Should sex work be decriminalised?

Decriminalisation opens the door to increased use of sex workers, leading to a culture that enables and encourages sex addiction

Question: Should sex work be decriminalised?
Position‹3 of 3: Sex work should not be decriminalised
Argument‹2 of 9›: Decriminalisation opens the door to increased use of sex workers, leading to a culture that enables and encourages sex addiction

As our society becomes even more sexualised, legitimising the purchase of sex reinforces the idea that commodified sex should be the norm, rather than forging intimate relationships outside of formal transactions.

The argument

As our society develops the notion that sex is allowable as a commodity, we begin to encourage a culture of sex addiction and instant gratification. Prostitution is one of the ways this culture is bolstered. One of the "oldest professions," prostitution has always played a role in shaping societal expectations towards sexual services and instant gratification. In the modern era, with the accessibility of pornography and the internet, the need for instant gratification has increased, and while societal expectations towards the availability of sex have shifted, paid sexual services like prostitution are lauded as viable options for achieving that gratification. Pornography is equally at fault for enabling this culture, but the porn industry has evolved with more protections in recent years than prostitution has, in large part due to criminal status. Also, there is a notable increase in the number of clients who crave actual intimacy, not just sexual gratification. In those cases, sex workers are being used to fill an emotional void, likely because misinformed customers are succumbing to the idea of instant gratification. The prevalence of sex work in society contributes to the harmful psychology behind instant gratification and sex addiction.

Premises

[P1]Treating sex as a purchasable commodity encourages a culture of instant gratification and sex addiction. [P2] Decriminalising sex work would increase the use of paid sexual services, bolstering that culture as pornography and the internet already have. [P3] Clients increasingly use sex workers to fill an emotional void, feeding the harmful psychology behind sex addiction. [C] Therefore, because decriminalisation opens the door to increased use of sex workers and the addiction culture it enables, sex work should not be decriminalised.

Counter-arguments

It should be on those using sex workers to curb the culture of sex addiction, rather than the workers themselves. So long as there is a market, there will be suppliers. If the product is to be cut off, it should be due to a lack of demand, not arbitrary criminalisation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Treating a service as purchasable does not by itself produce compulsion, and the argument names no mechanism connecting a legal market to addiction; describing prostitution as one of the "oldest professions" concedes that the culture it blames long predates any modern legal status. [Rejecting P2] Criminalisation suppresses sellers rather than demand, so where a market persists the case for restraint falls on the clients who create it rather than on the workers whose legal protection is what the question actually decides. [Rejecting P3] Clients who want intimacy rather than sexual gratification cut against the premise they are offered to support, since seeking company is the opposite of the instant gratification the argument describes.

Proponents cited

Melissa Farlay
“In research interviews with johns, we found that their abuse of women extended to women who had not been prostituted yet. The johns that bought the most women in prostitution were the most likely to commit sexually coercive acts with non-prostituting women. When women are turned into objects that men masturbate into, it causes immense psychological harm to the person acting as a receptacle. Please don't be fooled by people who tell buying sex is just another job. It’s wrong to set aside a special class of women, those who are the most vulnerable among us, for men’s sexual use. What’swrong with paying for sex is it’s the business of sexual exploitation.”
Wendy Shalit
“...a sexual transaction is different, because it teaches on the deepest, most personal aspects of ourselves. The proof that sex is different, in my opinion, is our response to the terrible crime of rape. If paying for sex were as morally neutral as paying for a hamburger, well then, rape is akin to just forcing someone to eat a hamburger. Right? But of course it is not. It is a horrible crime, that is serious, precisely because sexuality touches on the deepest, most personal aspect of our humanity. And to take something so intimate, and to turn it into a commodity, has far-reaching, devastating effects, for men, women and children.”