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The Ethics of Prostitution
real_pochacco
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Generally speaking, the legalization of prostitution is a pretty straightforward debate, and I don't find it particularly controversial. It's pretty obvious that prostitution is not something that is going to go away, and legalization can only help. It's also easy to understand a lot of the personal reasons why someone might not want to hire a prostitute: not interested in sex outside of a relationship, uncomfortable with the thought of paying someone for it, or afraid of diseases, etc.
But this thread is main to focus on this question: is it ever ethical for someone to hire a prostitute? That is, can you be a "good person" and still pay someone for sex? What situations is it ethical, and what situations is it not?
There are obviously a few key points on which the question centers. First, whether the act is truly consensual. If a person has somehow been forced to become a prostitute, either by another person or by their own poverty, then is it truly consensual sex? Do they actually have a choice? Would paying them for sex be taking advantage of their social position? Of course, there are different situations in which this would have more or less of an effect. In a red light district in a developing country, for example, it's very easy to see why this would be an issue.
Second, is prostitution inherently harmful? Is paying someone for sex inherently damaging to their psyche/mind? Are there psychological costs that no amount of money could truly make prostitution a "fair trade"?
Third, is there some element to which hiring a woman for sex that inherently degrades and commodifies women? Does putting a dollar amount on sex make women into objects for pleasure, and unavoidably dehumanize them?
As far as my own personal beliefs, I honestly have no idea. On the one hand, I know that there are some people who not only actively choose to become sex workers, but also love their jobs and find them fufilling. On the other hand, I imagine that those people are probably a small minority of sex workers, not the majority.
But this thread is main to focus on this question: is it ever ethical for someone to hire a prostitute? That is, can you be a "good person" and still pay someone for sex? What situations is it ethical, and what situations is it not?
There are obviously a few key points on which the question centers. First, whether the act is truly consensual. If a person has somehow been forced to become a prostitute, either by another person or by their own poverty, then is it truly consensual sex? Do they actually have a choice? Would paying them for sex be taking advantage of their social position? Of course, there are different situations in which this would have more or less of an effect. In a red light district in a developing country, for example, it's very easy to see why this would be an issue.
Second, is prostitution inherently harmful? Is paying someone for sex inherently damaging to their psyche/mind? Are there psychological costs that no amount of money could truly make prostitution a "fair trade"?
Third, is there some element to which hiring a woman for sex that inherently degrades and commodifies women? Does putting a dollar amount on sex make women into objects for pleasure, and unavoidably dehumanize them?
As far as my own personal beliefs, I honestly have no idea. On the one hand, I know that there are some people who not only actively choose to become sex workers, but also love their jobs and find them fufilling. On the other hand, I imagine that those people are probably a small minority of sex workers, not the majority.
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Since when were only women prostitutes? Does the experience of a male prostitute not matter, or what? Does the degree of exploitation experienced change with who's involved (man-hiring-woman vs woman-hiring-man, for instance).
Also, is the assertion by some that courtship and marriage rituals in traditional society actually constitute a prostitution of self in exchange for support and security worth noting? In a society where women hold no power and are kept from economic independence, its argued that marriage can really only be whoring, since there's no safe opt-out pathway (yeah, this is pretty much that part of Dworkin's stuff that everyone gets wrong). To a certain extent, the remnants of that power exchange can still be felt even in the most enlightened corners of western society - there's a good story about a bloke in California trying to take his wife's name upon marriage and having a whole lot of trouble doing it, for instance. The old notions of power in gender relationships are very important when discussing this question.
Small rhetoric issue, male prostitutes exist as well and arguably the harms of commodification and exploitation should affect them as well. Whether it does or doesn't is a danger relations issue.
One of the better ways to approach this is by consulting precedents of society that legalized prostitution and interwove it into their culture. How did their philosophy differ from ours, and what appendage ideas did they share that we in the present may find detestable/admirable?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Male Prostitutes aren't brutalized and killed by their pimpettes as often.
Prostitution itself isn't the problem, so much as all the crimes associated with it. When you think "prostitute," you don't think of the actual act. You think of the shitty street corners, the diseases, the violence, and so forth. Well, I do.
On one hand, legalizing prostitution might lead to a better quality of life for prostitutes. On the other hand, that really requires cultural acceptance of the job, which isn't something you can write a law for.
Also, there are gay prostitutes, and so I pretty much tried to keep the OP gender neutral until the last part.
I'd argue they're often abused non-lethally, as often as female ones (serial killers tend to target females, but despite the publicity surrounding their crimes its not what you'd call a true epidemic). Basically, its a physically dangerous job regardless of what gender you are - the danger lies in being hired by men who think its ok to get physical because there's money involved and a purely verbal contract with someone who's often not in a position to set out a detailed contract of what's permissible and what's not. Like it or not, female johns behave, on average, very differently to males. The problems of abuse would be solved to a certain extent by legalisation, but really also require paid sex to only take place in safely regulated spaces - brothels, in other words.
Yeah, kind of what I'm getting at. As long as there's still a substantial culture in which sex is seen as a power exchange, prostitution will always be seen as a subversive act, and punished accordingly, whether by open legislation or general disapproval.
So yes, I tend to agree with Kaz - you don't tend to imagine prostitution, you imagine the problems with it. But by the same token, beyond that it is entirely possible to imagine a world in which it's legal and well organized, with almost none of the problems we presently have (including societal villanization).
Dude, rent boys take savage beatings. Especially in countries where they are reviled and tend to be picked up by self hating psychos. The stories I have heard from people who studied the health of Indonesian and Thai sex workers are scary shit.
The physchology of prostitution is kinda hard to even approach. Sociologists do it a lot better. I will try and find some of the old stories from anthropologists in the sex industry. Anyone who says prostitutes are universally messed up in the head is speaking out of there arse, but it is an impossible to ignore aspect of the job. And whether it's primarily because the job is inherently demeaning, or whether people are attracted to the job because of psychological issues, or whether poor conditions in an largely illegal industry lead to mental health problems, or whether they just start feeling messed up because socially they're told they have to be to do what they're doing... well it's bloody hard to untangle it all.
After legalization, they can then seriously up the punishment for illegal operations (kiddie-tutes and all that).
A person's body belongs to themselves, they can sell whichever parts of it they want.
Yeah, when you outlaw something that people are going to do no matter what, it becomes dangerous. As for the dirt, disease, violence, there was a great Penn & Teller's "Bullshit!" episode that broke down this myth by showing how legalized prostitution in Nevada works, and how an independent sex worker outside of the law does business discretely and with safety precautions in place.
But the public doesn't see that side. They see the street workers strung out on drugs being (hopefully) rescued from life on the street on Cops. And in spite of the negative media blitz, many Americans in mainstream life fully support legalizing prostitution.
As for regulation, why should the government be regulating sex between consenting adults? When you give your girlfriend a nice Valentine's Day gift, should she have to run down to the courthouse and get a license from the state before she fucks you? The current laws could be interpreted that way in most states, which just shows how outrageous it is to let the gov't get their foot in your bedroom door.
Prostitution is a business.
Thus.
A) Prostitution is a business and because of that, yes, there would be regulations such as safety, health, etc.
EDIT: Beaten to the punch
with regards to b), the unfortunate incidence of date rape indicates that a not-insubstantial percentage of people do still confuse buying a person dinner or a movie ticket with buying sex. For them, the deal is simply carried out through non-monetary means. Unfortunately, they don't stop to consider that perhaps the recipient doesn't operate that way. This is the reason many girls are cagey about letting boyfriends pay for them/open doors/pull out chairs, for those who are confused by that behaviour (apart from wanting to simply be independent, or listening to too much Beyonce :P). Don't take it personally, but if you're confronted by someone who reacts badly to being paid for, they've probably either experienced that treatment or heard about it and are erring on the side of caution. This is why I keep bringing up the power interplay associated with sex - its a turn -on for pretty much everyone raised in this culture, whether we're willing to admit it or not, but it also can cause real problems.
I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with the point I was making that buying your lover a gift and then later on having sex is not, in any near future, going to be regarded as an actual business transaction by any body that regulates businesses. Hence, nullifying his point about one's significant other needing to go out for a prostitution license just because they were given a gift if the government begins to regulate prostitution.
I would hope that the people you describe to do not involve themselves in the regulation of businesses in any capacity
i'm saying that sex and power exchanges can be conflated with money to the extent that regulation may be difficult - rape threads here tend to eventually come around to a few people tsk-tsking about how apparently people in the future won't be able to have sex without signing a ten page contract, and that thus rape laws shouldn't be tightened lest the phenomenon of forcing people to think before they fuck breaks the mood, man. in a culture where sex isn't viewed as the power exchange that it generally is, this problem would fade.
That aside I can't really think of any moral reason why prostitution is wrong. It's alright to pay for a massage and sex is just a massage that ends in an orgasm. All of the genuine problems that stem from prostitution come from it being illegal and unregulated.
Ask a cop. The pimps who are putting out street walkers all have records for worse shit than prostitution, so the question of legalization doesn't even interest those assholes.
What you might call the "mainstream" sex industry in America has successfully regulated itself for many years. Law enforcement leaves a lot of venues for sex workers to exchange information on bad/risky clients, etc, alone in large part because these women keep each other out of trouble.
Only because you have arbitrarily called one a business transaction and not the other. Before making such a distinction, ask yourself what the variable is here. Is it the size of the gift, or the interval between giving the gift and engaging in the sex act? Is it the degree of certainty that giving the gift will ensure the sex act, or the likelihood that not giving the gift will end the relationship and with it any future chances for sexual relations?
Most importantly, do you really want the kind of pricks who become career politicians to be the ones making these distinctions? I don't.
There's still Nevada.
So possibilities remain.
The variable is that dating and relationships are much more complex than one-to-one gift-for-sex transactions. I've never given a girl a gift expecting sex, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
I'm not exactly getting what you're going for there with point one. I'm talking about that if prostitution was legalized, since it is a business, there would be some form of government regulation on it. Those assholes would likely still be operating illegally and would need to be dealt with accordingly.
on your second part... please think through this again. You are telling me you cannot see the difference between gift giving in a committed relationship and prostitution.
As has been pointed out, it's quite legal in Nevada, and I doubt that folks in Nevada are having any trouble separating giving their sweetheart a gift and eventually having sex as part of their relationship with one another and prostitution.
And if you're buying your significant other gifts just to get them to have sex with you, I'd say there are serious problems in your relationship.
Again, he's saying that some people don't see the distinction, and they'd respnd to your or I calling them rabid assholes by claiming that we're just not cutting through the crap, or thinking clearly, or some such other bullshit. But. Its hard to fight their claims that normal courtship is an elaborate form of prostitution while living in a culture where it kind of sort of is. Until the whole approach to sexual ethics shifts considerably, we're pretty much stuck with that, and the only way to fight it is to realise that that's how our system of courtin' looks from certain angles.
this is why I hate these threads, they're so goddamn complicated because people have sex for a zillion different reasons. If it was really all about making babies like te evo-psych guys think, things would be considerably simpler :P
Just because you can misdiagnose the nature of something from a particular angle doesn't mean that's how it is. I'm sure there are some girls that buy into gift-giving and that may loosen them up. There are all kinds of deviant behavior in Human society. I reject that that is the norm though, and it certainly isn't healthy on either the boy's or girl's part.
...yeah, still missing the point there. grab yourself a couple of sociology texts and come back after you're done.
Kind of difficult to confuse the two when one of them involves driving out to a "ranch" in an otherwise unremarkable county in the middle of the desert. No, not Vegas. I mean farther out. Like, almost out where they used to test A-bombs and shit.
I never said that I buy gifts for my girlfriend just to get her in bed that night. However, it is puritanical self-deception to insist that sex is not the reason men and women seek out one another's company. And simply naive to expect that the average relationship will continue for long if the man stops spending a substantial sum of his income on the woman, or the woman continually turns aside sexual advances.
And again, I don't trust our lawmakers to make the distinction, and don't want them sticking their nose in any adult's sexual liasons. Because it only invites further intrusions.
I've taken sociology.
That's a subjective comment that I disagree with. It's not scientific fact.
Most people fuck because it's pleasurable to fuck, and I think it has very little to do with financial reciprocation, or even procreation for that matter. Procreation may be the Human instinct, but on the surface, I think most people consent to sex because it's enjoyable.
I live ~20 miles from Amsterdam, which contains what is probably the most famous Red Light District in the world, what is important to understand is that the sex industry is in hands of crime bosses. They make their money by employing women to have sex, they use this money to fuel their other practises. In the end, it is not a save profession to work in, you'll either work on your own and wind up dead in a sewer system, or you've got a pimp taking care of you, until things go wrong. And the things really go wrong in Amsterdam every now and then.
Even in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legalised, there is trade in women, heroin hookers (crack addicts who whore themselves out for a few quid to get their shot) and more troubles. Most famous is a recent practise by young, good looking, men. They seduce young girls, give them gifts and make them dependable on them. Then they tell their girls that they are short on money, but that a friend is willing to give money *if* he gets to fuck the girl. Slowly but surely these young (mostly underaged) girls are talked into prostitution, without making money for themselves to get out of their mess. "Loverboys" they are called, ironically.
That said, it is still better to legalise prostitution, because that is the only way the government can keep an eye out for these women. If we are going to let our Prime Minister have the final say in this, he will try to abolish all prostitutes, thankfully he isn't *that* powerful;
Personally, I see sex as a little bit more than a massage: I see it as an act of love. I see every man who has sex with women without loving them as an asshole. Then again, I consider a whole lot of people as assholes, so you're most likely in good company.
Most of the time, male prostitution is just as unsafe as female prostitution. Over here, young desperate men whore themselves out out on the streets or around parks that are famous as places homosexuals go to to have sex without anyone else knowing. As you can imagine, these lads are very vulnerable to abuse. There *are* some men who are under the protection of pimps and reside in the Red Light District, but they are a minority, because the homosexual and women-seeking-men industry is a whole lot smaller than the men-seeking-women industry.
Oh, and I don't think any "normal" hooker is stupid enough to have sex without a condom. ^_^ It are the desperate or enslaved women that wouldn't mind, maybe because they have every STD in the world on them anyways. ;D
Ah, see, I do differentiate between sex and making love. If two people who aren't in love with each other want to have some fun together I can't see how this makes either of them assholes.
A guy who lies to a girl about loving her just to get her into bed, that's different.
You are correct, though, my views on sex are a bit flawed.
I was first going to say "I see every man who pays women for sex as an asshole." But I somehow forgot that women can like sex too. I guess I hate males too much to think clearly sometimes.
There are plenty of people who pay for sex who aren't assholes. Its often hard for disabled people to get laid, particularly the intellectually disabled - a lot of people have trouble acknowledging that a paralytic or a retard can have sexual needs. Others may be, to be blunt, social retards or uggos, and see hiring someone as a judgement-free way to get laid. Which is not to say that those people can't be assholes on top of all else :P, but the picture is more complicated than you're portraying. And yes, women can be in all those boats, although it seems to me from what I've read that only a certain set of well-off women feel free/entitled enough to hire right now. you can make of that what you will, I guess. I still pretty torn between dissing the traditional asshole john and noting that that's not the only person around who hires, and between noting that the majority of prostitutes currently are deeply damaged while acknowledging those who actually go into it willingly.
It's not like prostitutes do society a favour other than keeping freaks from (date)raping other women to get their kicks.
I know of some few who view the pleasuring of another as an art form not unlike (and this was their analogy) a skilled massuse. They took pleasure and no small amount of pride in their work and their skill; though these would fall more in line with the idea of a courtesan than a "hooker"
this just in: other people are different than you, without being crazy! MORE AT ELEVEN.
Yeah, I didn't want to double post but all sex drives are not created equal.
edit: I'm also gonna dispute that (the bit I bolded). To use a food analogy if someone wants to go out for a really expensive dinner prepared by skilled chef now and again whats the harm in that?
Again though I'm viewing a legal prostitute as a sex professional rather than as a blow up doll with a pulse.
With the changes in societial norms about relationships and marriage shifting more towards romantacism and love, then the lines dull a bit about how those traditions hold up.
As for prostitution, I am doubtful to it become more accepted or have more widespread legalization in the near future. Many people still hold on to the beliefs that sex is mostly for procreation or that promiscious sex is evil. These beliefs are founded on moralities which were very practical due to the risks of disease and unwanted pregnancy. The technological and societal "fixes" to those issues won't be universally accepted. Of course, not everyone has those sorts of morals and a lot of people are hypocrites regardless, so prostitution isn't going away anytime soon.
Basically, a woman was out of work and on unemployment benefits/jobseekers allowance (whatever the dutch name for this is) but was going to become inelligible because she wasn't willing to become a prostitute - i.e there was work available but she didn't want to do it.
Opens up a whole can of worms about whether you are able to refuse a job on moral grounds and which companies are and aren't allowed to advertise in job centers.
edit Link to the story
It was in Germany, not Holland
There is a similar thing that has been going on here in the UK as well, though its sex shop workers and lap dancers
Ann Summers wins case to use government job centres
Consequences of this, lap dancers and scotland
Its apparently very expensive to go through private recuitmen firms to find jobs, and really not worth it if you're not after someone with a particular skill (as the people who use the agencies to find jobs aren't going to be looking for simple retail work or jobs as pole dancers). It opens the door for a lot of other issues as well regarding what jobs you are allowed to refuse and retain benefits - whilst the social worker should probably have been a bit more sensitive and referred this up the chain as an oddity, he was infact correct here. There are a lot of jobs that people may consider distasteful, however the government (and the population at large) officially sees no problem wit them at all - if you don't want to be a prostitute, dustbinman, sex shop retail staff, barstaff, abatoir worker, banker or somewhere that opens on the sabbath then that is your choice but you are refusing to work.
I just don't see the direct use of prostitutes to society, replying to how The Cat argues that disabled persons are dependant on prostitutes. I am not arguing that paying for sex with a pro is wrong on the same grounds, if both are okay with it, I'm a-ok with it. For God's sake, legalise it! For exactly the same reasons to legalise softdrugs; it's cool and it doesn't kill other people (directly), no reason to make laws against it.
Is it my age, maybe? I'm 19 and don't see sex as something that is needed to enjoy life. Sure it's nice and dandy and enjoyable, but I could live without. Should I go and see a doctor?