All of which we might sum up as… “consent.” True, full, free, informed, consent. Which the character Beth in the OP has.
Okay but you gotta admit it’s murkier when the person is introduced to that line of work involuntarily. If you are kidnapped at a young age and forced into accounting without recompense, then you finally escape and all you know how to do is accounting. Doesn’t that change the power dynamic of your next job contract somewhat?
That’s not even getting into the absolute shitstorm of trauma that would ensue if you were raped and beaten into submission to exploit your body for the financial gain of someone else, THEN escaped and found the only thing you knew how to make money at was using your own body.
I tend to side more with Fel, but that’s because I see Stacia (his whore friend) as his equal and I know he does too. He comes from a culture that doesn’t attach shame to open displays of sexuality, so the moral taboo of prostitution is nonexistent in his mind. Likewise, he exploits his own body for financial gain, not sex but street fighting, so he at least understands the basic dynamic of having to do something unpleasant to survive and then being judged for doing that thing. Moreover, he at least tries to give back something in return (other than money) to the women he pays for sex, even if that’s sexual pleasure or casual friendship.
My own personal opinion is that Elen (the female protagonist) misreads his behaviors as exploitation because she does have that cultural taboo against prostitution, because she is privileged and because she really cannot begin to comprehend his world. It’s easier for her to see his behavior as a discrete set of ethical decisions more than as actions he’s taken alongside other actions throughout the course of ongoing relationships with these women.
But I agree it’s ethically murky and that’s part of the fun of writing.
In case it’s not glaringly obvious at this point by the stuff I write, I find paternalistic bullshit about what people should and shouldn’t be doing with their bodies to be a personal pet peeve of mine. Elen really has no place to decide whether Fel’s relationship with Stacia is exploitative, only Stacia can make that determination, and it’s kind of terrible how often we remove agency from people out of what is basically pity, not any real grasp of what their mental state is or who they are as people.
Elen is essentially saying, ‘‘Oh, that poor whore,’’ and Fel is essentially responding, ''Fuck you, that’s my friend you’re talking about, she’s stronger than you’ll ever know and she can make these decisions for herself."
While it’s always debatable where we should draw the line, I do think it’s especially important for people who have had sexual agency taken away from them to be able to reclaim it on their own terms. And that’s when I get bristly about what people should and should not be doing with their own bodies. Only once your choice has been removed from you do you truly understand the power and value of choice.
We all have our baggage. I’ll admit that extreme examples might cause some questions about real consent, but how would a prospective client know that?
In a world with legal prostitution, would it be the client’s responsibility to conduct an investigation as to whether the prostitute was entering into the agreement freely and voluntarily? What constitutes voluntarily? I understand that if she had a gun to her head, that would not be voluntary, but if all it means is that she needs to pay her bills and she does not know any other line of work, that could be said of most people and all employment contracts are therefore coercive.
Before a man accepts a prostitution contract, what type of investigation must he conduct and what standards apply to the outcome of that investigation? What if I know that she was abused as a child and was forced into this line of work, escaped some years ago (how many is enough?) but she really wants to do this to pay her electric bill/buy a bag of crack? I think we are just digging a giant hole with this.
In most species, yes. Not among humans. Sex in humans plays an important role in forming and maintaining relationships and reproduction isn’t really its primary purpose at all.
I don’t think it’s the client’s responsibility to do any kind of investigation. Do you investigate your mechanic to be sure he wasn’t forced into this line of work by his father, hates it, and would quit if he could but he has bills to pay before you engage in a contract?
Say we knew that 50% of mechanics were forced into that line of work.**
Does our responsibility change then?
**I have no idea what the stats are for forced prostitution, I’m just trying to draw a distinction.
Also, let’s stop pretending sex as a job is exactly the same as any other thing you do for a job. The cultural connotations alone make it different, and that’s not even getting into individual attitudes and experiences.
Does that make it wrong? No. I’d say I’m decidedly in support of people making a living however they damned well please. But agency is everything in that equation, and I’m not going to pretend that sex is the same thing as accounting.
Isn’t it? Try putting aside your cultural background. Many people do physically and mentally unpleasant things at jobs. Gynecologists, for example, spend all day peering into vaginas. Massage therapists have to touch all kinds of people, including smelly and ugly ones. Nurses carry bedpans full of excrement around and have to do fun things like administer enemas. I’d rather give blowjobs than do that.
You just finished saying sex had a special and important social role for people. So no, it isn’t… as you know.
So you’d rather suck a smelly, ugly guy’s dick than massaging a smelly, ugly guy’s back? Hey, different strokes I guess…
You’d have to ask an actual voluntary escort, but most of them don’t seem to regret their choices. Easy way to pick up money.
If we put aside culture we are totally ripping a thing out of context and that makes no sense to me in evaluating it. The cultural connotations of prostitution are relevant in distinguishing it from, say, mechanical engineering.
I only know one prostitute, she’s a transwoman with a very social-justice oriented bent who is interested in the empowering aspects of prostitution-as-career-choice. She’s a free agent doing what feels best for her. She is an Ivy-league educated woman who came from poverty and paid her way through college by commodifying sex. But I think we would be remiss to ignore the cultural context of her career path. An extremely high number of transwomen are forced down that road usually out of homelessness and financial necessity, she knows this and struggles against it. She also struggles against the transmisogyny of her own clients, the fact that so many of the men who are sexually attracted to her would never acknowledge her as a legitimate partner, she also struggles with the fact that what she does is fucking dangerous from a purely statistical standpoint because an alarming number of people make assaulting and murdering trans prostitutes some kind of personal hobby.
It’d be great if we could live in this perfect world where sexual exploitation and oppression weren’t things, but we don’t. As I said before, I’m generally for people doing what they want to do and erring on the side of sexual freedom, including the voluntary commodification of sex, as articulated by the person doing the sex work, but I’m not about to rip prostitution out of its cultural context if we’re going to talk about the ethics involved.
Generally, I think anytime anyone has sex with someone else, they have a responsibility to determine the other party is participating freely and voluntarily. That doesn’t change when money is involved.
That’s the real question, and I’m not sure there’s an obvious answer. The character in my novel seems to understand pretty intuitively the difference based on body language, vocal intonation, age, etc. and he’s not beneath outright asking. But the idea of consent and what constitutes consent and what is true sexual agency are huge themes in my novel as a whole. If I had all the answers I wouldn’t be asking those questions in the book.
If by ‘‘digging a giant hole’’ you mean exploring uncomfortable moral complexities most people would rather not think about, then yes.
Shit, I think that’s my goal in life as a writer. Dig giant holes.
If there is no real coercion than what’s the problem? She could choose not to play this game and if she has any sense she’ll know what risks she’s taking. Now people can endlessly debate what is and isn’t coercive but that’s a pointless discussion.
But to the larger question is consent sufficient? Even with underage and intoxication considered I’d say no. I personally don’t think all fetishes that have sexual arousal as a component are ethical.
I don’t think it’s a pointless discussion at all. I think it’s one of the most important discussions we can have.
I think that the problem with this “uncomfortable moral complexit[y]” is that you are shading a bit in each direction.
First, you discount the notion that sex with those outside of marriage or at least in a loving relationship has any validity. You assume without discussion that prostitution should be a legal enterprise because selling sex, if consensual, should be no different legally than selling copy machines or medical supplies.
But then you want to make what constitutes consent different for sex because of the moral questions underlying it.
If I have a wife, three kids, and a huge mortgage, and a job as a janitor, I might hate the job, but still go to work everyday because I have to pay the bills. If I am a janitor, it is a disgusting job, including cleaning up urine and feces in the bathrooms. If I am a janitor I likely have no other skillset with which to make a living.
I do not think that anyone here would say that my employment contract with the janitorial service is coercive or invalid. I also do not believe that anyone would require my employer to investigate whether I am working under my own free will, even if it was fairly possible that most janitors were kidnapped as children and forced into janitorial work. The only relevant question is at the time of the formation of the contract is the person doing so of his own free will.
But then we fall back into the old morality that sex is “different.” How is that so once we have taken the step of commodifying it as a subject of trade no different than coffee beans? On one hand we should drop the old morality and sell blow jobs on the open market but on the other hand, sex comes with such special moral baggage that there needs to be an exploration of consent that stretches back years or even decades when the worker first started in the industry.
I agree that it is a good discussion, but I think first we should set the ground rules on what sex is or means. Is it special or is it a commodity?
Yes. I can see the issue from many different angles, as per usual.
[QUOTE=UltraVires]
First, you discount the notion that sex with those outside of marriage or at least in a loving relationship has any validity.
[/QUOTE]
What? In what way did I do that? In my first example, as presented in the OP, the characters are neither married nor even arguably in a ‘loving relationship’ and I’ve presented their choices as entirely valid. In the second example, I gave an example of a man who routinely sleeps with prostitutes but views them first as friends and second as objects for sexual fulfillment, which again, I view as entirely valid.
[QUOTE=UltraVires]
You assume without discussion that prostitution should be a legal enterprise because selling sex, if consensual, should be no different legally than selling copy machines or medical supplies.
[/QUOTE]
I never said that, either. Are you perhaps confusing me with another poster?
It’s true I have no moral issue with prostitution in the abstract, but if anything I’ve been arguing it is much different than selling copy machines or medical supplies.
It sounds like you’re falling prey to the fallacy of the excluded middle. In my ideal world, the people that get to make the decision about whether they are entering into a consensual contract are the people making the contract.
Why not both? Why not ‘context matters’? Context always matters. Sex is different things to different people. What’s kosher with one person will not be with another person. I have no problem with that, really. I started this thread because I’m curious where my views lie on the spectrum.
The problem, if I had to pin anything down, is the tendency for humans to make categorical rules about what is and isn’t appropriate sexual behavior, and you can’t easily do that on this subject without throwing a whole bunch of people under the bus. Err too far on the side of protecting others from themselves and you run the risk of being patronizing and limiting others’ freedom. Err too much on the side of ‘anything goes’ and you run the risk of people being manipulated and exploited. Categorical imperatives are just a really poor way of looking at sexual relationships.
So yeah, if Beth and Kale want to fuck because Judd said so, and nobody involved feels they are being exploited, I am fine with that.
Is Fel wants to pay Stacia for sex and neither of them feels they are being exploited, I am fine with that too.
I can hold those opinions and still see the validity of opposing viewpoints.
How can you prove subjective standards are factual?
You can’t. You can demonstrate evidence of harm or benefit but that’s about it.
Should you be able to consent to harmful sexual acts? Rather is it moral to participate in such acts?
I consented to jumping off of a rock into some water this weekend. Because I’m stupid, I bruised my arm all up. I’ll stipulate that I knew the risks in advance and agreed to do it anyway.
Was that immoral?