I'm sorry if Will Wilkinson took offense at my query about prostitution and incest. I took him to be comparing sex work to carpentry and writing, and it struck me that this analogy suggested a view of sex as a sufficiently banal, devoid-of-moral-content activity - akin to hammering a nail or writing a blog post - as to render any prohibition on the sexual abuse of children somewhat incomprehensible. In his latest post, Will explains that sex work is "emotionally complicated" and "not always pleasant," and therefore is more like surgery, or policing, or hospice care than like basic carpentry or word processing; thus, teaching your child to give a handjob is wrong because it's the equivalent of asking your child to operate on a gunshot wound victim. I appreciate the clarification - not least because this analogy suggests that Will might be amenable to some sort of regulation on sex work. Perhaps we could require would-be hookers to attend accredited academies, as we do with cops and doctors, and streetwalkers could be prosecuted for practicing without a license. (I believe John Derbyshire has suggested something along these lines, and Ezra Klein seems like he'd be amenable, so the proposal would start out with bipartisan support.)
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It Isn't Brain Surgery (Or Is It?)
17 Mar 2008 10:15 am
Comments (8)
How bizarre.
I mean, I wouldn't want a 15-year-old as my surgeon, but when I read about a 15-year-old Indian surgeon I don't think of him as an object of abuse by his parents.
Fine, but are we licensing johns as well?
Except that as a libertarian, Will probably doesn't think that cops and doctors should be licensed.
Will posted a pretty solid response:
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/03/17/how-sex-is-and-isnt-different-part-ii/
I’m glad a possible consensus is emerging. I should take this opportunity to apologize for an aspect of a previous comment. I had written:
“One interesting aspect of Ross’s resort to the clearly inapposite child metaphor is its seeming implication that somehow women as a class are akin to children: cognitively and emotionally immature, and highly fragile to boot.”
I should clarify that I have no reason to think Ross adheres to these views. Rather, he seems to think that sex under overly casual or impersonal conditions, and certainly when used as a commodity, tends to be damaging to any man or woman who does it. I do think the child analogy was inappropriate, although in retrospect it helps clarify where Ross and I (and perhaps others) disagree. In my view the morals basis for regulating prostitution (as opposed to the health-and-safety-of-sex-workers justification) is offensive precisely because it treats men and women as though they were children, as though they lack the capacity to take responsibility for weighing decisions about intensely personal matters. To take this stance and place moral value on autonomous decision-making emphatically does not preclude a belief that certain choices are harmful, even degrading, to the individual. If you want to take both values seriously, the appropriate remedy is to seek to persuade others via cultural venues and relevant civil society organizations, not to use the law.
Jason -- I'd like to respond to your thoughtful post. I don't think that the morals approach, or laws informed by a moral view, views men and women as lacking the capacity to make decisions. The law doesn't punish people who kill or attack others because of a belief that people lack the capacity to restrain themselves. To the contrary, the law punishes them because despite having the capacity to restrain themselves, they don't. Where restraint is unreasonable, where people really lack the capacity to do right, the law makes exceptions, as it does for minors, heat of passion crimes, self-defense, etc.
Instead, I would argue that the law seeks to protect itself against those who would act in a way that would be harmful not only to the participants but also to the community as a whole. A proscription of prostitution might be animated by the belief that prostitution, insofar as it commoditizes humans and human relationships in a particularly pernicious way, inflicts an unacceptable injury to society as a whole. This injury would lie in the threat posed to the meaning and dignity of people, their most intimate relationships, and the family, as well as the more immediate threat of broken families and physical and psychological harm.
This is more clearly visible in crimes such as murder or assault. The state simply cannot countenance people being so roughly manhandled, in being treated in a way that defies our sense of the dignity of human life and that arouses and inflames others to repay the act in kind. Not only does the law seek to prevent such acts in the first place; but it is equally if not more important that the law repair the damaged social fabric when such acts do take place.
It is this moral perspective -- this sense of the denial of what is properly due to people -- that informs one's outrage and sense of injustice at certain acts. I don't think any law that concerns itself with health and safety, and does not address the sense of outrage aroused by certain acts, will ever be seen as legitimate.
However, prostitution is not simply the same as murder and assault. There is more ground to disagree about the moral and legal calculus involved in laws against prostitution-- that the injury inflicted or threatened by the acts in question might be outweighed by other factors such as the liberties constrained or the difficulty of enforcement. Perhaps this is what you are getting at when you speak of the invasive or overly paternalistic aspects of what you call morals-based laws.
Ross is usually thoughtful. In this exchange, though, he looks pretty bad. Will may or may not be right in his position on prostitution, but he is certainly right that Ross is badly off the mark.
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To answer why it is different to us is easy. As a species we moralize concepts having to do with "copulation, pudenda, orifices, and effluvia." It's pretty obvious why that would be the case.
Posted by JA | March 17, 2008 10:51 AM