The Morality of Sex Work Flashcards
What is Sex Work?
Practice of payment (money/bartering-Sugar daddies-) to a person who offers sexual relations
The person who offers sexual relations to the person willing to pay consents freely, voluntarily, with adequate information.
If coerced, consent is not legitimate (though there is a question whither free consent is possible given the conditions of unequal opportunity, and life chances women face relative to men).
We also assume that the person is of age to consent and that the persons offering to pay and are usually men and those accepting, women.
Sex Work in Canada
Canada has adopted the Nordic Model
Permissible to sell sexual services, but it is illegal to purchase it.
Criminalize buying, NOT selling sex:
- Brothels are illegal
- Advertising for sex is legal with some restrictions
- Pimping is illegal
Every province and territory has sex work (as do most of the world)
Morality and legality
Moral question: is it would be morally permissible for rational adults to enter into exchange relations for sexual services
Legal question: should the law allow persons to engage in exchange relations for sexual services
Morality and legality And Policy
The moral question is different from the policy question, which is often, what is the best policy approach to the challenges raised by sex work?
Policy positions include legalization, decriminalization, or prohibition (and each with degrees)
One might think sex work morally impermissible, but still hold, as a pragmatic position, that we should legalize or decriminalize
Why is Sex Work controversial?
Some women appear to choose it - voluntarily
It is dangerous: many women report multiple physical, psychological, emotional harms
It is stigmatized: women who participate are thought poorly of and our status/cultural practices reflect disvalue in sex work
Subsequently it is difficult to leave the profession and return to forms of labour without prejudice or social bias
It is a very old practice and many feel its presence is inevitable and without end
Many women who are involved in the trade are poor, uneducated, vulnerable, and visible minority (in the global south it is often, as it is here, indigenous women subjected to the trade)
Methodological challenges
It is difficult to gain concrete information about sex work
It has historically been illegal (and remains stigmatized)
And it is difficult to know if the work is not chosen under the duress of a pimp
Sex work is a global phenomenon and “supply chains” are international in scope
Women move and are trafficked to where the most profits are to be obtained
But also attitudes about sex have changed, thanks to the internet and social media, and hip hop
We live in a society that seems overly sexualized
Premarital sex attitudes have changed; views about promiscuity and starting families have changed as well
Internet sex work/Craigslist (web Cam, pornography have reflected new outlets to do sex work) has in some ways displaced street walking or strip clubbing)
More documentaries on Netflix tend to glamourize the trade by focusing on narrow slices of those in the trade
And many of these features vary, in practice, by jurisdiction, culture, etc. (we speak of one sex work, there are probably multiple sex works)
Arguments for Sex Work
Kantian Style argument for the moral permissibility of sex work :
We should respect the free, voluntary, and informed choices of persons
Both parties are aware of the risks and choose them in engaging in sex for pay
Since both parties freely, voluntarily choose the arrangement, and both parties are autonomous, then their acting is permissible.
Moral rights based arguments for the moral permissibility of sex work
A person has the right to choose what they will do with their body (even if the choice is risky)
This is because, one’s body is one’s property
And since one has an inalienable right to do with their property that they choose, they have the right to do so with their body as well
And therefore sex work is morally permissible
Utilitarian Arguments for the moral permissibility of sex work
Selling sex for pay, if chosen by consenting adults, has many utilities (the person wanting sexual gratification gets it; the other person receives money, maybe enjoys the sex on some occasions)
There are risks as well (transmission of disease, violence, psychological harms, social harms associated with the creation of a market and a site for services)
if the benefits outweigh the disutilities, then the practice is morally permissible
The utilities outweigh the disutilities, so sex work is permissible (this claim needs substantial empirical support)
Objections to utilitarian arguments
Kantian based arguments:
The argument assumes that people can autonomously choose sex work – is that correct?
Many women are forced into the trade by men (in many, many countries, women are slaves (Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam, France, Columbia, etc.)
Many women are forced into the trade through economy vulnerability – can a person be free when their ability to meet basic life needs is undermined?
Kantian style arguments
What is more, the social inequality of women, in our practices and institutions, insures future pools of vulnerable women
Some women are forced into the trade to escape family trauma – including rape and other forms of sexual assault
Some women are forced into the trade through addiction (without other means of acquiring the ability to acquire narcotics
And the longer a person stays in the trade the harder it becomes to leave (because of diminishing economic opportunities in being absent from the formal economy and because of the debilitating psychological, emotional, physic, social, and physical toll)
So autonomy diminishes over time
Natural Rights argument
Just because one has a natural right (and that’s not a given either), it doesn’t mean that the right is not limited
The right to life means one can do with themselves as they please, but it doesn’t imply the right to hurt another person, or oneself.
It may not even entail a right to basic needs such as health care, which we believe here, but the Americans don’t (we don’t believe one has a right to own a house, but to housing)
Utilitarian Arguments
Here, this is difficult to measure – we assume that the only persons involved are those two people engage in sexual intercourse
And we assume that the person selling isn’t harm (we always do so with the buyer), but if there are harms to the person, the disutilities may be greater than the utilities
Response to Utilitarian Arguments
Someone might argue that many of the harms are contingent; that many can be mitigated by legalization or decriminalizing sex work
And this is an empirical claim: where we see decriminalization or legalization, are the harms absent?
The evidence is mixed, legalization seems to be strongly correlated with trafficking (i.e. Pimps)
Evidence is mixed that men are less insulting or violent to women
Certainly it’s hard to see the objectification of women minimized with paid sex work
Arguments against the moral permissibility of paid sex work
The objectification of women is a feature of most societies and it harms women’s opportunities and life chances (cultural, material, political)
Sex work reproduces and is reproduced by the objectification of women
Therefore it is immoral
