Back At It

I apologize for the lack of posting in recent weeks. I have had things to say, but finals and spring breaks got the better of me. Now I'm back, and I want to talk about prostitution. Elliot Spitzer is a blatant hypocrite, an arrogant man, and a common example of what happens when power-hungry people get that which they crave. However, who's the real loser in this scenario? The call girl making $2500 an hour? Well probably, if we think about the long term consequences of selling your body in your twenties, but an argument can be made that people "sell" their bodies in many different ways. Cracking down on prostitution only further limits the options of those most degraded in society, the much more common "low class" prostitutes, making much much less than $2500 an hour. In the case of the high class hooker, if a woman armed with full information and full options still chooses to sell sex to the highest bidder in a situation that is safe, legal, and not likely to bring physical or emotional harm to either, is it then a victimless crime?

Sex workers and their counterparts in the pornography business present a quandary for feminists. On the one hand, if women are forced into prostitution because of their socioeconomic status then such work presents the ultimate debasement. In such a situation the best solution is to combat the social and economic conditions that force women into narrow choices and take away their agency and sexual power, placing it in the hands of violent pimps or johns. However, in the meantime, should women be punished for their activities as prostitutes, should the act of prostitution be criminalized? Sweden has come to the conclusion that selling sex is not a crime, but buying it is. Women aren't subject to prostitution, but their johns are. I think this makes a lot of sense, and the program has met with success.

In the end, I come down on the more second wavey- anti-prostitution side of things. Too few women have access to the idealized, legal scenario, and too many women might be tempted to opt for prostitution as a profession if it were glorified, legalized, and high-grossing. Factor in the huge problem of human trafficking, and we've got an even worse example of modern day slavery, serving the needs of rich, wealthy, white men like Spitzer. Let's keep prostitution illegal, but continue to crack down on the real problem: those who buy sex, those who sell other for sex, and the wider, institutionalized factors that force women into degraded situations in the first place.

Professional sex workers often identify themselves as feminists and assert their rights to their body in every capacity, even the capacity to sell it. This notion is deeply unsettling to the Western establishment.