Nina Čolović

The Short History of the Debate on Sex Work

Most of the discussions and conflicting views on sex work / prostitution that are emerging today have a dynamic and layered history that can be traced to as far as the 19th century. The history of the regulatory approaches to sex work, abolitionist and worker-rights-based, has been embedded in conversations on sexuality and morality, class, public health, social work, colonialism, as well as the construction of nation-states. This brief introduction will give an overview on the development and adaptation of the main perspectives and arguments on what it means to solidarize with sex workers that still continue to shape the contemporary feminist discourse.

Nina Čolović is a feminist and queer educator, dedicated to researching, learning and understanding how different forms of economic and social injustice are produced and maintained, and what can be done about it.

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Karolina Hrga

Social Reproduction and Sex Work 

The presentation will position sex work as social-reproductive work, which is directly subject to the pressures of capitalist exploitation when it is commodified through the market (regardless of whether it is legalized or part of the gray economy), and indirectly when it takes place within the family in a non-commodified form (as well as care work). It is therefore necessary to examine it beyond moralizing about the essence of “woman” and the sacralization of the body and sexuality. Through the deconstruction of the nuclear family and the function of social-reproductive labor in capitalism, we will try to articulate the connection between the feminist movement Wages for Housework and the contemporary queer-Marxist theory of social reproduction. The aforementioned perspective will help us understand the position and role of the sex industry in capitalism, but also to look at the criminalization of sex workers beyond sexual (gendered, racialized) repression, in the words of sex worker rights activist Morgan Merteuil: “begin to see it as a kind of repression that fundamentally serves specific economic interests which are secured through sex, class, and gender dynamics”.

Karolina Hrga is a cultural worker, translator, editor of the portal Slobodni Filozofski and coordinator of the conference part of Subversive festival. Research fields of interest: feminist political economy, queer Marxism and theory of social reproduction.