Prostitution and the (Libertarian?) Center
Posted on March 11th, 2008 by Kip
Glenn Greenwald via QandO:
[A]re there actually many people left who care if an adult who isn’t their spouse hires prostitutes? Are there really people left who think that doing so should be a crime, that adults who hire other consenting adults for sex should be convicted and go to prison?
My response at QandO:
Actually, the “need” to criminalize prostitution is one of those rare worldviews that unites radical conservatives (“morals,” “social fabric,” etc.) with radical liberals (“oppression of women,” “the powerful exploiting the powerless,” etc.).While the Vast Center-Wing Conspiracy just shrugs it off.
I would add “imagining negative externalities where none exist” to the liberal parenthetical.
Discuss.
—
I forgot to save it, but here’s a related comment, more or less, that I left somewhere:
Why are prostitution (and pornography) policy debates always framed in terms of “men exploiting women”? There are undeniably cases in both contexts of “women exploiting men,” “men exploiting men” and “women exploiting women.” Isn’t it both sexist and heteronormative to assume, to the extent one assumes that there even is a “problem,” that the problem is strictly one of straight men “exploiting” straight women?
Discuss.
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I think that feminist scholars are pretty divided on this subject, if you compare feminists like Martha Nussbaum to the "always exploitation" crowd. For Nussbaum at least individual autonomy and First Amendment concerns (in the area of pornography) trump the legal arguments for criminalization advanced by, say, Catherine McKinnon, although not always the ethical arguments.
I do not think it is heteronormative or sexist discourse. A cursory glance at gay male pornography makes it abundantly clear that gender, racial and sexual stereotyping is not limited to the heterosexuals among us. I think it is easier for people to assume that when participants are members of the same sex it does not implicate the same concerns. I think most feminists concerned with pornography and prostitution would not exempt the gay variety, though.
My take? The vast majority of this stuff is sexual fantasy that people enjoy for about a half hour before they climax and go to sleep or start reading a book. I know not what makes us enjoy it, but we do, and so long as it does not involve minors or physical coercion it does not present any problems I am interested in solving through government regulation.