Every Body’s Got Rights: Feminist Arguments For and Against the Decriminalization of Prostitution

A college student is taking a full load of courses at a prestigious private university. She receives financial aid and has a work-study job, but her student loans, scholarship, and paycheck still can’t make ends meet. Between studying, working, and extracurriculars, there may be just enough time for her to have a spare hour or two a week to earn a few extra dollars.

But the job has to be flexible. There’s no telling when the days will seem to fly by and that midterm will creep up. It also has to have night hours; she’s too busy during the day to even contemplate trying to squeeze in another obligation.

She could pull the late shift at her library’s café. The extra $24 for three hours at minimum wage couldn’t hurt.
Or she could earn ten times that amount in less than three hours by becoming a prostitute.

The immediate and initial rejection of selling a good or service from your body for a profit may be due to the negative stigma and stereotype of prostitution as lewd and inherently “bad.” However, it may take more than an instantaneous reaction to realize that economic survival and prostitution are closely linked.

In the United States, individual states determine legalization or decriminalization of prostitution, with forty-nine states choosing to outlaw prostitution. The singular exception is the legalization of prostitution in twelve counties of Nevada in the form of regulated brothels. The proponents of these brothels argue that “by recognizing [prostitution] as paid labor, governments can guarantee fair treatment as well as safe and healthy work environments.”¹

And the brothels in Nevada are highly regulated: prostitutes working in brothels must be tested weekly for gonorrhea and chlamydia and tested monthly for HIV and syphilis. ² Legalized prostitution arguably increases the safety of prostitutes: if legalized and regulated, prostitutes may face fewer violent crimes against prostitutes, and if and when these occur, would have the power of the state to protect them.

However, some claim the legalization of prostitution does not eradicate harm; it simply shifts the abuse of prostitutes from their clients to brothel owners. Melissa Farley, author of Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections, argues that prostitutes’ work conditions are inhumane. Farley writes that “once the people of Nevada learn of [prostitutes’] suffering and emotional distress, and their lack of human rights, they…will be persuaded that legal prostitution is an institution that just can’t be fixed up.”³ She found that prostitutes in many of Nevada’s brothels work in nine-day shifts, are not allowed cars, and may be subject to more abuse by brothel owners than by illegal clients found on the street or provided by a pimp.⁴

Prostitution satisfies a basic human urge for physical contact, earning the euphemism of “the world’s oldest profession.” If prostitution is an element of society that will never be cease to exist, is the decriminalization of prostitution a better solution that will protect women? Decriminalizing certain acts, such as prostitution, differs from legalization. Decriminalization suggests that certain acts are not the concern of the criminal justice system. Legalization may entail regulation by the government, while decriminalization means simply imposing a fine rather than imprisoning violators of the illegal act.

The economic implications of the decriminalization of prostitution are uncertain. The lower risk of prosecution, which may result from decriminalization, may drive more women to become prostitutes, thereby lowering the cost of prostitution with the increased competition for clients. However, with decriminalization may also come stricter health care requirements for prostitutes (if organized into labor unions, as discussed later in the article), such as STD testing, which would force them to raise prices in order to compensate for the additional price.

Both of the approaches to the decriminalization of prostitution presented focus on what each believes will promote the highest amount of respect towards women and ensure their safety. They are radically different solutions to the current prevalence of violence toward and violation of prostitutes. One solution argues against decriminalization and calls for the abolition of prostitution and even pornography while the other calls for decriminalization and an organized sex workers union.
Radical feminist Kathleen Barry argues for the abolition of prostitution and pornography. She argues that “prostitution, with or without a woman’s consent, is the institutional, economic, and sexual model for women’s oppression.”⁵ Barry and other radical feminists make the case that prostitution is the result of the most patriarchal reduction of a woman⁶, reinforcing age-old male domination in a world where feminists are still fighting for equal respect. The basis of her claim is that if men are exposed to a world in which women are on the market, “…male underdeveloped emotional life and objectified sexual life [will produce] power arrangements.”⁸ This argument lends itself to the idea that as long as there are pornography and prostitutes, women will be seen as sexual objects. Without abolition of prostitution, she argues, even women who are not prostitutes will still suffer from the sexual exploitation of women, thus never attaining full equality with men.⁷

However, other feminists argue that it is precisely man’s dependence on a woman prostitute that frees women from patriarchal control. “By publicly selling sexual services that men expect for free,” feminist scholar Anne McClintock argues, “prostitutes transgress the fundamental structure of the male traffic in women.”⁹ The monetary authority prostitutes hold over men may empower the prostitute with the knowledge that she has control over the terms and conditions of the interaction. McClintock continues to argue that the only way to empower prostitutes—male and female alike—is to organize them into labor unions to uphold their own rights and be recognized as a legitimate workforce.¹⁰

Feminists who wish to organize sex workers into unions recognize the degradation of the labor of prostitution. However, they also make the case that there is equally exploitative work that happens every day, such as working in a sweatshop or maquiladora ¹¹ without health benefits and risk of injury. Such jobs are the only options for some impoverished individuals. The problem of degrading work environments is not limited to sex work, which is another reason why some argue for the treatment of prostitution as any other form of labor.

Although both feminist arguments presented are more nuanced than can be described in a thousand words, the crux of the matter remains the same. Both feminist views believe that we need a solution that empowers and works to elevate women to equal status with men. Sex work is a charged battleground for feminists, but it represents an approach to sexuality that transcends this morally charged conflict.

McClintock and those in favor of sex workers’ unions fundamentally believe that “empowering whores empowers all women, and educating men to respect prostitutes educates men to respect all women. ”¹² Radical feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon and Kathleen Barry, on the other hand, think that, “sexual exploitation [through sex work] is the foundation of women’s oppression socially normalized.”¹³

In the end, these feminist arguments leave a question you will have to answer for yourself: should you have the right to use your body in any way that will be profitable to you? Or is it your right to be free from the notion that your body may be rented out?

Notes:

1. Leah Platt Boustan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), wrote in the article “Regulating the Global Brothel,” published in the July 2, 2001 issue of The American Prospect:

2. http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NAC/NAC-441A.html#NAC441ASec800

3. http://mostlywater.org/its_signing_contract_be_raped_work_nevadas_brothels

4. Ibid.

5.  Barry, Kathleen. The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Print. 78.

6. Ibid., 22

7. Ibid., 68

8. Ibid., 68

9. McClintock, Anne. “Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law.” Feminism and Postmodernism. 19.2 (1992). 24.

10. Ibid., 94

11. maquiladora: manufacturing plant that imports and assembles duty-free components for export. The arrangement allows plant owners to take advantage of the low-cost labor and to pay duty only on the “value added”—that is, on the value of the finished product minus the total cost of the components that had been imported to make it.

12. McClintock, Anne. “Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law.” Feminism and Postmodernism. 19.2 (1992). 95.

13. Barry, Kathleen. The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Print. 1.