Sell Sex Now!

Having widely outraged some sensibilities with my recent unequivocal call for decriminalization of drugs, it will come as a surprise to no one that I also advocate legalization and licensing of prostitution.

The goal of bringing both drugs and prostitution out of the underworld and into the sunshine is to limit both their prevalence and their harmful effects. Ironically, the drug problem drives in part the prostitution problem, as many young women become prostitutes in order to feed a drug habit, and many pimps inculcate drug habits to maintain control over their prostitutes.

There are few social problems more rife with hypocrisy than prostitution. As a rule, we punish the largely female prostitutes more severely than the largely male customers, although even then the usual punishments are so light as to call into question any genuine commitment to ending the trade. I positively admire Deborah Jeane Palfrey and Sidney Biddle Barrows compared to the two-legged cockroaches David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer, who hypocritically condemn the very lusts in which they are most deeply steeped. Cf. Angelo in Measure for Measure. My objection, mind you, is not so much to the lust as to the loathsome hypocrisy. Ms. Palfrey should not have been the one who suffered, or at least not alone.

Mind you, calling prostitution a victimless crime is cant. Overwhelming, it appears, women sell their bodies out of economic compulsion not simply profit maximization. In doing so, they frequently suffer danger and disease, not to mention whatever psychic cost there is to repetitive, anonymous copulation. But calling for legalization, as with drugs, does not imply endorsement; it merely recognizes the futility of our efforts at interdiction and the excerbation of the costs of the behavior in question.

The first benefit of legalization of prostitution would be to undermine the element of coercion. Not only would employers be more closely scrutinized by the government, but also women who decided to engage in the sex trade would have more opportunities and greater job mobility. Moreover, legalization would hopefully undercut the economic gains of kidnapping and sex slavery. If women are to have control of their own bodies, they must have enough economic freedom that prostitution is an option, not a last, desperate necessity.

As a recent article in the Guardian demonstrates, a second significant benefit would be disease control. See http://bit.ly/2VVRAE . Puritanical South Africa apparently wants to legalise prostitution for the duration of the World Cup in the hopes of avoiding an explosion of HIV infection. Nearly half of South Africa's prostitutes are HIV positive, and without screening and treatment, authorities fear that there will be an explosion of HIV infection among the 3.2 million fans. Meanwhile, proponents of legalisation in South Africa are mainly dismayed that the country is only talking about legalisation during the games rather than on a permanent basis.

It is time for more dignity and less disease. The time for legalization is now.