sex, in pornography, in sex work, etc without being shamed or otherwise punished for doing so. That seems to be by far the most prevalent form of modern feminism to me. This is completely separate from whether or not men should be able to take advantage of that freedom to satisfy their own desires.

That seems incoherent to me, or at least to have some obvious and serious internal tensions in practice. What, women should be free to engage in sex work but shouldn't have any customers?

That's right. For an example, see the nordic model of prostitution. Only the buyers are punished . It's clearly sex negative, even though the women are "free to engage in sex work without being punished".

This approach to criminalising sex work was developed in Sweden in 1999 on the debated radical feminist position that all sex work is sexual servitude and no person can consent to engage in commercial sexual services.[7] The main objective of the model is to abolish the sex industry by punishing the purchase of sexual services.

Notably, the National Organization for Women supports it.