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Over at the Mothership, Scott Lemieux assesses the Libertarian case for legalizing prostitution:
Matt links to without fully endorsing Kerry Howley's feminist-libertarian argument for legalizing prostitution. I'm inclined to agree with her bottom line, but I do find the argument in this form a little problematic. The key is this line: "Even decriminalization, which treats Johns as outlaws and sex workers as victims, assumes that all sex workers are damaged, that no woman would ever love sex enough to make a career out of it." There is a certain power to this argument. But then, there was a certain power to the justly discredited majority opinion in Lochner v. New York striking down maximum hours laws: "There is no contention that bakers as a class are not equal in intelligence and capacity to men in other trades or manual occupations, or that they are able to assert their rights and care for themselves without the protecting arm of the State." In practice, though, the problem is not that bakers don't understand their own interests but rather that structural realities put them in a position of much less bargaining power than their employers. Similarly, while I don't think most feminist critics of prostitution would deny that some women may choose to become prostitutes because they really "love sex," the reality of a majority of women who are prostitutes and why they end up in the job makes this a rather implausible motivating factor unless poor women, women with drug problems, etc. are especially predisposed to "loving sex."Right. I guess Kerry could respond that prostitution maps onto poverty, drug problems, and so forth because these are the folks with the least to lose by breaking the law, and so the most likely to prioritize their "love of sex" over their fear of imprisonment, but that doesn't seem especially convincing to me. But there's no reason for tension to exist between Scott's argument about the exploitation of illegal workers and Kerry's suggestion that this would be a very good profession for people who like sex. Decriminalize and regulate the profession, and both concerns are assuaged.While writing this, it occurred to me that prostitution has a certain resonance with illegal immigration. We're telling folks that they can't work, even though we know they're doing those jobs anyway. So all we're really doing is ensuring that when they do work, they have no legal recourse against exploitation by their employers or customers.
