destiny-manifest: “Reproductive labor - the labor that is done to produce new laborers and that...

destiny-manifest:

“Reproductive labor - the labor that is done to produce new laborers and that allows wage earners to continue to work every day - is built into the state apparatus, particularly the unpaid labor of home workers. This labor includes the rearing of children, cooking of meals, and housework, but it also includes the sexual reproduction of the (often male) wage earner within a household. Sexual reproduction - not limited to child producing - remains invisible as labor, but implicit within the [capitalist] structure. Sex work fundamentally upsets this balance by requiring money to be exchanged for a finite amount of time, as opposed to a housewife (or unwaged home worker) who exchanges unlimited labor for an infinite amount of time without wage. The state relies on this unwaged reproductive labor in order to maintain civil order and the continuation of the nuclear family. Requiring a specific monetary exchange for sexual reproduction socially undermines the concept that it is available without reciprocation, that the sexual availability of women may not be a given.”

— “Queering Our Analysis of Sex Work” by C. B. Daring