Coercion and Prostitution

The story that German welfare officials were intended to compel women to accept jobs in brothels at the risk of having their welfare payments discontinued has been discredited. (It is pretty amusing to see conservative bloggers imply that this is some sort of devastating critique of lefty welfare state policies; I don’t believe that it’s progressives who advocated making forced work requirements a key priority.) Nonetheless, it raises a particularly interesting question, which Bitch, Ph.D addressed yesterday. I have argued previously that the criminalization of prostitution is wholly indefensible from a progressive perspective. The short version is that I don’t find lefty nanny-state theoretical rationales for these laws significantly more convincing than their reactionary counterparts, but at any rate the question is beside the point because it’s blindingly obvious that criminalizing prostitution massively exacerbates whatever justifiable ends it could be addressing. Having taken that position, however, am I in a bind? If it doesn’t make sense to stigmatize sex work for the purposes of criminalization, can such distinctions be justified with respect to welfare benefits? Intuitively I agree with Dr. B that the hypothetical German policy is wrong, and I also agree that welfare recipients should not be forced to take any available job. But, still, can that distinction be maintained?

And then I thought a little bit, and I actually don’t think it’s a hard question; of course such a distinction could be made when it comes to receiving benefits, although it’s still difficult me to articulate the reasons why. Not prohibiting prostitution and coercing (albeit indirectly) women to do it are entirely different questions, even granting that most women probably engage in prostitution because of dire economic necessity. Markets do entail forms of coercion, but it’s still an important distinction. Similarly, there’s nothing inconsistent about advocating that abortion be decriminalized, while believing that state-coerced abortions are abominable. To some extent it’s a pragmatic distinction; one can imagine a society in which prostitution was generally seen as less inherently exploitative than working at Burger King, and in that context perhaps exempting it from jobs one can be compelled to take to receive welfare benefits would be unnecessary and undesirable. But that’s not the case, and there’s no reason that the law can’t embody the distinctions that most people themselves are inclined to make.