Go here to read the rest, but here’s a good quote:
Whether they were “Socialators” in Battlestar Galactica, or “Companions” in Firefly, or any number of other euphemisms, one SF trope that seems particularly insidious, especially in movies and TV, more-so than in literature, although it is still prominent there, is turning the world’s oldest profession into something glamorous and honorable, even exalted. I recently had the misfortune to read a book where they took “Make Love, Not War” literally, and all women were drafted at 18 to serve a couple years in a sex corps to keep the peace, under the idea that a free and easy sexual outlet was all it took to quell man’s violent nature.
… (several paragraphs you should read, but I don’t want to hijack his whole post)
The primary social reality that undermines all of the tropes is that when you commodify sex, you are putting women on sale. Maybe it’s just fractionally, for a few hours out of her lifetime, but when your fantasy/SF hero comes along and waves a few C-notes to get a woman to do what he wants, it’s not the “Combination of Sex and Capitalism” (“… which are you against?” the excuse goes) but the sublimation of Sex TO Capitalism.
The rest of the article is here.
This is why science fiction, and good philosophy, are so wonderful. He does a much better job of explaining why a lot of the popular arguments for “sex work” don’t hold water, and he’s not even coming from a religious point of view– just a people one. Yay, good philosophy!
…title for the blog post here changed because I don’t want to send out SPACE HOOKERS MUST DIE! to folks’ email. It’s on theme for SHOPLIFTING IN THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS (Mauser’s blog), but somewhat clashes with TAC. ^.^
Even if the trope really, really does need to go away.
We might need to coin a new term, the Sexual-Industrial Complex (SIC as in sick). A comment by Dr. Mauser in the linked article is something that I have been wondering about. The sexualization of children by public school indoctrination, and human trafficking over the porous Southern border appears to be headed in the direction of a consumer sex culture.
As he pointed out in the comments:
A rather disturbing realization came to me while I was re-reading this, while also thinking about the current release of The Sound of Freedom. Aside from de-stigmatizing the sexual slavery of women, they sure seem to be pushing the idea of child sexuality on society as well. And they’ve gone well past the idea of whether that’s appropriate at all, to making people think about How early, and what twisted KINDS of sexuality are okay to impress upon children.
The quote that you referenced was the one that I had in mind in my post. The public schools acting as centers for sexual indoctrination. The teachers acting like Soviet-era zamploits (political officers) insuring ideological purity. Children as the collectivized property of the state. Totalitarian regimes try to split children from their parents. The rot has become institutionalized.