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Sex Work Prohibitionism

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On April 3, 2014
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At 1:25 pm
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Melissa Gira Grant’s new book is causing all sorts of discomfort among liberals who are just flat not comfortable with thinking of sex work as labor. Katha Pollitt’s latest piece is an excellent example of this. Unfortunately, while Pollitt is writing in the language of second-wave feminism, she’s also writing in the language of prohibitionism. She tries to stigmatize a reality of the world as immoral, but in fact just reinforces a system by which women are in fact victimized. Even the poor women she accuses Grant of ignoring are not helped by keeping sex work illegal. If you legalize sex work, you are going to make it harder for underground sex operations that treat women terribly to continue because a major reason why they exist is that sex work is illegal and therefore stigmatized. That’s not to say sex work is great–it’s a bad job—but keeping it illegal does not promote the equality that Pollitt wants to see.

…To clarify one point, I realize Pollitt is not really calling for sex work to remain illegal, but by using language that separates it from other kinds of work as inherently and perhaps uniquely awful, it reinforces long-standing arguments used to keep it illegal. Quibble with my characterization if you’d like, but I just wanted to clarify this point a bit.

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  • brad

    It also would seem to follow, though I have no idea if in reality it bears out, that by simple virtue of market principles in economies where it is legal and regulated there’s far less business for the sex slave industry. Not to mention a greater ability for the relevant authorities to focus their efforts on eliminating it.
    But I don’t know.

    • brad

      I guess that’s basically what EL was saying, oops.
      Being in NYC I think of the “underground” as dungeons and that kind of “to each their own” stuff, but that’s a different world with the money to afford privileges these workers lack.

  • Murc

    It’s worth noting that a lot of people who are loudly in favor of legalized sex work are also loudly in favor of it continuing to be completely unregulated, which is basically being in favor of legalized human trafficking and a host of other sins. I’d be hesitant to put myself even a little bit into their camp myself.

    • I guess I’d put that crew in the same boat as those who want marijuana completely unregulated. Luckily, the regulate and tax position is winning out on legal weed, which is the responsible position for sex work as well.

      • Pat

        I think that that’s a real concern with legalized sex work. As you say, it’s not really a great job, and I have heard that in Germany, legal sex work coexists with a shadow economy of indentured-like immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe.

        One way to regulate and tax would be by zoning. Licensed sex workers would be required to work in a specified district that was well patrolled by police, for example.

    • witless chum

      You can just say “libertarians,” Murc.

      • Nobdy

        Even they are nominally against trafficking.

        • Murc

          Yeah. They tend to dismiss it as a problem completely.

          I recall “Paying for It”, Chester Brown’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel about his experiences as a john. It’s problematic in many places, but also has a lot of compelling information about the realities of being a buyer in the sex marketplace.

          And then you get to the lengthy afterward, in which he argues, at length, verging on ranting at times, that sex work should be totally legal and unregulated, because things like human trafficking just won’t happen as long as women can go to the cops about it, right?

          • Nobdy

            Legalizing prostitution would require a total reworking of their relationship with the cops and a new regulatory framework. It wouldn’t be easy, but surely if we turned anti-hooker task forces into anti-trafficker task forces we could do SOME good.

            • cpinva

              “but surely if we turned anti-hooker task forces into anti-trafficker task forces we could do SOME good.”

              this should be a true statement. that said, anti-trafficking is a lot harder than just anti-hookering. this is why police dept’s tend to focus on hookers, they’re easy to catch and arrest.

              • joe from Lowell

                Yeah.

                I’m trying to picture your typical Lowell patrolman running an international smuggling investigation.

              • Hogan

                See also Drugs, War on (Some Classes of People who Use Some)

          • Manta

            I agree: that’s the reason why all jobs should be heavily regulated or made illegal: otherwise human trafficking will (and actually does) happen.

            • cpinva

              “I agree: that’s the reason why all jobs should be heavily regulated or made illegal: otherwise human trafficking will (and actually does) happen.”

              I know you didn’t intend to, but this actually makes a kind of sense. after all, how much “human trafficking” is happening in the auto plants? aside from the “acceptable” kind?

              • Manta

                Or agriculture. I suppose the only proper thing to do is to make tomatoes illegal (and when tomatoes are outlawed, only outlaws will eat tomatoes).

                • Vance Maverick

                  Hmm, isn’t something like trafficking in people going on between the employers on their farms in the Central Valley and the potential workers in their impoverished districts of Mexico?

          • Halloween Jack

            *sigh* Yeah, Chester Brown goes into the category of comics creators who should really stick to the comics; he published a short piece, “My Mother Was a Schizophrenic”, in which he basically repeats R.D. Laing’s assertion that schizophrenia didn’t really exist, but was essentially invented by the psychiatric profession. I mean, he’s no Dave Sim, Frank Miller, or even Tony Harris, but…

      • pseudalicious

        As much as I want this to be true, there are definitely sex-worker bloggers, and their allies, out in the feminist-o-sphere, that feel that only decriminalization works, especially now that the Nordic model (criminalize the johns, not the sex workers; sounds great on paper) is considered a failure.) I should say, decrim rather than legalization, and the regulation that implies.

    • BoredJD

      There’s two truths in any industry: 1) that libertarians will bitch about the existence of government coercion and regulation, and 2) that nobody, not even other conservatives, will take them seriously.

    • Protagoras

      Huh? I don’t know which other sins specifically you are referring to, but trafficking already violates lots of other laws. Unless you think the decriminalization crowd also wants to eliminate laws against assault, kidnapping, extortion, etc.? I’ve certainly never heard any of them advocate that, though. Rather, they say that such laws are not sufficiently well enforced in the case of sex workers because of stigmatization, so they think decriminalization is a necessary step to getting those problems actually dealt with. I’m really not sure who you think is advocating “legalized human trafficking.”

    • Royko

      I would think even completely unregulated legal prostitution would offer a host of protections for prostitutes that they aren’t getting now, either because they lack basic employee protections or because they’re in no position (due to their part in an illegal activity) to report abuse.

      I think it should be regulated, of course, but even without it, legalization alone would put these women in a better situation.

      • Another Holocene Human

        Bingo. At any rate, every other country with legal prostitution that I can think of regulates it and Nevada regulates prostitution as well. Just cuz a few libertarians said something on the internet once doesn’t mean that’s the position taken by serious advocates.

    • ajay

      which is basically being in favor of legalized human trafficking and a host of other sins.

      I am really not fond of the term “human trafficking” because it seems to be used as a cover-all for everything from, at one end, modern-day slavery to, at the other end, paying someone to get you across the border so you can go and work for your cousin.

      • Another Holocene Human

        It’s a way for the moral panic crowd to amp up their megaphone, yes, but I think the term is legit, it’s just how it’s used.

        Most human trafficking is for much less, er, sexy forms of labor exploitation, it’s very sad, it’s very much overlooked, and good luck getting the moral panickers to care about brown people being locked onto plantations and their wages and visas stolen, or immigrants who pay enormous bounties to be smuggled into the country only to be trapped in debt peonage and unable to get help because of lack of papers and language skills.

  • I was in Basel last year. I was walking around in the early evening and I came to one block, just like all the others with the people out on the sidewalks having their beer and wurst, three hairdressers on the block (as always — there are more hairdressers in Basel than there are street corners, I’ve no idea why), and this happened to be where the ladies of easy virtue were. They were all young and lively and bantering with the cafe sitters but their reason for being there was obvious, and of course they all walked up to me and made what were evidently very friendly remarks in German. I just said Hi how yah doin’ and walked on and everybody laughed. As I left the block a police car (they’re Mercedes!) came around the corner but I expect they were just making sure everything was peaceful, it didn’t seem like they were going to broom the young ladies. But don’t hold me to that.

    So I looked it up. Prostitution is legal in licensed brothels. Street prostitution is confined to designated areas only. I am guessing that the young ladies I saw were actually the equivalent of carnival barkers for one or more indoor establishments on the block. They were there to advertise the business and invite customers inside, which is why everybody took them for granted. Maybe somebody who knows the city can confirm whether this is a plausible interpretation.

    Workers have to undergo regular HIV/STD testing, the premises have to be inspected, yadda yadda yadda. It does reduce the social costs and exploitiveness of the whole thing, it seems. I expect there are people who work their way through college doing it an so on. But still, it’s hard to really see it as empowering. I guess if you think that’s your best option . . .

    • brad

      I had a similar experience almost 2 decades ago now, while wandering with a gf. It’s interesting that the Netherlands makes it part of their tourism pitch, basically, while Germany keeps it so very quiet. I wonder what the studies show regarding how the workers are treated in the two countries.

      • Basel is actually in Switzerland — but they don’t advertise it either. They cultivate a wholesome image, basically, it’s their schtick. Holey cheese, leather short pants, giant wooden trumpets, buxom maidens in pinafores . . .

        • Hogan
          • Walt

            That speech is completely a lie. Cuckoo clocks aren’t even from Switzerland — they’re from Germany. Anyway, the Swiss used their years of peace to sell themselves out as mercenaries to the highest bidder.

            • Pat

              It’s tough to invade a mountain country.

              • Roland the headless Thompson gunner

                Lots of Switzerland isn’t actually very mountainous. Basel, in particular, is on a wide spot in the valley of the Rhine.

              • Tristan

                That’s why you bring a duck.

          • Colin Day

            And relativity and LSD (although the latter was after that video was made)

    • Nobdy

      Is working 15 random hours at KFC empowering? If we’re going to eliminate all non-empowering jobs we’re going to have many fewer janitors and tomato pickers.

      • Snarki, child of Loki

        Compared to the people working in the Purdue/Tyson chicken-processing plants, yes, KFC is “empowering” (damnation with faint praise, I know)

      • MPAVictoria

        Exactly. Also some woman actually ENJOY being sex workers. They find it empowering, or they find pleasure in making others feel good or any one of a hundred reasons. Being anti-sex worker is basically the same as being anti-woman.

        • Left_Wing_Fox

          To expand on that, good labor practices are not enough to help prevent women from being exploited by the industry. We need a good welfare system and social services so sex work never feels like the only option.

          It has the added advantage of forcing a lot of awful jobs to compete with a null option. I’m starting to think we should change the social service net into a hammock: that way shit jobs would have to offer something better than a refrigerator box under the bridge.

          • Lee Rudolph

            It has the added advantage of forcing a lot of awful jobs to compete with a null option. I’m starting to think we should change the social service net into a hammock

            A good idea, and a very good turn of the assholes’ phrase back at them!

        • GoDeep

          Being anti-sex worker is basically the same as being anti-woman.

          Oh surely that’s going too far now. A clear majority of women oppose legalizing prostitution…so that would mean that 57% of women are anti-woman. I don’t even think the majority of feminists support legalization…and this poll suggests a great majority of feminists oppose it.

          • Most women(hetero, of course) have been conditioned by the culture to see prostitutes as the ‘competition’.

            Also, we don’t give or deny people their rights based on ‘majority vote’. Even a leftie who presumably is for human rights could see that one.

    • JL

      The idea that in order for sex work to be legit, sex workers must be empowered and delighted to be doing it (preferably working their way through college), is part of the problem. Sex workers are like other workers. Some of them really do like their jobs. Others are doing it because it seemed like the best of the options in front of them – much like many employees of restaurants, department stores, etc. Some really don’t like it and would much rather be doing something else but this is the way they’ve found to survive – also like some percentage of McDonald’s employees, etc.

      If sex work were legal sex workers might be able to organize. I mean, I know a sex worker (as in “I know her personally”, not “I know of her”) who is already doing a lot of organizing around here (including building connections with some local feminist groups), but there’s only so far that you can take that when your work is illegal.

      • JL

        Oh, and also, referring to sex workers as “ladies of easy virtue”, or any other euphemism that suggests that their morality is lacking, is part of the problem too.

        • Guggenheim Swirly

          Yeah, that did kinda bug me too actually.

      • Ann Outhouse

        This.

        Adding, legalization in itself is no more a cure for exploitation in the sex business than in the fast food business. The legal prostitution trade in Nevada is highly exploitative, with regulations aimed at protecting the brothel operators and the clients, not the workers. One reason it’s exploitative being that you can’t legally be a prostitute unless you work at a brothel.

        • Protagoras

          So the fact that the regulations in Nevada do more harm than good is evidence that legalization must be accompanied by regulations? I don’t want to sound like a hardcore libertarian or anything, but there’s something suspicious about the reasoning that’s going on here.

          • Pseudonym

            Isn’t Nevada basically the poster child for regulatory capture in general?

            • Hogan

              “Working all my life in a nuclear power plant has given me a healthy green glow . . . and left me as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.”

  • Scott Lemieux

    One point of order: I’m very confident that Pollitt does not think that sex work should be criminalized. Her disagreements with MGG are about different issues.

    • I agree, but she is still using the language of prohibitionism, even if she isn’t really actively calling for it.

      • Incontinentia Buttocks

        I was going to write what Scott wrote. I can see why you object to Pollitt’s rhetoric, but I’m not sure that I’d call it the “language of prohibitionism.” Prohibitionism involves, well, prohibiting something. And there are all sorts of ways that one can criticize and even stigmatize an activity without prohibiting or seeking to prohibit it. It would seem to be that the language of prohibitionism would involve, at the very least, suggesting that we’d all be better off if the activity in question simply ceased to exist. And I’m not even sure that Pollitt is saying this.

      • joe from Lowell

        Does the concept “the language of prohibitionism” cover the entirety of any argument that paying people for sex should be viewed as exploitive?

      • L2P

        That seems to be a pretty bad misreading of Pollitt’s piece.

        The closest she gets is being against “normalization.” That’s a totally different thing than prohibition. Alcohol, for instance, isn’t “prohibited” in America. But it’s also not “normalized.” You can’t sell beer as easily as you can lemonade.

        Also, I’d say there’s a world of difference between believing sex work is stigmatizing because it’s sex work and believing sex work is stigmatizing because it’s reinforcing male privilege. One leads to prohibition, because it’s always going to be bad. The other leads to normalization, regulated to make it less harmful. Pollitt’s in the second group.

        • Jordan

          Yeah, this.

        • JL

          Framing sex work as overwhelmingly a (cis) women’s issue – which is where the male privilege argument would seem to be going – erases the experience of the gay and bi cis men and trans/gender non-conforming people of whatever gender, who practice sex work at higher rates than women as a group (see my comments on this below). It’s not that there’s no male privilege involved (trans women being about twice as likely to practice sex work as trans men illustrates this, for instance), but bringing intersectionality to one’s analysis is a good thing.

          • Another Holocene Human

            Also gay/bi/queer women are over-represented in sex work.

            I would bet that ASD women are also over-represented in sex work, based on personal contacts I have.

            Yes, this erasure is part of the reason I am so allergic to Pollitt and people like her, but the other side is that she doesn’t fucking get THAT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE JOBS THAT SUCK AND ENDANGER THEM DAILY.

            • Another Holocene Human

              For a lot of women on the edge of poverty, stripping is the safest, quickest, easiest money out there!! Spare us the condescension, academia lady!

              • Jordan

                She’s not an academic, dude.

        • GiT

          Alcohol isn’t really a good example of something that is not “normalized.” Alcohol is regulated and normalized. Sniffing glue is regulated and not normalized.

        • JS

          Yeah, I also think you’re misreading/characterizing KP. Not only does she not use the language of “prohibitionism” (where does she, exactly?), she also doesn’t use the language of morality. She says that sex work is exploitative, and that it’s exploitative in ways that being a waitress isn’t, e.g. This actually seems eminently sensible to me, regardless of where you come down on the decriminalization/legalization issues.

          Also, I haven’t looked it up recently, but I think I’ve read that decrim. can perfectly well coexist with all sorts of trafficking, exploitation, etc. Is this wrong?

    • Marek

      I have been reading Katha Pollitt for decades, and respect her greatly, but I think this was a pretty lazy column. Too many parentheticals and glib asides instead of real argument.

  • Nobdy

    If we want to end sex work that degrades and harms women then the answer is to give women better economic choices and aggressively pursue and punish traffickers (which is much more easily done when sex work is not itself criminal, because then a trafficked or exploited woman can go to the cops and have the real criminal arrested.)

    The truth behind prostitution is that it breaks down to:

    1) Economic necessity (Can’t be solved through prohibition)
    2) Forced prostitution (Solving this is actively impeded by prohibition and the antagonism it creates between law enforcement and sex workers)
    3) Women who legitimately want to do sex work (can be discouraged through prohibition, but is by far the least problematic category.)

    We know our society won’t do anything about 1, but it seems extremely perverse to create a society where a woman cannot economically support herself except through sex work and then to punish her (AND stigmatize her, further reducing her opportunity outside the sex industry) for doing sex work. The mass incarceration mindset is just manifestly unjust.

    • brad

      Not to mention we already make it legal for women to have sex for money, provided they do so on camera.

      Somehow it makes me wonder what ending this prohibition would do to rape culture. Rape isn’t about sex, I understand that, but would it change what society deems… “permissible”? Maybe it’d be harder to wave away date rape, from inside rape culture’s perspective, if the “poor guy” had other options.

      • Anonymous

        But that probably wouldn’t work, because rapists aren’t starved for choice. They genuinely enjoy rape.

        • Rob in CT

          Right, but that’s not what brad was saying. He’s wondering if legalized prostitution would diffuse the effectiveness of rape apology. Rapists want to rape. But lots of non-rapists make up excuses for rapists. Would legalized prostitution take away some of the excuses? Maybe, maybe not. Dunno.

    • DrDick

      That pretty much would be my sense as well. I have known women who did that and it is not a particularly appealing lifestyle to me, but they show have the freedom to make their own choices. For far too many women, sex work (including stripping) is the only kind of job they can get that pays the bills.

      • Theo

        Wait what? I thought only government intervention and more laws could stop human trafficking? Now you think that “sho[uld] have the freedom to make their own choices?” And you agree that “the answer is to give women better economic choices?”

        Careful. That’s the language of libertarianism.

        • Left_Wing_Fox

          Better economic choices also include government housing and meals, so they don’t _need_ to work for a living.

        • sharculese

          Complex causes are a think that exists, dummy.

        • DrDick

          Actually, libertarianism reduces the choices of most people to the benefit of the wealthy, but we already knew you were clueless. To second LWF, subsidized housing,childcare, and medical care, along with a much more robust and generous welfare system, and free access to public universities and trade schools, with a living stipend would go a very long way to improving those conditions. Also rigorous enforcement of gender and racial discrimination laws would help a lot.

          • Theo

            “To second LWF, subsidized housing,childcare, and medical care, along with a much more robust and generous welfare system, and free access to public universities and trade schools, with a living stipend would go a very long way to improving those conditions.”

            And why would anyone work at anything they didn’t want to do then? And who would pay for me to go to school and earn a living stipend forever and have people care for my many, many babies? I certainly wouldn’t be working for some “wealthy” person so they could make money for me to be taxed to pay for me to learn all there is about everything…

            But what you’re honestly saying is that a reasonable set of choices to decide whether to work at a job you don’t want to work at is to have the option to live well without working at all… Yeah, I’m sure that’s sustainable…

            • Left_Wing_Fox

              And why would anyone work at anything they didn’t want to do then?

              Ok, I’m giving you $12,000/year to live on. If you flip burgers part time, I’ll give you another $400 a month. If you scrub toilets, I can kick that up to $1000/month above and beyond that.

              Do you think no-one would take that opportunity?

            • DrDick

              That system has actually famously worked marvelously in Scandinavia for over half a century, but do not let reality stop you.

        • joe from Lowell

          Since when has anything close to libertarianism given any by the top slice of society better economic choices?

          You’re talking to people whose ideas revolve mainly around helping people suffering from poverty and economic immobility, and you think you get to seize the moral high ground on “giving women better economic choices” because you want to get rid of the minimum wage?

          • Theo

            Uh, aren’t you all in general agreement that allowing women and men to sell sexual services in an open market would lead to better choices?

            I’m sure we can tussle over what kinds of regulations would be needed, but that, in general, is a libertarian principle being applied to create more choices.

            Also, if you have been to other countries, you can see that freer markets create more choices. They might not be the choices you like, for the people you like, but there are more of them for more people.

            Go to Europe, and see what kind of choices you have vs. the United States. Go to China or Laos, and see what kind of choices you have vs Europe. Go to Peru or Bolivia and compare with the above or with Chile, who has a markedly freer economic system…

            Again, most libertarians don’t require no safety net, but the net can’t be better than working! That’s just attempting to reverse gravity!

            • DrS

              Again, most libertarians don’t require no safety net, but the net can’t be better than working! That’s just attempting to reverse gravity!

              Which must be why your policies of shredding the safety net and making work horrific are so appealing to you.

            • DrDick

              And now you know why nobody takes libertarians seriously.

        • UserGoogol

          It’s the language of liberalism. Liberalism is the political philosophy centered around maximizing freedom, libertarians are just a conservative-leaning offshoot of liberalism who focus on a specific interpretation of what freedom is.

          • Theo

            “Maximizing freedom?”

            Uh, then you should be anarchists. They really get the freedom thing max’d out.

            • UserGoogol

              Maximizing might not be the best word, but maximizing freedom subject to constraints like “Your right to swing your arm ends at my nose.” But more than that that’s indicative of the difference between libertarian and modern liberal conceptualizations of freedom. If freedom is freedom from constraint, then the government that governs best is the government that governs least, or at least a minimal government which focuses on preventing other people from harming you and taking away your freedom. But if freedom is the substantive ability to get what you want, then there’s many things a government can do to actively give people more options.

              • Theo

                “or at least a minimal government which focuses on preventing other people from harming you and taking away your freedom.”

                This is pretty fair.

                “But if freedom is the substantive ability to get what you want, then there’s many things a government can do to actively give people more options.”

                I don’t know if liberals would agree with this characterization or not, but I would note that “you” doesn’t necessarily mean the poor, the down-trodden, the just, or the benevolent. Government can, and always has been, used to get what “you” want. Unfortunately, the “you” is often large businesses, the rich, the powerful, the connected, the loudest, the meanest, and the least virtuous among us.

                The more powerful the government, the more power the governing have, and the more power-hungry people will be attracted to government. If that’s your goal, you may as well ask the King for that small slice of farm land…

                • DrDick

                  REvealing once again your total ignorance of 1) human behavior, 2) politics, 3 everything else.

  • Scott P.

    She tries to stigmatize a reality of the world as immoral,

    The same accusation was made of the abolitionists.

    • Among many differences is that slavery was a legalized labor system where sex work is an illegal labor system, meaning that the comparison is inherently problematic.

      • Scott P.

        But both were considered a “reality of the world” — i.e., something that it would be foolhardy to try to change.

        • Walt

          As is homosexuality, now. Analogies are overrated.

    • Dave

      You could also say the same of the War on Drugs. Your move.

      • pillsy

        You could say the same about pretty much anything anybody advocates against, from violent videogames to murder for hire.

  • For both male and female sex-workers, as long as those workers are adults, get fair pay, are treated well, and get free medical coverage and education opportunities, with some sort of early-retirement plan, then I won’t have a problem with it.

    Pretty much every town and city in American history had “Houses of Ill-repute” that every one in the town knew about.

    Of course, the treatment of those workers was far from the ideal that I’m talking about.

    Like with drugs, we can keep coming out with newer and stricter laws – but people some people gonna want to get high, and some wanna screw. And some, BOTH!

    Tax it.
    Regulate it.
    And have safety and medical inspections.

    • Nobdy

      Part of the reason they’re not respected and protected is the prohibition. Prostitutes know they can’t go to the cops, can’t unionize without the risk of crackdowns, and basically have to live on the margins of society. It’s hard to demand respect and better wages when you’re cut off from civil society AND the courts (Can’t sue a John who stiffed you.)

      • Great points!

      • Tyto

        And yet, in some jurisdictions, a John can use your services, stiff you, and then shoot you because you committed a crime. (Still waiting to see SYG enforced for a prostitute killing a particularly abusive john.)

    • Theo

      “For both male and female sex-workers, as long as those workers are adults, get fair pay, are treated well, and get free medical coverage and education opportunities, with some sort of early-retirement plan, then I won’t have a problem with it.”

      Wow. This would make it more attractive than many “normal” jobs! Are you trying to encourage more people to join the industry?

      • DrDick

        Actually, we want to extend those rights to ALL workers.

  • David B.

    If we take labor to presuppose voluntary exchange, then, yes, I’m skeptical and uncomfortable with that paradigm. For things like stripping or adult film that are already legal, yes, the labor movement should work on ending abuses like treating them as “independent contractors,” but with respect to prostitution, it’s closer to rape than sex. Johns are at best negligent and probably recklessly indifferent to the circumstances leading to prostitution, so the consent given is almost surely artificial. What do we think the ratio is of feminist studies majors “reclaiming their bodies” to drug addicts and runaways beaten? That’s not entirely a function of it being illegal as it prostitution being the result of extreme desperation under the best case. Western Europe has done as you suggest, and the result is legal protection for outside pimps and traffickers who can just place their women in legal brothels.

    • But legalizing and regulating sex work could take away much of these problems, especially intimidation and violence. In any case, the system would hardly be worse than the present.

      • David B.

        Legalizing stripping doesn’t take away the “social stigma” of giving lap dances, which makes it hard but not impossible for dancers to organize. If the goal is to make sex work not exploitative, legalization is not sufficient, and it’s probably not necessary either. I think there’s a compelling criticism of the way in which prohibition is currently enforced. I like the Iowa statute that charges johns with “prostitution,” for an example. Both parties are, under that law, “prostitutes.”

        I also don’t see why saying something is second-wave feminism is supposed to be an adequate objection in itself. Pollitt’s point is a good one – seeing everything thru the lens of Marxian theories of labor treat prostitution – sex work – as all work and no sex. Now, it’s possible each of Pollitt and Grant inventing a strawman (straw-womyn?) of the other, but I don’t see what a glibertarian, it’s the government interference with the hooker market that’s to blame, is supposed to help. If we were to legalize prostitution, for instance, and against all reasonable expectation it solved the problem of sex trafficking and drug addiction and women received a living wage and comprehensive health insurance (with dental), Pollitt’s concerns would still be compelling, because you’d have a market characterized by conditions falling far short of “dignity.”

        • There’s nothing wrong with second-wave feminism at all. There is something wrong with work being unsafe.

          • Origami Isopod

            There’s nothing wrong with second-wave feminism at all.

            Disagree. The second wave was and is massively transphobic and gender-essentialist.

            • Dustin

              Certain parts of the radical cohort of the second wave were/are transphobic and gender-essentialist. The second wave also had huge class/racial blinders on. But the second wave is where our contemporary arguments about male privilege, and the work to dismantle it, begin. The acknowledgment that men and women do not sexually bargain (whether or not money is exchanged) from positions of equal standing, and that they face entirely different expectations and pressures, is an indispensable part of any feminist project worthy of the name.

              • Another Holocene Human

                I don’t think the RADICALS in the 2nd wave, like Leslie Fish, were gender essentialist or transphobic at all.

                It was the MAINSTREAM 2nd wave, Gloria Steinem back in the 70s (I guess she’s kinda apologized since?) and so on who were pushing that.

                As for the Lesbian/Feminists they did go quickly in the reactionary transphobic (not to mention often misandrist) direction as the 70s progressed and they turned insular. But bi radicals stayed groovy.

                I read a lot of their works from 1969 to the early 1990s when Queer Nation and NLGTF kinda blew up the old paradigm in the Lesbian community and feminism as a concept seemed completely discredited to young people (that has since, fortunately, changed, but it didn’t hurt that some of feminism’s suckiest spokesmorons, people who for example blitzed the media with fake statistics and then tried to spin it that they were trying to start a conversation, left the stage). So I feel like I know.

        • BoredJD

          There’s a social stigma with being a garbage worker or a fast food worker too, but the former has organized and the latter is trying to. And many sex workers simply don’t care about the stigmas other people have shoved up their asses.

        • JL

          Legalization is not sufficient – any more than it’s sufficient to make any labor not exploitative – but the actual sex workers that I’ve talked to about this very much consider it necessary.

          • David B.

            I think legalization / not legalization is a bit of a red herring. You can have legal prostitution coexisting with sexual slavery. I think a better way to approach the issue is to find ways to help women who want to get out of sex work obtain the means to do so. Incarcertaing them probably doesn’t help as it makes it harder and harder to get a job, but what it does require is a recognition that, as Pollitt says, this isn’t work like any other and should in fact be discouraged as the exercise in male privilege it is. I’d rather reform HOW police go about enforcing prostitution laws than assuming the abuses are taken away. In the Pollitt article she particularly takes Grant to task for criticism of the Swedish model under which selling sex is not a crime. Is it still prohibition since buying it is? Does it matter? I’d rather see that than having the state give its imprimatur to a choice few brothel owners.

            • JL

              The sex workers that I’ve actually talked to loathe the Swedish model. When their customers are criminalized, they lose out on some of the benefits of legalization (like not having to do your work underground). When “pimps” are criminalized and cracked down upon, sex workers who help other sex workers with safety issues (by providing them with housing or helping them procure safe clients, for instance) are criminalized. Their support networks that they need in order to be safe – bodyguards, landlords, etc – lose out. You might be able to argue that this isn’t worse than the status quo, but the status quo isn’t being presented as a solution, unlike the Swedish model.

              I’m okay with trying to provide sex workers who want to leave that occupation with ways to do so. In the same way that I’m okay with doing that for, you know, any other kind of labor. I don’t want people to be stuck in farmworker or fast-food jobs – to name a couple of others that are often chosen for reasons of economic necessity and often have bad working conditions – if they don’t want to, either. Survival sex work (as opposed to sex work done because it’s genuinely the sort of work that the worker wants to do) comes down to issues of economic justice, of racial justice, of justice for women, of justice for queer and trans people…so fight those injustices at their roots. Fight for jobs. Fight for women’s and people’s of color and LGBTQ people’s increased economic opportunity. Fight to alleviate discrimination, bigotry, and the family rejection/abuse of queer youth.

              • David B.

                Well, no policy is 100%, but whatever one thinks about the Swedish model, describing it as “carceral feminism” takes a complex issue and renders it simplistic. I’m not sure who’s described it as a solution in itself, just that it’s an improvement.

                What you’re saying about pimping laws being applied to support communities and so on is exactly what i’m talking about, that within each legal regime, you can do this shit well or poorly, and the way you do it well is to take seriously the gender power dynamics that operate, which a pure labor approach doesn’t do. The biggest obstacle to fair treatment isn’t so much the legal status, than the inherent gender imbalances at issue. As such, I see criminalizing the johns more of a feature than a bug – if it deters prostitution at the margin, good. If being “pushed underground” is the cause of problems, you don’t need just legalization but normalization, and that’s where it gets counterproductive to addressing ways in which the exploitation is in the prostitution itself, not just the conditions of it. Saying the solution is various facets of “justice” instead is a truism, without content, but I bet you had fun writing it out.

                Further, since legalization will never happen, politically in the U.S., what approach to prohibition do you prefer – American or Swedish. At least within the prohibition model, Pollitt’s type of feminism does a better job than Grant’s of giving male authority figures tools to humanize those who aren’t humanized, especially insofar as it doesn’t require completely upending a legal regime to matter.

      • DrDick

        Exactly. Giving these women (and men) recourse to the police and courts alone would be a huge improvement.

        • Ann Outhouse

          Or not. Women who aren’t sex workers often don’t get much help from the system. See the Detroit Rape Kit Scandal, e.g.

          • DrDick

            I do not disagree with that (domestic violence and sexual assault do not get the kinds of attention they should). It is still better than the current situation, where they get arrested if they go to the police.

            • Ann Outhouse

              Agree 100%.

    • postmodulator

      What do we think the ratio is of feminist studies majors “reclaiming their bodies” to drug addicts and runaways beaten?

      In my experience the plurality — of strippers, anyway, I know very few other sex workers socially — are single mothers with no college education and some deadbeat dad off in the background. That could be a regional thing, I suppose. A lot more of the mundane tragedy of late capitalism and less of the runaway/drug addict issue.

      • DrDick

        The research I am familiar with indicates the same for prostitutes, but with more people with substance abuse problems. There is also considerable overlap between the two groups.

    • Theo

      “Johns are at best negligent and probably recklessly indifferent to the circumstances leading to prostitution, so the consent given is almost surely artificial.”

      The Johns’ consent or the trick? Also, what theory do you rely on to undermine consent? Or are you just making up your own definition of consent that turns on your own definition of duress?

      • DrDick

        While I do not actually agree with his construction, I think he is referring to the asymmetrical coercive nature of the interaction.

        • Theo

          But he doesn’t seem to limiting his comment to trafficking. He seems to be talking about sex work generally. Do you think that economic duress can invalidate consent? I would think not. I mean, “do this or I won’t pay you $500” might coerce me into doing this, but if I did, I wouldn’t allege a lack of consent.

          • Dustin

            Economic duress can severely compromise the possibility of genuine consent, yes, especially when the sex work is done out of the necessity of survival.

            • Theo

              Oh, “genuine” consent. I forgot all about “genuine” consent. Uh, how is that genuinely different than consent?

              Also, consider that some Johns are sex addicts. Can a sex addict “genuinely consent” to a sex? If not, isn’t the John being raped?

              • DrDick

                Proving once again that libertarians are simply sociopathic monsters and total assholes.

          • David B.

            To clarify, given what we know about the prevalence of trafficking, even consent verbally obtained from the john can’t be relied upon, so if we’re in a world where the legal regime requires the john to obtain consent to a sex act, it’s impossible without more information, which would of course compromise the sex workers’ safety in other ways. I think that’s the moral obligation at any rate.

            Economic duress is not what i had in mind, because that just gets into what is or isn’t “genuine.” I’m talking about what is or isn’t consent, and that’s not a question you can look at by considering the act in isolation but the conditions under which someone is a sex worker at all. Since the john is at least reckless in disregarding known risks of trafficking, i don’t see how one can justify legalizing the PURCHASE of sex, even when there’s a case to be made for treating the sellers of it differently.

    • Anonymous

      Western Europe has done as you suggest, and the result is legal protection for outside pimps and traffickers who can just place their women in legal brothels.

      Yes. Exactly so. Legalization assists pimps and brothel-operators more than it does individual workers. In fact, individual workers fare worse when their employers and clients both have more rights than they do.

    • Protagoras

      The way johns are described as thinking about their clients is very similar to the way some feminists say porn consumers think of porn models/actresses. I am a porn consumer, as are many of my friends, and I think the feminist description of how men view the women in porn is wildly off base in my case, and I’m pretty sure in the case of many of my friends. I am not sure why I should accept that the story about johns is any more accurate. What’s the evidence for that?

      It might, perhaps, be pointed out that johns rarely report cases of apparent abuse to the authorities. But then, they face prosecution for doing so, and “rarely” is not “never.” And for that matter, police and researchers find relatively small numbers of cases of trafficking and abuse; while the prohibitionists usually argue that this is because the abuse is well-hidden, it seems at least conceivable that what is instead going on is that the abuse is only a small part of the industry, and few johns report it at least partly because few of them encounter it.

      • David B.

        I said straight up, I’m not talking about porn or stripping, as does Pollitt. It’s an empirical one – there is wide scale trafficking in prostitution that a john is assuming a risk one is not assuming when watching porn. They choose with whom to work, and even in a regulated prostitution market, that’s just not sound business practices. It may happen that a woman is forced into porn (possibly more common in the old days), but it’s not a risk the viewer in particular is assuming because the viewer is not responsible for obtaining consent or releases. What you (and I) see is something separate from the act of filming it. Anyway, i view stuff like stripping and porn as a decent safety valve that hopefully lessens the demand for prostitution.

      • Origami Isopod

        I think the feminist description of how men view the women in porn is wildly off base in my case, and I’m pretty sure in the case of many of my friends.

        You’re arguing by anecdote. Given how virulently misogynist so much mainstream porn is, the feminist description is not without merit.

  • Orpho

    I am also too second-wave in this: I look at the current state of the market, not the possible state of the market, and conclude that sex work is exploitative, in the same way that I look at the current state of the clothing market/distribution in the US and conclude that the clothing industry is exploitative. I don’t believe that anyone with a reasonable set of choices would choose to work in the clothing factories in Bangladesh.

    If we are postulating magicalcandypony lands where there are lots of jobs in many industries where there are safe working conditions and just treatment, I can imagine sex work and clothing factory work that is not exploitative.

    I think most of the debate that goes on happens in the middle, and I’d be much more leery of taking a clear stand in the middle. I can understand why the position that “socially just sex work is impossible” would raise so many hackles, but is “socially just sex work is impossible in this climate/current context” really such an anti-labor/anti-woman/anti-feminist position?

    • ““socially just sex work is impossible in this climate/current context” really such an anti-labor/anti-woman/anti-feminist position?”

      It may not be anti-woman or anti-feminist per se, but it is anti-labor because the work is going to happen in any case and so the responsible position is to make that work safe.

      • Orpho

        I think that’s a very reasonable position, and would even if I thought (I don’t) that “socially just sex work in any world is impossible.”

        I suppose I thought we were debating whether sex work could ever be non-exploitative, rather than whether current workers should be protected. I think I’ve certainly read at the above links questions about _how_ current sex workers should be protected, but not _that_ they should be protected. I was pretty sure everyone you linked to is on board with protecting current workers, no?

        I think the root of the question being debate might be where the most harm to the sex workers is done – intrinsic to the work, so the work should be prevented from being done to/by them if at all possible, or in the circumstances that give rise to or support the sex work, which should be rendered as harmless as possible, I guess. I imagine that’s where you would hold that one position is anti-labor, as “the work is going to be done anyway,” even if the work is the thing that causes the harm rather than the circumstances surrounding it

        As for what actually does the harm, my jury’s out on that point, but hanging towards “it’s not the sex work does the harm.” M. Nussbaum compares sex work to volunteers for medical experiments, who also put their body forward in exchange for money, arguing that there’s no important difference between someone who, say, gets enemas for SCIENCE vs. a sex worker. I find the point fairly compelling.

    • Nobdy

      If a woman has a choice between a bad job in a clothing factory and a bad job in sex work and chooses bad choice B why is that more exploitative than bad choice A? Why is it better to economically force a woman to hurt her back and neck bending over a sewing machine 60 hours a week than to economically force her to have sex with strangers if she’d rather have sex with strangers?

      I realize that the choice isn’t always so clear cut and there’s often force and intimidation involved, but sometimes the choice is purely economic without violence, and if so why is sex exploitation worse than other forms of labor exploitation?

      • DrDick

        Exactly. It is not like sexual abuse is not common in the garment industry and similar legal businesses with a predominently female worlforce.

        • Right–the garment industry runs on massive sexual abuse and has for a century. Nothing like a forced gynecological examination in order to get a job.

          • N__B

            Recognizing that there’s no rational reason for that, what’s the stated reason?

            • DrDick

              There is no stated reason. They do it because they can.

              • Thanks. I guess.

          • Wait, what. This is a thing that happens in the US?

      • LeeEsq

        One reason why an exploitative job as a sex worker is potentially worse than an exploitative job in factory is that you usually don’t risk getting STDs from factory work. Factory work, especially in a very badly run one with minimal attention towards safety details, isn’t safe but most of the injuries who receive are usually more treatable than STDs. Exploited factory workers also probably doesn’t risk being physically beat up or even murdered as much as exploitative sex work even in an badly run, non-unionized shop.

        • “Factory work, especially in a very badly run one with minimal attention towards safety details, isn’t safe but most of the injuries who receive are usually more treatable than STDs.”

          Tell that to a textile worker suffering from bynossis or a coal miner suffering from black lung or a chemical worker who gets cancer. Most STDs are easily treatable if detected and treated early.

    • junker

      As Erik said above, though, it’s all well and good and I believe this too, but the status quo is worse for sex workers than legalization. Keeping the current framework isn’t going to prevent people from becoming sex workers.

      Put another way, you compare sex workers to those who work in the garment industry. You support regulations for the garment industry, right? Even though you think it’s exploitative?

    • Hogan

      So, what, we criminalize clothing manufacture?

      • Snarki, child of Loki

        …and a few years later, when everyone is naked, the strippers will have a much harder time finding work.

        • N__B

          They’ll put on clothes and thus be exotic.

          • Dustin

            Way off-topic, but I vaguely recall an anecdote, probably apocryphal, about Christian missionaries who encountered some tribe in which it was customary for the women to go topless, as breasts were not sexualized but merely for feeding babies. Their hair, however, was considered highly erotic and went covered. The missionaries reversed this and demanded that female converts cover their breasts. The act of covering up transformed their breasts, in male eyes, into erotic objects.

      • Jordan

        But who is talking about criminalization? Not Pollit, and not Orpho. Also, not really any non-troll regulars.

        So, we have a majority opinion here in favor of legalization. That doesn’t mean that prostitution can’t still be problematic.

        For some reason, a great deal of comments (and, kinda, the OP) equate pointing out that problematic nature with advocating for or reinforcing prohibition because reasons. And I don’t see how that helps.

        And, anyways, the actual, real-world practice of prostitution *is* problematic. For more or less the reasons that Pollitt brings up.

        • JS

          Just seconding this.

    • DrDick

      I don’t fundamentally disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the work, but the hard reality for most of these women is that the only choices they have are between degrees and kinds of exploitation. For all too many of them, this is the best paying and most reliable job they can find. Legalization is the only alternative that does not entail “magicalcandypony lands”.

    • Theo

      “I don’t believe that anyone with a reasonable set of choices would choose to work in the clothing factories in Bangladesh.”

      What makes a set of choices reasonable? From what I understand, a Bengalese’s choice of whether or not to work in a clothing factory is Bangladesh is a no brainer…

      • DrDick

        Given that you are a brain dead libertarian, I should point out that work there or starve does not qualify as “a reasonable set of choices”.

      • Left_Wing_Fox

        From what I understand, a Bengalese’s choice of whether or not to work in a clothing factory is Bangladesh is a no brainer…

        Shit-work or starvation is always an easy choice. So is “Give me your money or I’ll shoot you”.

        • Theo

          Neither you nor Dick answered my question. What’s a reasonable set of choices? And what makes it reasonable? Is it a define set, applicable in all circumstances? That is, an adequate set of reasonable choices the same in Bangladesh, as it is in the US, as it is in Somalia?

          I tend to agree that some choice is necessary for a free market to work. But how can you set that level reasonable choice beyond what the market can bear? We can’t pay $10.10 USD an hour to Bangalese workers, companies simply would not do business there. Then what? Then their choice is starve or starve; it’s not even a “set” any longer.

          • Left_Wing_Fox

            I believe a reasonable choice is “survival” versus “survival with benefits”.

            I believe this is reasonable because we have the resources to provide everyone with food, shelter and clothing, as well as basic healthcare and education.

            I believe it is adequate in all circumstances, even if the details vary.

            I think the market can bear a hell of a lot more than liberterians believe. The market shifts to match conditions, that’s what makes it such a powerful force. Create regulations, and the market adapts to those regulations. Create trade policies or minimum wages, and the market adapts to those conditions.

            So while it’s not necessary to pay foreign workers $10 an hour to have decent living standards in their own economy (and frankly, claiming that working 60 hours in conditions capable of killing 1000 people at a moment’s notice is equivalent is reprehensible), you easily COULD by ensuring tariffs match domestic wages of equal value. Companies can still take advantage of trained workers and low domestic wages for local production and export to low-wage nations with their own tariffs. Open fair trade, rather than “free” trade. ‘

            So, do you think it’s reasonable for market forces to ensure people accept as little money as possible? If so, where is the market for consumer goods supposed to come from?

            • Theo

              “I believe a reasonable choice is “survival” versus “survival with benefits”.”

              That definition adequately describes the current set of choices available to Bangalese clothing workers. They can still survive, it’s just nice to have thinks like concrete dwellings and meat.

              “I believe this is reasonable because we have the resources to provide everyone with food, shelter and clothing, as well as basic healthcare and education.”

              Do we have the resources to provide these to all Bangalese?

              “you easily COULD by ensuring tariffs match domestic wages of equal value.”

              Why would I want to hire foreign workers if I have to pay the same amount as I would local workers? The external cost would make it more expensive. Also, if I have to do that, wouldn’t the cost of my products increase. Wouldn’t, then also the people be able to buy less of my products? Wouldn’t they then need increased wages to afford my products?

              “So, do you think it’s reasonable for market forces to ensure people accept as little money as possible?”

              Yes.

              “If so, where is the market for consumer goods supposed to come from?”

              Accepting less money for work, reduces the cost of those goods on the market, allowing people who make little, to buy more. Increasing the cost of production, by increasing wages, simply makes the product more expensive. Where are you going to enough get enough people to make enough money to buy the products that you caused to increase in price? Sure, those workers might make 10.10 now, but that shirt they made is now that much more expensive.

              • Dustin

                How is anyone supposed to afford the damn “product” in the first place if you keep shoving wages as close to zero as you can get away with?

                • Theo

                  If the product is unaffordable, it’s unaffordable. Inflating the cost to make the product does magically make it affordable. if there are so many people that their labor just is not worth anything, or much, I don’t see an obvious solution. Artificially increasing the value of their labor is not a solution. As Left-Wing says, the market will adjust.

                  For example, the mortgage tax deductions no longer make houses more affordable, and the market prices have adjusted for the tax savings. If you don’t believe me, consider what would happen to housing prices if the deduction were ended suddenly.

                  Same with minimum wage. How will stop the economy from adjusting to the tide minimum wage, leaving you exactly where you were before?

                • DrS

                  Same with minimum wage. How will stop the economy from adjusting to the tide minimum wage, leaving you exactly where you were before?

                  Reality, that’s how.

                • Theo

                  “Reality, that’s how.”

                  So you can’t explain it, it just happens? Now wonder you all are so at convincing people to adopt a higher minimum wage. If I have more money I will be able to buy more things, or pay more for things. If I’m selling something, I will sell it for as much as I can get the most people to buy it for. If my customers have more money, I will be able to sell it for more. If they have less, I will have to sell it for less.

                  How you propose to stop that cause/effect by acting only on one side of the equation? Why not just price-fix? Or better yet, why not make everyone work for the same wage, and have access to the products. I’m sure choices will shoot through the roof then! Sure worked in the USSR, Cuba, China, and NK. Why didn’t we think of modeling our economy after them sooner!?

                • DrS

                  Holy fuck, Theo. If you can’t be bothered to even get the basics of economics down, then you should really shut up rather than talk out your ass about economics.

                  What you’re talking about is Say’s Law, which isn’t exactly Say’s and absolutely isn’t a Law, but that’s just a ‘fun fact’.

                  I love how a modest change always gives rise to ZOMG! USSRCUBACHINANK!!!!! talk with you dipshits. Your sense of proportion and judgement of effects are only matched with your keen understanding of history.

                • DrS

                  I mean, if nothing else, you can note that the minimum wage has been raised multiple times before and what you’ve said will happen doesn’t happen.

                  So, I get that you don’t understand the theory, but why can’t you even get the real world facts down?

                • Theo

                  “So, I get that you don’t understand the theory, but why can’t you even get the real world facts down?”

                  What am I missing? If a significant portion of the population can suddenly pay more, why would the market not adjust to that additional purchasing power by raising prices? Why would this increase not occur especially to low-cost goods, whose production costs are more likely to increase if minimum wage was increased?

                  Also, I don’t know what you’re talking about regarding prior increases. Obviously, prior increases did not solve the problem, as further increases were needed, and are now proposed. That’s exactly my point. Raising the MW increases inflation and the focus of that increase is likely born by low-cost products. Worse, the more increase the MW, the more inflation, so the more you have to increase the wage.

                  That’s not good economic policy unless you counter it with strategies that affect the other side of the equation, like making the cost of production lower to offset and increase in productions costs, but still wouldn’t account for the overall increase in inflation due to there being more purchasing power generally, albeit temporarily.

                • DrS

                  We’re all still reeling from that massive hyper inflation from 2006s minimum wage hike.

                  Obviously, prior increases did not solve the problem, as further increases were needed, and are now proposed.

                  So, the argument is, don’t give the infected patient an antibiotic cause they will in all likelihood get infected at some future date? Sounds dumb.

                  What’s up with this notion that you should stop passing new legislation regardless of the situation and what’s changed since it was last addressed? It’s strange. I think it’s probably tied to that insistence that the proper way to build a government is on libertarian principles regardless of the outcomes.

                  You’ve proposed a very efficient model here where price levels move in lockstep with wage increases. If things were this deterministic, then why are you even worried about inflation? Wages go up, prices go up….what’s the big deal if its all the same relationally?

                  I’m telling you, go read about says law, and the critiques of says law. I was going to say something about “how I don’t have time to dig up these things to try to educate you.” But that’s obviously not true.

                  Anyhoo, this is all not to say that there are no changes to the minimum wage could lead to inflation but, and this is important, these are changes NO ONE IS PROPOSING. Also, that doesn’t address the times that increased inflation can have positive impacts.

              • DrS

                Say’s Law is bullshit, Theo.

              • DrDick

                Actually the real choices for many of these workers is take this job or starve, but I realize that does not bother you, since you are a sociopathic libertarian.

                BTW, it is “Bengalis” not “Bangalese”, you cretin.

                • Lee Rudolph

                  The Bangalese were a punk band, weren’t they?

          • DrDick

            A “reasonable set of choices” is one where “dieing” or being homeless and begging are not among the alternatives.

            • Libertarian Fuckwit

              Who cares about such prosaic things? There are principles to worry about here!

              Can’t interfere with the free market or else things will get bad…so bad that someone might die of hunger!

              No, better to stick to your principles rather than risk that hellscape.

          • Orpho

            So, to the extent that you’re asking a real question, I would suggest that the most useful approach I’ve found (and this is not my field) to this rather tricky question is the Capabilities approach to social justice questions (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach/ ; I’m most familiar with it from the work of Martha Nussbaum, and she has applied it to sex work.

            Just in case you’re really asking.

  • TribalistMeathead

    Frankly, calls for legalized prostitution make me uncomfortable because they invariably involve finding one woman who’s a sex worker because she enjoys sex and then argue that there are literally legions of women who would love to have sex for a living, but can’t, because it’s illegal.

    Not to mention the fact that its advocates tend to be men who are far too loathsome to have sex without paying for it.

    • You are way misunderstanding the point Grant is making here. This isn’t about “loving sex.” This is about making choices as a worker. Phrasing it the way you do is in fact quite sexist.

    • Ronan

      (1) I’m not sure what ‘makes you uncomfortable’ matters. (2) It isnt ‘one woman who’s a sex worker who enjoys sex’, its succession of sex workers from within the industry pushing for legalistion (3)this

      “Not to mention the fact that its advocates tend to be men who are far too loathsome to have sex without paying for it.”

      is morally loaded and irrelevant. There are many men who havent paid for sex and wont ever but who think the current system (and potential half measures ala Sweden) are idiotic and proven failures. (plus it’s not men primarily at this moment in time it’s coming *from sex workers* – afaict)
      (4) ther argument you lay out *really isnt the argument*

    • DrDick

      Actually, the only argument I am seeing here is that legalizing it makes it less onerous and safer for the women already engaged in it. Nobody is arguing this is about women “enjoying” it (the few prostitutes I have known did not like sex very much, at least with men). It is about improving their working conditions and lives.

    • djw

      This is a standard that is applied to no other jobs, ever. Does anyone love being a meatpacker? Does that mean it should be illegal?

      • Another Holocene Human

        Actually, it’s a callback to condescending upper middle class Victorian rhetoric about street walkers (desperately poor urban women whose men were confined to workhouses and who often sold themselves for bread from the same workhouse), claiming they were “nymphomaniacs”, in other words, having an unwomanly lust for sex, not just desire for sex, but one of abnormal degree. As if their desperation were a paraphilia.

        It’s a way of looking at it that excuses the wealthier classes from any sort of solidarity with and moral obligation to the Malthusian ranks of laissez-faire, industrial England and the US.

  • Anonymous

    Whoring is illegal because its bad. Legalized whoring is not going to help. The whore isn’t any less objectified because its legal.

    • Nobdy

      Unassailable logic. An anonymous git on the Internet declares something “bad” without qualification or explanation. Pack it up, LOOMIS, your arguments have been totally and convincingly refuted. Ogg think it bad.

    • Origami Isopod

      Fuck off, JenKnob.

    • Anonymous

      And how do you feel about fire, Tonto?

    • DrDick

      So you can only get laid if prostitution is illegal and they are forced to take all comers or get beat up?

      • Snarki, child of Loki

        If prostitution is legal, do the “public accommodation” rules apply?

        Just asking for a friend.

  • Lee Rudolph

    I haven’t seen any of either in this thread (and don’t expect to, although given our local trolls perhaps I should), but I just want to stake my IP claim to both “johnsplaining” and “whoresplaining” should either become appropriate (and/or be used inappropriately). Oh, and “pimpsplaining” while I’m at it.

    I’ll just take my 10% in trade, thanks.

    • brad

      It’s too bad “cluelessplaining” feels clumsy. I sure am good at it.

  • Dusitn

    I love Katha Pollitt. The second-wavers (and the radfems) are slowly fading away and being replaced by a younger cohort of feminists for whom the the concept of “patriarchy” is hardly ever mentioned. Women are an oppressed class, the radfems would say, and women who do sex work are in no more position to consent to it than sexually abused minors consent to their abusers. Prostitution is the horrifying end of a patriarchal view of the female body as object, a disposable receptacle for male use. Inherently exploitative, even if legalized. Men who use prostitutes are not morally distinguishable from rapists.

    But these kinds of arguments usually get one inaccurately labeled a prude. Radical arguments are almost completely absent from our political discussions. No one writes like Pollitt anymore.

    • Fine. How does this keep sex workers safe?

    • Origami Isopod

      The second-wavers (and the radfems) are slowly fading away and being replaced by a younger cohort of feminists for whom the the concept of “patriarchy” is hardly ever mentioned.

      Actually, the concept of patriarchy is going quite strong among the youngest of feminists. The third wave provided some needed correction to the transphobic, gender-essentialist excesses of the second, but the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction.

      Beyond that, I would repeat Erik’s question to you. Until we attain radfem utopia, how do you propose we make sure as few sex workers as possible are beaten, raped, exposed to disease, or murdered? Because keeping it illegal has not helped, especially when there is not much of a social welfare net and many women do not have other career options.

      Also, people in oppressed classes do have some agency, if far from perfect agency.

    • JL

      …a younger cohort of feminists for whom the the concept of “patriarchy” is hardly ever mentioned.

      I…what younger feminists are you hanging around? Not the ones who volunteer at my local rape crisis center or my local abortion fund. Not the ones I’ve met at activism conferences. Not the ones I’ve encountered in the feminist blogosphere or on what some of my friends call “Social Justice Tumblr”.

      Women are an oppressed class, the radfems would say, and women who do sex work are in no more position to consent to it than sexually abused minors consent to their abusers.

      The radfems also hate trans people, so I don’t think I’m going to base my morals or politics on theirs. A lot of young feminist radicals won’t call themselves “radfems” for this reason.

      Radical arguments are almost completely absent from our political discussions.

      The radicals that I interact with support sex workers in their desire to be able to work safely (which includes avoiding criminalization and police abuse as well as abuse from customers, bosses, whiny owners of buildings and businesses in downtown business districts that want someone to sweep them away like trash, etc). A few of them are sex workers.

      • Hogan

        what younger feminists are you hanging around?

        Oh you know, Katie Roiphe, Caitlin Flanagan, Christina Hoff Sommers . . .

        • Lee Rudolph

          Perhaps the worst problem that would be caused by removing the stigma from the words “prostitute”, “whore”, and so on, would be the difficulty of coming up with a new metaphor and a new word to describe the nature of the work that erstwhile intellectuals (like my old colleague Christina Hoff-Summers) undertake for houses of truly ill repute like the Heritage Foundation.

          Actually, taking the metaphor from any domain of honest work is unfair to that domain—dung, for instance, does have to be spread, and it’s not a pleasant job. Yet metaphors like “bottom-feeder” are unfair to perfectly respectable members of the aquatic ecosystem! What to do????

          • Left_Wing_Fox

            What, “lying hacks” isn’t good enough?

            • Lee Rudolph

              That’s just a literal job description, not a lively metaphor! [Takes break to check OED.] It is, however, a dead metaphor: “hack” comes from “hackney”, originally “A horse of middle size and quality, used for ordinary riding, as distinguished from a war-horse, a hunter, or a draught-horse”, later “A horse kept for hire”, a bit later (1546)
              metaphorically for “One who is used to do mean or servile work for hire”, and eventually (1699) abbreviated as “hack” with the meaning “A person whose services may be hired for any kind of work required of him; a common drudge, = hackney n. 3; esp. a literary drudge, who hires himself out to do any and every kind of literary work; hence, a poor writer, a mere scribbler.”

              So, a dead horse-metaphor, though not a dead-horse metaphor, but certainly involved with labor.

          • Protagoras

            I have long preferred “mercenary” over “prostitute” as a term for those willing to do any kind of objectionable thing for money, since mercenaries do things that are genuinely objectionable.

            • Roland the headless Thompson gunner

              Sez who?

        • Tiny Hermphrodite, Esq.

          While I hold no candle for Flanagan grouping her with Ignorance and Malice (guess which is which) is unfair.

      • Dustin

        “…a younger cohort of feminists for whom the the concept of “patriarchy” is hardly ever mentioned.”

        That was unfair, I admit. Arguing from a position of frustration does this to me. Sorry. But I’m nevertheless concerned about the naivety of sex-positive arguments that fail to acknowledge how the choices we make are circumscribed by the ideological constraints of oppression, especially an oppression as pervasive (and, to far too many people, invisible) as patriarchy.

        There has got to be a way of arguing about exploitation without being accused of denying sex workers agency. The argument is that our agency, especially our sexual agency, is severely compromised, both by the economic disparities that leave women in poverty with far fewer options to self-actualize than men, and by gender norms that treat objectification and commodification of the female body as normal (in other words, the assumption that women exist only for male use).

        It’s fantastic that you know so many brilliant people fighting for justice. I’m sorry for minimizing their, and your work. I should have left that sentence out. It was unfair.

        However, I haven’t actually argued that sex work should be kept illegal. I’m just troubled by arguments that treat it as indistinguishable from, I don’t know, being a barista.

        • MPAVictoria

          “There has got to be a way of arguing about exploitation without being accused of denying sex workers agency. The argument is that our agency, especially our sexual agency, is severely compromised, both by the economic disparities that leave women in poverty with far fewer options to self-actualize than men, and by gender norms that treat objectification and commodification of the female body as normal (in other words, the assumption that women exist only for male use).”

          So basically women shouldn’t be allowed to make their own choices because society?

          • Wait…what?

            However, I haven’t actually argued that sex work should be kept illegal. I’m just troubled by arguments that treat it as indistinguishable from, I don’t know, being a barista.

            So basically women shouldn’t be allowed to make their own choices because society?

            One thing’s for sure: we need a stronger regulatory state to oversee the working conditions of the word “basically.”

            • MPAVictoria

              hahah I should have read that more carefully. Cheerfully withdrawn.

          • Dustin

            Not remotely what I said. I’m not sure, though, how else to say it. I’m trying really, really hard not to be misunderstood. I certainly didn’t say that women’s economic opportunities should be curtailed. On the contrary: the power disparity under which (especially poor) women labor is what prevents from pursuing the same economic opportunities as their male peers (or men who would be peers, if conditions of sexual parity and justice obtained).

            I’m not sure how else to say this. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

            • MPAVictoria

              Okay. Just so I don’t put words in your mouth should prostitution be legal/well regulated or not?

        • JL

          I’m not sure that anyone here, save a troll or two, is arguing that oppression doesn’t constrain choices. But this isn’t the only arena in which it constrains choices and this produces exploitative conditions. Coal mining (which depends on class and regional oppression) comes to mind. The huge and increasing legions of overwhelmingly-female home health aides come to mind (class and gender oppression). Farmworkers come to mind (class, nationality, and racial/ethnic oppression). We should be trying to ensure both options and safe working conditions, and end exploitation, for all of the workers and prospective workers in those trades, and same for sex work!

    • joe from Lowell

      Prostitution is the horrifying end of a patriarchal view of the female body as object, a disposable receptacle for male use. Inherently exploitative, even if legalized. Men who use prostitutes are not morally distinguishable from rapists.

      This is the bit that prevents me from making the jump from “legalize and regulate as the best harm-reduction strategy” to “it’s like any other service job.”

      Buying a burrito doesn’t make you a p.o.s. Getting your house painted is morally neutral at worst.

      We can talk about the exploitive conditions in apparel factories, but it’s the conditions that make it exploitive. It’s the mere act of someone making a shirt for someone to buy.

      If “sex work” was legal and regulated and inspected, would the people making the anti-stigma argument look at johns as just like any other customer of a service business?

      • joe from Lowell

        It’s not the mere act of making a shirt for someone to buy, that should be.

        Need an edit function.

      • Why do you put sex work in scare quotes? You don’t put apparel work in scare quotes. Are these women not laboring? This sort of thing contributes to the stigmatizing of women that leads to dangerous working conditions.

        The question of morality is basically irrelevant here. This is about working conditions. If people are doing this work, even if you don’t want them to do and I don’t want them to, they need to be kept safe and alive.

        • joe from Lowell

          Why do you put sex work in scare quotes?

          Because whether you like it or not, it is a highly-debated term that is not widely accepted in our language. And to think, I was suspecting you above of trying to play language-police games to stigmatize opposing arguments in place of addressing them.

          The question of morality is basically irrelevant here.

          It’s clearly irrelevant to you – so much so that you bulled all the way through Pollit’s piece without noticing what she was talking about.

          If people are doing this work, even if you don’t want them to do and I don’t want them to, they need to be kept safe and alive.

          Wow, you mean like “legalize and regulate as the best harm-reduction strategy?” Why are pretending this is the disagreement?

          • Ann Outhouse

            Why do you put sex work in scare quotes?

            Because whether you like it or not, it is a highly-debated term that is not widely accepted in our language.

            Is there some ambiguity to the term that I’m missing here?

          • djw

            Because whether you like it or not, it is a highly-debated term that is not widely accepted in our language.

            This…isn’t a particularly compelling explanation, and it draws on a logic I’m confident you’d reject in other circumstances (global warming is, increasing, not widely accepted but I doubt you’d put scare quotes around it to cater to denialists). I certainly agree there ought to be room in the feminist project for criticism of prostitution as a practice, perhaps including criticism of sex work, but that project badly needs to take a back seat to the urgent need for worker protection and safety. Feminist criticism of porn/prostitution/sex work is a theoretical and perhaps a cultural project whereas the protection of workers is an immediate and clear political and economic project. I worry that injecting the former into discussions about the latter does little more than muddy the waters.

            The slaughterhouse metaphor is a good one: I think the proposition that meat production/consumption as presently organized is grossly immoral is worthy of serious consideration, but the place for that project is not when considering basic workplace safety for slaughterhouse workers.

            • Dustin

              “I certainly agree there ought to be room in the feminist project for criticism of prostitution as a practice, perhaps including criticism of sex work, but that project badly needs to take a back seat to the urgent need for worker protection and safety.”

              This is a good point, one that isn’t always raised in arguments about the nature of the choices we make. I lose sight of this, unfortunately. Though not everyone even concedes the first part of that paragraph, nevertheless the public policies we aim for should be primarily focused on harm reduction.

              In other words, I agree with everything you just said.

            • joe from Lowell

              I think you putting way too much effort into cramming a political meaning into a syntactical act.

              “Sex work” is not a widely-accepted synonym for “prostitution.” It’s a neologism, which are commonly written with quotation marks around them. It’s a convention that is used to avoid confusion, to show that the potentially-unfamiliar term is not a typo, but a term being purposely used, so the reader should make an effort to ascertain the meaning based on the words provided, rather than assume there is something missing or mistakenly included.

            • joe from Lowell

              The slaughterhouse metaphor is a good one: I think the proposition that meat production/consumption as presently organized is grossly immoral is worthy of serious consideration, but the place for that project is not when considering basic workplace safety for slaughterhouse workers.

              Ditto: as I’ve pointed out several times now, my position is “legalize as the best harm-reduction strategy.”

        • joe from Lowell

          If “sex work” was legal and regulated and inspected, would the people making the anti-stigma argument look at johns as just like any other customer of a service business?

          Anyone?

          • BoredJD

            Of course not, but that’s not surprising. People judge others all the time for the goods and services they consume. Like buying a Hummer or Prius, wearing a fur coat, playing violent video games, or eating meat. That doesn’t mean the auto worker, coder, or slaughterhouse worker is any less deserving of being called a worker because others debate whether people who use the good or service are worthy of scorn.

            • joe from Lowell

              Like buying a Hummer or Prius, wearing a fur coat, playing violent video games, or eating meat.

              In each of these examples, you could buy the Prius, you could buy the organic hemp fiber coat, you could play the educational video games, you could eat the vegan burrito from the co-op.

              Are you saying there is a similar category of john?

              • BoredJD

                If we’re talking about sex work broadly defined, yes. Porn.

                • postmodulator

                  I’d go a bit further; a customer of a prostitute could in fact make a more ethical or less ethical choice as to which prostitute he would…patronize, I guess? Is that the best word? I believe the women working at the Bunny Ranch to be in a less explicitly exploitative environment than

                  The debate would be whether that choice could ever be absolutely a morally ethical choice.

                  As far as porn goes, you certainly can’t assume that that’s a less exploitative industry. My understanding is there is beginning to be a lot of porn on the net from Eastern Europe, from South America, etc. You can’t tell me some amount of that isn’t being filmed at gunpoint.

                  People are weird about their vices. I know a woman who would not set foot in a Walmart, because of the way they treat their workers, but occasionally buys cocaine.

                • BoredJD

                  Of course not, but you can’t also deny that there’s not a lot of worker protection generally in industries in EE or SA, part of the reason why companies are so eager to move there.

              • brad

                And you’re aware even your hypothetical examples of “morally pure” alternate choices also, in fact, involve workers? Also environmental costs and other downsides. I’d agree with you that most, aside from boring video games, are the “better” choices, but nothing is morally pure in our world.
                Besides, I believe that EL’s point is that judging the customer however you like is immaterial to the working conditions of the person in the industry.

                • joe from Lowell

                  And you’re aware even your hypothetical examples of “morally pure” alternate choices also, in fact, involve workers?

                  Of course they involve workers. What does that have to do with anything? The problems with Hummers, fur coats, and violent video games don’t have anything to do with, in fact, involving workers.

                  Also environmental costs and other downsides. I’d agree with you that most, aside from boring video games, are the “better” choices, but nothing is morally pure in our world.

                  Yes, but again, my question is an attempt to distinguish between the conditions that may attend something, and the thing itself. It isn’t buying a coat per se that’s the problem; it’s the conditions that might or might not be involved in the process. People having coats is just fine.

                  Besides, I believe that EL’s point is that judging the customer however you like is immaterial to the working conditions of the person in the industry.

                  Just as the issue of working conditions as prohibition is immaterial to this separate question I’m raising about the morality of being a john in an of itself.

                • BoredJD

                  I’m unsure where you’re going with this. Making a Prius and a Hummer involve substantially the same industrial process, as does making GTA V vs Portal.

                  Are you saying that the act of patronizing the good or service in and of itself produces some externalities that some people in society see as bad? Or is it that the people who patronize sex workers are bad people who create the very conditions that would make sex work exploitative even in a regulated, legalized system?

                • joe from Lowell

                  Are you saying that the act of patronizing the good or service in and of itself produces some externalities that some people in society see as bad? Or is it that the people who patronize sex workers are bad people who create the very conditions that would make sex work exploitative even in a regulated, legalized system?

                  The latter, and I’m more questioning than saying.

                • BoredJD

                  I guess what you’re asking is whether there’s a higher instance of some bad traits among johns that differentiate them from just “people who want to pay other people for sex.” I don’t think there’s such a thing, people probably have just as many reasons for paying for sex as they do for selling it.

                  I just don’t see why that wouldn’t apply to people who watch porn or visit strip clubs. Or if you want a different industry, why not outlaw drinking in bars because some patrons create bad working conditions for the staff?

                • brad

                  What is it that’s uniquely bad, to you, about someone wanting to reduce an orgasm to an economic interaction? Someone in this thread has compared it to massage. Obviously, there’s a difference, but I personally would find it very nearly as distasteful to be that physical with strangers as to be a sex worker. But I was also friends with a pro-domme for a few years before she moved, and she had held many different types of positions in the industry before that. The reality of the work is not what you seem to want it to be for ease of definition.

                • joe from Lowell

                  I guess what you’re asking is whether there’s a higher instance of some bad traits among johns that differentiate them…

                  Actually, BoredJD, I don’t think this is so much about differentiation of them from the rest of society, and recognizing in them an expression of a negative feature found throughout society.

                  Yes, I suppose they’re worse about it than others, but ultimately, we’re just talking about a more-extreme manifestation of the misogyny and dehumanization that is found throughout our culture.

                  Which makes it so odd to me to see people who usually condemn anything and everything as misogynistic, leaping to the defense of johns. And don’t even get me started on the libertarian market-fetishist language of transactions and contracts to describe human interactions fraught will all sorts of power relations.

                  Or if you want a different industry, why not outlaw drinking in bars because some patrons create bad working conditions for the staff?

                  And for the seven thousandth time, as I stated hours ago, my position is “legalize as the best harm-reduction strategy.” Any commentary about outlawing things completely missed the point.

                • joe from Lowell

                  What is it that’s uniquely bad, to you, about someone wanting to reduce an orgasm to an economic interaction?

                  Hurry, ladies! Believe it or not, Brad is still available!

                  I expect libertarians not to see the problem with this. I’m surprised to see so many others glomming onto your position.

                • brad

                  No Joe, I’m not single, sorry.
                  And I’ve spoken with people who experienced that situation as a reality, you’re speaking about a hypothetical that’s as much construct in your mind as reality. It can be a very bad thing, and it can be a perfectly benign thing. Letting the worst people define it for you strikes me as basically listening to JenBob.
                  It’s not for me, either, but it’s not what you think, not inherently.

                • BoredJD

                  Nobody is “leaping to the defense of johns” or to whatever you define as a john. However, there’s all sorts of reasons why people might pay for sex that have nothing to do with whatever you think the real reason people pay for sex is that creates poor working conditions for sex workers. Just like there’s many people who go to bars that don’t behave or act like the customers who cause so many problems for staff members at bars.

                  If you’re saying that people who pay for sex don’t appreciate the environment that sex workers work in, then you’re just talking about a general lack of empathy for service workers that is a feature of our society. I’m not sure why sex workers would be singled out.

      • Karen

        Exactly. The customers of the sex industry are vile. We have to figure out a way to load them with stigma but not the workers.

        • MPAVictoria

          ” The customers of the sex industry are vile. We have to figure out a way to load them with stigma but not the workers.”

          Not possible.

          • joe from Lowell

            So this is why you keep insisting on the decency of the johns.

          • joe from Lowell

            On second thought, you make a good point here. Maybe not wholly unassailable intellectually, but good enough for government work.

            Even if you grant that being a john should be looked down upon, how do you do that without also stigmatizing the prostitute? Even if all of the opprobrium starts out on the john, we all know what’s going to happen: the women would get blamed for starting trouble and bringing the johns into town, or corrupting the men.

            You’re probably right.

            • MPAVictoria

              Why thank you Joe.

        • Theo

          A bit ethnocentric, are we? Many places in the world do not fit this description in the least.

          • DrDick

            I am sure you are intimately acquainted with them all.

            • Theo

              Just suggesting that many places don’t have the same stigma associated with prostitution. Johns in Asian countries, some African countries, and a few European countries do not fit the profile Karen suggests. That’s all.

        • postmodulator

          The customers of the sex industry are vile.

          …All of them? Every single person who’s ever fired up Pornhub or been to a strip club? If you go back further, bought a Playboy?

          I’m a relatively prudish person in some ways, but by that definition I’m a long-time customer of the sex industry.

        • Actually, they’re not. That’s the same sort of stigmata as always has been loaded onto sex workers themselves and isn’t of any help whatsoever in improving sex work.

          Most people who visit sex workers are just ordinary people looking for sex they can’t or don’t want to get elsewhere.

          Too many people do so to think they’re all monsters.

      • JL

        If “sex work” was legal and regulated and inspected, would the people making the anti-stigma argument look at johns as just like any other customer of a service business?

        If they treated the sex workers well (and weren’t committing ethics violations like cheating on an unconsenting partner), then sure.

        • JL

          That might have been too flippant. Let me be less flippant. If I had done so in the first place, it would have taken me longer to write my comment and WordPress wouldn’t have gotten mad at me for commenting too quickly.

          Right now, the conditions of sex work are often, in fact, both exploitative and unsafe, and this can make it difficult for even the most well-intentioned prospective customer to purchase sex work ethically. Legalizing, regulating, and inspecting, by itself, is not going to fix this problem, anymore than never having been illegal in the first place, regulating, and inspecting, fixed such problems in, say, the mining industry. To make even as much progress as we’ve seen in that industry, we will need organizing, we will need cultural changes.

          But legalizing, regulating, and inspecting is a start, and further organizing is further progress. That progress creates space for the sex work equivalent of buying sweatshop-free clothing or getting your meat from a CSA farm. Or, to go with a less rigid criterion, buying union. As you create spaces for ethical purchase of sex, then I don’t have a moral problem with making that ethical purchase, and don’t see it as different from purchasing other services with a similar level of ethical consideration.

        • joe from Lowell

          I know that’s the argument that’s most useful to you at this moment on the internet.

          But now, really try to think about this in real life: your friend, your brother, whatever, tells you that he had the most awesome time at this party because they paid for some girls. “Woo hoo, Bro, rock on!”

          • JL

            Not everyone here is trying to win debate-club points. Maybe read some of my other comments in the various subthreads to get where I am coming from?

            Context is everything. I’d be listening for exactly how my brother/friend/etc described the situation – whether they were speaking respectfully about the people whose services they bought, for instance. I’d also want to know what steps they took to ensure the transaction was ethical.

            If my adult brother told me that he’d been going to Mistress Matisse, I’d be completely fine with that as long as he wasn’t cheating on a partner to do so.

            • Jordan

              And yet, you won those points anyways!

            • joe from Lowell

              I’d be listening for exactly how my brother/friend/etc described the situation

              Why?

              Would you listen like that if he told you they’d hired a band, or had bagels delivered?

        • Anonymous

          Agreed – I might judge a john (or even most johns) to be assholeish, but I do that with other businesses too: case-by-case (person in front of me at coffeeshop) or as a class (Hummer dealership, Hooters).
          I’d definitely be open to the possibility that a given john has decent, sympathetic reasons for buying sex, though god knows I have a lot of the internalized squickiness that almost everybody else seems to about buying sex work.
          Here are two real (though probably rather rare) reasons for doing so where I’d hope no one with a decent amount of emcould really argue that paying for a sex worker is wrong*: couples searching for a 3rd partner for a special occasion, and the kinds of therapeutic issues that affect many current clients of sexual surrogates.

          *Assuming sex work was legal and regulated and inspected, as stated. And fairly compensated.

    • McAllen

      I’m glad we’re seeing the decline of radfems, not only because it means the decline of overt transphobia in feminism, but it also means that inane arguments like this:

      Women who do sex work are in no more position to consent to it than sexually abused minors consent to their abusers. Prostitution is the horrifying end of a patriarchal view of the female body as object, a disposable receptacle for male use. Inherently exploitative, even if legalized. Men who use prostitutes are not morally distinguishable from rapists.

      are fading. Sex work, at its core, is the selling of a service. It is of course often exploitative in our patriarchal society, but there’s nothing inherent about it.

      And if you’re going to make sex work illegal because it’s exploitative, you better make sure sex workers have some other way to pay their bills.

      • joe from Lowell

        I have a question: If sex work, at its core, is about the morally-neutral act of selling a service, than is paying for sex, at its core, a morally-neutral act of buying a service?

        • MPAVictoria

          “If sex work, at its core, is about the morally-neutral act of selling a service, than is paying for sex, at its core, a morally-neutral act of buying a service?”

          If both participants are legally consenting adults then yes.

          • joe from Lowell

            So if we had the legality, and the consent, and the sufficient regulatory state, et al., you’d make no judgements about johns? There’s no problem from a gender-politics viewpoint to men buying sex.

            I don’t want to put words in your mouth, or misunderstand some distinction.

            • MPAVictoria

              Yes. Of course. Personally I thinking being anti-sexworker is the same as being anti-women. People should have a right to make their own choices whether you approve of them or not. There is no shame in having sex for money.

              • joe from Lowell

                Um…the question was about johns.

                • joe from Lowell

                  The people paying, the clients.

                  Also, the question wasn’t about what people had the right to do – people have the right to listen to Jewel and watch late-era Chuck Norris movies.

                • MPAVictoria

                  Ah. I miss read. Response is pretty much the same. I don’t see purchasing sex as being wrong.

          • Lee Rudolph

            It is, however, arguable (and argued by some) that “consent” on the part of the buyer should, to be moral, not place that buyer in contravention of other moral (non-legal) obligations he (pronoun of convenience and likelihood) may have undertaken, e.g., fidelity in another sexual relationship. A similar argument could presumably be made (I don’t know if it ever has been made, in good faith, though I am certain it has been made in bad faith) that the seller should also, to be moral, not contravene other moral (non-legal) obligations she or he may have undertaken.

            • MPAVictoria

              huh?

            • Karen

              This is my big problem with the whole thing. Johns have wives, girlfriends, and partners to whom they have made promises of sexual fidelity. I’m not allowed to interfere with someone else’s contract in any other area, and I’m certainly not allowed to unilaterally break my own. So, what happens to the innocent injured parties? I
              Will you allow wives to sue sex workers?

              • “Will you allow wives to sue sex workers?”

                Oh, come on.

                • Karen

                  Seriously, negligent interference with contract, the contract being the john’s promise to keep his pants zipped around other people. It certainly isn’t the most pressing part of this issue, but it is an issue nonetheless, as there are a lot of women who would like some reassurance that society will not make adultery quite so easy.

                • Theo

                  “Seriously, negligent interference with contract, the contract being the john’s promise to keep his pants zipped around other people.”

                  Uh, wouldn’t it be the silly wives that are interfering with the contract? That I could see. The Johns suing the wives when they burst in with their rolling-pins…

                • Left_Wing_Fox

                  Has any woman successfully sued a mistress under these terms? That sounds like it would be an incredibly common lawsuit if it were possible.

                  It seems far more likely that a sex worker could write in a term stipulating that the client is not married, and could sue the adulterous client for breech of contract if he’s lying.

                • postmodulator

                  I can’t remember if a wife has ever sued a mistress in that situation. I’d be surprised if it hadn’t happened.

                  I do know that in the early 90s there was a woman who referred her husband’s mistress to her local DA for prosecution under the state’s adultery statute. The DA took it up and got a conviction, I think. But of course, that’s rare enough that it was a “News of the Weird” kind of story.

                • CD

                  Excellent, a new level of insanity. This is why I keep reading this blog.

                  And it gives the game away. This is about nothing more than an ideology of domestic respectability.

                  Of course Karen has no idea about what said Johns have actually done or promised, but in her mind they *ought* to have made such promises, and it’s always wrong to be out with whores.

                • djw

                  Seriously, negligent interference with contract, the contract being the john’s promise to keep his pants zipped around other people.

                  I thought you must be joking at first; this is an utterly bizarre suggestion. We currently live in a world where wives are not in a position to sue women who willingly and knowingly have an affair with their husband, and I’ve never heard anyone suggest we ought to change that. There are good reaosns not every moral concern ought to be a legal one.

                • Informant

                  Jesus H. Christ, are there no litigators among the commenters on this blog??? There’s no such thing in the law of any American state that I know of as “negligent interference with a contract.” Only intentional interference with a contract is potentially actionable. (And in most states you can’t even bring a claim for intentional interference with a contract if the breaching party was the one who took the first steps to breach.)

              • For what?

                • joe from Lowell

                  Do the courts still recognize “alienation of affection?”

                • Hogan

                  Yes, but it has to involve the dissolution of the marriage (or at least desertion of the spouse). A one-off sex act doesn’t count.

                • Lee Rudolph

                  Way back in 1966, or so, they still did. The father of a high school friend of mine sued a local minister of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (publishers of The Plain Truth and other fine publications, including some illustrated by Basil Wolverton—you haven’t lived until you’ve seen his renditions of the Great Tribulation) for alienating my friend’s mother’s affections. It even made the national newsweeklies. I don’t recall whether the father prevailed, but he certainly was allowed to pursue the case in court.

                  Of course that was 50 years ago…but, hey.

                • Do the courts still recognize “alienation of affection?”

                  Wikipedia sez “Alienation is, however, still recognized in Hawaii, Illinois, North Carolina, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah.[2]

                  An action for alienation of affection does not require proof of extramarital sex.”

                  Given that corporations are people too there’s a lot to work with.

              • MPAVictoria

                Okay you are obviously dealing with your own sexual hangups.

              • Ann Outhouse

                Johns have wives, girlfriends, and partners to whom they have made promises of sexual fidelity.

                They do? They have? Do you know any single men?

                I could walk into any poker tournament in Las Vegas and in about fifteen minutes find you fifty guys who haven’t gotten laid in a month.

                • Theo

                  What? So married guys like poker. What’s so bad about that?

              • Should a man be able to sue his wife or girlfriend for breach of contract when she wants a divorce or to break up?

                What if someone has sex with someone who is in a relationship but does it for free?

                What if the part of the 1st part doesn’t know the party of the 2nd part is in a relationship? What sort of duty do they have to find out to avoid claims of negligence?

                At what point does dating become a contractual obligation, is it time based or do the parties have to take some sort of concrete step installing a toothbrush at each other’s places?

                Also, speaking as someone who has dated excessively possessive and jealous shitheads, your view of romantic relationships is creeping me the fuck out.

                • CD

                  +1.

              • JL

                Not all purchasers of sex have intimate partners with whom they’re in a monogamous relationship. For those who do, I’d think the onus there would be on the purchaser.

            • Left_Wing_Fox

              How is that different from any other “terms of employment” service contract? My employer can’t force me to clean the office toilets, our office janitorial service doesn’t do the dishes in the office kitchen. Why should we expect sex workers to not have explicit limits, or have legal recourse against those who breach the terms of service?

              • Karen

                Good point.

        • McAllen

          Yes.

          Again, in practice it often doesn’t work out that way, but that’s due to the nature of our society, not anything inherent to sex work.

          • joe from Lowell

            that’s due to the nature of our society

            Would our society’s nature be different with a legalized system of commercial sex?

            Are the working conditions created by prohibition the only manifestation of “the nature of our society” that come into play?

            • McAllen

              Are the working conditions created by prohibition the only manifestation of “the nature of our society” that come into play?

              Well, no. Since the harassment, sexual assaults, and rapes of all woman are often ignored or minimized, I imagine this will continue to be true for sex-working women as well.

              Would our society’s nature be different with a legalized system of commercial sex?

              With sex work legalized, sex workers won’t be arrested or have their children taken away from them, and will have some legal recourse if anyone DOES rape them or otherwise harm them.

              • joe from Lowell

                Since the harassment, sexual assaults, and rapes of all woman are often ignored or minimized, I imagine this will continue to be true for sex-working women as well.

                Now this is interesting; would you expect women in this particular legalized trade to be victimized at higher, lower, or about the same rates as other women? Why?

                You’re studiously avoiding the question. There’s a lot of that going around.

                • McAllen

                  Now this is interesting; would you expect women in this particular legalized trade to be victimized at higher, lower, or about the same rates as other women? Why?

                  Probably higher, since I don’t expect the stigmatization of sex workers to go away immediately after legalization.

                  You’re studiously avoiding the question. There’s a lot of that going around.

                  I’ve answered every question you asked, though I admit I’m not clear on what THE Question might be.

                • joe from Lowell

                  Probably higher, since I don’t expect the stigmatization of sex workers to go away immediately after legalization.

                  And yet, you’d consider it morally neutral for a man to avail himself of this industry once it became legal?

                  Hell, I don’t buy certain paper towel brands because of the Koch brothers!

                • McAllen

                  And yet, you’d consider it morally neutral for a man to avail himself of this industry once it became legal?

                  No. My argument is only that sex work isn’t inherently immoral, not that legalization alone is all that’s needed to make every case of a john hiring a sex worker morally-neutral.

                • Left_Wing_Fox

                  And yet, you’d consider it morally neutral for a man to avail himself of this industry once it became legal?

                  Hell, I don’t buy certain paper towel brands because of the Koch brothers!

                  That doesn’t follow. It sounds like you’re arguing that buying paper towels isn’t morally neutral, because some of the fellow customers and owners are evil.

                  Buying sex is morally neutral. It’s the baggage around the trade (abusive pimps, trafficked women, abusive johns) that’s the problem, and a problem better addressed by regulation and legalization.

                • joe from Lowell

                  It sounds like you’re arguing that buying paper towels isn’t morally neutral, because some of the fellow customers and owners are evil.

                  Only if you ignore the words “certain” and “brands” in the sentence “I don’t buy certain paper towel brands.”

                  Buying sex is morally neutral. It’s the baggage around the trade (abusive pimps, trafficked women, abusive johns) that’s the problem, and a problem better addressed by regulation and legalization.

                  Perhaps in theory, there can be johns whose efforts are wholly untainted by misogynist and expletive systems. I just don’t believe that, in our society or pretty much any other, you can separate that “baggage” from the act so cleanly. And while legalization would work to reduce the harm, I don’t agree that it would do so nearly to the extent necessary to make the buying of sex into a morally-neutral activity.

                • joe from Lowell

                  Exploitive systems, obviously.

                  Expletive systems. Well, &*$# me!

            • Bob

              “Men who use prostitutes are not morally distinguishable from rapists.”
              Remember the repugnant arguments made by Limbaugh and his ilk with regards to water boarding and “fraternity hazing”?
              Consent matters. Like Johns, dislike Johns, but claiming there is no “morally distinguishable” distinction between the two completely ignores the crucial distinction represented by that one short word: consent.
              As for your other concern regarding those paying for sex and how society should view them:
              Well….before anyone says otherwise I have never been a John. However, I have worked for the US Army for 30 years and I know a LOT of people – male and female – who have paid for sex. And I don’t look down on them for that alone – some I look down on because they have such a contemptible view of the people they were paying for sex. But those who did so in a respectful manner?
              I don’t care one bit. Makes no difference in my view of them as human beings. Carries no weight whatsoever.
              Two consenting adults came together briefly, had an economic exchange and went on with their lives. What about that is supposed to leave me contemptuous of those who paid?

              • joe from Lowell

                Like Johns, dislike Johns, but claiming there is no “morally distinguishable” distinction between the two completely ignores the crucial distinction represented by that one short word: consent.

                In theory, sure, but in practice, the “adult consent” aspect on the part of the women (or girls) is not that safe an assumption. As someone else pointed out, johns are at least recklessly inattentive to the downside of how that “consent” might have been obtained.

                • nixnutz

                  Yes, but I do think that’s an important distinction. You can’t be assured that there’s no coercion involved, and legalization doesn’t solve that problem in itself. So it is basically inexcusable absent knowledge that one is not likely to have, but still, “not morally distinguishable” it wrong enough to undermine your point.

                • joe from Lowell

                  I wouldn’t go so far as to say “not morally distinguishable.”

                  Maybe “not all that different.”

                • brad

                  And in that case joe, you’re flat out wrong.

                  I’m not someone who has or would ever pay for sex, but that is not how it works.
                  I hope one of the more informed and better speakers on this topic in the thread bothers to say this more clearly than I probably can, but you’re ignoring the concept of consent in a fundamental, and patronizing, way.

                • joe from Lowell

                  I’m not someone who has or would ever pay for sex, but that is not how it works.

                  Lol.

                  As someone with no experience with these issues whatsoever, Brad is perfectly comfortable saying that women being coerced into sex is “not how it works.”

                  See, thinks the libertarian, you can tell she’s totally not being coerced or anything, because she’s being paid. A little.

                • brad

                  No joe, I’m talking about the humbling but to my real benefit experience of my pro-domme friend making me realize that my initial attitude, which was much like yours, was me mansplaining to her about a reality she lived which I could only hypothesize. You are factually wrong, and your refusal to acknowledge the simple concept that sex workers can consent to the work they perform in a non-malignant to them or society way in the proper circumstances. You’re actually being sexist, fucked as it is for me to be the one who says it.
                  But again, you’ll respond with more personal assaults because the simple truth is you have no argument here beyond “culture says whoring bad, look how we make that so, it must be true”, which is JenBob circular logic, and not reality in any case.
                  Personal assaults on me for having been shown that sex work is

                • brad

                  More shitty editing on my part.

                  In my defense, I’m currently experiencing the benefits of the smell of burning plastic as repairmen work on my fridge.

                • brad

                  and to finish my sentence, then stop posting for a while to let the derp drain…

                  “that sex work is just as devoid of inherent moral value, positive or negative, as almost any other form of work is not a replacement for a counter-argument.

                • joe from Lowell

                  You are factually wrong, and your refusal to acknowledge the simple concept that sex workers can consent to the work they perform

                  Sorry you can’t read, Brad.

                  It’s not surprising that the libertarian would conflate “It’s not safe to assume the prostitute’s consent was uncoerced” with “No prostitute can consent.” Blurring the distinction between the coerced assent of the most-exploited workers and the freely-given consent of those who have the most money and power is what libertarians do for a living.

                  More surprising is to see this nonsense so widely accepted by non-libertarians.

        • Walt

          I don’t think it is a morally-neutral act of selling a service, but it’s not clear to me that enforcing this morality is a legitimate function of government.

          • joe from Lowell

            Certainly not; the government’s role should be about enforcing safe working conditions.

            I’m laboring under the apparent delusion that there are gender-politics questions that go beyond whether something should be legal, and that it’s possible to discuss them without “engaging in the language of prohibitionism.”

            • Walt

              I thought you were advancing an argument for why it should be illegal.

              • joe from Lowell

                Yes, there’s a lot of that going around.

                Even though I led off by describing my position as “legalize and regulate as the best harm-reduction strategy.”

                It seems to me that an awful lot of the arguments being made here (“I think johns are just terrific!”) are stemming more from this misapprehension and an desire to argue against prohibition than from actual principle.

                • Walt

                  I missed where you said that, but I’m not smart enough to understand the comment threading here.

                • Bob

                  I think claiming the comments here are filled with “I think johns are just terrific!” level comments is a serious misreading.

                • joe from Lowell

                  Or a turn of phrase. One of the other.

                  I generally find that the people who obsess the most over phrasing have the least to add when it comes to the substance.

                • Bob

                  So your phrasing contains no substance. Got it.

          • McAllen

            I agree that is is very often (possibly most of the time) not. I’m disputing that sex work is inherently morally-negative. To paraphrase George Carlin, people having consentual sex isn’t wrong, so why does it become wrong when money changes hands? The answer of course is that the latter situation often happens under exploitative circumstances that make it not consentual, but there’s nothing inherent in sex work that makes that the case.

        • brad

          The fact that I would never do it doesn’t change the fact that it happens. Reality is more important than morality.

          • joe from Lowell

            Um…ok.

            I didn’t think the question of whether it happens was being disputed.

            • brad

              Yes, but the status quo mostly only works for the pimps and johns, especially the worst of them, who are the very people who you want to deny any benefit. Isn’t questioning the morality of the business part of asking whether legalization is an imperfect improvement?

              • brad

                Urgh, crappy phrasing and my finger honestly slipped. Please insert “even enough of” between is and an in my question.

              • joe from Lowell

                Isn’t questioning the morality of the business part of asking whether legalization is an imperfect improvement?

                No. As I said upthread, my position is “legalize as the best harm-reduction strategy.”

                Brad, have you been making arguments you didn’t really mean because you thought they were necessary to rebut a prohibitionist position?

                • brad

                  No, I’m trying to understand why you find potential moral issues with legalization. It seems to be center around the idea that johns are repugnant and that it’s something that should treated as a harm to be reduced. That involves retaining, to my mind, some of the key problems and structures of the prohibitory regime.

                • joe from Lowell

                  No, I’m trying to understand why you find potential moral issues with legalization.

                  Since you kept asking me whether I support legalization, I don’t believe you, Brad.

                • joe from Lowell

                  It seems to be center around the idea that johns are repugnant and that it’s something that should treated as a harm to be reduced.

                  Since legalization was my harm-reduction strategy, it’s clearly not the existence of johns that the strategy is meant to reduce.

                • brad

                  Harm-reduction and legalization are, in policy terms, different things, joe.

                  One says “this should be illegal, but fuckit, we give up” and makes it legal but actively discouraged and limited and leaves the underling problems untouched, imo, the other begins to more fully engage with the reality by trying to recognize and work with it.

                • joe from Lowell

                  You are factually wrong, and your refusal to acknowledge the simple concept that sex workers can consent to the work they perform

                  Unless, of course, your harm-reduction strategy is based on legalization, as, for instance, in the phrase “legalize as the best harm-reduction strategy.”

    • djw

      a younger cohort of feminists for whom the the concept of “patriarchy” is hardly ever mentioned.

      Not even close to true.

    • MPAVictoria

      Well I am glad you are here to decide what is best for the thousands of sex workers who choose their profession willingly and even *gasp* enjoy what they do.

      • Dustin

        People who are able to willingly enter sex work without being economically coerced into it; who perform it under conditions that are consistently free of violence, abuse and disease; and who have the economic liberty to leave it without fear of violence or a poverty deeper than what they were already trapped in, are uncommon. I don’t mean to erase their arguments, but people arguing from positions of privilege don’t get to override the voices of the trapped.

        • MPAVictoria

          “People who are able to willingly enter sex work without being economically coerced into it; who perform it under conditions that are consistently free of violence, abuse and disease; and who have the economic liberty to leave it without fear of violence or a poverty deeper than what they were already trapped in, are uncommon”

          Perhaps they would be much more common if their work was legal and they could organize and seek legal protection?

          “I don’t mean to erase their arguments, but people arguing from positions of privilege don’t get to override the voices of the trapped.”

          So you get to make their decisions for them? Women everywhere are lucky to have you on their side I guess.

          • Dustin

            Nowhere did I claim to the right to make anyone else’s decisions for them. Please stop accusing me of saying this. I’m trying to address how our choices are framed and conditioned in oppressive contexts, not that they should be curtailed in otherwise just contexts.

            • MPAVictoria

              “Nowhere did I claim to the right to make anyone else’s decisions for them. Please stop accusing me of saying this. I’m trying to address how our choices are framed and conditioned in oppressive contexts, not that they should be curtailed in otherwise just contexts.”

              Okay. Clear question, do you support the legalization of sex work? Yes or no please.

              • Dustin

                The reason I’m hedging here, hesitant to concede to its legalization, is that it I’m proceeding from the radical assumptions about sexual inequality. I don’t want women denied their agency and as many economic opportunities as possible, but I believe that, under patriarchy, men are socialized into using their sexuality to assert control over female bodies. I believe, then, that under patriarchy, all sex is always about power differentials. I don’t accept libertarian arguments that people are always and everywhere free to choose however they want without any risk of coercion or reprisal (I am not, I promise, accusing you of being a libertarian.)

                But if, given these disparities, decriminalization and strict regulation of sex work are the only ways to liberate women (and men, too, who also do sex work, though a much smaller share of it) from at least these aspects of their oppression, then I support it.

                But the sexual power of men is a problem that can’t be ignored. Combating is a more revolutionary (and probably unachievable) goal. The end of male privilege, I fear, may well be “magiccandyland.”

                It’s weird having the same conversation with the same person in two different threads.

                • MPAVictoria

                  “It’s weird having the same conversation with the same person in two different threads.”

                  Well at least we can agree on something.

                • Protagoras

                  I believe, then, that under patriarchy, all sex is always about power differentials.

                  So all sex should be illegal, or perhaps tightly regulated?

                • JS

                  It’s obviously not that all sex should be regulated, I’d think. But I think Dustin does have a point. So, e.g., even in a loving relationship, a mutual recognition that, or of how, the spectre of power hangs over pretty much all sex is not a bad idea. (That this recognition almost never occurs is another matter.)

                • Dustin

                  “So all sex should be illegal, or perhaps tightly regulated?”

                  Where did I say that? Why do people keep accusing me of wanting to ban things? I had hoped that my rote recitation of feminism 101 ideas about sex and power would be uncontroversial on a lefty blog.

                • chris

                  I believe, then, that under patriarchy, all sex is always about power differentials.

                  If you really want a sentence like that to be uncontroversial *anywhere*, you really ought to think about replacing words like “all” and “always” with something more nuanced.

        • nixnutz

          people arguing from positions of privilege don’t get to override the voices of the trapped

          It’s too bad there’s no edit function here because you seem to have made some unfortunate typo that makes it appear that you’re claiming to be the voice of exploited sex workers.

          • Dustin

            I certainly don’t mean it be read that way.

            • nixnutz

              I didn’t think you did, and I agree with the statement, but to the extent that it’s an argument about whose arguments carry weight it’s kind of self-refuting.

    • LeeEsq

      I think you need to re-examine your idea that younger feminists don’t mention patriarchy frequently. The younger ones that I know, these are women born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, talk and write about patriarchy with great frequency.

      • Dustin

        This was, as I said above, unfair and an unconsidered point. I had in mind specifically the “I choose my choice” set of young feminists, people working from a more politically naive POV. I’m not sure how representative they are. It was sort of straw-mannish of me.

  • Alan Tomlinson

    Even the commentariat here is rather moralistic about the whole thing. Frankly, while sex-trafficing does occur and is horrible, it seems to be used as a justification for a policy that was based on a moral decision(rather like the arguments supporting circumcision).

    I live in a country where prostitution is still legal. When prostitutes speak out in the press here, it is to keep prostitution legal, not to forbid it. I don’t visit prostitutes, but I frankly think that it’s a good thing to have it legal, available, and safely regulated. So many of the arguments against are condescending, judgmental, and rather lacking in any logical basis aside from, “it’s wrong” or “I’m uncomfortable”. Well, I’m fucking uncomfortable with using grain to feed fucking cattle, but that doesn’t mean a thing except that I’m uncomfortable with it. The arguments for prohibition are so often based on a fear of change rather than logic.

    Cheers,

    Alan Tomlinson

  • Dave

    I could post links to the twitter feeds of several serious, articulate, feminist supporters of sex-workers’ right to do what they do, some of whom do it themselves, but a) it wouldn’t get through the spam-filter, and b) obviously the opinions of various menz here count for more anyway.

    • McAllen

      Right, everything Loomis is arguing for here sex workers themselves argue for too.

    • I’d go in and take it out of the spam filter if you want to do it.

      • Dave

        Go ahead.

    • MPAVictoria

      Mistress Matisse is a great person to follow on twitter for anyone who is interested in the rights of sex workers.

    • Wait…what?

      b) obviously the opinions of various menz here count for more anyway

      Whoa.

      Just because Erik contradicted Katha Pollitt doesn’t mean you get to dismiss his argument.

  • Anonymous

    Sex workers have no rights to do that kind of work, as its illegal. When person x pays person y for sex, person x can’t help but to think that person y is an object they can own rather than a fellow human. Thats why whoring is illegal.

    • Derp.

    • Walt

      And yet whoring for attention remains legal. The law is a mysterious thing.

  • LeeEsq

    Prohibiting sex work works just as well as prohibiting alcohol and drugs. Not very. Its always going to be with us in one form. You can reduce the need for sex work by taking away the taboos involving premarital sex and increase economic oportunities for women but never entirely eliminate it. The benefit of legalizing sex work is the same as with drug legalization. A legal market can be monitored and regulated by the state and non-state actors. Legal sex workers are unioniziable sex workers at least in theory. Many but not all of the abuses can be eliminated or reduced. The worst aspects of the sex market, for people whose tastes can not be legalized for reasons of morality or for abusive pimps and madams, can remain criminalized.

    That being said, I still understand why lots of people of all political stripes are very squimish about legalizing the sex market. Legalizing sex work has ethical problems that other vices do not. Intoxicating substances are things and any worker abuse involved in their manufacture is more similar to worker abuse in an exploitative textile factory or corporate farm than sex work. The exploitation in sex work is radically differnet in ways that many people, liberals and conservatives, are deeply troubled by. I’m not very comfortable with it myself but its probably going to be better than the current situation.

  • Just picking up on what some others have said – If legal means with the same rights and responsibilities as any other form of employment – Yay, it’s about fucking time.

    But the Menz Rage Activists and libertarian duds who really mean “I don’t care what happens to the prostitutes so long as I don’t risk arrest,” or “No one will question my right to stalk strippers,” can fall down a long marble staircase for me.

    • Walt

      In true libertarian fashion, I support legalizing your right to push them.

    • MPAVictoria

      “But the Menz Rage Activists and libertarian duds who really mean “I don’t care what happens to the prostitutes so long as I don’t risk arrest,” or “No one will question my right to stalk strippers,” can fall down a long marble staircase for me.”

      Ha! Agreed.

      • JL

        Finally something that I think the large majority of commenters in this thread can agree on, even!

    • Karen

      You’re too kind. I want the customers to suffer something with blades and fire.

      • Ann Outhouse

        I hear the symptoms of gonorrhea resemble that description.

    • Protagoras

      Are there many such mens rights types? I usually see them engaged in slut shaming, not arguing for legalizing women having more sexual options, paid or unpaid.

  • BoredJD

    It seems like people think that the exploitation, violence, and trafficking will take on a different tenor or will increase with legalization. What studies have been done about the exploitation in countries where sex work is legalized?

    • Protagoras

      Googling “New Zealand prostitution studies” gave me something rather relevant-looking as the top hit (a 2007 report to the Prostitution Law Review Committee).

  • JL

    I wish more people who cared about this issue would spend some time talking to sex workers. I’ve medicked on marches organized by sex workers. I’ve sat next to sex workers at activism conferences and chatted about our lives before the panel started. I’ve listened to sex workers on panels, and sex workers in the audience. And you know what? These people don’t all agree on sex work – how they feel about it morally, whether they enjoy it, whether they feel that it harmed them. But none of them so far have been into the whole prohibition mindset. Many of them talked about how attempts to crack down on “pimps” and other peripheral figures involved in sex work leave them, the sex workers, with severe extra legal risks if they band together for safety or house each other and leave non-sex-worker friends who house them or bodyguard them open to criminalization as well.

    At an LGBTQ conference a couple of months ago I listened to presentation of a study on young LGBTQ sex workers by NYC’s Streetwise & Safe, which is an excellent organization if you actually want to help and empower (young) sex workers (of color), and a Native American feminist health group in the Midwest whose name I’ve forgotten. By far, the biggest concern that they identified was inability to access stable housing. It wasn’t anything about sex work itself harming them.

    Even in this comment thread a lot of people are presenting this as overwhelmingly a cis women’s issue, but according to the National Transgender Discrimination survey, 11% of trans and gender non-conforming people of whatever gender – including 44% of black and 28% of Latino trans and gender non-conforming people – compared to 1% of women overall. That 11% figure includes 7% of trans men and 10% of gender non-conforming people, meaning that they are 7x and 10x more likely than women, respectively, to be sex workers at some point. Those who had lost a “legit” job due to bias or had experienced transphobic hiring discrimination were disproportionately likely to be sex workers at some point. If you care about the safety and well-being of sex workers – or, for that matter, reducing the number of people going into sex work – you really need to also be looking at trans/GNC issues. Also at racism.

    Despite all the barriers to it, there are some great attempts at sex worker organizing going on. The Sex Workers Outreach Project (chapters in many cities) and HIPS (in DC) are examples of groups that are focused specifically on sex workers. Streetwise & Safe (NYC), BreakOUT (New Orleans), and Boston Feminists for Liberation are groups that I can think of off the top of my head that aren’t specifically focused on sex work but do some sex worker organizing and have current and/or former sex workers involved with their organizing.

    • MPAVictoria

      Fantastic, fantastic post. Thank you for all the work you do JL.

  • Karen

    I didn’t have any problem with the Pollitt article, but I think she could have made her pint clearer by noting one thing: johns are all male. The number of women who purchase sex is a rounding error. What we’re doing now stinks, but we need to acknowledge that legalization benefits the kind of filthy slimeball who buys sex. I want the workers to have safe working conditions, especially the ability to leave easily. I also want the customers to be heaped with mountains of shame for thinking they are entitled to demand sex whenever and however they want it. It helps to remember Charlie Sheen: “I don’t pay them for sex; I pay them to leave.” Is that an attitude we want to encourage?

    • MPAVictoria

      “What we’re doing now stinks, but we need to acknowledge that legalization benefits the kind of filthy slimeball who buys sex. I want the workers to have safe working conditions, especially the ability to leave easily. I also want the customers to be heaped with mountains of shame for thinking they are entitled to demand sex whenever and however they want it. It helps to remember Charlie Sheen: “I don’t pay them for sex; I pay them to leave.” Is that an attitude we want to encourage?”

      You are steeped in a culture of sexual shame. May I suggest reading a little Dan Savage? He had a great podcast recently with 3 sex workers as guests and guess what? They enjoyed their jobs and, in many cases, they legitimately cared about their clients. Not everyone purchasing sex fits your movie of the week stereotype.

      • joe from Lowell

        Dan Savage’s guests are probably pretty well representative of the industry as a whole.

        • MPAVictoria

          Joe we are raised in the s sex negative culture that we are unable to see passed our biases. If sex workers were treated with respect and if the purchase of sex between two consenting adults was destigmatized things would be better/safer for everyone.

          • joe from Lowell

            Nice retreat into generalized talking points. BTW, as I wrote upthread, my position is “legalize as the best harm-reduction measure.” You can stop feeling the need to disagree with whatever I wrote in order to be against prohibitionism now.

            Let’s get back to the matter at hand: is it wise to view the people invited to be guests on Dan Savage’s show, or who get their books distributed by major publishers, as credible representatives of the industry as a whole?

            • MPAVictoria

              Well they are representative of the type of sex worker I hope would become predominant in a rational system that protected women’s agency.

              • joe from Lowell

                I agree, they are representative of our hopes.

                But let’s not let our hopes run too far ahead.

          • Dustin

            I’m concerned about the difficulty of genuine consent even in regulated and legalized sex work. There are still too many operative assumptions going into the transaction. Men who solicit sex workers do not have the ideas about women’s compromised agency and sexual equality that you do. To condemn them is not to argue that sex is something to be ashamed of; rather, that men have, pretty much always and everywhere, used sex as a weapon. What does legitimizing sex work say about men who demand women be in a state of permanent sexual availability?

            I don’t wish to assume anything about your beliefs, so I ask this in all innocence: do you self-identify as a libertarian?

            • MPAVictoria

              No

            • Lee Rudolph

              What a perfectly foul suggestion!

    • BoredJD

      How is a john demanding sex whenever and wherever they want, when they are paying a price set by the sex worker, wearing protection, or the sex is taking place in an environment acceptable to the sex worker?

      I’m not suggesting that this is the kind of control that every sex worker nowadays has, but that’s because of prohibition, not inherent to sex work.

    • I also want the customers to be heaped with mountains of shame for thinking they are entitled to demand sex whenever and however they want it.

      Any customer who thinks they can demand any service whenever and however they want it is a shitty human being, period.

      I’m going to get real crazy and propose that if society placed a stigma on waiting tables and the police refused to protect people who waited on tables, you’d see the same filthy slime balls abusing waiters.

      The system we have right now benefits the slimeball because he can mistreat, abuse, rape and even kill the worker and get away with it. This person will not be happier when prostitutes aren’t afraid to call the police or defend themselves.

      As an aside – This sort of asshole is unlikely to be a sweetheart to the woman or women who have sex with him gratis.

      • Karen

        And that is exactly the undiscussed* point. Our attitudes toward sex are changing very, very slowly. Legalization is clearly the only option to improve the lives of the workers. That can’t be disputed. But the nature of the industry as it exists attracts a particularly rotten type of customer, and the best course of action is to see what can be done about eliminating those guys while legalizing.

        *autocorrect changed this word to “undies dismissed.”

        • Marek

          Harrumph for autocorrect.

    • Nobdy

      Do people who visit restaurants think they can demand food whenever and however they want it? I fail to see the connection to paying for a service freely offered and demanding whatever you want for free. Now when people are forced into the work there’s a much closer connection, but this is why force is the issue, not sex work.

    • Under pur current system, a man with money can demand a massage whenever he wants one. Do you condemn that? Or is the distinction just about which body part is rubbed?

    • Phoeey the Lurker

      Word. And cordoning sex workers in a “well-regulated” and -taxed brothel where they can’t take a break at whim, reject customers they find repulsive, refuse mandatory vaginal probes, or say no to whichever act was ordered and paid for up front … how is better than rape and pimpery?

      Not to mention that legalizing prostitution doesn’t cover transactions that the government finds too repulsive to permit. You imagine they’ll go away, Erik, or not matter. Because labor.

      Point to one sentence in Pollitt’s piece that’s wrong. Smearing her as second wave doesn’t count. Legalization has its upsides but, as Pollitt said, the problem with prostitution is male privilege.

      • Nobdy

        Who said that would be the regulatory scheme? one could easily conceive of a regulatory scheme where prostitutes would be able to refuse any customers, be entitled to certain breaks etc… or negotiate and contract with their employer (if an employer would be permitted vs a partnership type situation.)

      • joe from Lowell

        And cordoning sex workers in a “well-regulated” and -taxed brothel where they can’t take a break at whim, reject customers they find repulsive, refuse mandatory vaginal probes, or say no to whichever act was ordered and paid for up front … how is better than rape and pimpery?

        First “leftist” to argue “They can always find another job or negotiate better working conditions” wins a prize.

        • Dustin

          It’s weird how sex-positive arguments about prostitution can sometimes so closely mirror libertarian/conservative arguments about the workplace.

      • And cordoning sex workers in a “well-regulated” and -taxed brothel where they can’t take a break at whim, reject customers they find repulsive, refuse mandatory vaginal probes, or say no to whichever act was ordered and paid for up front … how is better than rape and pimpery?

        This is quite true. Nevada really isn’t the model for this reason.

        Point to one sentence in Pollitt’s piece that’s wrong.

        This:

        But when feminists argue that sex work should be normalized, they accept male privilege they would attack in any other area. They accept that sex is something women have and men get (do I hear “rape culture,” anyone?), that men are entitled to sex without attracting a partner, even to the limited extent of a pickup in a bar, much less pleasing or satisfying her.

        There’s nothing mystical about sex. This passage sounds like something a Catholic conservative natural law theorist might write.

        Men– and women– ought to be allowed to pay money to a willing partner in exchange for sex for the same reason they can pay money to a willing partner in exchange for other services. Nobody says that hiring someone to paint your house is wrong because it lets you off the hook of convincing someone to do it for you to free. Or cleaning your house. Or giving you a massage.

        There are still huge problems– because there’s so much coercion in the sex work marketplace. But Pollitt is completely wrong in assuming that there’s something mystical about sex that makes it the only service on the planet that cannot be rendered for money.

        • Dustin

          Not mystical, no, but it’s old hat to point out that, under patriarchy, men and women’s ability to sexually bargain is severely compromised. Male privilege and rape culture are not theoretical constructs but descriptions of how patriarchal culture can unquestioningly influence our behavior, descriptions as real, and inviolable, as Kepler’s Laws.

          • MPAVictoria

            You can use this type of thinking to justify a lot of restrictions on people’s freedom.

            • Dustin

              To analogize this to conventional labor relations, restricting the power of employers to pay their employees starvation wages, or force them to labor under dangerous conditions, or to pay them in scrip, or to send children into coal mines, infringes upon the “freedom” of the employer. But what kind of definition of freedom are you working from?

              • MPAVictoria

                You first.

                • Dustin

                  I think we’re pretty much speaking to each other from completely different moral universes. When I talk about wanting to end sexual exploitation, how is that interpreted as a curtailment of anyone’s freedom?

                • MPAVictoria

                  Are you kidding?

                • Dustin

                  “You can use this type of thinking to justify a lot of restrictions on people’s freedom.”

                  Seriously, I don’t know what this response has to do with my comment. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

                  And where’d the reply button go?

            • joe from Lowell

              You can use this type of thinking to justify a lot of restrictions on people’s freedom.

              Yes, you can.

              On the other hand, you can use the libertarian-ish language of free negotiation in a market to justify a lot of terrible things, too.

              That’s why it’s more important to look at what an argument actually says, than what some other facially-similar argument might say.

        • Dustin

          I meant to go on to say that what makes sex different is that it always been the fundamental means by which men have oppressed women. This is not true of painting.

        • Karen

          But the fact remnants that women DON’T buy sex.

          • Some women do. Rich women. (And even middle class women if you count bachelorette parties, male strippers, etc.)

            In fact, the reasons more women don’t buy sex may have to do with sex discrimination. They are taught not to want it, and not to pursue men to get it, and men also have much more money to buy it than women do.

    • UserGoogol

      If a person wants to have sex with someone without respecting them, it’s better for them to just pay for it than for them to form emotionally fradulent relationships. If you look at how Charlie Sheen has treated his wives, it’s probably for the best for all involved parties for the women he has sex with to leave.

      • CaptBackslap, YOLO Edition

        I’ve never seen a comment from you that didn’t strike me as being exactly correct.

    • postmodulator

      johns are all male.

      No. There are exceptions. I only know one person who has worked as an escort, and she had very few customers, and one was female. Almost all johns are male; not all are.

  • Anonymous

    Whoring is bad because when you can just show up, pay x dollars, and fuck someone, you tend to view them as lesser persons, as a thing that can be bought rather than a fellow human. The act of sex stirs up our primal instincts, and they tell us that when you have sex with someone you should stick around for when the baby comes because cavemen did not have condoms or any other means of birth control. In other words our primal instincts cause us to form an attachment to who we screw. Of course our higher thought can say “this is a hooker im banging, so no strings attached”, but our primal instincts still want us to form some sort of attachment. This conflict causes us to objectify whores, to make them something less than human, so our primal instincts can shut up and we can carry on with our day un-conflicted.

    • Nobdy

      From the journal of “things anonymous pulled out of his or her butt with no support whatsoever.” Also not really relevant to the issue at hand. Prohibition does not stop sex work.

  • joe from Lowell

    …To clarify one point, I realize Pollitt is not really calling for sex work to remain illegal, but by using language that separates it from other kinds of work as inherently and perhaps uniquely awful, it reinforces long-standing arguments used to keep it illegal.

    Could you give us some examples?

  • I think most of what Pollitt says is right– about straw manning feminists, trafficking, etc.

    But at the end, she gives the game away. She objects to men getting sex without “earning” it through good conduct. And that just makes no sense. Sex is just rubbing body parts together for pleasure. If that’s something that men may only receive if they earn it with good conduct, why are commercial massage services legal?

    • Phoeey the Lurker

      Sexual pleasure as something that has to be earned by good conduct? Why, you’d think the john was a woman!

      • I don’t even understand what that means.

        But– having said that– there was definitely a time when women paid their doctors to give them orgasms with vibrators.

  • wengler

    There’s a fairly big constituency that’s happy pretending that prostitution doesn’t exist in the US. It’s hard to see any politician taking this issue on, especially since concern for the welfare of sex workers is slightly lower than black teenagers.

  • Anonymous

    Whoring has a negative stigma because its wrong. Its wrong because people always will look down on someone when you can just show up at their house or place of business, pay their cash, and bang.

    • brad

      The wheels on the bus go round and round
      round and round
      round and round
      the wheels

      and etc.

    • Left_Wing_Fox

      Psst, your id is showing.

      • N__B

        State-issued id at that.

  • Anonymous

    The baggage is an effect of the immorality of whoring. If it was moral, people would have no problems thinking the hooker they’re banging has parents who love him/her

  • shah8

    I think I need to make this apparently minor point that the visible sex work going on is just one part of the “sex industry”. Simple legalization would be a very bad idea. A few women would benefit, but most would not. To dress this concern up as “prohibitionism” is deeply irresponsible.

    Next, I think some people also have a very poor grasp of the implications of sex work as a legal service:

    1) How many women do you think would choose to work in a regulated sex industry, complete with health care, physical protection, pensions, etc?

    2) Now, compare how many women you thought would voluntarily do sex work under reasonable labor conditions and compare that with how much demand there is from how many johns?

    3) If you have regulated sex work force, such a work force will have a higher price, due to all the services they require. How will you prevent desperate or trafficked women from selling sex for lower than any above-board worker? You’d probably criminalize the women who most needs the help of public services like police or hospitals–if a john can’t beat or rape an registered worker, they’d find desperate women who can’t say no, and who can’t go to the police or hospitals.

    4) How will you handle disputes between sex workers and johns? How well do you imagine society will tolerate the nature of restitution, particularly those that involve the wife or other family members in some way?

    I just feel like prostitution legalization is just one of those ideas that patently lazy thinkers imagine would be a good one. The benefits will go to a small number of workers while many more women will probably be worse off as trafficking becomes more profitable. The most valuable aspect, remember, is absence of legal protections where the women end up.

    I would prefer to reduce prostitution. Just like I would prefer to reduce smoking or the use of PCP.

    • Jeffrey Beaumont

      Yeah, basically I think these are all good points, combine them with my post right below this and I think there are a lot of issues that need to be worked through.

    • LeftWingFox

      Speaking personally, my goal is harm reduction. I worry less about the amount of prostitution, than the number of people being harmed by it. Anything that effectively improves mental and physical healthy, quality of life, and reduction of victimization,

      There are many other avenues that can serve to reduce harm. Working to change cultural attitudes towards women, trans* people and sexuality. Broader social safety nets to eliminate the need for survival sex work. Improved police accountability. Better availability of affordable health care.

      These are all necessary, and worth fighting for. I’m of the opinion that legalization gives society a more robust toolkit for dealing with the problems of legalization, but there are a lot of other societal changes that need to happen in tandem.

      • shah8

        The thing is, though, the service provided is very often about the john’s ability to degrade women. So any legal market in prostitution is effectively about a legal market where people can harm themselves physically and psychically for the benefit of others (somewhere between the range of “working for tips” and “legally selling your kidneys”). Markets in such things are entirely about affirming the naturalness and appropriatness of the consent to foul/coerced conduct. Which is why we don’t allow people to sell themselves into slavery or sell their organs. If the choice exists, you know that many nasty people will force others weaker than themselves to make nominally free choices to their own detriment.

        And then the rest of society will have to deal with the victims behaving almost like domestic violence victims–because they probably will need very much to validate their bad/forced choices, as well as be expensive (in tax dollars) to deal with.

    • JL

      1) Is there some reason to think the number would be a lot less than the number now? Why would fewer people choose to work at a job when its working conditions are better? Or is your concern that a lot more would choose to do it? I’m not sure where you’re going with this.

      Also, you seem to be assuming a model where the sex workers are employees of a brothel (that provides them with health insurance and pensions), rather than self-employed or banding together as an equal partnership. I know that’s the Nevada model, but I’m not sure it’s the model that anyone here is trying to promote – in fact, at least one person has said that that’s a bad model.

      2) Is there some reason that you’re worried that demand is going to wildly outpace supply?

      3) Why would we criminalize anyone selling sex, whether consensually or trafficked? We should criminalize traffickers, obviously, but I would like everyone who sells sex, and everyone else, to be able to go to the police and hospitals without fear of arrest, abuse, or harassment. I have no idea how you think keeping sex work illegal is supposed to accomplish this.

      Furthermore, we should be working to reduce economic desperation (better social safety net, laws to reduce employment and housing discrimination, etc), so that nobody has to engage in survival sex work. To the extent that people are still doing so, harm reduction. There are existing organizations like HIPS that do good harm reduction work with sex workers.

      4) I don’t know what sort of disputes you are referring to with this, but it might be worth asking organizations of sex workers, like SWOP, what they think best practices would be.

  • Jeffrey Beaumont

    Count me among the liberals who think making sex work legitimate labor and legal is really problematic. For not entirely moral reasons I really think sex work comes with a number of very real costs to the sex worker, primarily the degradation that comes with exploitative sex, and the complication of any sexual relationships caused by the whole sex work thing. That is to say nothing of the dangers of violence, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and the general stigma associated with it, which, while unfortunate, is definitely real.

    If it is legitimized, I don’t think that automatically fixes these problems. Yes, policing and regulation will become easier. But I also think it will become easy, and eventually automatic, for GOP-types to look askance at any poor people (probably mostly women) who want public assistance without having to resort to sex work. I can only imagine later-day Paul Ryans declaring unemployment a thing of the past. And given that our whole economy is shifting into a service-based model which caters to the 1%… You see where I am going.

    I am happy to hear arguments which prove me wrong, but this really seems like a scary path to move down.

    • Lee Rudolph

      the degradation that comes with exploitative sex

      Any and all kinds of exploitative labor are, because of the exploitation, degrading. Those who might claim that sex work is uniquely degrading (perhaps because they think that it is, in some manner, uniquely exploitative) should have the burden of supporting that claim by an explicit argument. In the meantime, the struggle to end, or seriously diminish, all exploitative labor can be—and (I think) should be—joined in by them alongside those who question (or deny) their claim.

      • postmodulator

        I know sex workers who have claimed that the sex work in which they engaged was less exploitative than other forms of work with which they were familiar.

        I also know sex workers who have claimed the opposite. I think we have to regard this as very far from a settled point.

      • Jeffrey Beaumont

        I agree, all exploitative work is bad, and all of it, sex work included, should probably be combated via similar strategies.

        But right now the prohibition means that sex work isnt really subject to all the vicissitudes of capitalism and market forces. I just worry that, as bad as it is now for those involved, it might get a lot worse.

    • BoredJD

      I just don’t see how the chronic health issues and cultural stigmatization isn’t applicable to other kinds of low-paid service and blue collar work. Those are problems that must be fixed by other efforts.

      “and the complication of any sexual relationships caused by the whole sex work thing”

      This sounds way too much to me like the “I’m sure you can do the job, but think about what your boyfriend/husband might think about you working all the time” objection levied at women trying to break into the workplace, or reasons you might tell a relative why they shouldn’t rush into sex work. This certainly isn’t a reason to keep locking sex workers up.

      “I can only imagine later-day Paul Ryans declaring unemployment a thing of the past. And given that our whole economy is shifting into a service-based model which caters to the 1%… You see where I am going.”

      They are going to do this anyway. More practically, no serious GOP candidate would alienate the religious right by talking about legalized prostitution in anything but moralistic terms.

    • Nobdy

      The 1% already uses (and abuses) sex workers with impunity. How many boats stocked with escorts sit in harbors in Miami or New York? How many rings like those Eliott Spitzer used operate without a hitch until a politically motivted investigation?

      It’s street hookers and poors who get busted and harassed.

  • MPAVictoria

    “According to the Los Angeles Times, teachers in Oxford, Miss., are asking “students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it became.” Says Marie Barnard, a public health worker and parent: “They’re using the Peppermint Pattie to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she’s had sex—that she’s been used.”

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/04/03/mississippi_sex_ed_class_compares_women_to_dirty_peppermint_patties.html

    We need to move away from this kind of attitude. It warps and damages people. Sex isn’t dirty or bad. It is just sex.

  • pseudalicious

    Erik, I hear what you’re saying, but I’m still really fucking grateful she wrote that essay. Among the internet left, especially in feminist/female-dominated spaces, the Law of the Land is Thou Shalt Centralize The Experiences Of The Most Oppressed Among You. And it all goes out the window when it comes to sex work, and I’m fucking sick of it, tbh. I’m glad Pollitt called it out.

    • JL

      How is being pro-sex-worker and treating sex work as legitimate labor doing anything but centralizing the experiences of the most oppressed? Sex workers are pretty damn oppressed, both as a group in their own right, and in the sense that they disproportionately come from oppressed groups (black trans women, for instance).

      If the argument is that trafficking victims are more oppressed than consenting sex workers, well, yes, but nobody is saying that trafficking is okay or you shouldn’t listen to trafficking victims.

      • pseudalicious

        I’m pro-sex-worker and I believe in treating sex work as work. However, a lot of the pro-sex-work voices on the internet are pro dommes like Mistress Matisse, class-privileged women, etc. The ones doing survival sex, the trafficking victims, the ones who are consenting but doing it out of intense economic hardship, aren’t the dominant voices online. Probably because the discussions are, well, online. And I find it grating. (I assume things are different with groups like HIPS.)

      • John A

        pseudalicious’s point, I believe, is that the NORM for sex work is “poor exploited woman of color”, and discourse about it should not be based on some white middle-class fantasy of the ideal conditions for sex work that rarely obtain in practice…

  • Manny Kant

    Question: is Loomis mansplaining to Pollitt? It seems like a very clear instance of the term as commonly defined. If not, why not?

    • Answer to your first question: No.

    • Well, unless your definition of the term is “male disagrees with female about a particular point within feminist politics and expresses that opinion even though he’s really just using it as a jumping off point to make a point about sex work and not even really responding directly to the individual.” If that’s your definition, then sure, why not.

      • shah8

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining

        Your first para does kind fit the bill. You basically said that she didn’t fully understand what she was talking about, and you effectively do it through libertarian lens, which annoys the ever-living fuck out of me. Bad personal agency theory is bad personal agency theory is bad personal agency theory, and shouting prohibitionist at her isn’t making a very good argument. Makes for a good theme, but what you did was say that Pollitt was ignorant of your personal ideology/feelings about the issue, without making any sort of validating argument as to why you’re right. We the readers were supposed to think the Pollitt just did an oops. She didn’t. You did, I think.

        • 1. Of course she understands what she’s talking about. I just disagree with her.

          2. There was nothing libertarian about what I said. I was talking in the language of workplace rights. This is a worker’s rights issue. I don’t care about any other part of it.

          3. My ideology about the issue is nothing more than a political point. It neither needs to be validated or not validated. It’s simply my position. Pollitt is not ignorant of my position (or Grant’s anyway). She understands it. She doesn’t agree with it. OK.

          4. The validating argument about why I think I’m right is strictly about workplace safety.

          So I see nothing valid in your points.

          • shah8

            1) You don’t actually disagree with her on any actual part of her rhetoric. For example, she doesn’t, and makes explicit the sentiment, stigmatize sex work or the sex world. Instead of addressing what she actually wrote, you basically put words in her mouth and went “prohibitionism”, blah, blah, blah. If there isn’t an actual clear point of disagreement on any fact or logic from the essay, then it kinda looks like you put words in Pollitt’s mouth and said that she doesn’t get how she’s talking this dead feminism, this dead failure of “prohibitionism”. That’s not really a particularly good faith disagreement. I mean, that last sentence of the first paragraph has zero relationship to anything Pollitt said or apparently feels.

            2) Libertarian rhetoric has certain consistent traits, the most important of which is that society doesn’t have the ability to justly, and consensually deal with serious problems. That uses charasmatic victims in places of what the normal constituency is like, such as to deny the basis for any sort of utilitarian logic. And the narrow focus, as you put it: This is a worker’s right issue. I don’t care about any other part of it.

            That also tends to be how libertarians handle things. Because all of it is about denying the complexity of social life, in favor of promoting the atomized private life.

            3) I never truly said that she wasn’t aware of positions like yours. You basically said that she didn’t understand the implications of her own words, effectively because she’s not as enlightened as you are.

            4) You say that it’s strictly about worker safety and that validates your sentiments. However, there isn’t a strong logical chain to believe that legalization would make more women safer. Moreover, refusing to acknowledge *how* women enter the industry weakens the very idea of taking what you say, seriously. I’ve read too much about human trafficking to not take the issue really rather seriously–and trafficking is not made profitable through the illegalization of services, but by alienating their victims from support networks and legal aide. Legalization without some pretty major changes in laws and law enforcement framework will almost certainly harm more women. And sex slavery in most of the world fetishes “free choice” so as to make sure the women blame themselves when they can’t climb out of their holes.

            Sure, you can see nothing valid in my points. You’re not really admitting nuttin’.

            • JL

              If you think that most of the people on this thread who disagree with you are arguing against the complexity of social life or the atomized private life, you have just not been paying attention.

              and trafficking is not made profitable through the illegalization of services, but by alienating their victims from support networks and legal aide.

              And we want trafficking victims (and also consensual sex workers for that matter) to have access to support networks and legal aid! Why is this hard to grasp?

              Legalization isn’t going to fix trafficking. Legalization, however, would do things like give police less cover to abuse sex workers and make it more feasible to hold abusive customers accountable.

            • John A

              yeah, I’m with shah8 on this one…..and, btw, I would add that the very simplistic understanding of agency that prevails in internet left circles is just another sign of how thoroughly what English departments used to call “Theory” failed.

              “This is a worker’s rights issue.”

              Why is RIGHTS the only relevant discourse here?

              Even the radicals turn out to be liberals….

  • mch

    With apologies for not reading the comments, but as a woman and a mother of a son as well as a daughter I feel strongly.

    Why is “sex-work” always framed in these discussions as a form of “women’s work”? Are there no boys and men doing this work? And, crucially, are only the ones being paid “working”? I have this mental picture of some paying man pumping away, working hard. Why is he not imagined as (pathetically) “working”?

    I am sick of this shit. Trade unions are a necessary evil, not the best solution. Maybe some similar stop-gap is best for the women, girls, men and boys stuck in needing to use their intimate bodies as labor. But let’s not mistake this stop-gap as anything but like feeding starving children with emergency staples. The whole system needs upending.

    • Karen

      It’s framed as women’s work because it is always a subordinate person providing a personal service to a much more powerful man.

      • JL

        1) No, that is not always what it is. Female customers do exist, and customers regardless of gender are not inherently more powerful, let alone much more powerful, than the sex workers. Sometimes they are. For some demographics of sex workers this is probably true most of the time. But it is not intrinsic to sex work.

        2) Even if that were true, it would still be deeply problematic to misgender a bunch of sex workers who are not women on the grounds that being less powerful or providing a personal service to men somehow makes them women. As I keep saying, trans men and gender non-conforming people are much more likely to be sex workers at some point in their lives than cis women (though less likely than trans women), and a significant minority of cis sex workers are men – around 20% of those arrested for prostitution in the US are men.

        • Lee Rudolph

          Thank you for consistently bringing facts to bear on this thread.

  • mch

    And, yeah, I am with Katha.

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    • Anonymous

      How is making prostitution legal going to stop another illegal act, namely human trafficking? If you`re already running slave hookers, making the hooker part legal isn`t going to slow you down much. You could then use your legal brothel as a front for your illegal sex slave business.

  • joe from Lowell

    I’ve been thinking about the “It’s just like paying for any other service.”

    If I pay someone for a service, I gain a legal right to it. I can turn to the law to enforce my rights. I can compel the house-painter to do the job, or compel him to pay me back with damages.

    I’m used to thinking in terms of a woman’s inarguable right to withdraw consent at any point. Should the law treat a woman who withdraws consent like any other service-industry provider who defaults on a contract?

    • Scott Lemieux

      I do think this is an important point. Most liberals would consider work, at least for the non-independently wealthy, as coercive to some extent for the employee. But this means that paying people to have sex carries some real problems.

      None of which means that any form of formally consensual sex work should be criminalized — it’s counterproductive. But I think Pollitt is asking important questions that don’t imply criminalization as a solution.

    • Lee Rudolph

      I think that the house-painter is a singularly bad model for the kind of service involved in prostitution. What, at present, are the protections for hair-dressers and barbers, manicurists and nail-artists, licensed massage therapists and other kinds of body-workers (like physical therapists or instructors in the Alexander technique), tattooists, trombone teachers? How about sparring partners, dance instructors (or paid dancing partners if those still exist), personal trainers? Each of these kinds of service has much more in common with hands-on sex work (as contrasted with no-touch stripping or pornographic acting and modeling) than house-painting does, though obviously none is a perfect match.

      I know of a fringe ophthalmologist (believer in the Bates Method) who turns away non-vegetarian clients because of their body odor.

      • joe from Lowell

        What, at present, are the protections for hair-dressers and barbers, manicurists and nail-artists, licensed massage therapists and other kinds of body-workers (like physical therapists or instructors in the Alexander technique), tattooists, trombone teachers? How about sparring partners, dance instructors (or paid dancing partners if those still exist), personal trainers?

        I’m perfectly ok with the law compelling each of those service-providers to fulfill their contracts, or suffer legal damages up to and including fraud and theft prosecutions.

        Now, your turn.

        • Lee Rudolph

          Well, I’m perfectly okay with extending that law to sex work, so we’re all set! The extension has to be, in practice as well as in theory, as respectful to the workers as it is—or should be—in all the other cases. In particular, “withdrawal of consent” on contextually reasonable grounds (e.g., the client changes specifications for the service to be performed in mid-performance of the service, or the client threatens or assaults the worker) should not be a prima facie justification for finding the sex worker in breach of contract.

          • shah8

            Nah, you need to think about the extremes on the other side of the prostitution angle…

            Would you say that legalization of child soldiery would promote better outcomes or worse. Would you say that extending worker rights to child soldiers would make for better outcomes for child soldiers…and children as a whole?

            • Lee Rudolph

              That’s an impressive rhetorical move.

              I think I’ll leave it to Loomis to reply, if he feels up to it.

              • shah8

                I don’t think it’s a particularly “rhetorical” move, I spent time last night trying to think about why I feel the way I do, and I starting comparing the issues with child soldiery. There is a lot of overlap, and we don’t traditionally think of that farm boy running off to join the national army in some big war (and lying about his age) in place of images of random african children in the bush with guns bigger than they are. So less distraction about what child soldiery *really* is, as opposed to prostitution, which is a lot nastier than people give it credit for, because most don’t perceive the whole of it, instead seeing (and absorbing from media) the mildest version.

                • Nigel

                  I’m open to the idea of legalising the sex trade, but the necessary stipulations, regulations and protections that go with it always end up resembling that joke about the biologist and the chemist and the physicist each explaining how they would make the fastest horse, and the physicist says: ‘First, you take a perfectly spherical horse…’

          • joe from Lowell

            The extension has to be, in practice as well as in theory, as respectful to the workers as it is—or should be—in all the other cases.

            Oh, that’s nice. You mean like how it usually is in other service industries?

            Have you ever worked in a kitchen, and you knock over some plates or you’re taking too long to get the potatoes cut, and your boss is like, “Come ON!”

            That was a really cute, glib “We’ve all set!” in your reply, Lee.

    • chris

      Should the law treat a woman who withdraws consent like any other service-industry provider who defaults on a contract?

      If you’re asking if they should be required to give a refund for any services not yet performed when they decide to refuse to continue, well, maybe, depending on the facts of that particular case. I don’t think it’s really going to require any radically new principles.

      IANAL, but I doubt you can actually compel the house painter to do the job.

  • Pingback: Making Sex Work Ordinary | Konfeksiyon Tekstil()

  • Another Holocene Human

    Pollitt needs to stuff it. Just another privileged person with no concept of what blue collar work is like or the conditions of employment of the bottom 40%.

    Forget blue collar, let her go out in the fields with migrant farm laborers for a couple weeks and then tell us how degrading, harmful, traumatic, coercive, blah blah blah that is.

  • Hulloder

    The happy, fulfilled prostitute is sibling to the happy, fulfilled worker of unpaid overtime. That the lease of each on sanguinity in their respective roles is so short as to be negligible never enters into their minds, until they, worn-out and hideous to former employers, are replaced by youthful and unspoiled images of their former selves, in three to five years, with little to show for their bold choices but a gap of meaningful life and loss of health.

    This while obscuring, with the attention-seeking glare of their self-approval, all the brutality undergone by those with less privilege in the same roles: those so “unenlightened” as to lack the resources for making any self-satisfied election of such employment at all; those so “unskilled” as to fail to get an article or book deal out of the experience before a forcible retirement.

    That a worker can choose what to do with her labor is an ideal no question, but the collective imposition of obsolescence or exploitation on all but a tiny minority of the workforce, a minority likewise doomed to spoilage and replacement in a matter of years, should impose some limits on our cheering for some freedoms, I’d think.

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