Second-wave feminism emerged from the political Left, from radical progressives who criticized tradition and sought a reorganization of society that ensured freedom, justice, and equality for all. But the challenging radical politics of second-wave feminist figures like Andrea Dworkin have never been welcomed by the leftist majority. The antifeminist campaign has always had bases on the Left (for example, socialist men adopting the patriarchal sexual politics of the bourgeoisie under the guise of “proletarian morality”). And this conflict persists today—systemic misogyny continues to underlie the politics of the left wing. It rears its head most visibly on the internet, with leftist commentators, pundits, and content creators propagandizing in favor of the sex industry.

“I’ve gone to a brothel, Artemis, in Berlin, and had sex with the workers there,” Hasan Piker, a leftist political commentator and streamer with over 2.5 million Twitch followers, said in a 2021 stream. “I don’t hide it. I don’t give a sh*t. Why would I?”

After a clip of the stream was posted on Twitter (now X), Piker’s comments sparked heated debate. Some criticized Piker for participating in the sexual exploitation and commodification of women, and argued that the working conditions in brothels cannot be guaranteed. Others argued that sex work can be consensual, and praised Piker for “normalizing” it. Ethan Klein, host of the popular H3 Podcast and former co-host of the leftist political podcast Leftovers with Piker, featured the streamer in an H3 episode where the two discussed the controversy. In the 2021 episode, Klein defends Piker, describing the online backlash from leftists as “the Left eating their own” and proclaiming sex work as a “necessity of society” that “will never go away.” And in an interview with Vice, Piker doubled down on his comments, claiming that “all work under capitalism is done under coercive and exploitative conditions.”

Support for the sex industry abounds in male-dominated leftist and liberal spaces, but there is a curious shortage of outrage over its abuses toward women. Where are the leftist answers to the critical question of how the invasive sacrifice of bodily autonomy can be made to be safe and ethical? How is it justifiable to defend workplace conditions where the workers are at risk for disease, but where full PPE and other health and safety measures aren’t required? The legal regulations mandated to protect workers in every other profession are incompatible with the acts involved in prostitution. While it is argued that sex work is an umbrella term not synonymous with prostitution or sex trafficking, the unique intrusiveness and risk associated with situations of purchased sexual access is concerning.

Feminist activists find themselves in an ideological no-woman’s-land, with conservatives championing a traditional patriarchal framework and leftists a modern one. American radical feminist Andrea Dworkin compares the two ideologies in her 1983 book Right-Wing Women: “The difference between left-wing and right-wing when it comes to women is only about where exactly on our necks their boots should be placed. To right-wing men, we are private property. To left-wing men, we are public property. In either case, we are not considered to be humans. We are things.”

In both political environments, the plight of the female class is largely neglected, and women are compelled to absorb and advocate other interests and demands. The political Left’s sparse support for feminist causes is often misguided, discounting the problem of misogyny by scapegoating capitalism as the sole reason for women’s social conditions. The economic class struggle takes priority. For example, women are expected to balance both unpaid domestic labor and waged work, and mothers are emotionally, physically, and financially affected by severely lacking paid parental leave policies. But this is not just capitalism at work—it is misogynistic discrimination, oppression, and essentialism.

After the revolution. After the revolution, we can address your smaller problems. But misogyny is no small problem, and it transcends the economic system—capitalism did not start female oppression, so why would its downfall eradicate it?

Many leftists don’t only ignore the female political struggle, but promote women’s collective public suffering as “liberating.” Popular neoliberal and socialist perspectives on the sex industry are two sides of the same misogynistic coin: under the neoliberal economic model, women are exploited through the market, and under a socialist model through provision by the state. Both political frameworks enable female exploitation and are predicated upon male entitlement to sexual access to women.

Like Piker, many leftists argue that “all work is exploitative under capitalism”—that all profit is coercively extracted from workers by capitalists—while simultaneously making excuses for the sex industry. Logically, these leftists are making an argument for a market of coerced sex. Those who use neoliberalist philosophy to advocate for a free market on women’s bodies are prioritizing market demand over ethical considerations. They are weighing the consumer’s desires more highly than female autonomy.

According to many leftists, the ills of capitalism don’t apply to prostitution, which Dworkin discusses in her 1981 book Pornography: Men Possessing Women. Dworkin writes: “Capitalism is not wicked or cruel when the commodity is the whore; profit is not wicked or cruel when the alienated worker is a female piece of meat… poverty is not wicked or cruel when it is the poverty of dispossessed women who have only themselves to sell; violence by the powerful against the powerless is not wicked or cruel when it is called sex.”

Sexually exploited women are dehumanized, but sex buyers are accepted and defended, legally and in the media. Watching someone’s abuse on a video screen isn’t a quarter as frowned upon as it is to be the person abused on that screen. Purchasing sexual access to another person isn’t seen as half as shameful as being the person violated. In youth leadership programs by GEMS, or Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (the nation’s leading organization for the empowerment of commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked girls and young women), girls who are victims of sexual exploitation are encouraged to frame their experiences as “being commercially sexually exploited/trafficked” rather than “being a prostitute.” For many survivors, learning and implementing this language helps to remove a sense of shame, facilitating their healing process.

The sexual exploitation of women has been digitalized and normalized, its horrors both hidden and ignored. In Pornography, Dworkin discusses how the Left’s politics and support for the industry are incompatible: “The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.”

It has been argued on the left wing that prostitution is “the oldest profession” and is therefore natural and inevitable. Moreover, that the “right to sex” is a matter of safety—that some women must be sacrificed to men to protect society from sexual violence. The underlying argument here is that certain women should, can, and will be violated. That this is the way things are, and nothing can be done about it. But there is nothing politically radical about appealing to tradition (inaccurately), or weaponizing the threat of sexual assault against women. And consent cannot be purchased.

Dworkin’s 1983 speech “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape,” which she addressed to 500 men at a conference for the men’s movement, reads: “I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less–it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little.” The grim reality Dworkin describes—a culture where female victimization is commonplace and women’s trauma proliferates—is global and enduring. Asking to be liberated from it, as she writes, is asking for so very little.

Asking that the Left aid in the feminist struggle against this reality is asking it to do what it already professes: to strive to eliminate inequality, injustice, and oppression. But women’s liberation will not be found on the x-axis. It will not be found in moving horizontally on the political spectrum while maintaining our position on the y-axis of morality and justice. It is a question of right and wrong. Not Right and Left.