Holly asked:

What are some ethical issues surrounding Prostitution. Is it OK?

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Here's another of these questions fraught with political implications, which are nonetheless
interesting. Ok... what isprostitution? That term has been employed for everything from being a
housewife to doing art for the "wrong" reasons, to taking money for sex. I'm going to be very simplistic
and define it, for the purpose of this discussion, and a bit of brevity, as the last: taking (receiving,
asking for) money for sex: selling sex. (Notice that this very restricted definition eliminates, for
example, temple prostitution, where a priestess took a donation for a temple in exchange for sex.
Some religions in the ancient world did this.) Usually it's a woman who is paid by a man, but that's
certainly not universal, as we all know.

Is a housewife (-husband) a prostitute by this definition? No. Is an artist a prostitute? No (unless
perhaps their art involves sex... then it gets more complicated than I want to deal with here). What
about a person who simply marries for money? Well, my off-the-cuff answer would be that if they
could refuse sex, they weren't prostitutes (again, by my restricted definition above)... if not, and sex
was even implicitly part of the deal, they were. In other words, there is a contract involved here, one
which implies an exchange of one valuable item: sex, for another: money.

Ok. Sex for money. Now... you want "ethical issues". But what does that mean? Are you asking
whether selling sex is (im)moral? Whether it, even if moral, can result in immoral actions? How
people feel about or during prostitution? Buying or selling? Why or whether they should do it? "Ethical
issues" is just too broad a term for me to deal with here... "issues" can be just about anything. So
again I'm going to simplify. First, I'm going to say that ethical or moral issues revolve around,
generally and vaguely, enhancing human life. I'm going to neglect animals (they don't sell sex
anyway, as far as I know — yes I know about bonobos), and I'm just simply going to refuse to get
more specific about what I mean. Enough is enough. So... first, can prostitution be an immoral act,
i.e., can it result in immoral effects, i.e., can it result in the quality of people's lives declining? Yes. Is it
more likely to have that result than not? Well, clearly, the practical, empirical answer to this is a
resounding "yes". Just look around you. This isn't even an issue. Prostitution results in all sorts of
outright evils.

But the bigquestion is whether prostitution is intrinsically immoral, right? That is, needprostitution
result in immorality, viz., in the decline of the quality of human life? It's clear that a great deal of the
immorality resulting from and associated with prostitution is a result of our (and other) culture's
attitudes toward it. For one thing, people want sex enough to pay for it, others will sell it, and those
actions are illegal; but that illegality will not stop it — an obvious conclusion if you just look at history;
it certainly never has in the past. A classic recipe for crime, then, right off the bat. But let's simplify yet
again, and try to take an ideal case, inasmuch as we can, where we do not consider society as a
whole, but merely a relationship between persons naïve in these matters.

When two people are in a relationship, a good relationship, sex is given, fairly freely, as a gift, and
enjoyed as an intrinsic pleasure of the relationship. Sorry, all you anti-sex people out there, but that's
my opinion, for what it's worth. If that is nottrue, if sex is notfreely given nor enjoyed as a fairly
necessary (all other things equal) aspect, on a par with respect, (other manifestations of) affection,
communication, etc., in a relationship, then where doesit come from? It is, in that latter case,
something that one person must request of another, and that request is the beginning of an
obligation, a contract, is it not? So what must be done to balance the sex given only (or mainly, in
some cases) upon request, is something else given back, to meet or fulfill the obligation... and we're
going down the path to money for sex, aren't we. But is that bad, i.e., immoral? My take on this is that
in an ideal (or even a very good) relationship it is immoral, to varying extents, since, as I say, sex,
among other things, should be given and taken freely, for pleasure, intimacy, and so forth (and having
children... but how much of sex is for that, really?). Why? First, with less gift-giving, and the more
bargaining that goes on and the more explicit it is, the more there is possibility for resentment, in
implicit and explicit contracts perceived as unequally unfulfilled. Second, more importantly, the less
gift-giving, the less trust there is. That's the purpose of a contract, isn't it, to compensate for a lack of
trust in others' generosity, mutual goodwill, and so forth. What about a less than ideal relationship?
Who knows? Evaluate your own relationship and ask yourself that.

Next, what about prostitution outside of a relationship? A single person (one in no intimate
relationship) goes and pays someone else for sex (I assume no social restrictions: no illegality, no
disapproval, etc., I also assume that there's no coercion, and that the prostitute is such purely by
choice. A lot of ifs here, but I'm trying to get at the ideal case.). Is this immoral? My inclination is to
say yes, moderately (in this ideal case), for the following reasons. First, and not too relevantly, it
would certainly be better if that former person had a good relationship, so they didn't have to have sex
this way, given the reasoning above. But that isn't the situation, we're assuming. The argument, I
believe, for prostitution's immorality (again, in this ideal case) is one based on habit or learning. That
is, once someone engages in this kind of behavior, there will be some greater tendency, in some
cases, to view sexual relationships in terms of bargaining. In such cases, the person's other
relationships (if there are or will be any) will, I would think, tend to suffer (given the reasoning in the
above paragraph), just because of the human tendency to generalize. That is, given some sexual
relationships conducted as bargaining, others that should not be will tend to be understood in the
same (or similar) way. So even in this very ideal case, there is a tendency, I think, for prostitution to
be somewhat immoral. And given that the reasoning in this paragraph is correct, if someone who isin
an intimate relationship goes and pays a third person for sex, that behavior again will tend to be
immoral, even in some ideal world where both people in the relationship agree to, even enjoy, the
prostitution.

But you know, we're not talking about stealing here, nor murder, nor violence. In this ideal and
unrealistic case, prostitution, as far as I can see, is about as immoral as, say, children watching too
many violent movies. There is, after all, no overt violence performed on another, since we are
assuming that everyone is acting voluntarily. A tendency is set up towards seeing people similar (in
appearance, etc.) to the prostitute as similar in other respects; a tendency is set up to seeing sexual
relationships in that light. This is not good, but it's not, to my mind, as bad as, say, a group of men
whistling at a passing woman, which issubjecting her to something against her will (and setting up
tendencies towards thatkind of mind-set and behavior).

Well, that's all very fine, but in the real world things are a lot worse. Drugs, crime, violence, poverty...
we all know this, don't we. So in the real world, prostitution is immoral, period. Let me, however, given
the above reasoning, propose a way to move prostitution towards less (not none, mind you)
immorality: legalize it, with government control. Oooh... I can hear the screams. But cite me one
culture in allhistory without prostitution (I'm of course including male as well as female prostitution). If
you can do that, I'll retract my suggestion and revise it to recommend we (attempt to) change our
culture to that one (and please don't tell me we should all become stone-age hunter-gatherers in little
villages... how many billions would we have to kill to realize that? how much disease and suffering
does living like that entail?). That's an even less practical suggestion, though, isn't it. Given that
prostitution is universal and unavoidable, clearly if we make it criminal, we merely push it
underground, with additionalproblems, right? I won't bother to outline the causative scenarios, you
can do that for yourselves, or just read the newspapers.

Steven Ravett Brown