Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ora!daemon From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Legalization of Prostitution (bodies & rights) Message-ID: Date: 16 Nov 90 02:36:51 GMT References: <1990Nov1.173135.727@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Natural Language Incorporated Lines: 57 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <1990Nov1.173135.727@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> w25y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: Some people would argue for the legalization of prostitution on the grounds that sex is not fundamentally different from other services that people are employed to perform. However, I would claim that there is an important difference: Imagine someone forced at gunpoint to delete data files, carry boxes, or whatever. Now imagine someone being forced at gunpoint to participate in sex. The latter is considered to be a more severe crime than the former. This may not apply directly to the case of someone selling sex vountarily, but it indicates that the role of consent in sex is considered more important than in other activities. I don't think it's so much the consent as the physical violence that makes the two cases different. Certainly, being held at gunpoint is going to be extremely upsetting for someone anyway. There is violence against the mind and will. Rape adds physical violence. There really isn't anything you can compare this to that I can think of. Also note that your analogy breaks down because rape is not the same as having sex. That is, you're not just being forced to do something you might do anyway, like carrying boxes. A similar comparison might be made between someone driven to prostitution by economic necessity and someone who has no choice but to write COBOL programs; the former case is considered a much greater tragedy. Are you suggesting that legalizing prostitution is going to cause more people to be driven to it by economic necessity? People are also driven to dangerous jobs. Comparing it to writing COBOL is hardly accurate. Comparing it to working with dangerous chemicals might be more so. Sometimes people are driven to do something they wouldn't normally choose to do. People are already being driven to prostitution; it is possible that if it were legal, it would be less of a tragedy (I can't prove this, but it seems that prostitutes currently don't have the ability to protest unsafe working conditions and get laws passed to protect them, so that would certainly be an improvement). There are activities such as voting and organ donation that people may engage in voluntarily, but may not do in exchange for money. It is not too unreasonable to suggest that sex should be one of them. Vote selling, like prostitution, is likely to go on anyway, but this is not grounds for legalizing it. It's not clear how prostitution resembles organ donation or vote selling. You might just as well say maybe people shouldn't be able to program for pay, only voluntarily...where's the connection? Note that I don't know whether prostitution should be legalized or not; I know very little about the practice (I do have an opinion, but I'm not expressing it here). However, I don't think the article I'm replying to is a good argument against legalization. Muffy muffy@mica.berkeley.edu