It seems to me like if a person wants to hire a prostitute, and another person wants to be hired as one, then at first glance there’s really not a problem.
I know that in most places prostitution is illegal. I’m sure that the laws appeal to all sorts of reasons from moral ones to economic ones to public health ones and so on.
My question is why can’t people be responsible for thier own choices about what to do with one another? And why can’t they be left responsible for the consequences? If I go broke spending my money on hookers, or a hooker gets herpes, or if both of us go to hell, isn’t that our own business?
I’d like to know how people here at ILP feel about prostitution.
How should it be defined?
What are the moral/economic/public health or other arguments for or against it?
Maybe someone might post some statistics that could shed some light on the state of prostitution around the world.
Like anything, if done wrong, prostitution can lead to all sorts of bad consequences. But is that really a justification for an outright total ban of it?
I think prostitution is fine, morally, ethically, economically, whatever. Sort of like the illigal drug industry, if it were legal and regulated, it would be safer. Prostitutes would have to be licenced, and they would have to pass ‘inspection’, like any business. It would generate tax revenue, and probably discourage sex-work slavery because there would be counselling, HR reps., insurance requirements, all sorts of improvements.
I have no moral or ethical problems with it. I know a couple of folks in the industry. They are quite normal other than the chosen profession. its like your mind, If you can make money with your mind and other physical skills why can’t you make money with this skill? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Anyone that is employed is basically prostituting. So you have sex and get paid or you make a sale of potatoes and get paid, Really whats the difference? You are selling your skill. A sale that makes both people happy and content should be OK. Drugs, now some should remain illegal but others nahhh, Just make it illegal to sell to kids.
Hmmmm, Legalizing prostitution could put a whole new dimension in Sex Ed. Hey mom! I need 50$ for sex ed homework!
Smears, your questions were pretty thoughtful, too bad the responses fell so short of that mark. Not that I’m surprised…
You’re presuming an equality between the contracting parties that seldom exists. Prostitutes are not selling a commodity, they are (human) commodities.
What this question assumes is that liberty for men be construed in sexual terms, so that johns have access to women. It’s ironic that liberty construed in this way is about women being prostituted when prostitution itself is about women living without certain fundamental freedoms.
Which puts prostitution in the same realm as marriage and family: that which occurs in private between consenting adults. In effect, it extends the cloak of privacy and protection from government intrusion in matters of sex to matters of sexual abuse.
It’s sexual slavery. To lack the ability either to set limits on one’s condition or to leave that condition is to lack consent to it. Women not only go into prostitution because they’re poor, but also, once in it, they’re kept poor by pimps who take most of what they earn. This indicates that they’re the property of the men who rent them to other men.
Forget those; it’s essentially a civil liberties issue. Prostitution as an institution silences women by brutalizing and terrorizing them, by punishing them when they tell the truth about their condition, by degrading whatever they do manage to say because of how they’re viewed. And yet society protects the freedom of expression of the pimps.
I don’t think it matters whether it’s the developed world or third world; the underlying factors are poverty and abuse and, in particular, the inability of women to determine their own fates. There are statistics all over the Net concerning the high degree of childhood abuse that characterizes the women who go into prostitution, and this definitely includes in the West. When it comes to poverty, well, women are a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York brothels. Do you think they enter into such arrangements with complete knowledge and of their own accord?
How can you ban it without a change in the underlying factors? Because if women had equality under the law, if they were educated and raised with the same right to, and expectation of, self determination that men have then prostitution, while it might very well still exist, wouldn’t likely exist as we know it today.
Ingenium, most of your complaints don’t stem from the institution of prostitution, but the taboo on it. Because it’s illegal, women have no voice to cry for help: they’re criminals. If the whole process was open to review, if the pimps payed taxes, subsidized health care, and were inspected to make sure their premises were up to code, most of your complaints would be solve. Prostitution, in principle, presents no more human commodification than massage, chiropractic, Rolfing. Hell, even dance, modeling, or kung-fu-action flicks represent the same ‘sale’ of one’s body as a commodity.
The difference is in the cultural context of sex, but that’s not the fault of prostitution, either. Banning or opposing prostitution in the form I’ve been defending is misplacing anger that is better directed at the socialization of gender roles, which suck.
You cannot compare all of the above, Carleas: to having sex for money - there is a huge line between earning an ethical wage or a non-ethical one.
People who sleep with a colleague for promotion are also prostituting themselves, in my eyes - I am alpha female: so telling me otherwise won’t wash (you’ll condone anything for the pursuit of pleasure, right…)
Btw, unless you are actually having sex (in whatever form) it’s not prostitution… just reconfirming the definition for you there…
Well, Magsj, you’re right about one thing: there’s a huge, fuzzy, ill-defined line between ethical and unethical anything. I’m just not convinced that prostitution falls on the unethical side of it.
I think sleeping your way to the top of a company is wrong, while prostitution is not. Why? Because, I assume, someone who sleeps their way to the top is not recognized for that feat. They’re generally promoted for other reasons, at least ostensibly. If they could sleep their way to the top honestly, then they probably are prostitutes, and then it’s fine. If not, then they’re lying, and it’s that type of deceit that’s the wrong, not the token of sleeping one’s way to the top.
I appreciate your viewpoint, but it will never be mine
Sex outside of a relationship isn’t moral to me, but that’s just my view - it’s all too easily used as a bartering tool, or a quick way to make a quid… It’s not a world I’ll even pretend to know about, but I know it happens all around us on a daily basis
I was having a conversation that touched on this subject recently. I was told the story of a woman living in Germany on welfare. Like most welfare cases, if they are offered a job and refuse it, they lose their welfare eligibility. Makes sense, right? Well, she was living in an area of Germany where prostitution was legal and she was offered a job at a brothel. She was left with the choice of either becoming a prostitute or starving. To me, any system that forces a situation like that is simply broken. It is no longer about free-choice between autonomous individuals.
And that is, of course, my problem with prostitution. Sure, we can deal with thought experiments like Smears proposed where it seems fine. The problem is that an unencumbered individual like those proposed in the OP don’t exist. Because of this, the situation is created where people can and will be forced into prostitution. It can be argued that this already happens with the black market. This is unfortunate and true, but it makes the fall to the position of stripper much, much more difficult as well as keeping the practice stigmatized. I would argue that the loss of the John’s freedom to is more than made up for in the added freedom from oppression that the prostitute experiences, even if said freedom from is less than absolute.
I would further argue that when a freedom from is established, it needs to be done with respect to maintaining human dignity. In terms of a working definition of “human dignity” I would say that it is a recognition of the superiority of internal goods over external goods, something that prostitution fails to do.
Prostitution is a sliding scale. Anything that you get paid for is a type of prostitution. Performing in a play could be considered protitution. But you are talking specifically about sex aren’t you.
Prostitution for sex is a sliding scale. At least two actually. There is the scale of what degree of sex: penetration, simple contact, visuals, audio, written, etc. And then the scale of “business”. Is it a stranger for an hour, or the perosn who will eventually become your wife?
Economically? Sliding scale. From those being forced into it to those not being forced into it.
Socially? It is shallow. It should be legal. It should be taxed to acquire revenue to provide eduation for prevention and protection, clinics, licenesing. So as a society we should try to prevent the most forced, shallow forms of prostitution. Jailing poor people for being prostitutes is immoral.
I can agree under Kant’s ends principle that every job that we do is prostitution to some degree; however, I think that such a rendering is too detached and results in an empty formalism. Reducing every job, indeed, every task done by Homo economicus to prostitution, doesn’t actually get us anywhere because it amounts to vulgar economic relativism.
I was pretty unsure of my thoughts on this, but this argument is very convincing to me. I like how it refrains from ultimate judgement about right and wrong, which always gives me the willies. On the other hand morality/ethics aren’t dispensed with. It seems quite clear to me now in fact…
Xunzian, I think that your argument is based on a sub-human understanding of women as a default. Are we to believe that there is never a woman who is willing to sell her sexual services for money? Such women do exist. Jenna Jameson is not ashamed of her chosen profession, and she’s basically a prostitute on stage.
Assuming that prostitution represents an inherent sacrifice in freedom entails the sinister implication that women cannot decide their sexual desinies. The black market already employs a significant number of women in this profession. Smears proposal, as I read it, is to make the system as safe as possible, and if no women choose to participate, so be it. Assuming that they cannot freely make that choice is dehumanizing.
The anecdote you present is not the fault of prostitution, but of the unemployment system. The same situation could arise with nude-photography, should that be banned as well? What if an arachniphobic were offered job cleaning the spider cages at the zoo? Should we ban spider cage cleaning? Would a severely socially anxious person be forced to do customer service? My point is that similar cases about, and surely the law should account for them. That does not indicate, however, that the occupations are morally wrong.
Prostitutes on the street live without freedom, prostitutes who choose to do so and work in a b uilding with secruity, cleanliness and etc simply refuse to believe that its not their choice.
Theres many females while forced into it for economic or pimp reasons who do it for fun or the money or both.
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This happens because it IS ILLEGAL, and whenever somthing is illegal a black-market is created (if there is a demand) policed by nonpolice, thugs. If prostitution in actual designated houses, run by the government, where the females got to choose their clients its not like that. Making it illegal is one of the reasons that it needs to take place on the streets with pimps.
Women who decide to work at these places or who decide to be prostitute escorts aren’t always on the low economic end or low eeducated or forced into it, some women want easy money and enjoy sex, it is JUST LIKE THAT.
Pimps wouldn’t exist because like alchohol prostituion would be watched closely, street prostitution could remain illegal.
but anyway, you’re post is a nonsensical over generalization, a lot of the abuse that women suffering due to pimps and disease is due to the fact its illegal, women might be forced to sleep with men due to economic factors, but at least they’d be safe, and in a clean place (theres a place in the states that is really really nice/clean and a lot of the women who decided to work there weren’t poor, just wanted to work there.
Poor women do go to prostitution but it reamining illegal doesn’t HELP THEM ANY, when somthhing is legal/illegal it doesn’t neccesary means it will happen more (drug use and cheapness of drugs/pureness of drugs/availability of drugs all skyrocketed with the war on drugs) but theres a good indication it will increase and be violently policed.
all poor women who are forced into prostitution gain from it being illegal is a pimp, no one is going to make it illegal and then pay women who so they aren’t forceed into it, the best world to provide is that if they are forced into it, have a safe, nice establishment (without pimps) for them to work with.
It should be legal. Ingenium’s lurid and Dickensian tale could be told about many illegal occupations. Ask any communist. In fact, Ingenium’s rendering is an insult.
A commodity is bought and sold - while slavery exists, not all prostitutes are slaves. If the trade were legal, it’s hard to imagine that any such slavery would exist (at the same time in the same place).
The are many contracts wherein no real equality exists - such unilateral contracts are therefore regulated by the government. An insurance contract is a typical example.
There would be more male prostitutes if there were a market for them. To put prostitution in feminist terms merely accounts for accidental qualities of that occupation. And there are (straight) male prostitutes.
There is nothing inherently abusive about prostitution. There is a lot inherently abusive about poverty and ignorance. If much prostitution is a symptom of these, we should try to cure the disease. Stamping out one symptom seems not very “thoughtful” at all. But, the fact is, there are women who don’t view sex as a holy act. It’s just sex.
It is not sexual slavery in every case - and again, much of this has to do with its illegality. My next door neighbor back in massachusetts was a prostitute. She was no slave.
Society protects the freedom of expression of pimps? That’s a new one on me. This is not an “equality” issue. This is not an “oppressed” minority issue. It’s an economic issue. Why should we eliminate one more job wherein women can make some money? It’s just sex.
Oops! Had to edit. I mistyped “legal” for illegal in my second sentence. I was thinking about working for a big-city drug dealer, for insatnce. No bowl of cherries. Another reason more drugs should be legal.
Laws aren’t necessarily about absolute morality - they are about social order, and protection of what people consider ‘inalienable rights’. It’s irrelevant whether rights are ultimately ‘inalienable’ or not. It’s pretty obvious to me that a woman should not be forced to work as a prostitute or lose benefits, as Xunzian pointed out. I mean what if she is completely disabled? She’s still got a working vagina, right? Big deal if the birth control doesn’t work, right? Who pays for the child? Does she have to keep the child? Is she forced to take birth control pills, which may be against her religion? In such a context the state would be guilty of rape. Could the new or revised laws be made in such a way that the above example can’t happen? I’m not sure. It sounds pretty complex and slippery to me.
Making prostitution legal is not the same as forcing people to be prostitutes. If the story Xun heard is true, it is about the welfare law of that country, and not about the prostitution laws.
For instance, in the US, it is legal to become a soldier, and also legal to be a conscientious objector. It is legal to keep kosher, but it is not legal to force some to eat meat and dairy together.
If you can demonstrate that prostitution has its own internal goods and represents a viable expression of those in a way no other path can, I would be willing to agree with you. Pending that, I have no problem with paternalism on behalf of the state. Clearly prostitution can’t be eliminated; however, by sanctioning such a gross endorsement of external goods over internal goods and thereby demeaning human dignity I think the government would be doing all of its citizens a gross disservice. I don’t see how once it has been legalized situations like that which I’ve described won’t happen. Faust argues that we have a choice whether or not we serve in the military, but the military is also famous for recruiting in economically disadvantaged areas and exploiting the poor for its own purposes. The same would happen with prostitution. Now, if your ethical system allows for such abuses to occur, I have no real retort save that the lodestone in your moral compass has lost sight of the magnetic north. As for women, I’m actually more concerned with male prostitution. Women become prostitutes largely because of society’s economic failings – they are poor and feel they have no recourse. Boys become prostitutes because of society’s moral failings, they are abandoned by their families and thereby made poor and forced to become prostitutes. As for Jenna Jamison, you can point to her success, but I would question how far her kleos reaches. If such short-sightedness is acceptable, then clearly she is acceptable as well, but I’d have to ask what sort of society is it that allows for such a thing to occur?
