If You Own It, You Can Sell It
Kerry’s brilliant take on the post-Client 9 discussion of prostitution is spot on. Apparently a number of people think the basic libertarian view of prostitution is facile. Well, the view that the basic libertarian view is facile is facile. The idea of self-ownership is profound. Every form of labor involves “selling your body,” one way or another. I see no interesting intrinsic moral distinction between brick- and other forms of laying. There is simply nothing wrong with selling or buying sexual services. There is no bright moral line between a good massage and a really good massage. The entire issue is generated by backward prudishness, a precious, misogynistic attitude toward female sexuality, and run-of-the-mill patriarchal paternalism. (Do we ever see handwringing about the degradation of male prostitution? Why not?)
Yes, some women turn to the sale of sexual services out of a lack of better alternatives. Indeed, some women turn to the sale of lettuce-picking services out of a lack of better alternatives. And bricklayers shouldn’t be permitted to individually negotiate labor contracts because they will be exploited by capital. Show me the difference. Whether orgasm delivery, lettuce picking, or bricklaying is degrading depends on the attitude of the worker toward that kind of work and her ability to sell her services with dignity on her own terms. More importantly, it depends on the attitude of people at large toward that kind of work. Honest work that we legally and culturally marginalize is degrading. But that’s because we marginalize it. Time was that champions of the moral order claimed that money smelled like shit and you could smell it on loanshark Shylocks. Very degrading. But now everybody charges interest all the time, and look what happened to us!
March 12th, 2008 11:13
“Honest work that we legally and culturally marginalize is degrading. But that’s because we marginalize it.”
Cf. Nietzsche’s remark: “The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly has made the world evil and ugly.” (I would substitute the more ecumenical “moralist’s” for “Christian.”)
March 12th, 2008 12:52
I’ve given this some thought, actually, and there might be a legitimate libertarian argument against legalizing prostitution. It’s not, for example, legal to sell yourself into slavery. Why not? In principle it’s not inconceivable that I could assign a cash value to my status as a free citizen. In general, if you own it, you can sell it, certainly. But when you get too close to questions of personhood there’s uncertainty about who is doing the selling. If you truly could sell anything, what do we make of the idea of inalienable rights?
It’s at least worth considering that a personal (non-commercial) sexual life may be a natural right.
March 12th, 2008 13:08
Alisa,
This line of thought begs the question. How is the sale of sexual services any more like slavery than the sale of any other kind of service?
My guess is that you think sex is different. But that is because sex is treated like it is different, not because it ought to be.
A non-commercial sexual life is indeed a natural right, as is a commercial sexual life.
March 12th, 2008 14:59
I’ve always looked at it this way. In general, defenders of abortion use the idea of self-ownership, which means that women should be able to choose what they do to their bodies. Yet, when it comes to prostitution (or drugs), these same defenders believe that prostitution is an affront to the choices of women. Leaving aside instances of coercion and abuse, is this not a complete logical disconnect?
I also do not see how one can see a difference between services sexual or otherwise. It must, then, be dependent upon cultural stigmas.
March 12th, 2008 15:04
[...] — Will Wilkensen Wilkinsen Wilkinson [...]
March 12th, 2008 17:26
Guilty as charged. I begged the question. Here’s my best attempt to fix things up:
I do think there is a difference between prostitution and lettuce-picking, but I have to go on fuzzy psychological (or cultural) ground here, and say that having to sell sex as a service makes it far more difficult to have personal relationships that include sex. Maybe in a society with different norms this wouldn’t be true, but here and now a prostitute has to forgo a (nearly) universal part of a complete human life. That’s not true of other workers, even those who work for long hours and low pay.
March 12th, 2008 17:46
Ok, so you’ve shown that it can be a costly choice (in this culture). But, not that it’s similar to slavery.
I’m sure that there are many professions that make a normal sex life difficult. But, that’s not a reason to remove them as options.
As long as the people maintain the ability to exit the profession when they think they have better options, I don’t see how having the option to engage in the profession impinges on any natural rights.
March 12th, 2008 18:54
If we all agreed to place the burden of persuasion on those who would criminalize it, prostitution would be legal. Principled humility always beats moral stridency when the latter carries the burden.
March 12th, 2008 23:09
It’s not uncommon for prostitutes to have boyfriends on the side. It’s weird, but not uncommon. Besides, most women don’t remain prostitutes for long. If you figure the average woman is in the business for less than a year, is it really such a burden to do without personal sexual relationships for several months? How is that different from a guy stationed on an offshore oil drilling platform or a deep sea fishing vessel? Or even an investment banker working 100-hour weeks? Prostitutes tend to work very few hours leaving them plenty of free time to pursue an education or a personal life.
March 13th, 2008 01:23
JA,
I wish that were universally true. It’s true for many of us, but there are quite a few people who see merit in “arguments” like Leon Kass’s “Wisdom of repugnance.”
March 13th, 2008 09:12
FXKLM, I’d add that a significant number men and women go through a phase in which they have sex with a lot of different partners for a several years. This is almost always in a much more out of control and emotionally volatile context — lots of alcohol, maybe some drugs, etc — than a lot of prostitution. Yet very few people think a man our woman who had a lot of partners in his or her party days in their early twenties can never have a normal sex life.
March 13th, 2008 09:50
Interesting, but I have to ask, If we ~never~ see “handwringing about the degradation of male prostitution” could it be that there is some significant difference between male sexuality and female sexuality?
You said, “There is simply nothing wrong with selling or buying sexual services.” But that seems to be a rather sweeping assertion.
I tend to agree that the degradation associated with some prostitution is primarily the result of cultural marginalization, but that doesn’t mean that prostitution might not (often) be degrading and dehumanizing even it enjoyed cultural approbation.
The problem is that sex is different from other activities. It is similar to lettuce picking and brick laying only if and when its practice is commercialized. But there are (or, at the very least, there may be) psychological and physiological reasons to treat sex differently from other, more necessarily mundane, activities.
Does that mean that prostitution should be illegal? Of course not. But the argument to decriminalize prostitution does not rest a question of whether or not it is healthy or moral to sell sex, but on whether that decision should be properly made by the individual or the state.
March 13th, 2008 10:08
Patrick,
Could the relevant difference between male and female sexuality be (1) women are supposed to be pure and (2) we think they are more fragile than men and too weak to look after themselves?
Of course, there are circumstances in which it would be wrong to buy or sell sexual services, but there are circumstances in which it would be wrong to buy or sell a television.
The “sex is different” line is almost complete bluster. It is different mostly because even otherwise rational people are fiercely determined to treat it differently. But we know that people can behave very promiscuously FOR FREE and come out the other side glad they did it. Why is sex for money categorically different? What’s the evidence? Our intuitions, conditioned by the social stigma, simply beg the question. So tell me exactly how and why selling sex is more damaging than giving it away. What are these “psychological and physiological reasons”?
March 13th, 2008 10:54
Will,
I don’t think the difference between male sexuality and female sexuality is as trite as you want to make it. Whatever difference there may be between male sexuality and female sexuality need not be large, or even universal, to have significant cultural effect. Significant statistical variances exist between men and women in many respects: physical, emotional, and intellectual. I see no reason to assume that there can not be some significant, biological variance in sexual mores as well.
You say, “But we know that people can behave very promiscuously FOR FREE and come out the other side glad they did it. Why is sex for money categorically different?”
And we also know that promiscuity can result in severe psychological damage. As can “virtue” or celibacy for that matter. The point is not that sex ~for money~ is categorically different, it’s that ~sex~ itself may be categorically different.
Sexual activity (type, frequency, quality, manner, etc…) is more often intimately tied to an individual’s sense of self than other activities. To be sure, that’s not ~always~ the case, but I think it’s fair to say–at the least–that it is often the case that a person’s sexual identity is significantly more essential to their personal identity and psychological health than their work or hobbies.
I didn’t ever argue that selling sex is necessarily more damaging than “giving it away.” I think that sexual decisions are often crucially important decisions–and those decisions need to be left to the individual, not the state. It may be the case that many people could prostitute themselves for fun and profit with little negative consequence. But it also seems likely that a larger number of people would discover that prostitution, however financially rewarding, is ultimately a psychologically damaging profession.
I think it’s important that when we advocate the decriminalization of “vice” that we don’t dismiss the very real risk that vice can pose to individuals.
In response to alisa, you said, “My guess is that you think sex is different. But that is because sex is treated like it is different, not because it ought to be.” My point is that there are good reasons to suspect that sex ~is~ different for many people, regardless of whether you or I think it ~ought~ to be.
March 13th, 2008 11:15
This is all just a veiled way of arguing for organ sales, isn’t it? Well, when you wake up in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney, don’t come crying to me…
As to sex being different, I wouldn’t write that off entirely. I can go to work on days that I don’t want to be there, go through the motions, and get paid, no worse for the wear. However, regular emotional detachment from sex acts I think could become a problem, were prostitutes (male or female) to do so on a regular basis. The answer to long term psychological risks for prostitution clearly isn’t jail, so I wouldn’t write off legalization entirely. I’m just not as optimistic about how harmless it would be if society was more accepting.
March 13th, 2008 12:01
Patrick,
I do not deny that there are differences in tendency between men and women. But you do realize, don’t you, that the argument based on difference has historically been deployed to justify almost every restriction of women’s liberty. It is not “trite” to be skeptical of the force of these arguments, which constantly evolve as social attitudes evolve. Rather, such skepticism is a large part of what it means to take women’s freedom seriously.
I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think you do either, that sexuality is more intimately linked to a sense of identity than many other aspects of a human life. I am sure that the centrality of sexuality to our personhood is a part of modern ideology, but I don’t know that this is a biological fact about us.
I don’t think prostitution is nice. I think it is work — often hard, emotionally exhausting work that is usually undesirable when there are other equally well-paying options. But I don’t think this is special, or unusual.
I once worked at a telemarketing place, and I left after a week because the sense I was violating people’s privacy and manipulating them in various ways was very hard for me to take. Other people seemed to thrive on badgering grandmothers into signing up for credit cards.
Prostitution is not an especially attractive profession, but it is not especially terrible either, and the people who choose to stay in it are probably the people for whom it seems like the best deal. I don’t see the point of making that choice more fraught or emotionally loaded than other similar labor market choices.
March 13th, 2008 12:02
Aaron, I think you’re much more likely to have your organs stolen with an organ black market, than a legal one. The type of people drawn to it, and the profit potentials, will be much more likely to result in violence.
I just don’t understand why people feel like they have to emphasize that there would be some costs legalizing currently-illegal activities. Of course there are. Nothing is perfect.
The issue isn’t whether there would be NO PROBLEMS related to legal prostitution. The issue is whether it better. And I haven’t seen or heard any persuasive arguments that it isn’t.
Freedom isn’t harmless, but it usually beats the alternatives.
March 13th, 2008 12:15
[...] This is too silly to merit reply, but…is this part of the fear? That if we legalize orgasm delivery, all women will become orgasm deliverers? [...]
March 13th, 2008 12:54
Freedom isn’t harmless, but it usually beats the alternatives.
I do agree that the “BAN IT” reaction is usually the wrong call (I actually do support organ markets). In the case of prositution, I would like to see more regulation than probably could be realistically enacted, so there would necessarily be unseemliness to the industry, regardless of what the prevailing social norms would come to. I feel the same way about child labor. There isn’t anything inherent to “childhood” that entitles someone to a particular expectation of treatment, but I kinda like the societal norms we have that would prevent hard labor for those under the age of 12. My opnion doesn’t matter much to people in other countries who are trying to survive on something more concrete than my goodwill. I was arguing more against Will’s take that there is nothing beyond societal disapproval that is negative in prostitution. Like you said, the existence of a negative in a legalized endeavor isn’t enough to warrant banning it. I just want to be up front about the fact that there would be costs, so we don’t get caught up in ideology either way.
March 14th, 2008 01:48
I don’t think anyone has mentioned sex and its relationship to marriage, but I have a feeling that this is far too anachronistic to even be seriously considered here. Also, it seems that the question of whether something is acceptable or not rests on whether it CAN be done as opposed to whether it SHOULD be done. Are we so afraid of moral paternalism that we are unwilling to make but only the most obvious of moral judgments, such as “murder is wrong?” I fear however that even some may say that murder is wrong only because it infringes on an individual’s right to life and not because it attacks the moral order of mankind. Perhaps if he could sell his body to be murdered (the money would go to his family) for the enjoyment of someone who wished to murder, then it would be alright.
March 14th, 2008 07:26
Jacob,
This is all fairly idle talk right now, as I don’t envision a large enough legalization movement arising around this issue. While we do need to make moral judgements, we also need to consider the enforcement costs and benefits to any given law. One could make a case for the banning of alcohol in light of its known health effects and secondary effects in drunk driving accidents and increased violence. Are we not being moral enough by giving up on prohibition? And your argument implies that there is something to sex that is unique among human activities, its relationship to marriage. I don’t know if I want to see that much rigidity in the law. Would that extend to cohabitation prior to marriage? Would there be a limit to the number of sexual partners one could have? I think what it comes down to for people who don’t support the practice (which I believe the vast majority of the libertarian bloggers absolutely don’t) is whether or not its sufficient to just not participate in the market. But again, I believe this amounts to more of a libertarian exercise than a social movement.
Organ markets, on the other hand…
(Oh, and I’ve reserved kidneybay.com, just in case.)
March 14th, 2008 10:15
Aaron,
Thanks for the reply. I hadn’t intended my comment to be aimed at endorsing illegalization. I probably agree with most here that government prohibitions on sexual activity are not a good choice. Mostly, I was responding to the way certain activities are justified such as Will’s comment - “I don’t think prostitution is nice. I think it is work — often hard, emotionally exhausting work that is usually undesirable when there are other equally well-paying options. But I don’t think this is special, or unusual.” A societal order is not only what the government imposes but what society imposes. I am more concerned with the latter.
In addition, I’m not sure how anyone who has had sex can say that it is not intrinsically different than picking lettuce. Sex is by definition an act that requires another person; it is something that joins them together, both physically and emotionally. And this is not like working with a co-worker. Just because someone CAN treat it as such does not mean that it SHOULD be. Experience should make this plainly obvious.
One more anachronism - sex and reproduction. I suppose there is no such relationship when sex has been reduced to a commodity. Child birth must be treated as some sort of accidental byproduct that happens occasionally and interrupts the flow of work, something like a paperjam.
March 14th, 2008 11:03
One more anachronism - sex and reproduction. I suppose there is no such relationship when sex has been reduced to a commodity. Child birth must be treated as some sort of accidental byproduct that happens occasionally and interrupts the flow of work, something like a paperjam.
I hope I’m not petty to argue in terms of aesthetic taste here, Jacob, but you remind me of those people who hate air conditioning. Why do so many people romanticize the deprivations of our ancestors, like sweltering indoor heat and unreliable contraception?
March 14th, 2008 12:47
What about voting? Do you own your vote, whether as an ordinary voter or a politician? Should you be able to sell it?
March 14th, 2008 12:56
Jacob,
I really do see where you’re coming from in all of this. One of the themes in Predictably Irrational (reviewed on this blog earlier) is that once an activity that was regulated by social capital becomes overtly commercial, the expectations change completely. One we as a society go around then bend, we won’t be able to just come back. There are a lot of considerations that should be made before action was taken.
Regarding voting, I would say that you don’t “own” your vote, in the sense that it illegal to sell (the same way you don’t seem to be able to properly say you own your body). Your vote is protected, because you are entitled to solely determmine it (kind’ve of like your body, to a certain extent, with some very important exceptions), but while it’s protected, you don’t have full control over it. But you can be persuaded by things that benefit you indirectly.
Aaron
March 14th, 2008 17:36
alisa,
I do think there is a difference between prostitution and lettuce-picking, but I have to go on fuzzy psychological (or cultural) ground here, and say that having to sell sex as a service makes it far more difficult to have personal relationships that include sex. Maybe in a society with different norms this wouldn’t be true, but here and now a prostitute has to forgo a (nearly) universal part of a complete human life. That’s not true of other workers, even those who work for long hours and low pay.
(I apologize if I’ve misunderstood your argument, but here goes.) You argue that our normative cultural dynamics make it virtually impossible for a prostitute to have a health intimate life. Pardon the Godwin’s Law corollary, but analogous arguments have historically been made against mixed-race marriages. The argument that it should be illegal because it would be too socially hard on them as well as on the children that would result from such a marriage are just as invalid as those arguing that a women should be jailed for taking a profession that will cause her social harm.
April 2nd, 2008 12:03
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