Prostitutes encourage people in committed relationships to betray those who trust them. Simple proof here: If a john would have no trouble telling his wife, committed companion or lover that he was thinking about frequenting hookers and required her consent before indulging then I would concede that the prostitute’s profession could be ethically defensible. I’m sure that somewhere, at some time, there have been men who leave the house saying, “Bye, honey, I’m off to get a blow-job!” and hear, “OK, my love! Remember, we have that dinner at the Phipps’!” Not many, however. Resorting to a prostitute is a betrayal, and the existence of prostitutes encourage betrayal. Prostitution fails the test of utilitarianism and libertarianism. It has victims, including the institution of marriage, and civilization, which is built and strengthened by family units.
Furthermore, the payer is using money to persuade someone to do something they would not otherwise choose to do, and something that is degrading and submissive. Hinrichsen wants to eliminate disincentives for women (and some men) to persist in a destructive practice on many fronts. The john’s role in the transaction breaches Kant’s edict that one should never use another human being as a means to an end. The role of prostitute is dehumanizing.
It is also intrinsically dangerous. Frequenting prostitutes is signature significance: ethical people don’t do it. Unethical people do bad things to other people more often than ethical people do. Legalizing prostitution will make it more likely that “sex workers” will be in vulnerable situations with unethical people.
The movement to legalize prostitution has the same societal problem as the successful efforts to legalize other harmful, corrupting behavior, like using drugs and gambling. There is value in the State making a declaration that certain conduct is harmful and should be avoided by responsible citizens. Decriminalizing conduct that was once forbidden, whatever the motives or justifications, will always send the message that the conduct once condemned is now considered harmless, acceptable and benign. That delusion leads to ethical incoherence and confusion.
Oh, I have no doubt that this latest terrible, corrupting, culture-eroding crusade from the Mad Left will succeed eventually. After all, governments can make money by encouraging people to harm themselves and those who trust them, just as they make money from legalized pot and state lotteries. Anyone opposing these measures are branded as spoil-sports, fogeys, moralists, reactionaries or worse. Entropy is always working against ethics, civility, responsibility and common sense: stopping it requires vigilance and constant battle from the guardians of values, and they get tired, warn-down, co-opted, or just start shrugging.
Nevertheless, prostitution is harmful on many levels, and therefore unethical.
But by all means, make your case why it’s not. You may convince someone. Not me, but someone…
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day, is…
Ethics Alarms 
I have nothing else of substance to add beyond my contributions on the Open Forum regarding this subject. So I’ll just respond with a resounding, “No. No. No.”
I agree with this response.
”It is a provocative exercise, especially when one ponders why the addition of money should change the nature of the act from benign to objectionable in the view of culture, society, or government.”
I pondered this a great deal when I ended up using blackjack to help my children learn simple addition. Many would call it objectionable to teach young children a game of chance, and yet… you can not discount the educational assist you get from this simple card game.
This reminds me of philosophy class.
I don’t believe in legalized prostitution, and I think porn should be illegal by blocking all sites (addiction and the industry have hurt many). However, from a libertarian perspective, here’s what I may argue:
Consenting adults do a lot of things that are harmful to themselves and others. Promiscuity (non-paid, consensual) is bad for society and people. STDs run rampant when people have a high number of sexual partners. It’s also pretty bad for everyone to shovel down junk food all the time, but that’s also legal. Think “sin tax” type behavior.
The “harm” to someone else concept is limiting though. Adultery used to be illegal, but now its not, even if some laws exist on paper. The current political zeitgeist seems to have a really hard time defining harm. Human dignity is kind of there, but where’s the limit?
What about violating a dead body? Say the person could do it without being caught. Most people find it repugnant, but from a freedom/utilitarian calculus, what’s the real harm? Utilitarianism has a really hard time handling conduct that’s undignified but only harms the person doing it, which is why I cannot call myself a utilitarian, even if I do see value in utilitarian analysis.
So, a lot of “sins” are allowed, and promiscuity is one of those sins, even though promiscuity has produced a host of social problems, such as STDS, unwanted pregnancies (leading to an increase in abortion and absent parents), broken hearts, and just overall bad decisions. If people limited partners to those they were dating and trusted (at minimum), you wouldn’t have many drunken nights where memories get fuzzy. If a baby does come about, it’s not between two strangers.
It seems like the best argument for prosttiutiion is that we allow a lot of sexual vices already, so adding money into the mix really isnt’t that big of a deal. More like an arbitrary disctinction because it “feels” different without actually being so.
On my end, I ascribe to human dignity arguments, and that humans have ends that are good for us, such as sex being used to bond those together who love each other and trust each other. When those ends are misused, it’s bad for all parties. The more important the ends, the more likely the law should get involved (such as ruining the end of someone living by killing them). Sex creates life and bonds people together, so there is a state interest in regulating sex. Legalized prostitution should be a gross misuse of the end of human sexualty.
“Furthermore, the payer is using money to persuade someone to do something they would not otherwise choose to so, and something that is degrading and submissive.”
Man: Would you sleep with me?”
Woman: No.
Man: What if I offered you 1 million dollars?
Woman: (thinks about it), Okay.
Man: How about 10 dollars?
Woman: What kind of woman do you think I am?
Man: We’ve already established what kind of woman you are, now were just negotiating over price.
Joke aside, there is no value Prostitutions brings to the table, except maybe more taxes for the government to collect.
“Furthermore, the payer is using money to persuade someone to do something they would not otherwise choose to so, and something that is degrading and submissive.”
it continues to amaze me how often the single sentence commenter choose to quote is the one contain a typo. I proofed this post three times! “Choose to DO,” bot “so”! (Fixed.)
Judging from the video below I have some questions about the strength of your argument here. The lady below is a registered escort and influencer in Australia, using YouTube, OF, and other social media to inform people on legal sex work. The phrase “the payer is using money to persuade someone to do something they would not otherwise choose to so” definitely does not apply to her as she does not need to be persuaded, as she approaches her profession as a calling. She would definitely not agree with the judgement that prostitution is degrading. There are indeed women who cheerfully, proudly and unapologetically practice world’s oldest profession.
The trouble with this discussion at EA is that we have only men participating, mostly boomer and trending conservative. Do we have any women who can comment? Or any sex worker?
At least two other women on this thread so far…
High-priced escorts are not typical sex workers Now, go down K street in Washington DC and see what average sex workers look like. Or you could watch “Night of the Living Dead”
It’s the world’s oldest profession because unmarried women had so few options to support themselves. That is no longer the case.
Some women made a fortune on OnlyFans.
The medium income of an Only Fans creator is between 150 and 180 dollars a month. Only a tiny segment of OF creators are able to support themselves with OF work.
Maybe it is because the supply is high.
I am guessing the successful ones already have a social media fanbase, and they post regularly about their regular lives, as if they were more than naked pictures.
It has been a while that I have been in DC, I am a bit surprised to hear that K street has streetwalkers; I am under the impression that all those highly paid lobbyist would rather pay for a high-priced escort than for a drug addicted streetwalker.
I see plenty of reasons why patronizing streetwalkers should stay illegal as this is a public order offence with significant health care risks, it creates squalor and attracts crime, and it is exploitative in nature.
So I think we need to distinguish between different types of prostitution. High-priced escorting does not create the negative externalities associated with streetwalking or sex trafficking related prostitution. That means that legislators may decide not to paint all sex work with the same broad brush, but allow for independent escorting and still prohibiting all other types of prostitution.
CEES, K Street has had a de facto red light district at least since I arrived in the 70s. So does Old Town Alexandria. Passing a law that benefited well-to-do escorts and left the poor, desperate prostitutes vulnerable to prosecution is, I am sure, politically impossible. So only the rich could afford legal prostitution under such a system? Come on. High end escorts are already rarely apprehended.
The issue of prostitution can be approached from a number of moral, ethical, wisdom, cultural, and legal angles. I will split this up in more comments.
I will start with the moral angle. The key passage in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 6: 12-20 which
12 I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
The basic issue here is sexual morality. In the world of the Bible sex is exclusive to a marriage between one man and one woman, and marriage is a covenant that can only be dissolved by death. The Bible has a high view of the human body (temple of the Holy Spirit), and departs from the dualistic views of the Romans and the Greeks that elevated the soul over the body. In the Roman Empire there was sacred prostitution in temples, which is a weird mixture of sex and religion.
Key passages in the Old Testament on sexual morality are Leviticus 18 and 20. These passages condemn a whole lot of sexual practices from a holiness perspective, complete with death penalties for infractions, including incest and homosexuality. Interestingly enough prostitution is not mentioned here. Prostitution is mentioned in other parts of the Old Testament, namely in Genesis 38 (Judah and Tamar), Joshua 2 (Rahab), Judges 16 (Simson in Gaza), and the prophecy of Hosea (marriage of Hosea with Gomer). There is no death penalty in the Old Testament for prostitution; there are death penalties for adultery, incest, and homosexuality. Prostitution is never addressed in a positive way.
So we may reach a tentative conclusion that in the world of the Old Testament adultery (sex with somebody’s wife) is a more serious sin than mere prostitution.
The laws in the United States on marriage and sexuality as they were in the 1950s breath the influence of the culture and morals of that time, which was heavily influenced by Christianity. There were laws against adultery, fornication, sodomy, pornography, birth control, divorce; in the 1950s we even had coverture laws that established the husband as legal head of the family, and laws that established the husband as breadwinner. The existing laws against prostitution need to be understood in this moral and cultural framework. Marriage and the nuclear family were regarded as cornerstone of the society, worthy of many legal protections.
Since the the culture has been secularized. Birth control separated sex from procreation. The sexual revolution separated sex from marriage. Unilateral no-fault divorce became the norm, starting with California under Gov. Ronald Reagan. Gender equality became the norm thanks to feminism, and both husband and wife now need to provide. Abortion became constitutionally protected, and gays now marry. Almost all laws against sexual immorality fell by the wayside, with laws against prostitution being the exception. The legal and cultural changes since the 1950s have significantly altered the nature of marriage as an institute.
Let’s call marriage in the 1950s Marriage 1.0 and marriage as it stands today as Marriage 2.0. I am aware that I am borrowing manosphere terminology here. I do that deliberately as many manosphere influencers (e.g. Rollo Tomassi in the Rational Male, and Dalrock) have argued that Marriage 2.0 is fundamentally different than Marriage 1.0. Marriage 1.0 gave a husband authority, respect, loyalty, and recognition. Marriage 2.0 carries the same responsibilities for a husband, but with reduced benefits and elevated divorce risk. The low marriage rates of today reflect that reality; many men have decided that it is better to stay single as they calculate that the rewards of Marriage 2.0 do not weigh up against the risks and the costs. (There are many other reasons why people do not marry or even date, but I will not go into that).
If I understand our host, and many commenters at the Open Forum, laws against prostitution are still needed to protect Marriage 2.0. This is a typical traditional conservative argument, and I believe that this is a losing argument. Traditional conservatives have lost the culture war on marriage and sexuality. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Divorce rates are at 50 percent. The divorce rate among Southern Baptists (a conservative denomination) is not radically different than the USA at large. One third of all children are raised by a single parent. You want to marry a virgin? You are searching for a unicorn! Sexual immorality is rampant, even at conservative events like CPAC. Marriage 2.0 is like a house with the roof blown off, and full of black mold.
It is hardly conceivable that the state of marriage as it stands today can be worsened by laws legalizing prostitution. The biggest legal threat to marriage are the existing divorce laws. plus the family court system handling custody, alimony, and child support. But even traditional conservatives are unwilling to touch these laws with a ten foot pole; they would rather make child support laws more punitive for divorced dads alienated from their children by their exes, while publicly grandstanding about “deadbeat dads”. The traditional conservative argument against legal prostitution is a rearguard fight and a last stand. There is not much worth left to protect in Marriage 2.0.
And as somebody who is happily single, and have been single all my life, why should I give a rats ass about Marriage 2.0 and the traditional conservative view?
There are many other arguments against the legalization of prostitution, e.g. those related to sex trafficking and the role of cartels and organized crime. But that will be another comment.
Men want sex and are unhappy when they cannot have sex. Many men cannot find willing sex partners without paying for them. I do not believe that the only ethical choice for such men is to remain celibate until they go to the grave.
Many men cannot find willing sex partners without paying for them.
1. They need to try harder.
2. Seems like the same rationalization used to justify stealing.
this was my justification.
some people can’t try harder
young dumb I experienced kids
widower octogenarians who miss physical intimacy
overly obese or unattractive people
sometimes “trying harder” makes no sense
-Jut
Greg, assuming that prostitution was legal, would you recommend somebody who is involuntary celibate and highly frustrated to engage with a sex worker?
What are the other two categorites
Anyway, a difference I see between prostitution and other vice trades are that prostitution more directly involves human beings. Instead of selling a product, you ARE the product. This lends itself to dehumanization and abuse. The linked article cites a study that reported rape in the Netherlands dropped 30% after legalizing prostitution. How many rapes or other abuses at brothels go unreported in these scenarios? From the article Legalizing Pimping:
Here’s why I believe it’s too difficult to untangle prostitution from coercion and other issues. As a religious conservative, but who is still a man with normal heterosexual urges, the hookers in “Hey Big Spender” have no attraction for me. I find myself far more attracted to gorgeous female movie stars and fashion models. Indeed I don’t know how anyone can be attracted to the stereotypical smoking, drinking hooker past her physical prime who is only in it to make a buck. With that in mind, I would think that legalizing prostitution increases the demand, but not the supply of quality “merchandise”. Guys rush out to the red-light district, looking to fulfill their wildest fantasies, only to find that the girls who would fulfill those fantasies have already been snatched up by the fashion and showbiz industries. Hence brothels are incentivized to try any dirty trick they can get away with to find and retain young, attractive girls. Those that try to do it “ethically” get outcompeted by those who can provide the goods that customers want most.
Abortion: anti-abortion vs pro-life
Prostitution: anti-prostitution vs pro-nuclearFamilyMarriageSexualMores
I have grown fatigued championing illegalization of behavior on the basis of spiritual morality. The better approach is simply to fully aid good behavior.
With respect to our postulated harms that legalization of prostitution would produce, would it not be a practical middle ground to legalize prostitution while regulating the harms once they manifest much like all other employment and commercial practices?
“The better approach is simply to fully aid good behavior.” (bolds mine)
I’m of the belief that what’s good for us comes in a weak second to who decides what’s good for us.
Might the same be said of who decides which good behavior/s ought be fully aided?
PWS
A woman walks into a nightclub, steps up to the bar, orders a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. Puts her money down. Sips. Her brain feels the stimulus. Her eyes reflect her pleasure.
A Puritan, on a mission, accosts her and says, “It is wrong for you to buy your pleasure, whether from a barman or from anyone else. BEGONE!
The barman says, “I’m trying to make a living here.”
The woman says, “I’m just out to have a good time.”
The Puritan beats both of them senseless. Consensual pleasure? Bad!
Irrelevant to the topic at hand, HJ!
In my previous post I have not explored the ethical side of sex work. Let me reiterate that sex work is morally wrong from a Christian perspective. But according to Ethics Alarms ethics and morals are not the same. Ethical arguments should in that view not primarily have to rely on religious prescripts or rules that are particular to a given culture; I make hereby an assumption that such an approach is possible.
So we should be able to ask questions about sexual ethics. Some questions will be in a comparative style, some in an absolute style, and some are about definitions. I will start with two definitions I found on the internet, with some added notes by me, and then continue with ethics, and finally about the relation between law and ethics.
Question 1: How do we define sex work?
Sex work is the consensual exchange of sexual services, performances, or materials between adults for money, goods, or other forms of compensation. It is regarded by many as a form of labor or economic activity, often distinguished from trafficking by the presence of consent. Sex workers represent a diverse group of individuals who may work in various settings, including escorting, stripping, or camming. (NOTE 1: sex work includes porn work and Only Fans work. NOTE 2: the definition of ex work excludes sex trafficking and situations of slavery, as these situations can be classified as rape.)
Question 2: How do we define adultery?
Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse. (In the Old Testament that would be: sexual intercourse between a married or betrothed woman and a man who is not her (future) spouse. Having a concubine in addition to tor wife is not adultery in the OT.)
Question 3: Is adultery wrong?
Adultery is wrong if if means that marital vows are broken, it involves dishonesty and concealment, or is disagreed upon by the other spouse. E.g. in an open marriage adultery is a moral wrong but not an ethical wrong.
Question 4: Is extramarital sex wrong?
Extramarital sex between consenting adults is not an ethical wrong, unless it involves ethically wrongful adultery.
Question 5: Is withholding sex from your spouse wrong?
Withholding sex from your spouse is a breach of the marital contract, unless otherwise agreed upon by both spouses.
Question 6: Is unilateral divorce wrong?
Unilateral divorce is a breach of the marital contract, unless the other party is at fault due to adultery, abandonment, or cruelty and abuse.
Question 7: Is sex work wrong?
Sex is not wrong and earning money is not wrong. So earning money with sex is not an outright ethical wrong. Sex work involving or leading to adultery creates an unethical situation. Sex work that does not involve adultery is not a perse ethical wrong (e.g. an unmarried man visiting an escort or watching pornography does not commit an outright ethical wrong but deserves criticism for patronizing an ethically flawed industry).
Question 8: Is sex work more wrong than adultery?
No. Adultery is the original wrong. The wrongs committed by the escort and the mistress are ethically comparable.
Question 9: Is adultery more wrong than withholding sex from your spouse?
No. Both are breaches of the marital contact. A sexless marriage helps creating the conditions for adultery.
Question 10: Should sex work be outlawed on ethical grounds?
Multiple arguments against this in the United States:
One of the problems with simple issues is that some refuse to see them as the simple issues they are. From the headline, one might think the ethical issue was legalized prostitution. But, no, raised here, are all manner of issues related to sexual conduct. So, lying, deception, corruption of values, presumed coercion, and more are all leveraged into the argument. Relevant? I guess so. In a way.
Nothing is ever simple. I do not understand why a society that winks on adultery and allows no-fault divorce condemns prostitution. Does not add up for me, especially using traditionalist conservative pro-marriage arguments. Maybe we need a feminist perspective on this topic?
I like your argument better than mine.
My heart soars like a hawk when someone say that! Or even thinks it…
In previous post I established that I am not in favor of prohibition on traditional conservative grounds protecting the sanctity of marriage and standing athwart moral decay. Being single and trending libertarian I have no truck with this type of reasoning.
Morally I am not too perturbed by single men with no other sexual options visiting a prostitute. I would rather have Barnacle Bill the Sailor have fun in a brothel than engaging in date rape. I am not using this as an ethics rationalization, but as a lesser than two evils approach. Sex work was often to be found in areas where you could find groups of unattached men, such as ports, military bases, frontiers (Wild West), mining towns, oil fields. The justification for legalizing or condoning sex work was to prevent rape, and social disorder.
There are still other arguments to be made related to legalization of prostitution, some pro and some contra. I will try to approach this from a pragmatic utilitarian perspective.
The big issue is the like between crime and prostitution. Besides the legal brothels in Nevada organized crime is all over prostitution. Sex trafficking is a major source of income for cartels, and one of the drivers for illegal immigration. Organized crime thrives on things being criminal. So legalization / decriminalization poses challenges for criminal organizations, So any sensible legislation should make sure that the influence of organized crime goes down. As the experience in Amsterdam show, this is easier said than done, as criminals are good in using legit looking businesses for money laundering, and also good in concealing situations of sex trafficking and bonded labor.
The next issue is streetwalking. Often these are drugged out hookers controlled by a pimp. This has all sorts of negative externalities such as STDs, attracting crime and squalor, and making a neighborhood unlivable and dangerous. This situation can of course not be tolerated.
Too me that indicates that given the current situation in the USA it would be unwise to open the gates wide by simply striking laws against prostitution; it would involve a lot of regulation to make should that sex workers are not trafficked or pimped, health compliant, tax compliant, finances are transparent etc. Zoning is also important, as most people in the USA are willing to encounter this type of activity.
This is my post from yesterday:
If you are as cynical as I, you see legalization of prostitution as yet another leftist strategy to undermine the nuclear family, fracture community cohesion and sweep up more power for the radical cause. Even if you take religious principles out of the discussion, Mother Nature provides evidence of the profound nature of sexual interaction: without readily available effective birth control methods and powerful antibiotics, the result of widespread promiscuity, free or transactional, is ill-timed or unwanted pregnancies and rampant disease. Modern medicine allows profligate lifestyles on many levels that are not necessarily healthy for individuals or society – doesn’t mean we should embrace them.
Having travelled more than once to Amsterdam I have a first-hand experience in the Red Light District. It is not as clean as the rest of the city, primarily because of the abundance of sex tourists. Walking by one of the Windows, my eyes met the woman who was perched on a stool, dressed in stereotypical sexy clothing. We exchanged a slight smile as Danny and I walked past, but I didn’t leave the area marveling at the empowerment of these women. It was profoundly sad to me that this, most intimate activity is reduced to a transaction.
Today’s quick research indicates that Amsterdam has about 20,000 sex workers. Cartels, sex trafficking, violence and abuse have not diminished, but increased over the last 20 or so years. The original goals to reduce crime have not been attained. Furthermore, local sex workers have been crowded out by foreigners who flocked to the city, making it more difficult to earn a living.
On another trip, this time to Ecuador, our tour included a talk with a local sex worker. She revealed that to make a decent living she needed to see at least 10 men each day. In her mid 40s, she didn’t know how much longer she would even be able to make ends meet, since men preferred younger, prettier ladies, and she spoke of a colleague in her 60s who is barely surviving.
You asked for a woman’s opinion, but I am at odds. My Libertarian leaning suggests that consenting adults should be able to tangle up, with or without money changing hands, and without others’ approval or consent. It’s nobody’s business but theirs.
On the other hand, most of the time women are disadvantaged, exploited, abused and debased by prostitution. Bottom line, even if it is ’empowering’, I don’t want any of my five granddaughters to choose the oldest profession. I want each of them to be madly, passionately in love with a man who adores them, and that’s the only kind of terrific sex they have. Not an ethical conclusion – visceral. Old school.
A stimulating ethics alarm drill surfaced over at Freakonomics, where Stephen Dubner challenged the site’s readers to help him compile a list of goods, services and activities that one can legally give away or perform gratis, but that when money changes hands, the transactions become illegal.
That’s easy. Any occupation requiring a license.
I stated that with prostitution, both the payer and the payee were engaging in unethical conduct. And they are.
Conduct isn’t unethical because you say it is. Moreover, the question here isn’t whether prostitution is ethical, but rather whether it should be punishable by law.
Consensual sex, absent the exchange of money, is legal. The same sex act, involving payment for service rendered, is illegal. The question here isn’t whether the sex is ethical, but why it should be illegal. You can assert all you want that the transfer of money for sex is unethical, but you haven’t touched the question at hand: should it be illegal?
Legal sex can be just as much a betrayal as prostitution. Or it may be no betrayal at all. Depends on circumstances completely independent of whether money is involved. Moreover, betrayal is not a matter for the state.
Your economic argument is weak. There are all manner of things that money persuades people to do that they wouldn’t otherwise, including things they find degrading or submissive. And what of those who don’t find it degrading or submissive, and prefer sex work to all other available options? Kant’s edict is no help, at least as you have stated it. We use people as means to an end all the time: last week I, with the exchange of money, I used a roofer as the means to the end of repairing a strip of shingles the wind had removed for me.
Rather than making prostitution per se illegal, make the unwelcome consequences of prostitution illegal: curb crawling and loitering solicitation chief among them. Violence is far easier to report, and is already illegal. If sex workers aren’t worried about getting arrested while doing so, thereby making them less vulnerable, not more.
Prostitution is fully legal and regulated in, among other countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium. In Belgium and Germany, it is treated as a legitimate profession, with sex workers having access to labor rights and social benefits.
I lived in Germany for nearly five years, very close to Belgium. If there were any significant negative consequences, I sure didn’t see them.
Conduct isn’t unethical because you say it is. kind of a cheap shot, no? Especially since I have explained why prostitution is unethical, and in the post that quoted the earlier one.
the question here isn’t whether prostitution is ethical, but rather whether it should be punishable by law.
No, the question is since the conduct is already unethical and punishable by law, will society be better off or worse off if its no punishable by law? And that’s an easy one. Is it better or worse to have more woman in an accusation (it isn’t a profession) that degrades women, exploits them undermines respect in the sex, and encourages men to be unfaithful and dishonest to their families? Gee, Jeff, is that a hard one for you?
Your argument slides into nothing but rationalizations.OK, adultery and unfaithfulness with paramours may also be betrayal, but society decided long ago not to criminalize it—the worse kind, secret sex with hookers, IS illegal, and IS a deterrent, particularly to middles class men with reputations to protect. This isn’t an economic argument, it’s an ethical one: using money to induce someone to degrade or harm themselves is unethical. There’s a horror movie about the subject: “Would you rather?” “Fear Factor” is an unethical show. Paying drunks to humiliate themselves to get money to but more drinks is Kantian. You’re exploiting greed and desperation.
Then you descend into a pure “everybody does it” argument. I couldn’t care less what other countries choose to allow. This country is better than those countries, has different values and priorities. Prostitution is like a culture and values “broken window” just like allowing mood and mind altering drugs and gambling that creates addicts and ruins lives. Your argument reminds me one a gain how deluded devoted libertarians sound. Laws protect the vulnerable, the weak, the self destructive and the poor from the greedy, exploitive, ans sociopathic. They enhance the pursuit of happiness by making a more ethical society viable. I don’t want to live in Amsterdam or Las Vegas. If I did, I would move there.
You make a point prostitution is exploitative.
Before: a man has money, a woman has a vagina.
After: the man has less money, the woman has more money and the vagina.
The woman has reduced herself to a body part and a masturbation tool, with the accompanying loss of self-esteem and self-respect.
Jack Marshall: kind of a cheap shot, no? Especially since I have explained why prostitution is unethical, and in the post that quoted the earlier one.
I didn’t intend a cheap shot; rather, your explanation was appeared to me to be an assertion, and one that couldn’t withstand many hypotheticals.
For instance: In my neighborhood there is a woman who operates an illegal business, and only because she is paid to do something she would not otherwise do.
She cuts hair. Without a permit. Worse, she will NOT cut women’s hair. The nearest barber is twenty minute drive each way, and she does an excellent job. Of course, there would be no problem if she didn’t charge for her time.
Is her providing haircuts for money unethical? Should it be illegal?
For another instance: I am on a business trip, staying at a nice hotel with a bar. I am single. I strike up a conversation with an unmarried woman also staying at the hotel and who decides she would rather not spend the rest of the night alone. If I take the hint and go to her room, is our behavior unethical?
Change the hypothetical a bit, and she is a prostitute who is happy to not spend the rest of the night alone for a few hundred dollars. Is that unethical? If so, why? Is she degraded and exploited by the exchange, or does she find getting paid for a an evening of ostensibly pleasurable activity preferable to an eight hour shift in a call center?
(Full disclosure: That very situation happened to me when I was staying at the Four Points Sheraton in Oakland, CA. It has been fifteen years, and the hotel has changed hands. The woman was very respectable looking, early thirties. Chatted for ten or fifteen minutes. Finally, she said “You do know I’m a hooker, don’t you?” When I got home and told my wife the story, she sussed the punch line before I got to it.)
The mutually beneficial exchange of money does not change the underlying ethics, because the ethics have nothing to do with money.
No, the question is since the conduct is already unethical and punishable by law, will society be better off or worse off if its not punishable by law? And that’s an easy one. Is it better or worse to have more woman in an accusation (it isn’t a profession) that degrades women, exploits them undermines respect in the sex, and encourages men to be unfaithful and dishonest to their families? Gee, Jeff, is that a hard one for you?
Yes it is, because you are engaging in question begging. You haven’t argued why conduct that is not unethical becomes unethical when money is exchanged, nor why the legal system should be involved one way, but not the other.
What’s more, your position deprives women of agency. Who are you to decide for her is unacceptably degrading or exploitative? Assuming she has agency, then regardless of how degrading or exploitative she may find sex work, then she must be engaging in it because it beats the alternatives on offer. Making sex work illegal must, in the main, force sex workers into alternatives they find worse.
And then you state as true that which you can’t demonstrate. Would legal prostitution encourage men to be unfaithful, who wouldn’t otherwise be? How about men whose wives don’t care where he obtains his pelvic spasms, so long as she isn’t involved? The examples could go on for quite a while, but none of them should involve the power of the state.
I am perfectly happy to agree that there are some aspects of prostitution that can absolutely degrade our civil spaces — but the law should focus on them, while not punishing people simply because money changed hands. And you also need to consider the downsides of making something illegal. Like having a criminal record reduces the options available to those in sex work, and increases the disincentives to reporting assaults and exploitation.
1. Is her providing haircuts for money unethical? Should it be illegal? How is this possibly a relevant analogy? cutting hair is not an intimate biological act that is naturally based on passion and/or love, not commerce. Cutting someone’s hair does not interfere with anyone’s relationships or ability to form intimate relationships.
It is a relevant analogy because it demonstrates that the exchange of money has nothing whatsoever to do with whether an act is ethical, but often does with regard to legality. Hence my remark regarding occupational licensing above. If an action, whether sex or haircutting, is ethical, then monetary exchange cannot make it unethical. And if it is unethical, it is unethical regardless of how much currency is involved.
I don’t think you even believe this. Money often is used as an incentive to take over the autonomy of another individual who is vulnerable or desperate. Your kind needs a cancer treatment and you can’t afford it? I’ll pay for it babe, but you have to give me blow jobs every day. That’s unethical. It’s a forced transaction. It is no different from a situation I faced two years ago when I was in even worse financial shape than I am now. A brilliant but crooked entrepreneur offered me 7 figures guaranteed to give him ethics cover for a clever but unethical (though legal) project. It would have been unethical ro accept, and it was unethical to offer, which he did because he thought I was desperate.
2. If I take the hint and go to her room, is our behavior unethical? That is a genuine consensual relationship. She is not desperate for cash, you are not exploiting someone’s vulnerability, poverty and desperation for personal gratification. Again, apples and cucumbers.
You are assuming facts not in evidence.
However, assume the woman is desperate for cash. Clearly, she prefers prostitution to the other alternatives on offer. You wish to deprive her of that choice.
Prostitution can have public nuisance side effects, so make laws to deal with them, just as with public inebriation or loitering.
But you haven’t yet made a internally consistent argument that sex for money is ipso facto unethical. Sometimes sex is unethical, mostly it isn’t.
Money has nothing to do with it.
Human nature is always in evidence. Go ahead, take a survey. See how many women you can find who would answer the question, “Would you let a stranger stick his dong in you if you absolutely didn’t have to? Would you prefer to be porked multiple times a day by fat,smelly, low-lifes than have a normal job?
Don’t fall back on the “choice” canard: the law stops people from making choices that harm others. You haven’t dealt with one of my central questions; if this were a healthy, benign activity, why don’t spouses and lovers inform each other that they are doing it? It is obvious: they don’t because they know its wrong and destructive to families and relationships. Money is a perverse incentive for destructive conduct. How can you say “money is irrelevant”? Gee, I guess runaway teens end up on the streets because they want sex with strangers, not because they need money.
As usual for libertarian justifications of the unjustifiable, you’re distorting reality and what we already know about human beings.
An all time great thread of ideas and observations by the commentariat! Congratulations to all for your contributions, even the snarky ones. We need the snarky ones because they help break up the reading and provide a momentary respite.
For me, there’s a pointed difference between de-criminalization and legalization.
Legalization to me indicates that the government is attempting to create a new industry with regulation, licensing, oversight, taxes, fees, etc.. If you think the topic of “Should prostitution be legal” is fraught with moral and ethical conundrums, then prepare yourself for the entralling topics that can come about with regulating such an industry.
So should it be legalized, regulated, taxed, licensed, reported on?
Or should it be decriminalized and let free people make free decisions? This one is probably already happening now in an environment where enforcement is not occuring, but the benefit I see to the current status of criminality is that it pushes against disputes of services exchanged in open court proceedings.
Consider any number of complicated dating, encounters, power dynamics that resulted in allegations of sexual misconduct – now layer a consumer/provider rights debate to entangle that situation. “We agreed on $50 verbally. She told me it was $100. She said I could do the special thing, she renegged on the verbal contract. I was legally owed. I paid for her services, but she derived benefit from my services and I didn’t consent to that one thing she did to me.”
It’s too messy to be “decriminalized”.
So we turn back to “legalized” – a government framework to define how long an encounter can last, what does health testing certification look like, is pricing discriminatory against those with a quickly satiated appetite or those who require a lot more effort, how many thrusts and what kind of ‘wear and tear’ is permissible, what if the client’s equipment is too big – is a full or partial refund due, where can contracts be made, who records the contract, are spouses entitled to notifications for their own health?
That all sounds messy too and a waste of government time and resources for a few debaucherous imbeciles.
So honestly, neither of those sound good to me. It should remain firmly criminalized and if we need a caveat for a classy sounding “sex therapist” with limited functionality for those with medical necessities – that’s fine with me. I think there’s some room for compassion in this subject, but decriminalization and regulatory structures are not the answer to the question.
Human nature is always in evidence. Go ahead, take a survey. See how many women you can find who would answer the question, “Would you let a stranger stick his dong in you if you absolutely didn’t have to? Would you prefer to be porked multiple times a day by fat,smelly, low-lifes than have a normal job?
What is the ethical content of an opinion survey? Especially if, as in so many opinion surveys, the questions are posed to elicit the desired answers?
It is entirely possible to ask the same questions differently. “You are saddled with nearly $100,000 of college debt. Would you let guys have had sex with you while you were in college in order not to have any of that debt? Would it be OK to be porked by men successful enough to afford it?”
If the answers to the questions are dependent upon how they are posed, and not what they ask, then they can’t be relied upon.
Don’t fall back on the “choice” canard: the law stops people from making choices that harm others. You haven’t dealt with one of my central questions; if this were a healthy, benign activity, why don’t spouses and lovers inform each other that they are doing it?
You haven’t come close to dealing with mine. Sex is an activity the ethical implications of which are completely independent of money exchange. To decide that money defines ethics so as to render an instance of sex illegal that is otherwise indistinguishable from another because it involves the exchange of money is a category mistake.
It is obvious: they don’t because they know its wrong and destructive to families and relationships. Money is a perverse incentive for destructive conduct. How can you say “money is irrelevant”? Gee, I guess runaway teens end up on the streets because they want sex with strangers, not because they need money.
But the reasons they need money, or prefer sex work to the alternatives on offer, has nothing to do with the legality of sex work. Those reasons will exist regardless. A question that very much needs answering is whether making prostitution illegal creates effects that make things worse for these women.
As usual for libertarian justifications of the unjustifiable, you’re distorting reality and what we already know about human beings.
I am not justifying the unjustifiable; rather, I am pointing out that the arguments for making prostitution per se illegal do not stand up to inspection. I’m not posing a libertarian argument; rather, I find the prohibitionist argument wholly unpersuasive.
As I noted above, prostitution can entail social nuisance side effects. They are what should be illegal. Search on [Los Feliz Boulevard prostitution]. A very progressive California state senator with the last name of, if memory serves and I’m not making it up, Weiner, got a law passed prohibiting police officers enforcing loitering laws because they unfairly impacted LGBTQ communities and women of color. The inability to control the social nuisances allowed prostitution to transform from something that happens into a civic travesty.
Which anyone except a progressive could see coming from a light year away.