EXCLUSIVE RECORDING: Socialists discuss how to protect the rights of children to engage in sex work.

Undercover at the Socialism 2023 Conference

From September 1-3, I went undercover at the largest socialist conference in the country, Socialism 2023. In this series, I’ll show you what the real Marxist left talks about when they think we aren’t listening.

The Socialism Conference cost me about $3,000 to cover (and, if I’m honest, more than a bit of stress). My work is funded entirely by you.

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Abolish the Family is my favorite socialist topic to cover, and I was so happy that my favorite Abolish the Family activist, Sophie Lewis, was scheduled to speak not once but TWICE at the Socialism Conference.

I’ve covered Sophie’s work extensively on Socialism Saturday, because it is truly the most dystopian of the dystopian. This is a clip from an episode where we watch Sophie Speak at the University of Pennsylvania:

One of the panels Sophie was speaking on at the Socialism Conference was called The Politics of Childhood, and was about children’s liberation.

In this conversation, Sophie Lewis and Jules Gill-Peterson will discuss the urgent project—and problem—of solidarity across reproductive justice and trans justice movements. Mounting losses in access to abortion and transition in the US have traded in extremist moral panics over children’s bodies. What sort of affirmative, political constituency that includes young people might grow in response?

Joining Sophie was Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor of History at Johns Hopkins. I recently covered a speech Jules gave at Lewis & Clark in which she encouraged college students to use do-it-yourself hormones.

The fact that these two are on a panel together shows that Queer Marxism is inextricably linked with Abolish The Family, but that’s a different topic for a different day.

Are Socialists Groomers?

The term groomer is thrown around very easily these days. But if they’re advocating to protect the rights of children to do sex work, I’m not sure there’s a better term for it. You can listen to the audio and judge for yourself.

There are a few things you must understand about Socialists if you are not a regular viewer of Socialism Saturday:

1. Socialists do not believe in private property, including believing that children are not the property of their parents.

2. They believe that children should raised by the collective, with many layers of parents that have nothing to do with biological kinship.

3. Just like Scientologists, Socialists believe that children are just adults in little bodies and are fully capable of making all their own decisions.

4. They believe children need to be “liberated” from being the property of their parents, which they compare to children being slaves.

   1. This is why they are constantly attacking parental rights.

   2. Anytime you hear them talking about “children’s liberation” or “adult supremacy,” this is what they mean - that parental rights oppress children.

Regular viewers of Socialism Saturday know that the best part always comes in the Q&A, because that is when the Socialists say the quiet part out loud. The Politics of Childhood session was no different.

After Sophie and Jules gave their presentation, a woman named Chanel, a self-described sex work activist, came up to the microphone to ask a question.

And the next few minutes were some of the most shocking things I heard at the entire conference.

Chanel argued that we need to advocate for the rights of child sex workers because some children need to be child sex workers:

Then Jules answered that if Chanel wants to fight for the rights of child sex workers to be child sex workers, she just needs to create a project get other people involved, and create a mass movement on the topic:

I think we can all agree that sometimes, children are put in a very unfortunate position of needing to do desperate things to survive, and those children require protection because they are in that position through no fault of their own.

But what was striking to me was that there was no discussion of whether or not children should be sex workers.

It was about how to protect their right to be sex workers.

Seemingly at any age.

No one said “perhaps the best way to protect them is to help them not be sex workers and get them out of the sex industry.”

Because Socialists believe that children are capable of making their own decisions, and deciding to be sex workers if they want to be.

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