Prostitution can help women celebrate their sexuality

The argument

The stigma around sex work is inherently related to a fear of women's sexuality or impurity. Proponents of this position argue that the disapproval attaching to sex work is not really directed at the exchange of money but at a woman openly treating her own sexuality as hers to direct, which is why the stigma has historically fallen so much more heavily on the woman selling than on the person buying. By entering into sex work, women have the opportunity to express themselves as sexual beings, something not considered acceptable in wider society. The claim is that the work makes explicit something women are otherwise expected to leave implicit and unacknowledged, and that much of the objection to it is therefore an objection to that visibility rather than to any identifiable harm. By becoming more accepting as a society of prostitution, we are also becoming more accepting of seeing women as beings with sexual agency. The two acceptances are held to move together: a society cannot treat a woman's authority over her own sexuality as legitimate in general while treating this particular exercise of it as inherently degraded. Additionally, prostitution gives women the opportunity to utilise their sexuality for economic gain, rather than having to give it freely (e.g. as traditionally considered part of a marriage contract). That comparison is deliberate. It observes that sexuality has long been exchanged for economic security inside sanctioned arrangements, and asks why the sanctioned version attracts no equivalent stigma. The law often serves to prosecute those who practice 'deviant' sex (e.g. LGBT people), often reflecting power balances in wider society. On this reading criminalisation is not a neutral response to harm but an instrument that marks certain sexual lives as illegitimate, applied to whichever forms depart from the prevailing norm of the day. We should instead move towards a paradigm which celebrates sexuality, including empowering sex workers to express their sexuality through their work.

Context

While male sexuality is often prioritised and celebrated, women are generally expected to not express sexual desire. Female desire is culturally portrayed as subservient to male sexuality.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even if a woman individually feels they are reclaiming their sexuality, the act of prostitution does not exist in a vacuum. There are deep-rooted power imbalances at play through gender, racial and economic norms. Therefore prostitution cannot ever be a vehicle for women to convincingly reclaim their sexuality.Rather than promoting the sexuality of the sex worker, prostitution prioritises the sexuality of the customer. When the customer is a man, as it most often the case, the industry perpetuates the idea that male sexuality must be satiated. This does not prioritise or empower women’s sexuality, but the sexuality of the customer.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Prostitution celebrates and caters to male sexuality.