Undergraduate Finalist paper in the 2026 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Ethan Beri.
- Introduction
Despite being the “oldest profession”, prostitution is still hotly debated, both in the academy and in public discourse. Prostitution is often considered worse than other jobs, in part because it wrongs the prostitute: a woman who sells sex “sells herself”, or appears to consent to something which she cannot really consent to. This essay will argue to the contrary: prostitution does not constitute a wrong to prostitutes, any more than any other job would. Specifically, prostitution does not always involve especially bad working conditions, nor does it involve treating someone in an especially bad way. Prostitution is also not necessarily any less consensual than any other job. Finally, I draw out the implications of this argument, including that we should not automatically dismiss prostitutes’ ability to choose careers, and perhaps we should even defend their right to sell sex.
I define prostitution as having sex with another person, in exchange for that person’s payment (monetary or otherwise). This definition intends to include services such as vaginal, oral, and anal sex (what we would ordinarily consider “having sex”) but excludes other services such as phone sex or pornography. Further, I focus on cases involving female prostitutes and male clients, setting aside the nuances of same-sex prostitution. I also focus on consensual prostitution, taking for granted that unconsensual prostitution wrongs the prostitute. By “consensual”, I mean to refer to cases where women enter prostitution under similar conditions of agency to other jobs (setting aside idealised notions of consent): for example, a woman who seeks a job for primarily financial reasons, weighs up prostitution against other blue-collar jobs, and is able to quit her job if she chooses to. Finally, for reasons of scope, I only consider arguments that prostitution wrongs the prostitute, as opposed to wronging the client or other women.
- Working Conditions
One might argue that prostitution is worse than other jobs because it involves especially bad working conditions. “Working conditions” here refers not to the nature of the work itself, but instead to the pay, hours, and “environment” (broadly construed) in which work is performed (for example, stereotypically: working long hours for low pay, standing on a cold street corner). A typical response to this view is that prostitution is no worse than other jobs which may also be demeaning, poorly paid, affect one’s personal life, and so on (Overall, 1992, pp. 709-710; Mac & Smith, 2018). On the other hand, these authors seldom acknowledge the uniquely “sexed” (in both senses) aspects of the working conditions of prostitution. Specifically, prostitution seems to come with an “intrinsic” risk of sexual violence: that is, prostitution cannot be done without this risk, as it necessarily involves having sex. Is this unique to prostitution? It is plausible that prostitutes are, overall, especially likely to face sexual violence. However, women in a number of other jobs are too—indeed, this is perhaps a core part of what it means to be a woman under patriarchy.
- Objectification
Some claim that prostitution necessarily involves treating the prostitute in a way which does not respect their personhood (specifically, objectification). Christine Overall responds that other, acceptable forms of sex involve objectification, hence this cannot be what makes prostitution wrong (Overall, 1992, p. 714). There are different forms of objectification, however (Nussbaum, 1995). For example, compare a one-night stand with an act of prostitution. In the former case, a sexual partner may be “objectified” in the sense of being reduced to their body or sex appeal. The prostitute, however, is further treated as an instrument for the client’s pleasure, rather than as a person with their own sexual agency. The issue with prostitution, then, would be the way it reduces the prostitute to an instrument or “mere means”.
However, instrumentality would seem to condemn a number of (if not all) other jobs, insofar as employees are instruments of their employer’s desires (Green, 1989, p. 533). But perhaps being a means for someone else’s sexual ends is worse than being a means for their other ends. This could be justified by appealing to the centrality of sexuality to our identities: Carole Pateman argues similarly when she claims that prostitutes, in selling their sex, sell themselves (Pateman, 1988, p. 207). Hence, prostitution would fail to respect an especially central part of one’s person.
One might respond to this by denying that prostitutes sell something central to their identities, or by denying that selling something central to oneself is wrong. I start with the former. While this essay only deals with female prostitutes, it is worth noting that critiques like Pateman’s (that prostitutes “sell themselves”) are rarely levelled at male prostitutes, even those who perform “feminine” roles like “bottoming”. Consequently, some see Pateman’s objection as being rooted in misogynistic views which tie women’s identities solely to their utility as sex objects. Further, it is not clear that sexuality is always central to our identities: indeed, it seems to me that this is a contingent matter, not a necessary one. Some people (perhaps those raised in sex-positive environments) see sex mostly as a fun pastime, whereas others (perhaps those raised in more traditional environments) see sex as a way of “giving oneself” to a life partner. Cecile Fabre further notes that we sell many other things that are central to our identities: for example, a philosophy tutor’s job involves sharing their most deeply held beliefs (Fabre, 2006, p. 161). We would not say that they “sell themselves”, nor that this constitutes a wrong to the tutor.
Instrumentality, then, does seem intrinsic to prostitution—but, as Green notes, it is also intrinsic to other jobs. Is instrumentality for sexual ends worse? Not because sexuality is so central to one’s identity: this is not necessarily true, and, as Fabre shows, we sell many other things which are perhaps more central to our identities. So I have not found a reason to think that the kind of objectification involved in prostitution is worse than that in any other job.
- Consent
Opponents of prostitution must also contend with the fact that many prostitutes appear to consent to their work, in the same way that, say, a mechanic or a cleaner would. For example, consider a woman who decides to enter prostitution after a lengthy job search, in which she cogently considers her alternatives. This is not to say that consent is a “moral transformer” which can turn any impermissible act into a permissible one (Hurd, 1996): this is unnecessary, given the above objections have failed. Instead, I consider two objections which claim that prostitutes cannot consent to sell sex.
The first objection claims that the desire to prostitute oneself is an adaptive preference. Adaptive preferences, briefly, are preferences which seem unreliable or otherwise morally puzzling. As far as I know, this objection to prostitution has not yet been articulated, though some authors may have alluded to it: Overall quotes an ex-prostitute who compares an apparently consenting prostitute to a battered housewife who insists that she has a happy marriage (Overall, 1992, p. 712). The case of the “consenting” battered housewife is a paradigmatic example of an adaptive preference: we would not say that she properly “chooses” to stay in her marriage, due to the puzzling nature of her preference. Serene Khader formalises this intuition: a preference is adaptive if it is 1) inconsistent with basic human flourishing, 2) formed under conditions unconducive to human flourishing, and 3) that we believe its holder might be persuaded to change, given normative scrutiny and exposure to conditions more conducive to flourishing (Khader, 2011, p. 42).
Opponents of prostitution often claim that 2) and 3) are true: that prostitutes’ preferences are unreliable because they are “damaged goods” (for example, victims of childhood abuse) (Mikkola, 2019, p. 216), and that anyone who was not “damaged goods” would not become a prostitute (the implication being that if we could somehow reverse prostitutes’ trauma, they would change their mind). I will grant 2) and 3) for now, though it seems unlikely that they are true for all prostitutes. We still have to argue for 1), that prostitution is incompatible with flourishing. This could be done using arguments from the sections above, which have thus far failed. Contrarily, it seems to me that prostitution, for many women, is just as essential to their flourishing as any other job (or perhaps more). Mac and Smith quote a woman who much prefers prostitution to her previous job: “This job is better; the money is good and quick. The cleaner job was really hard work and no good money. I still say I’m a cleaner, I have to lie, but I don’t want to be one.” (Mac & Smith, 2018, p. 28). For this woman, prostitution means better money, and less strenuous work. Seemingly the only thing stopping us from considering this to be an obviously better job is the fact that it involves sex, rather than mopping floors or cleaning toilets. Opponents of prostitution still have to explain why this should override the fact that prostitution appears to be important for this woman’s flourishing.
The second objection is that one cannot consent to alienate oneself from one’s sexual rights, and that this is a necessary feature of prostitution, hence one cannot consent to prostitution. Scott Anderson claims that prostitutes necessarily alienate themselves from their right to refuse sex (Anderson, 2002). Hallie Liberto responds that prostitutes can “weakly waive” this right, which does not entail alienating themselves from it (Liberto, 2009). “Weakly waiving” one’s right to sexual autonomy entails a temporary waiving, which can be regained at any time. Liberto argues that because prostitutes can regain this right at will, they retain jurisdiction over that which their right regards (their bodies). Hence, on her definition of what it means to be alienated from a right, prostitutes who “weakly waive” are not alienated from their sexual rights. This is supported by prostitutes’ testimony that they do not sell all bodily and sexual rights, with no boundaries: instead, they sell specific sexual services, illustrated by industry terms like “OWO” (oral without condom), “girlfriend experience”, and so on (Mac & Smith, 2018, p. 25). Crucially, Liberto’s argument rests on the claim that prostitutes can actually back out when they want to.
I agree with Liberto: providing specific sexual services with the option to back out seems very different to alienating oneself from one’s sexual rights altogether. Liberto’s view makes prostitution, again, seem like other jobs: nobody would say that a cleaner, say, completely alienates their rights to their body, especially when they have the option to leave or change what sort of work they do.
- Conclusion
I have argued that prostitution is not a uniquely bad kind of job: prostitution does not involve especially bad working conditions, nor does it involve treating someone in an especially bad way. Further, prostitution is not necessarily any less consensual than any other line of work: prostitutes’ consent does not rely on an adaptive preference, nor does it involve being alienated from one’s sexual autonomy.
Some implications of these arguments include that we treat prostitutes’ career choices as genuine, and that prostitutes do not wrong themselves by merely doing their job. A stronger implication, however, is that prostitutes have just as much of a right to sell their sexual services as, say, a philosopher has to sell their tutoring services. A full treatment of this argument is beyond scope, but I will briefly sketch out a promising path towards it. On a plausible account of interests, the above arguments allow us to say that prostitutes have an interest in their work: prostitution supports their basic flourishing in the same way as any other job, and does not constitute a wrong to themselves. Insofar as rights protect interests, the right to sell sex—the power to transfer claims over sexual services, a claim against the state not to interfere, and a claim against the state to enforce prostitutes’ transactions (Fabre, 2006, pp. 15-16)—could follow from a combination of the above arguments and further arguments against third-party effects of prostitution (such as that prostitution wrongs all women by promoting negative stereotypes), which would give prostitutes relevant claims against the state.
In all, prostitution is just a job—not a uniquely bad job, nor an unreliable preference. We should respect prostitutes’ career choices, and perhaps, further, we should advocate for their right to sell sex.
References
Anderson, S. A. (2002, July). Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy: Making Sense of the Prohibition of Prostitution. Ethics, 112(4), 748-780.
Fabre, C. (2006). Whose Body is it Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person. Oxford University Press.
Green, K. (1989, October). Prostitution, Exploitation, and Taboo. Philosophy, 64(250), 525-534.
Hurd, H. M. (1996). The Moral Magic of Consent. Legal Theory, 2(2), 121-146.
Khader, S. J. (2011). Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment. Oxford University Press.
Liberto, H. R. (2009, October). Normalising Prostitution versus Normalising the Alienability of Sexual Rights: A Response to Scott A. Anderson. Ethics, 120(1), 138-145.
Mac, J., & Smith, M. (2018). Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights. Verso.
Mikkola, M. (2019). Pornography: A Philosophical Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1995, Autumn). Objectification. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 24(4), 249-291.
Overall, C. (1992, Summer). What’s Wrong with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work. Signs, 17(4), 705-724.
Pateman, C. (1988). The Sexual Contract. Polity Press.