It’s Time To Bring the Oldest Profession Into the Light

The arguments for maintaining the prohibition of prostitution aren’t just irrational, prudish, and harmful — they’re un-American.

Image generated by DALL-E.

I wrote a hybrid review and interview of author Ewan Morrison’s new sci-fi thriller, “For Emma”, for Queer Majority. Read it here.

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Prostitution is not an issue often discussed in America’s national political conversation, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. It’s a cause without a political constituency. There are no “sex work households” candidates try to woo, nor an escort lobby from which to accept large donations in exchange for services rendered. Perhaps politicians also aren’t too keen to draw attention to the obvious parallels between prostitution and themselves. After all, shady monetary exchanges can buy a prostitute’s time for an hour, but a politician’s for a decade. More than that, to be seen advocating for the legalization of prostitution is akin to setting one’s political capital ablaze — or being branded a degenerate anarchist.

In a society that is at once puritanical and sex-obsessed, sex becomes an instantly deranging element in culture and politics. In the US, revelations about one’s sex life cause instant scandals large enough to eclipse the sun, and crimes (or just accusations) involving anything sexual trigger frothing paroxysms of inquisitorial bloodlust out of all proportion. When it comes to all things sex, America is, and has always been, deeply neurotic.¹ Save for a handful of academics and activists, virtually nobody in public political life touches the subject of the world’s oldest profession except to denounce it, or call for harsher punishments. But the arguments for maintaining the prohibition of prostitution aren’t just irrational, prudish, and harmful — they’re un-American.

First, a note on terminology. In recent years, the term “sex work” has emerged from the euphemism treadmill as the preferred politically correct replacement for “prostitution.” However, “sex work” functions both as a synonym for “prostitution” and also as an umbrella term that encompasses all forms of sex-related work, including porn performers, strippers, escorts, cam models, phone sex operators, dominatrixes, and even OnlyFans creators. As is so often the case, the progressive compulsion for maximalist inclusivity produces imprecise and confusing language. The issue at hand is about people physically trading sex for money — not telemarketers with benefits. In other words, we’re talking about prostitution, and that’s what we’ll call it.

The conflation of prostitution with broader categories is more than linguistic — it’s woven through the research, such as it is. Unfortunately, when it comes to measuring the scope and scale of prostitution in the United States, we know next to nothing. Even in the best case scenario, studying a clandestine, black-market industry will always be difficult. But virtually every study, report, or resource attempting to estimate the size of the prostitution economy is either woefully outdated, poorly sourced, ideologically motivated, or carelessly lumps prostitution in with all sex work or with sex trafficking.

What we do know is that prostitution is illegal almost everywhere in the US, with the exception of some rural counties in Nevada. In Maine, selling sex was decriminalized in 2023, but remains illegal to purchase.² According to the FBI, more than 20,000 people were arrested for “prostitution and commercialized vice” in 2019, the most recent year for which there is data. And given that the FBI relies on voluntary reporting from local law enforcement agencies around the country, many of which fail to report data, the true arrest figure may be substantially higher.

The justification for the prohibition of prostitution rests mainly on three lines of argument. The first and by far the oldest is the objection to prostitution on religious and socially conservative grounds. For thousands of years, Abrahamic cultures have shunned and outlawed prostitution as a sin against God and a spiritually impure practice. Modern social conservatives often contend that prostitution degrades the moral fiber of society, threatens family values, and corrupts children. These arguments should sound familiar, because they’re the same ones right-wing moralists have lobbed at nearly every social behavior they disapprove of, from premarital sex, to divorce rights, to birth control, to rock music, hip-hop, video games, pornography, women in the workplace, and same-sex marriage. Whether it’s true that prostitution erodes the character of society, it has proven itself omnipresent and ineradicable. Moreover, we know what kind of “moral” society the religious right would impose given the chance — a de-facto theocracy without women’s rights, LGBT rights, and individual freedoms, in which the state has been “shrunk” to fit inside one’s bedroom, medicine cabinet, and uterus.

On the other side of the aisle, feminists have long characterized prostitution as a form of exploitation that arises from economic inequality, power imbalances, and capitalist coercion. Prostitution, this argument goes, is work almost no woman would ever want to do, but which some “choose” based on limited options and the need to make money. Upon a moment’s reflection, however, it becomes obvious that this describes nearly every working-age person in society.

Unless you’re in your dream job or are wealthy enough that you don’t need to work, you are, by definition, doing work you otherwise wouldn’t choose in order to make a living. Of course prostitution is hardly anyone’s first choice of profession, but by the same token, people aren’t exactly operating cash registers, cleaning toilets, delivering Uber Eats, or working customer service out of an intrinsic passion for the job. Given the choice to do anything, no one would spend their days sitting in a call center, taking drive-through orders, selling insurance, or changing bedpans. Gallup found that 77 percent of employees are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. A survey from Monster.com found that 95 percent of workers think about quitting their jobs, and according to a study from UKG, nearly half “wouldn’t wish their job on their worst enemy.”

Source: Gallup

To single out prostitution as exploitative is to disregard the simple fact that for most people most of the time, all work basically amounts to exploitation. People’s need to make a living — and their inability to do so by pursuing their passions — is exploited by employers and the market to push them into work they would otherwise never choose. The point here isn’t to advocate for the overthrow of capitalism — no alternative has so far proven to be better — but rather to demonstrate that the “prostitution as exploitation” argument falls apart upon scrutiny. Either follow the critique to its logical conclusion and join the quixotic ranks of the anti-work movement, or admit that, for better or for worse, sex work is work.

Finally, overarching both the conservative and feminist arguments against prostitution is the pervasive conflation of prostitution with sex trafficking, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse. Through years of sheer repetition, anti-prostitution advocates have made sure that prostitution and sex trafficking are nearly always mentioned in the same breath. Try searching for anything related to the issue of prostitution — statistics, op-eds, arguments, legal questions, debates, etc. — from Google to Wikipedia to ChatGPT to social media, and nearly all of the results redirect to the topic of sex trafficking or other sex crimes linked to prostitution.

The problem is, the supporting data is nonexistent.

We know from case reports, news coverage, and crime statistics that the percentage of prostitutes in the US who are trafficked, assaulted, or underage is not zero. Beyond that, there is very little we can say with confidence. As noted above, we can’t even credibly estimate how many total prostitutes there currently are in the US, let alone quantify what percentage of prostitutes are the victims of trafficking and other abuses. Most of the claims one encounters about the link between prostitution and sex trafficking trace back to a handful of deeply flawed sources.

For example, the oft-cited statistic that “300,000” girls in the US are sex trafficked and forced into prostitution every year originates from a 2001 University of Pennsylvania study. That study, which drew from research published in the 1990s and 1980s, estimated that the number of children “at risk” of “commercial sexual exploitation” — a category that includes, but is not limited to, prostitution — was 326,000. Another popular factoid is that the average prostitute begins work at age 13. This claim derives from a single misread paragraph in that same study. Similarly, the misleading stat that “90 percent” of prostitutes are trying to escape due to rampant abuse comes not from a representative sample of people in prostitution, but from interviews with sex trafficking victims.

Activists also commonly refer to the research of feminist psychologist Melissa Farley, who cites questionable, decades-old statistics about violence experienced by prostitutes to argue that prostitution is itself a form of violence and trafficking. Her work on prostitution, along with that of other prominent academic feminists, has been roundly taken to task by fellow scholars and legal experts alike for being unscientific and doctrinaire — radical feminist activism masquerading as serious research.

It is a laborious and awkward task to prove a negative, but it’s important to emphasize the degree to which the most alarming anti-prostitution “facts” rest on almost nothing at all. Carl Sagan famously said that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but the only thing extraordinary about the evidence linking prostitution and trafficking/abuse is just how extraordinarily flimsy it is. In most cases, these stats and assertions are probably invoked by concerned citizens simply repeating things they’ve heard without realizing they’re spreading misinformation. Collectively, however, the deluge of bogus facts drowning the prostitution debate functions as the most shameless, cynical, and sleazy of scare tactics. After all, sex crimes in general, and child sex abuse in particular, inflame Americans’ emotions like nothing else, and no decent person wants to be seen supporting policies that help child sex traffickers. And since so few people have the wherewithal to fact-check everything they encounter, activists need only stir up a moral panic to convince most onlookers that where there’s smoke, there must be fire.

Is all this to say that prostitution is a perfectly safe and risk-free line of work? Of course not. But there’s much more at play here.

A sex workers’ rights protest in San Francisco. March 2008. Photo credit: Eliya

The prostitution debate is usually narrowly framed through the lens of safety and purity — rarely through freedom and liberty. This raises the question: are we a free society, or aren’t we? It also points to a fundamental philosophical divide, because oftentimes, freedom and safety are at zero-sum odds with one another. A society cannot be both free to engage in risky behaviors while also being fully protected from those risks. Which then should we prioritize? There are circumstances where it makes sense to prioritize safety. If the danger posed by something presents a big enough hazard to the public, safety justifiably wins out over freedom. This is why it’s illegal to drive 120 miles per hour on roadways, or to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or to build bioweapons in your garage. It also explains the efforts by anti-prostitution campaigners to manufacture a slate of facts and associations that, if true, would represent a moral emergency.

But when the danger is not catastrophic, or is unknown, and the ethical calculus is grey, it’s generally wiser to err on the side of freedom over safety. In these increasingly illiberal times, appeals to freedom can come off sounding quaint, even naïve, but nothing could be more essential. If we cede too much safety but retain freedom, we remain free to make adjustments to strike a better balance. But if we cede too much freedom in pursuit of safety, we render ourselves powerless and reliant solely on authorities — which ends up leaving us both unfree and unsafe.³ This ethos lies at the core of the American experiment. In a free country, adults should be free to enter into voluntary exchanges between consenting individuals, even if the exchange entails a degree of risk or danger. As it happens, however, all indications suggest that legalizing prostitution would not only expand personal freedom, but also make the industry safer and more beneficial for everyone involved.

Just as with ending the War on drugs, legalizing prostitution shifts power away from bad actors and criminal syndicates and places it back into the hands of individuals. Studies conducted around the world have determined that bringing prostitution out of underground black markets and subjecting it to regulation increases safety, improves health outcomes, reduces incidents of violence, sexual assault, rape, and sexually transmitted infections, and leads to a decreased risk of HIV. But legalization does far more than enable regulation — it removes the veil of silence. With greater visibility, prostitutes are empowered to report crimes and abuses to the police without fear of incriminating themselves. It also becomes vastly easier for researchers to finally gather accurate data about industry — a crucial step to better understanding which policies work and which are ineffective or counterproductive.

With legalization, prostitutes gain access to labor protections, eligibility for Social Security and Medicare, and safer working conditions by moving interactions from street corners and back alleys into controlled indoor spaces. And it should go without saying that sex trafficking and sexual assault would remain serious crimes. Nothing about ending the prohibition on prostitution would change that. In fact, freeing up the law enforcement resources and man-hours currently spent arresting prostitutes and johns would divert more budget and personnel to catching human traffickers and other criminals. What’s more, as a legal industry, prostitution would generate tax revenue to further fund these efforts.

For many (if not most) people, statistics, studies, and philosophical arguments play a minor role in determining their stance on the legal status of prostitution. More often, our views are dictated by personal values or hypotheticals. The question many people ask themselves seems to be some version of, “Would I want my daughter to become a prostitute?” This is just another way of asking, “Do I consider this line of work to be reputable, wholesome, or beneficial to society?” Usually, the answer is “no”, and that settles it. But perhaps that’s the wrong question to be asking. Maybe instead, we ought to ask, “If my daughter did become a prostitute, would I want her operating in the dark, working in dangerous conditions, thrown in jail, or left without recourse to report assaults or abuses?”

Prostitution is called the “oldest profession” for a reason. It’s been around forever, it serves an ever-present market need, and, legal or not, it’s not going anywhere. Rather than laboring under the utopian delusion that we can rewrite human nature and fully eradicate this industry from the planet, perhaps it’s time to engage with the real world. When a practice is endemic and utterly intractable, there comes a point when moral idealism must pivot into rational compromise or risk turning into repressive authoritarianism that only causes more harm. As a society, we have a choice. We can continue to make prostitution more dangerous, risky, and abusive than it needs to be. Or we can face the reality that human nature cannot be socially re-engineered, and bring prostitution out of the shadows and into the disinfecting sunlight of the regulated market.

See also: “The Coming Anti-Drug Backlash”

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1. It’s almost as if we, as a society, desperately need to get laid. If only there were an industry of paid professionals who specialized in… but I digress.

2. This approach, known as the Nordic model, was first employed by Sweden in 1999 and has since been adopted by seven other countries. If this compromise seems bizarre and morally asymmetrical, it’s because the Nordic model is grounded in radical feminist thought. Radical feminists see prostitution as an inherently exploitative, misogynistic, and patriarchal form of violence that should be abolished, but in such a way that punishes sellers (predominantly women) as little as possible while throwing the book at buyers (predominantly men).

3. See the Patriot Act.