Bad Arguments For Criminializing Prostitution

According to Melissa Farley and Victor Malarek, because I support legalized prostitution, I must be a john, because only they could ever be so blind to the coercion and exploitation present in sex work. Their NY Times op-ed, The Myth of the Victimless Crime, is one of the most tendentious and uncharitable contributions to the prostitution legalization discussion that I’ve ever seen.  This, my friends, is a direct quote:

Whose theory is it that prostitution is victimless? It’s the men who buy prostitutes who spew the myths that women choose prostitution, that they get rich, that it’s glamorous and that it turns women on.

So I guess Matt Yglesias, Brad Plumer, Megan McArdle, Kerry Howley, Julian Sanchez and the legislators of the Netherlands and Nevada spend most of their time with hookers.  But how do they have time to blog?  But seriously, does anyone really think that prostitution leads to glamor and riches?  I, a legalization supporter who has never bought sex from a hooker (honest!), sure don’t think this, and I imagine that most of those who share my views don’t.

Instead of showing, say, real evidence that criminalization, with all of it’s lack of enforcement, encouragement of unsafe sex, forcing prostitutes to seek the protection of violent pimps, breeding disrespect for the law, is actually better than the alternatives, all Farley and Malarek can muster is that “But most women in prostitution, including those working for escort services, have been sexually abused as children, studies show. Incest sets young women up for prostitution — by letting them know what they’re worth and what’s expected of them. Other forces that channel women into escort prostitution are economic hardship and racism.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.  If women have been sexually abused as children, should they be disallowed to have sex, to enter into relationships - I mean, after all, they’re likely to hurt themselves because of their past abuse.  Let’s expand this further.  Plenty of evidence shows that murderers and sexual abusers are likely to have been abused themselves.  Does this mean that we should prohibit victims of sexual abuse form doing anything?  Should we keep them in group homes?  I mean, seriously, we should by as benevolent and sympathetic as a society to victims of sexual abuse and should help them as much as possible, but at a certain point, we need to recognize their autonomy and agency.

They also say that “economic hardship and racism” channel women into prostitution.  This is undoubtedly true, women with better opportunities don’t generally become prostitutes.  But the same could be said about black women in the Jim Crow South working as maids for white families.  Economic hardship and racism “channeled” women into jobs as domestics, should we have banned black women from working as maids?  No, that would have been absurd.  You don’t address issues of economic hardship by restricting economic opportunity!  You instead work on the root causes - the racism and lack of economic opportunity - instead of criminalizing women doing the best they can and restricting liberty in a horribly ineffective manner.

The last paragraph of the piece is especially disturbing

Whether the woman is in a hotel room or on a side street in someone’s car, whether she’s trafficked from New York to Washington or from Mexico to Florida or from the city to the suburbs, the experience of being prostituted causes her immense psychological and physical harm. And it all starts with the buyer.”

I love how they depict sex workers as helpless objects with no agency and who don’t make any active decisions.  Isn’t it possible that for some women, they judge prostitution as the best thing they could do?  It’s not pretty, it’s not a choice I would like to see someone make, but I don’t see why we have to assume that people engaging in behavior we need unseemly are necessarily being exploited or have no other choice.

Once again, I encourage you all to read Kerry Howley’s interview with Laura Maria Agustin, who actually works with migrant sex workers.  Here’s a taste:

People may feel under the gun, but people who end up leaving home to work abroad have mixed motives. They may be poor and without many choices. But they also are normal human beings who have desires and fantasies. They daydream about all the same pleasurable things that richer people do. The human ability to imagine that things can be better, that getting ahead is possible, is in play. These motivations mix together in the project of leaving home—legally or not—to go somewhere else.