In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare. – Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
Starting today, my readers will have the opportunity to see me in a rather different mode. Normally, my arguments are in the form of a monologue; though people can and do disagree with me in the comments, they aren’t writing full essays; furthermore, the readership of any blog is going to self-select towards a general zone of agreement with its author. In other words, though most of my readers disagree with me on some points and some disagree with me on many points, very few disagree with me on most points (else they’d probably not be regular readers). But near the end of October, Jason Kuznicki invited me to contribute the lead essay for this month’s issue of Cato Unbound; it will post today at about 11 AM Eastern Time (16:00 UTC). About the same time Wednesday, a response essay will post, then another on Friday and one more next Monday. For the rest of this month I and the others will then write a series of shorter essays responding to each others’ points, creating a debate in print that will conclude at the end of December. Here’s the index of previous issues, so you can get an idea how it tends to unfold.
I would like to thank Jason for thinking enough of my writing and thinking skills to invite me to lead off the debate on this subject; I hope that I can argue my position convincingly and adequately answer the criticisms of the other writers, and that I can sway those Cato readers who aren’t necessarily predisposed toward decriminalization to see the sense and justice of it. My lead essay is entitled “Treating Sex Work as Work”, and here’s the first paragraph:
When researchers taught capuchin monkeys how to use money, it didn’t take long for one of the male monkeys to offer a female one of the coins in exchange for sex. Prostitution is often called “the world’s oldest profession” with good reason; it is a form of exchange that predates the human species, and has even been observed among chimpanzees. Males tend to want sex much more frequently than most females are willing to accommodate, and where a demand exists it is inevitable that some individuals will choose to meet it for a price. But because sex has traditionally been viewed as sacred, magical or otherwise special because of its ability to produce life, it has always been an area authoritarians felt especially compelled to enact restrictions upon; the fact that most of the sellers were female and most of the buyers male probably also had a lot to do with it, especially in pre-modern times when virtually all political power was concentrated in the hands of the client class. We no longer live in a time when power depends upon gender, nor one in which coitus runs an uncontrollable risk of creating unwanted offspring, yet our laws regarding prostitution are still solidly anchored in the era when those conditions prevailed…
It’s about 3000 words, two to three times the length of one of my normal columns, but I don’t think you’ll get bored. Click on over to Cato Unbound for the rest, and be sure to look in for the other contributors’ responses and the debate to follow. Following the usual pattern, my first response should post on Thursday the 12th, and then a few more times over the next few weeks as needed. So for this month, you’ll be getting a double-dose of Maggie if you are so inclined…and I really hope you will be!
looking very much forward to this triple dose of Maggie! Yummi! Congratulations.
Extra Maggie! Life is good to me.
Male and female calculus with respect to sex reflects the large disparity in consequences to each participant should the act result in pregnancy. Males may choose to invest anywhere from some large amount of energy, to essentially nothing. Females must invest large nutrient reserves and undergo parturition, which will have significant mortality for them without medical assistance. Women who insist that the male commitment must reach at least the threshold value of a monetary exchange at the time of intercourse are simply refusing to allow male cheating in one of the most important of human interactions.
“We no longer live in a time when power depends upon gender, nor one in which coitus runs an uncontrollable risk of creating unwanted offspring, yet our laws regarding prostitution are still solidly anchored in the era when those conditions prevailed…”
There’s something that bothers me about this. I thought it was a theme (not a particularly common one) of yours that prostitution was *more* tolerated in the past eras you refer to in that quote than it is now. If that’s the case, it seems odd to say that our current laws are solidly anchored in those eras.
You are confusing moral rationales with legal strategies. Prior to the late 19th century, it was not widely believed that governments could force people to subscribe to the state’s version of morality by threat of violence; that was generally the church’s job. Prohibitionism is anchored in the belief that selling sex is “bad”, and that belief is anchored in patriarchal moral systems.
You know, as a snappy rejoinder, the Cato Essays actually define prostitution and slavery, namely as elites’ vile apologizing for tyranny.
I will not deny, but that, in arbitrary countries, there are sometimes found men of great parts and learning. But these are either ecclesiasticks, who, even in the greatest tyrannies, at least in Europe, are blessed with great liberty, and many independent privileges, and are freemen in the midst of slaves, and have suitable leisure and revenues to support them in their studies; or they are men invited and encouraged by the prince to flatter his pride, and administer to his pomp and pleasures, and to recommend his person and power. For these reasons alone they are caressed, protected, and rewarded. They are endowed with the advantages of freemen, merely to be the instruments of servitude. They are a sort of Swiss, hired to be the guards of their proud master’s fame, and to applaud and vindicate all his wickedness, wildness, usurpations, prodigalities, and follies. This therefore is the worst of all prostitutions, and most immoral of all sort of slavery; as it is supporting servitude with the breath of liberty, and assaulting and mangling liberty with her own weapons. A creature that lets out his genius to hire, may sometimes have a very good one; but he must have a vile and beggarly soul, and his performances are atbest but the basest way of petitioning for alms.
Or, in other words, academics 🙂 If there is a pejorative use for “prostitution”, surely it isn’t for the desire to provide for oneself without harming others according to one’s own conscience.
I was curious to see who the other contributors are for this Unbound and came across this on Steve Wagner’s Renewal Project webpage.
“The average age that girls begin prostituting in the United States is 13, therefore, there are many children working in brothels in the U.S.”
Have fun Maggie:)
It’s quite possible to say that the “average” age is 13. Suppose 2 girls enter at 13, and between ages 18 and 27 one girl enters. The “average” is 20.9 years. This is the “mean” value—all values are totalled, and divided by the number of girls, here 12.
But, the “mode” is an average which uses the most frequent or commonest value, which here is 13 years. If you assume that your audience has no mathematical ability, it’s easy to present an “average” to best suit your position. (If, say, two girls entered at 13, and two at 24, there would be two modes.) The median is the “average” in the middle of a range, here 20.
It’s also wilful manipulation of figures, but it’s quite a common practice when you want obscure a figure which doesn’t suit your purpose, and highlight one that does. Just don’t explain which “average” you are using.
No, it’s still impossible. There is no form of manipulation that will produce an average, median, mode or anything else anywhere near 13. Even the average underage girl starts about 16. There is no way to present this as a mere distortion; it’s pure fabrication, and a stupid one at that.
Let me say that I don’t believe this 13 nonsense. But I can show how it is mathematically possible to produce it. What is missing from the people who produce such misleading “statistics” is the raw data; we only see their computations. I’m quite sure they won’t share the data or sets of data; people who produce such “statistics” never do, though it’s often the first thing that people doing peer review want to look at.
Even if they invent the data, there are ways of analysing this; Benford’s law works for most large data sets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
(This is a bit heavy going; look at the bit about fraud detection.)
This massaging the averages used to be a favourite trick of estate agents (realtors) who would take a street with say 6 cheapish houses and 2 much more expensive ones. Where you want the “average” to be depended on whether you were buying or selling.
This isn’t a matter of “cheapish” and “relatively expensive”; it’s comparing shotgun shacks to stately homes and then saying “the average house costs $5000”. It’s idiotic, and it CANNOT be produced with any math; it’s just a flat-out lie.
In this context: these days I saw a soon-to-be-released study on certain small groups of independent contractors, labor laws, and taxes here in Holland. The current situation of sex workers was used as model (including the so-called ‘dry sector’ of strippers, hostesses, etc.). The researcher had had access to the (nameless) data base of one single accountancy / tax service firm and been able to study data for income on returns of about 3200 sex workers during the 2008-2012 period. These were only sex workers who worked as licensed “independent contractors” through a licensed club / sex club / escort agency; so no “unlicensed independents” working for instance through the internet. He calculated their average income before taxes close to 6000 Euros per year. However, the range went from those who had only worked one or two “shifts” (and then probably figured out it wasn’t their kind of work?) to full time professionals, from window workers to escorts-de-luxe. In absolute numbers the stated gross yearly income ranged between 300 and a little over 40.000 Euros.
The “antis” can now begin arguing that The Sex Worker in Holland suffers under a horribly abusive extortion reality: they make 6000 Euros per year; data in another study show that The Sex Worker here labors 36 hours per week, therefore sex workers in Holland make only 3,25 per hour (for which of course they must suffer the demands of 2-3 clients).
The history of “13” would be interesting. Did the researchers start out with the 13 bias, or did they think they had discovered this early on, and then set out to “prove” it?
Lots of researchers generate tons of data, and ten look for answers within it. This is often called “massaging” the data, by combining parts into greater wholes, by arranging the data into the most appropriate sets etc. If you are unscrupulous enough, you can get the data to prove almost anything, and certainly whatever you want to prove. Outside assessors must see the raw data, and how that was obtained.
For example, if you were to look at the dates of birth of Turkish men in the 19th century, you would find that most of them were born on 1 January. Clearly, this is impossible. But these men didn’t know their dob, just the year, and that only because such-and-such happened then. A military factotum would then enter 1 January, for the form had to be completed. Years ago, there were reports from Georgia that they had almost found the secret of eternal life, with many people living to 120 and beyond. Only much later was it found that the men had lied about their age when called up for military service, to avoid it.
So if “researchers” talk about 13, how did they verify this age? Did they take the word of the girls, was there any documentation—and if so, was the documentation correct, and was it really for any particular girl. Did they rely on the girls’ memory; was there any estimation of the ages because no firm fact could be determined? How long was it between interview and entry? How believable were the girls? Were there any inducements?
It’s a long time since I read ‘How to lie with Statistics’—and I can’t find my copy, but it’s an easy introduction into statistical manipulation:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386145834&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+lie+with+statistics
You keep assuming Melissa Farley (the source of the “13” figure) “lied with statistics”, but she did not; she simply flat-out lied, as I explain in “The Source“. She substituted one figure for another, which isn’t a “massage”; it’s just a plain lie. I honestly don’t understand why you seem compelled to believe these people have even the slightest hint of academic rigor.
Dianne Post? Ouch… Good luck with that one. She went into a similar debate a while ago against Indian filmmaker Bishakha Datta. Her speech was only too familiar (my favourite one being ” The average life span for a woman after entering prostitution is four years, with 50 per cent of the deaths due to murder.” Seriously!)
@Maggie: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Bishakha Datta but her views are very similar to yours. For example: “When adult women say sex work is a form of livelihood or commerce rather than coercion, we need to put aside our discomforts and listen to them. When these women say that the harm in sex work comes not from the act of selling sex, but from the stigma and violence surrounding it because of its illegal and hidden nature, we must hear them.” Quite a contrast to Dianne Post’s Melissa Farley quotes!
The whole debate can be found here: http://newint.org/features/2013/04/01/should-prostitution-be-legalized-argument/?39411521111313350
I’m not too worried. It’s a print debate, so even if I get angry I can just go do something else until I calm down. I don’t have to convince Post (or Wagner); all I have to do is calmly and quietly refute the fake stats on which most of their arguments will no doubt be constructed. Remember, Cato’s audience is mostly libertarian, so they already agree with my basic principles; all I have to do is refute arguments that this is a “special case” (like children or the mentally ill) justifying government abrogation of the principle of self-ownership.
I wonder what they will come up with, although I suspect that their argumentation is very predictable! As others have said before me, have fun 🙂
“The average life span for a woman after entering prostitution is four years, with 50 per cent of the deaths due to murder”.
One for your “Frequently Told Lies” article?
You put this together with the thirteen thing, and it means that most prostitutes are dead before they’re old enough to vote, let alone buy beer.
You have to wonder if people even stop to ask themselves the “if this is true” question.
Wow. I just read Post’s article. Aside from being poorly constructed in the main (as much of it as I could stomach), she lost me when she claimed that men “believe they have a right to sexual access” as the “demand” side of the sex-work transaction. I’m wondering if she understands the difference between a right and a commodity. I do not think this word means what she thinks it means. And that she has only a passing acquaintance with logic and reasoning.
She further hammered her credibility by subsequently delineating all the ways in which that general “right” is restricted these days. It was a pretty sad litany of all the ways a man can’t have his violent way with the women (and children) of his choice these days. Seriously, she needs to look up the meaning of the word “right”…and to stop using scare quotes.
She also thinks the woman is subordinate in sex transaction and that the only reason for prostitution is inequality between people/sexes. She starts from a faulty premise, and it just gets worse. I don’t envy you actually having to read it closely enough to disassemble her on it. I couldn’t get past more than a few paragraphs.
It wasn’t easy, but I managed. You’ll see the result next week. 🙂
interesting that Weitzer entered into “conversation” with you right in his first paragraph. Post acknowledged neither you nor Weitzer; she didn’t have the courtesy or even strategic consideration to do so. I think it shows that she is not accepting Cato’s invitation to discuss or debate your and Weitzer’s thoughts and arguments. It’s a soliloquy, rather she runs her mouth and what comes out is predictable.
The issue that goes well beyond the actual topic here is fundamental to productive and interesting conversations on any subject: Can open, knowledgeable minds like yours and Weitzer’s engage closed minds like hers and that of other abolitionists in having a meaningful, open-ended discussion? How to do that? How to make a closed mind listen? Too often this given is so frustrating and discouraging. Curious to see how you replied!
Read your response on Cato-unbound. I thought you “managed” very well. Two slightly para-relevant thoughts.
1. I’ve never met a female estate agent, but after the murder of Suzy Lamplugh years ago, apparently they started to work in pairs; it seems a very sensible precaution. Yet sex workers can’t do this, well, not legally. (Found this in a Guardian ‘comment is free’ piece from a couple of days ago.)
2. I’m not a theologian, but I might take issue with the one you quote, not to refute her ideas, merely to expand them. The Protestant Reformation did not construct a new morality de novo, rather it sought to ‘improve’ existing ideas and practices. Surely, the idea that sex was bad came from the early doctors of the (Catholic) church, presumably because of what went on in the Garden of Eden. If the way to heaven was to be pure, the best route was chastity; but if you couldn’t manage this, then marry and have sex only for the production of sin-free virgins. And the Catholic church recognised the reality, that whoring was ‘bad’, but you could repent (or buy an indulgence). The bishop of Winchester, after all, lived off the avails of his “geese”. The protestants hardened this view; sex outside marriage was bad, full stop, and if you indulged you were a risk of a public bollocking from the pulpit, as Robert Burns was. The prods were much less tolerant, and understanding, than the catholics; but the ‘sex is bad’ idea didn’t really originate with them.
Nice picture btw.
At the end of your piece on Cato, you provide a link to your Short History. I don’t remember seeing this before; is it new, or just more evidence of how gaga I am?
It’s new; I wrote it for a curriculum being taught in American universities in conjunction with showings of the film American Courtesans. The section on the development of “white slavery” hysteria was adapted from the historical section of my research paper “Mind-witness Testimony”, forthcoming in a few months in the Albany Government Law Review (and yes, a PDF will be available).
Thanks; I’m always surprised at the dichotomy of ideas in the US. Strenuous criminalization versus a university course. I thought that Short History was an excellent, accurate summation (as I understand it) of how and why things developed. I’m interested in seeing how the debate on Cato develops; just how will your points be intellectually and empirically refuted?
I look forward to reading that, Maggie.
Nice essay!
I’m looking forward to the discussion that’ll follow the other articles. Too often people like Dianne Post get to recite their dogma without any counter arguments being made.
For me, it’s particularly depressing to see the responses she received after speaking to skeptic/humanist groups: lots of “free thinkers” credulously thanking her for educating them about the “realities of prostitution”. They’d question a religious preacher making similar arguments, but feminist activists like Post, Gloria Steinem, or Gail Dines, seem able to blatantly lie without being discredited.
I just wanted to say that I read the Cato essay and it is fantastic. I look forward to the rest of the exchange.
Actually, I should add something: Your usage of “legalize” and “decriminalize” is the reverse of what I normally see elsewhere. The wikipedia pages on both appear to agree. You might want to take that into account when writing for an audience beyond your regular readers.
You did make a point of defining them, which is good practice for ambiguous terms, but I expect a non-trivial percentage of readers to ignore the intended meaning in favor of the usual meaning.
No, those are the ways the terms are used in regard to sex work, which I do understand is different from the way they are used in regard to drugs. I’m afraid I have no control over this; the terminology existed that way long before I started activism.
Huh, that’s interesting. Is that usage specific to activists, or are the terms also used that way by non-sex-workers referring to sex work regulatory status? Do sex-work activists use the drug-style meanings when referring to drug laws?
That was confusing. I think what I’m asking is: does the variation depend on who’s speaking, or what they are speaking of?
What they’re speaking of. I switch meanings when I use them for drugs and for sex work, and so does everyone else. Confusing, I know, but that’s how it has evolved.
Okay, thanks. At least it’s consistently inconsistent. 🙂
It’s like describing a wind and an ocean current. Suppose that each is moving from the north to the south. That’s a north wind and a southerly current, and they’re both going the same way.
Thank you! 🙂
Maggie, congratulations, your essay in Cato Unbound is a masterpiece. If someone asked me to explain my own views on prostitution, I wouldn’t bother–I would just refer them to your essay saying,” She explains it much better than I ever could.” I look forward to the rest of the debate.
One thing crossed my mind: wouldn’t you say that Germany, in addition to New Zealand and Australia, has also decriminalized sex work, at least on the level of national law? Some regions, like Bavaria, still put some restrictions on sex work, but most regions do not. My own experiences in Germany in various “sauna clubs” and “FKKs” (mega-brothels in reality) confirm this view.
Thank you! Germany is about as close as legalization gets to decriminalization without crossing over; see this coming Saturday’s TW3 column for an example of a Germany-wide restriction.
Excellent. I have learned a lot. Keep up the good work.
This is why I don’t like being behind. I missed this as it was happening. Ah well; I’ll come back and read it later. I do want to see how it goes.