Sale of the body is immoral

The argument

We encounter the world through our body and are linked to the experiences attached to it. Therefore, the sale of sex is inherently different from the sale of other goods. The difference is one of kind rather than degree: ordinary commodities are things a person has, and can part with while remaining who they were, whereas the body is the means by which a person exists in the world at all and is not separable from them in that way. Sex is tied to the very nature of ourselves, and to sell it is an extreme version of alienation. Alienation here names a separation between a person and something belonging to them so intimately that parting with it costs them a part of themselves, and on this argument sex is the limiting case, because it engages the self more completely than anything else that could be offered for money. For a sex worker to participate in prostitution, it is necessary to distance themselves from their bodies in order to cope with their work. That necessity is presented as evidence rather than as incidental hardship. If the work can only be sustained by the worker separating themselves from what is being sold, then the separation is not a personal difficulty to be managed but a condition the transaction itself imposes, and it is present wherever the transaction occurs. By placing something on the market we commodify it, making it external to us. To sell the body is to reduce the self to a 'thing'. A market does not simply attach a price to an object; it establishes that object as the kind of thing which can be priced, exchanged and used according to the purposes of whoever buys it. This is inherently harmful to sex workers. Sex is irreversibly linked to the 'self', and to sell it is therefore to sell part of the self.

Context

The concept of the ‘self’ is one that is consistently debated without a consistent definition. Whether the body is inherently part of the ‘self’ is therefore also disputed.

Premises

Counter-arguments

We all sell the use of our body in a sense; the difference in professions relate to whether and how they are stigmatised. When one takes a job under a capitalist system they are contracting out their body for certain periods of time. This is more visible in jobs involving manual labour. The distinction when condemning prostitution, therefore, is constructed on prejudice against jobs involving female sexuality, rather than an issue contracting out the body as a whole. Our bodies do not wholly make up our ‘selves’; there is far more to a person than their capacity as a sexual being. Additionally, if we see the sale of sex as inherently negative as it is part of the ‘self’, we then have an obligation to also see profit from creative endeavours as negative, for instance, given that they represent the artist's self. Additionally, sex workers sell sexual services rather than their bodies themselves.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] There is no inherent link between sex, the body and one’s sense of self. [Rejecting P2] Sale of things relating to one’s sense of self is not inherently impermissible.