Legalize Prostitution

One of the few remaining unjustified restrictions on the freedom of women–one of few remaining barriers to equality in the workplace–is the prohibition of prostitution.  No other service industry is forbidden to women on the basis of gender. Other sexist obstacles have come down. It is time this one did.

Treating prostitution as a crime represents an unconscionable restriction of a woman’s right to control her body. This right is legally recognized, allowing her to have an abortion, and must certainly extend to allowing her to decide with whom to go to bed. Any rational feminist (I know, I know) must favor legalization. So must libertarians opposed to governmental interference, conservatives favoring free enterprise, and advocates of free-markets. Keeping prostitution illegal smothers initiative and prevents capital formation.

merchandise but the banning that creates problems.

By contrast, legal bordellos, inspected as restaurants are, can be safe, clean, and elegant with bars, smoking rooms, oil paintings, crystal chandeliers, and other elements of a theme park. A well-run bawdy house would allow the women to dress and behave as ladies and require that the men so treat them, thus elevating public manners. In the United States, such houses would constitute almost the only places where men could be alone with each other and agreeable women.

For reasons beyond my ken, Doers of Good believe that the customers of prostitutes hold these women in contempt, and enjoy degrading them. Perhaps some do.  Some hold piano movers in contempt. (“They are not our sort of people, dear.”) I know many men who have spent long years in Asia and patronized countless prostitutes. These men do not at all speak of the girls with contempt, and indeed often remember them fondly. The disdain seems to come from the Doers of Good, not from men.

A bargirl Thailand once told me approximately, “I can work in an electronics assembly plant twelve hours a day, barely make a living, and almost never see my little boy, or I can work here where it is comfortable and I have my days off.” So you see: Illegality consigns women to sweatshops. And it is bad for children.

In the past, and in many places today, women were and are forced by physical threats to work as prostitutes. This is utterly reprehensible, as immoral as forcing men to fight wars in which they have no stake, or forcing them to pick cotton. Again, it is the forcing, not the prostitution that is an evil. Picking cotton is not in itself a moral disgrace.

Under today’s economic conditions, compulsion would be nonexistent, especially in licensed houses rigorously inspected. Any prostitute who became dissatisfied could simply walk out the door. Today, a girl of eighteen can make her living without selling sex, and almost all do. If she chooses voluntarily to work in a brothel for whatever reason—better money than Starbuck’s, and less boring—why is that not her business?

Illegality? I say unto ye, brothels and sistels, herein lies a great evil, and it should not stand.

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