Molly Smith

Sex work is the vault in which society stores some of its keenest fears and anxieties.

Perhaps the most difficult questions raised by prostitution involve what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society. Feminist writer Kate Millett notes feminist rhetoric suggesting ‘that all women are prostitutes, that marriage is prostitution’.

They noted that this interest in the metaphorical uses of prostitute was not accompanied by much practical support for sex workers’ efforts to tackle criminalisation.

‘It’s not intended to arouse – but people are turned on by all kinds of things, so maybe someone will be turned on by sex workers fighting for social justice.’

With legalistion, only some sex work, in only some contexts, is legal, whereas with decriminalisation, prostitution is, as a starting point, not a crime.

Liberal support for regulationism is linked to the notion that prostitution is something innate, perennial, inevitable – the dirty job that someone has got to do. This has deep roots: Christian theologians, for instance, have argued that commercial sex is an outlet for sexual impulses that would otherwise result in worse sins.

The patriarchal double standard praises men for having multiple sexual partners but shames and condemns women for the same. Mathematically, the only way for men to practice promiscuity while allowing the majority of women to remain ‘respectable’ is for a small number of women to be extremely sexually active.

That is, patriarchal sexual norms render sex work not only economically viable but in some sense necessary – whether for the benefit of the individual client or for the benefit of society.