Lately the idea of legalizing prostitution as a sort of means for empowerment of women and betterment of society has been making rounds. Engaging in prostitution may become more accessible to the public as a result. I would like to raise the following considerations:
The role of sex in a romantic relationship has been becoming trivialized lately. At first it began with making sex casual, as if there is a way to separate the individual into components. The individual is absolutely indivisible by definition; the individual is a union of the mind, body, and spirit which cannot be undone and this union is greater than the sum of the abstractions of these components. To be physically intimate is simultaneously to be mentally and spiritually intimate. Fundamentally, sex is the physical expression of a complex myriad of emotions that make up the psyche of romantic relationships. Those feelings, and therefore the expression of those feelings, are not a trivial thing. The next logical step to further trivialize sex is by making it transactional, or so it would seem.
If we were to make sex a transactional exchange then we immediately invite ourselves onto a dangerous, slippery slope. It may be damaging to the collective consciousness of the female ego that exists in society. If sex becomes a commodity that can be purchased then what does this mean for rape and sexual harassment charges? If we allow ourselves to go down this road we are inviting ourselves to begin the search for an answer to the following question, “How much is the dollar cost of sex?” This ultimately may damage the pursuit of justice and begin making monetary settlements an acceptable retribution for heinous crimes by equating rape or sexual misconduct to something closer to theft as opposed to assault.
Furthermore, we should consider how attractive this may be for all the wrong reasons. Why commit to anyone in a relationship if you can get off for a dollar amount? Having all the benefits of intimacy and the benefits of being single and focusing on your own pursuits, such as a career, is absolutely an attractive idea if even only at a superficial level. Young people are lonelier than ever now and this may aggravate that issue.
Where does this deconstruction end? By attaching a dollar value to how much sex is worth we create a means for a competition where no one wins, a race to the bottom. Is sex with a conventionally attractive woman worth more money? Is sex with a more fertile woman worth more money? Is sex with a younger woman worth more? How much more for how much younger? What happens to the idea of consent in sexual deviance? If someone takes sex too far then the moral fiber of their actions become inconsequential, they can just up the price and wash their hands of what happened. Why should we have intercourse for free if I can monetize it? Undoubtedly someone inexperienced and much younger will have that question and explore it in all the wrong ways. And what happens when big corporations want to profit from this exchange? If sex has a dollar value then can it become contractually obligated? What makes this woman more qualified than another to charge an amount for sex? Is her body count or time in service advertised? Who determines how much it costs? PornHub? Sex Inc? Brothel Corp? The market usually answers this with the consumer who votes with their dollars. This will certainly be counter to at least the feminist movement since men will essentially be voting on how much a woman is worth. If this is a valid career choice then what age do we begin educating girls on how to make sex more pleasurable and how is that different from raising them like livestock? Should the markets be segregated by sexuality? Do you have a right to deny goods and services to a customer whose sexuality doesn’t align with your own? If you don’t find someone attractive enough to have sexual relations with when paid to do so, is this discrimination? Especially if you said something that may make the buyer feel that way. Imagine being called a bigot for refusing to sell yourself.
Biologically speaking, in humans, sexual selection is primarily a female niche because they select partners higher on the dominance hierarchy. In a manner of speaking, they define the metrics used to determine the dominance hierarchy. That is a lot of power to give up as soon as that becomes a function of money. And the argument can be made in an ideal world transactional sex should not result in offspring but historically that is not the case. Regulatory oversight is not the answer; who finds it preferable to allow the state and/or private companies to police the consensual sex behaviors of humans? What does this mean our obligation as a society is to those offspring legally and morally? I don’t see an end to this deconstruction. It seems to me that it may be better we do not go down this road.