| When I was younger, I supported full legalisation of sex work because I thought that to disallow it would be to remove the agency of sex workers who had chosen that path as their profession. Then I got older and read accounts of sex workers trafficked to European countries where prostitution is legal I realised that some (but not all) sex workers are actually participating in "legal" transactions under duress. In my mind that invalidates the necessary consent required when the activity involves sex work of some kind, making it unethical from the buyer to acquire such a service despite it being legal locally. While trafficking is of course still illegal, I am unclear about the laws protecting trafficking victims from their "buyers" in non-consenting transactions. Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services. In addition, what I would consider "under duress" is fairly broad, not only under threat of violence from traffickers, but also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table. In this vein, I would consider sex tourism to poorer countries a form of exploitation and thus unethical, even though one could argue the individuals from the poorer countries selling such services do so "willingly". This article writes that one of these women feels that she must engage in sex work through OnlyFans because it is "the only way she can support her family...". It leaves a bad taste as I would not consider that she is participating in the transaction without duress, and thus actually consenting in the transaction. Would you be okay with it if you knew that the woman you were buying lingerie pictures "had" to do it? How would that not be a form of exploitation? However, one can extend this argument to any type of work. "She says her _____ work is the only way she can support her family...", replace with an arbitrary line of work and activity (woodcutting/marketing/basketweaving). Is there any thing that makes sex work special (apart from some puritanical opinion which are not actually applicable), that would make such a transaction inherently more unethical than say being forced to work at McDonalds because it's the only way to make ends meet? Why would the latter more "ethical" than the former, when an individual is still "forced" to sell their labor to survive, what ever form that labor is? |
Doesn't that mean pretty much all labor then?
I think my biggest counter argument to your otherwise excellent post is that I am not convinced that prohibition actually fixes the problem you're talking about. We all agree that alcoholism is bad, but making it illegal didn't actually do anything to stop it.