Sex Discrimination in Another Guise
The revealing of Governor Spitzer’s use of the services of prostitutes led to a barrage of reporting, a barrage that fortunately seems to have stopped for the moment. Two things about this barrage were disturbing. First, the unrefuted assumption that it is a moral crime to have sex with women you are not married to — in spite of the evidence that this has been a major activity since the beginning of human history. Second, reporting on prostitutes as though they were necessarily worthless women, not worthy of the respect of the rest of the society. The writing varied from simple abuse, as in the New York Times piece concluding that the Spitzer’s prostitute only claimed to have a beginning career in the arts when in fact she was nothing at all (March 14). This report was under the headline “The Emperor’s Club Oxymoron: High-Class Prostitution.” The evident assumption of the reporter was that prostitution was by definition “lower-class”, an assumption often refuted by history. The Heterae of ancient Greece and the Geishas of Japan were considered better educated and more skilled in the arts than other women of their time.
Fortunately, the Times came out with an op-ed by a prostitute that pointed out that Spitzer had been remarkably foolish to use an escort service. She said it was common knowledge that this was a way to get into trouble. Most of her friends were independents operating out of their dwellings. They relied on recommendations; few of them reported trouble with the police or Johns. Then the Times went another step by printing an investigative report (March 16) on what really went on in New York prostitution. They found that most of it was very low-key, with little violence or danger to those involved. The report estimated that only about a fifth of prostitutes in New York were street prostitutes. These were the ones with the pimps and those regularly arrested. The life of the rest was unremarkable. Many seemed to have quite positive relations with their regulars, often sympathizing with their plight. This is also the picture one gets from Heidi Fleiss in a Newsweek interview about the same time.
This flurry of activities, his own research in many countries, and the abuses of the trafficking of women led Nicholas Kristof to propose in an Op-Ed that the only “solution” to prostitution was to have it banned. He especially liked the system recently established in Sweden that arrests primarily the Johns rather than the prostitutes. He gives a rather narrow view of the many different systems in the world. One of the best systems is that in New Zealand which now has well-regulated legal prostitution.
The mistake commonly made by the opponents of prostitution is that “street-walking” is the most common form. This seems not to be the case anywhere. The New York investigative piece suggested that not more than one-fifth of prostitutes were on the street. These are of course easiest to see and easiest to arrest and legislate about. I was interested to see that my latest Atlantic reports on an academic study of prostitution in Chicago. They concluded that prostitution is actually well-paid, but that it is a dangerous occupation. But again they are actually not studying prostitution in Chicago but street-walkers, an occupation that is no doubt dangerous (although I was surprised how well pimps pay).
If we took a less moralistic and fairer approach to the issue, we would grant that every one has the right to act in any way he or she wishes as long as they do not harm others. We would note that for some young women the best way to make a living, given their life situation, is to offer sex for money. The job of the larger society in this regard is to do as New Zealand does. It should try to control the abuses that often accompany prostitution (just as all societies do the abuses that afflict marriage: the international traffic in wives is quite parallel to that in prostitutes). If abuse occurs, if people are “enslaved”, if children are forced into the trade, then these crimes should be prosecuted. One should note that successful arrests and prosecutions would be much more common if prostitutes were not afraid that they would be arrested simply because of their occupation.
In making these remarks, I am not addressing the assumption of social conservatives that it is simply wrong to pay for sex, or receive money for sex. Sex should be more “sacred” than that. This may be a correct intuition. But the problem with applying it to the modern context is that “payment” for sex occurs in so many forms that restricting the condemnation to cash transactions seems odd. The trophy wife of the rich entrepreneur receives more pay in kind than a prostitute ever would. I take it that the date that is simply a meal ticket is not uncommon among the young. In some ways, cash payment is a less hypocritical approach than these examples. (For an earlier discussion, see my accompanying blog at http://enlit.wordpress.com/ “Sex in an Enlightened Society”.
