The problem with the view that sex work can take place in conditions of freedom is that market transactions, except in some very unusual circumstances, are not based on the liberty or equality of the participants. The fact that an individual is not being directly coerced by the person having sex with them, or by a third party, doesn’t mean coercion is not taking place; a vanishingly small number of people who have the opportunity to work in some other, safe, well-paid, personally rewarding field choose to work in the sex industry instead. An economic system where people have no choice other than to sell their labour into a ‘market’ (the labour market doesn’t really function as a market, but that’s a debate for another day) in which all the power is vested in the ‘buyers’ is inherently coercive, and sex workers are simply some of those with the fewest options and the least power within that system. Having said that, criminalization of either side of sex work transactions is simply attacking a symptom, and puts sex workers themselves under pressure either way; to actually address an issue like that involves getting hold of the long end of the lever, not the short, but that has broader social implications, and runs counter to the interests of those with real power…
@RadLib, beautifully stated.
We do not allow sexual harassment and propositioning in a workplace especially between subordinate and superior, no coerced sex allowed. Yet in a laboratory grade fake example, sex trade was an occupation that if a woman refused a job in when placed she would loose her unemployment welfare benefits.
What if she is one of the many who already did not have unemployment benefits?
Is this not an easy to understand if untrue model of the actual coercion to engage in sexual activity experienced by an overwhelming majority of sex workers? Do we really think most, or even a few women entering sex work wake up hoping to have sex with strangers and are surprised that they actually get paid for it?
Prohibition causes its own problems but at it’s heart prostitution is a symptom of sometimes life threatening inequity in a world where there is actually enough for everyone to be taken care of properly where it not hoarded by a very few.
Totally true, but also true of many other things about our economic system. The solution is to have a system with a social safety net (maybe a minimum income) that eliminates most of those coercive dynamics by making sure that whatever someone’s doing, they aren’t doing it because that’s the only way to get food or shelter, rather than, as you said, treating the symptoms while ignoring the underlying causes.
I completely agree, but there are some cases (eg violence) where, even though that is the case, society has a compelling interest in trying to stop it. I’m not saying that prostitution is one of those cases, but I’m not completely sure that it’s not. It’s one of the many regulatory issues out there that, practically and ethically, I’m not sure I know the right answer to.
I agree that there are cases where society has an obligation to make the attempt to prevent or at least mitigate certain behaviors. More often, though, these behaviors are symptomatic of other issues- And if it’s something that keeps cropping up after 10,000 years of civilization, those are probably issues that aren’t going to be fixed overnight.
There’s a Norse rune, Gebo. It means “gift”, but that’s never what it actually means, because it originated in a society where the giving of gifts was tied to a complex series of customs. If you gave someone a gift, it was expected that they would give one back- if either gift were of a greater or lesser value than expected it could be considered a great insult, and once gifts were exchanged it symbolized a bond between you. This was a society without contracts or the kind of capitalism that we learn about in economics- A gift was half of a two-way obligation, and carried with it all sorts of subtext. The best example is the gift of a crown: The object itself is practically incidental to everything else that comes with being king.
The more I think of social issues like this, the more I think about Gebo, and that none of it is what it’s about, so much as it’s about everything else that has to do with it.
I think that the assumption that sex work is like any other work is incorrect. Given that sex, for most, is one of the most intimate connections to another human being, I find it scarcely surprising that the rendering it a simple commercial transaction has deleterious psychological effects upon those who are forced to commercialize it.
Even bereft of the social approbation and legal issues, I think one would likely find far higher rates of drug use and simple contempt of one’s customers than in almost any other field I can think of.
Even trickier, a society that has no social disapproval of prostitution is one in which it is as acceptable to pressure someone into working in prostitution as it is to pressure them into working as a grocery store clerk. Both are simple cases of selling one’s labor, both admirable examples of being productive members of society. And yet, at least to parochial me, I cannot imagine that the psychological cost in the long-term of one being much, much higher than the other.
That said, I think the harm that comes from the criminalization outweighs the costs, but I do fear the cost.
We prohibit people from being employed in jobs where the risks of physical harm are too high, regardless of the wishes of both purchaser and supplier. I think if the risk (not certainty) of psychological harm were weighed, prostitution might be banned for much the same reason.
true, and sex workers in Sweden have been fighting for their rights for ever. https://vimeo.com/87450331
So how many men do you think women may have sex with before you deem them having detrimental psychological effect to which make them use drugs ?
What frustrates me is that whether or not to legalize sex work is the subject of a great deal of hand wringing. We have years of evidence on the relative success of the ‘arrest sex workers’ model the ‘arrest clients’ model and the ‘stop arresting people’ model in developed nations.
Whenever we talk about sex work there is always a discussion of sex slavery. In New Zealand where sex work is work and sex workers are protected by the same labour laws as everyone else, a sex worker successfully sued her brothel owner for sexual harassment this year. Imagine that! A court system that demonstrably believes it is not right to sexually harass a sex worker! Isn’t this the country where someone being held in sex slavery is more likely to believe that the law will actually protect them?
I think the vast majority of people who have an interest in exchanging currency for sex would prefer to do so in a way that avoids dealing with dangerous criminals and slavers. There is a reason there aren’t people being held in slavery and forced to do hair cuts - who would ever support such a system when they have so many legal, safe haircutting alternatives? I think the jury is in on the best approach for legal frameworks for sex work, and I don’t think we need to hem and haw about it any more than we do about the war on drugs.
Well of course it isn’t like any other work. Jobs aren’t just interchangeable. If someone was looking into a career as a sex worker, maybe they should take the same caution as someone who is looking into another high stress career in human services. But is having sex for money so uniquely powerful an experience that it takes a greater emotional toll than, say, doing social work in child protective services? Slaughterhouses have insanely high turnover because most people simply can’t stomach the work, but there are those who make a career out of it. The world has people who feel called to be undertakers.
Sex isn’t magic and people are different than one another. If we got rid of criminal laws regarding sex work everyone wouldn’t suddenly become a sex worker. Yes, some people would become sex workers who really weren’t suited for the work and they would be unhappy, maybe even depressed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rate of stress-related ailments among sex workers was higher than the general population. I’d be surprised, however, if (post legalization) it was the highest.
It isn’t a particularly stupid assumption because, when we step back from the population to look at individuals, there are always barriers to entering a certain kind of work. Some people do not have the necessary traits to be waiters, call center workers, nuclear physicists, soldiers or prostitutes. I could never work in a call center (I’m deaf). But out of a large population it’s reasonable to believe that there is an excess of people theoretically willing and able to do a certain job. So when we look at the level of employment in any sector, we can be fairly sure that there are plenty of qualified people who would enter the job market if the rewards were sufficient and if there were vacancies.
The psychological, moral, and cultural challenges that a career in [insert sector here] presents will always keep some otherwise qualified people out of a given market. I left military weapon research when I became a Quaker and decided that even defense work was incompatible with my beliefs. I know of people who will not work in call centers because they disapprove of bothering people to buy things they do not want. A life of coal mining can result in lung disease, severe joint and muscle pain, and early death. This would put many people off the well paid jobs in mining. Joining the armed forces implies the risk of an agonising death or surviving with limbs missing. Yet both of these dangerous occupations are paid at a rate that is able to ensure a supply of workers. A woman working her PhD by a couple of evenings of escort work a week runs far less risks. It is street prostitution that nobody wants to do, just as nobody really wants to deal in drugs on the street or pick fruit.
My point is that, in thinking about economics, one should not be swayed by considerations of ones own that may not apply to other people. Unfortunately, in discussing prostitution, it is the moralisers and the people who desire to control women that shout loudest - whereas it should be the women involved.
Which is rather interesting when you take this into account:
A representative for the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education told the news agency TT that it could be speculated that young gay men “have an easier time accepting their sexuality if they do it in exchange for something, like a few beers or a recharge of their phone card.”
I remember, years ago, seeing a study which found that the situation was similar in the United States, with homophobia playing a role in male prostitution (it’s easier to find a potential secret hookup if you’re paying, apparently.)
There’s no doubt this is true. But I don’t think it’s true that—as per Hill’s blog—people are choosing sex work because it pays better than waiting tables or welfare, and that so long as it pays even one cent more than waiting tables or welfare, they would chose this work.
And while those workers that do go into the sex trade may not be as beholden to the social values that are a barrier to entry for other potential workers, those social values still act to constrain supply by limiting the sector to those relatively immune to those social opprobria.
Agreed. However, with respect to how society views its willingness to support those who do not have a job, low skill jobs are generally only limited by physical limitations. A person who chooses not to work in a low-skill job they are physically capable of can count on being viewed as a slacker and barred from social and financial support from the state.
Highly agreed.
Good point. However, this doesn’t come up as CPS is considered a high-skill service. A call centre is also a very high stress job, but if that’s the only job available, you take it or face the consequences.
My understanding is that is because of the physical toll.
Well, I’d hope legalization and social acceptance would lower the psychological toll on the participants, but I have to say, my reading indicates that many prostitutes seem to feel prostitution far more de-humanizing than selling other skills. Is there any other job where the sellers have more loathing for their customers? Admittedly anecdotal, but its seems pretty widespread, and that indicates something about the industry to me.
I don’t quite know why selling sex seems to be so much harder on (many) people than selling physical or mental labor. After all, being paid by someone who cares nothing for you except for using your muscles or brains shouldn’t be all that intrinsically different than being paid by someone who cares nothing for you except for using your vagina, but it appears (to me anyway) that many human beings do feel differently about it.
Anyway, again, I support legalization. But I don’t think that treating sex work as “just another job” will be bereft of consequences either.
It also could be that if the law is designed to protect women that it specifically penalizes purchasing sex from women and basically makes male-male sex-for-money exchanges legal, or maybe the law just isn’t enforced for them. If that’s the case then a growing population of male sex workers could be response to that legal pressure. I wouldn’t be surprised if legality created availability which created a market that might not have been there otherwise. We all know situational homosexuality is a thing. Maybe people who are purchasing sex aren’t as choosy as we would normally think.
I reckon the only way to objectively test whether people genuinely enter into sex work freely would be to introduce a Guaranteed Minimum Income in a jurisdiction where prostitution is already legal.
My own suspicion is that the number of available workers would fall in this circumstance.
All very good points. I also have to say, that in cases like that and gun control where I’m really not totally sure, my reflexive default is very much to not go around making things illegal and throwing people in jail. Edited to clarify: There is no possible legitimate argument whatsoever for criminalizing prostitutes. There could potentially be an ethical argument for criminalizing johns in the context of certain socioeconomic milieus, but the article I linked earlier pretty much shoots that out of the water.
Sex is a high-skill service.
Some people, I hate to say, are just plain bad at it. Some people study and practice certain techniques to become better- especially when it comes to =ahem= particular tastes. There’s also, believe it or not, a pretty high degree of psychology and empathy that come into play, in determining what a partner (or customer) is actually looking to get out of the experience- which is usually just as much emotional as physical. Some people want to feel powerful. Some want to feel wanted. Some just need to connect in whatever way they can. Some just want a release. Interpreting what and how is not something everyone just does.
My personal theory is that a fair number of younger women go into it figuring it’s quick, easy money doing something enjoyable- And keep at it for as long as it is quick, easy, and enjoyable- Which, I’d wager, isn’t very long.
Then we get into the socio-economic issues implicit with surviving or extracting yourself from that sort of work- Which is a much bigger and darker discussion.
No it isn’t, because the increase of supply in this case is explicitly assumed to be an increase in the number of hours the existing sex workers made themselves ‘available’ in order to maintain their economic position when faced with a lowered per-customer income.
The “supply” isn’t in numbers of sex workers, it’s in hours of fucking.
Surely that’s for a lot higher-end than most women involved in the trade. Worldwide, I would imagine the most common form of prostitution to be fairly anonymous encounters by women desperate to support their children. And are there really “repeat customers” in the trade? After all, would most customers sociopathic enough to be willing to purchase sex want to become identifiable?
I wonder what makes you think your imagination about sex work are so correct that you know for sure that customers are sociopathic. These kinds of whorephobia is exactly why there are stupid laws against sex work.
