From Allison Schrager, this was striking:
“I only charged $300 when I lived in San Francisco,” Andrea says.
Unlike most industries, escorts can charge higher prices when they are
in greater supply. This is because price is one of the few metrics sex suppliers
can use to convey quality. (In this way it is not unlike the hedge-fund
industry.) There are only about 30 VIPs in San Francisco, but nearly
100 in New York, so Andrea can charge more here. The customer
demographic is also wealthier, and a higher price deters customers from
bargaining, which is considered poor taste.
Alas, I cannot vouch for its accuracy. But in April I am participating in a NYC debate over the morality of prostitution, later to be broadcast on NPR. Notwithstanding my praise for Ross Douthat, I will be defending prostitution (with the Mayflower Madam on my side), against Catherine MacKinnon and others.
My bleg is this: other than Bernard Mandeville, what should I read to prepare? Any and all assistance is appreciated.
One of the more interesting arguments against legalization of prostitution I’ve read was by Scott Anderson, “Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy: Making Sense of the Prohibition of Prostitution,” Ethics, July 2002.
Anderson points out that if society decides to treat sexual services as something that can be bought and sold just like any other good, or any other kind of labor, this may actually undermine sexual autonomy, at least as it is currently understood.
For example: it may become acceptable for employers to require employees to perform sexual services as part of their job. For most people, this would count as a decrease in sexual autonomy.
There is (or used to be) a blog by a woman who claimed to be a high-end escort. Most of her posts were not related to her paying work, but she did several on what it’s like to be in the business that were fascinating and had the ring of truth. I wish I could remember the name of her blog.
This.
Walter Block’s “Defending the Undefendable.”
Here’s the Amazon link.
“the morality of prostitution”: is the basis of your expertise that you know many Academics, or more specifically that you know many Economists?
You could of course browse the message board on this site – you might not like the material, but I’m guessing you’d at least be able to see real members of the profession chatting amongst themselves, albeit from a British slant.
http://www.punternet.com/
Some of the ladies there have their own blogs.
The website is actually collegecallgirl.blogspot.com, and the author really is an *excellent* writer. I’m reading it now and I’m disturbed yet fascinated.
“Pimp” by Iceberg Slim. Recommend also his other works.
“I think the selected quote means to say “high end escorts can charge higher prices…” and not “escorts” unadorned. And I don’t see any reason to think it’s true. Given the choice between Andrea and another escort–let’s say a graduate of Columbia with a MBA from Stanford, attractive and fit, discreet, who is certified by a reputaable source to have sex only relatively rarely (for a professional) and only with men of the same social class as those Andrea services, and who charged only $100 an hour, who would get more business? Price signals lots of things, yes, but that doesn’t mean that price doesn’t matter–it just means that controlling for the other things is hard to do.”
That’s a straw man. Not to drift too far from this particular area, if Apple started selling laptops for $100, who would get more business in the laptop market? That question doesn’t make sense either. Nobody is going to sell something below it’s market value and stick around for very long. The answer to your question doesn’t tell you anything since you’re ignoring equilibrating forces.
When prostitutes charge $1500, they lower their workload by catering to customers that can afford it. They make money and the johns can rest assured knowing that she’s not fresh from completing a transaction with a commoner.
I can think of at least one method Andrea could employ to determine if her competitors offer comparable services.
The whole idea of a debate over “the morality of prostitution” strikes me as missing the point, and not being instructive in the slightest.
If you’re just arguing that in /some/ circumstances, under some hypothetical ideal conditions, it’s moral to pay for sex, you aren’t going to have an interesting debate and it’s not going to discuss anything practically relevant. (E.g., guy with cerebral palsy paying well for experience with a sane, educated, financially secure sex worker who likes her job and gets a warm fuzzy feeling out of helping the disabled.)
But just arguing flat out, “It’s moral to pay for sex” ignores the fact there are a helluva lot of times when it’s blatantly not moral, even if in other ranges of circumstances most people would probably be morally okay with it.
Anyway, that minor peeve aside — it definitely couldn’t hurt, Tyler, to familiarize yourself with the feminist defenses of prostitution. A lot of it is good stuff on its own, but since you’re up against MacKinnon, it might be especially useful.
The best way to handle MacKinnon is to ignore what she says. She’ll ignore what you say. And the radical feminists are very loose with statistics, a form of dishonesty that is hard to expose on the spot.
These are two relatively good pieces that might be useful for your side…
More philosophical:
Nussbaum, M., 1999, Sex and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Decriminalize/legalization = good:
Almodovar, N. J., 2002, “For Their Own Good: The Results of the Prostitution Laws as Enforced by Cops, Politicians, and Judges†, in Liberty for Women, W. McElroy (ed.), Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
The whole idea of a debate over “the morality of prostitution” strikes me as missing the point, and not being instructive in the slightest.
Strongly disagree. For one thing, Cowen is fairly committed to a world view that posits freedom of choice and freedom from regulation as unquestionable goods. And yet many if not most people disagree when it comes to prostitution. This seems like a good area for debate.
But in April I am participating in a NYC debate over the morality of prostitution
It’s getting to be ridiculous. What makes you an expert on morality?
I’m not sure about prostitution, but I would bet $100 you are not an expert either.
Except that you are prostituting your position/profession by participating in a discussion about subject you know nothing about.
I agree with Scape. What a pathetic way to ignore all the real issues by asking a question that is non-controversial! I can’t imagine why you agreed to participate. “The morality of prostitution” (i.e. the morality of prostituting oneself) is not an issue many people have a problem with these days — and those who do won’t see any point in debating the issue.
Presumably McKinnon is participating just to draw attention to the real questions which are:
Is hiring a prostitute moral?
And the implicit subtext of some people’s view on the former: Should prostitution be legalized?
Presumably a lot of the moral arguments will touch on the fact that prostitution is often the economic refuge of the desperate, so I would read up on times in history when there were big spikes in prostitution due to economic hardship or war. For example, the lack of supply lines to Naples during WWII devastated the local economy and an estimated 42,000 out of 150,000 women were engaging in some prostitution, often with US troops (this also created a VD epidemic).
Jim Leitzel at uchicago does a lot of work on vice, vice control, and victimless crime. His blog, vicesquad.blogspot.com, is a very good resource. I suggest you do a google search for ” prostitution site:vicesquad.blogspot.com”
You should read these
1. Helen Reynolds’ 1986 _The Economics of Prostitution_ (a book-length treatment)
2. Edlund and Korn’s 2002 JPE, “A Theory of Prostitution” (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/03/the-economics-of-prostitution-pricing-bleg.html). Tries to explain the so-called “puzzle” that prostitutes are low-skill, labor-intensive, female-intensive, and high-wage occupations. Roots the explanation in the marriage market.
3. Rao, et al. 2003 Journal of Development Economics – compensating differentials paper. Looks at the wage compensation brothel prostitutes in Calcutta earn for having unprotected sx.
4. Gertler, Shah and Bertozzi 2005 JPE – similar to Rao, et al, they estimating compensating differentials for Mexican and Central American street prostitutes. The identification they use is better, imo. Panel data, using with-prostitute variation in prices and risky sex, with a theoretical model to help the identification along.
5. Giusta, Marina Della, Maria Laura Di Tommaso and Steinar Strom. 2008. “Who’s Watching? The Market for Prostitution Services.” Journal of Population Economics Forthcoming. This is a model similar to Eric Rasmusen’s 1996 Journal of Law and Economics piece on criminal behavior and stigma. Their model shows that stigma is a deterrent to consume and produce prostitution services. They then have an extension in the model wherein stigma is endogenous – this is basically related to some of Akerlof’s stuff on social interactions.
And then you should just go to Manisha Shah’s website (http://mercury.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/mshah/research.htm) and read what she is doing and has done. She’s currently one of the leading economists working in the area of the economics of prostitution. Most of her work focuses on developing countries, but that appears to be changing (see her paper with T. Logan on signaling and prostitution).
You should also read Levitt and Venkatesh’s 2007 working paper on street prostitution, and Amanda Brooks’ writings on prostitution. Amanda has a book-length treatment examining how to make it into the business.
Also check out Elizabeth Bernstein’s book, _Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity and the Commerce of Sex_. Bernstein is a sociologist at Berkeley, and this is a work that came out of years of ethnographic research. I’m reading it now and it’s excellent.
Melissa Farley’s research is very unscholarly.
I’ve been mulling this question over and I think the best way to approach it is to take sex out of the discussion. The morality of buying and selling sex is like the morality of buying and selling anything else.
There doesn’t seem to be too much of a moral issue when you’re selling something to which you have clear title.
On the other hand, the morality of buying something is a trickier proposition. Here the means of production may matter. For example, if you know or should know that the only reason you can buy something at the price quoted is because it’s produced by slaves, then it’s not surprising that there will be a lot of dispute over the morality of the trade, because there’s a legitimate question as to whether your demand is a part of the process that creates a slave trade.
The point I’m trying to make is that the moral question is the same whether we’re talking about cotton, coffee, diamonds or sex. I think it’s fair to say that buyers always have some moral obligation to inquire into the means of production of their purchases.
For a good historical perspective, I think you can’t do much better than Judith Walkowitz’s (now) classic 1980 book “Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State.”
It offers a compelling argument that, despite attempts at direct state control and cultural forces to the contrary, working class women in Victorian Britain viewed prostitution as a viable (and sometimes preferable) option to other forms of work.
Also check out her “City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London” from 1992.
(Sorry for the quotation marks…it is far from Chicago Manual of Style standards, but you get the point).
We had MacKinnon and Harvey Mansfield debate at Brown. MacKinnon made faces and gestures the entire time Mansfield was talking. She acted like a child. It was embarrassing.
Furthermore, the question “Is it wrong to pay for sex” is stupidly essentialist. You might as well ask “Is it wrong to pay for food”. I might be able to construct some very unusual scenarios where most people would agree it was. But universally, and in every possible context? That’s dumb. Of course it isn’t inherently wrong. And in the grand majority of scenarios it is good. Both parties usually benefit in a consensual economic exchange, which is why they are agreeing to it. Sex is intrinsically no different than food or anything else I could name in this regard. So what we are really arguing is if free economic exchange is good, and the answer is yes, for both empirical and philosophical reasons.
The conditions where exchange is wrong usually fall under some small number of predictable categories, like fraud (e.g. I sell you sugar pills, telling you they cure cancer), or impaired consent (e.g. exploiting mentally ill homeless people, or hiring child labor). I think it is insulting that the implied reason that soliciting prostitutes is wrong is that prostitutes are like children or the mentally ill, without a recognized ability to make a free adult choice in the matter.
Of course, in some sense maybe I sympathize a little with the paternalism behind it (… yes, “paternalism” is an ironic word here!). Some adults really do have the same basic decision-making abilities as many children or mentally ill people. And I’m sure they are overrepresented among prostitutes.
Just because there are dumb (but not otherwise “mentally ill”) adult men who would happily cut off their left foot for $10,000, unaware or unconcerned about the much larger long-term income penalty this will impose on them, does that make it moral for you to carry out the exchange, solely for your sick entertainment, when you have a fuller apprehension of the consequences?
The answer is ‘no’. It is a kind of ‘fraud’, and it is immoral even if it isn’t illegal. (is it??)
But I don’t even think this is comparable to prostitution. Prostitution might prevent some women from long-term relationships and more lucrative career tracks than they would otherwise have, but this is doubtful. More likely you are imposing very little unforeseen penalties on a prostitute than she would otherwise endure. Is it really more degrading for the prostitute to have sex with a strange man for money, than to serve burgers or clean toilets? Because if that were the case it seems she could easily quit and obtain such jobs (given proper legal conditions, of course. Women in the illegal universe get trapped by violent pimps, etc).
The “uncomfortable” truth is is that there are many women who enjoy selling sex — literally enjoy the job — or find it more bearable and less degrading than other kinds of work plausibly open to them. And the evidence quoted above suggests this for a majority of prostitutes.
Contact Roissy to see if he has any suggestions.
Not because any enlightenment is to be expected therefrom (or from the debate as a whole, for that matter) but merely in the hope that the cat will be let loose among the pigeons.
If you were going to debate legalizing hair cuts, I’d suggest you get you hair cut. If you were going to debate legalizing marijuana, I’d suggest trying that first. So …
And if we’re going to legalize suicide?
Look up “Hobbyist” and “GFE” on the Googles.
Talk to sex worker organizations and read what they recommend.
http://www.bayswan.org/
http://www.bayswan.org/student.html
http://www.iswface.org/
Once again I appeal to Jason Malloy to start an independent blog of his own as to bless us with the ridiculous amounts of knowledge he possesses.
I’m curious why this is a debate among academics who are not actually involved in sex work (with the exception of Ms. Barrows– formerly involved). Though it looks like an interesting panel, what does anyone hope to accomplish?
XX
And also Naked: the life and pornography of Michael Lucas (which I review here, it is a great example of the Voltaire point about commerce and diversity) because Lucas operated a travel agency before going into hustling, approached the latter as a business and has since become a successful businessperson, funding his (porn) business originally from his hustling.
After all, how many ex-prostitutes have had profiles in The New Republic?
Prostitution is the ancients job in the world. Just separate the definitions that a hooker does it for pleasure and a prostitute for money. Is it not told that doing what you more enjoy is what rewards you economically The Bible is the best source of information on the topic. Have a lot of fun reading Jose Saramago’s The Gospel according to Jesus Christ
Harvard Professor Jeffrey Miron discusses the pros and cons of drug legalization, a great video that might give you ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3QAlKx10c
Eliot Spitzer is up on the topic of high-priced call girls.
What should you read?
Try reading the diary of a wife and or the children of a man (since we generally seek “services”)
who has been publicly caught, lost a lucrative career and has a marriage, family and finances in
tatters. I’m not sure what’s defensible about something that’s intrinsically degrading and likely to
result in breach of (marriage) contract.
There is a moral dimension to the commerce of sex and there’s nothing enlightened about ignoring it.
But after you defend it publicly, also publicly encourage your daughters, nieces, etc. to
consider it as a career. Think it of as “the equivalent of requiring an economist to put their money
where their mouth is”
I think this debate is oddly matched – radical feminist firebrands Melissa Farley and Catherine MacKinnon, alongside “modesty” maven Wendy Shalit versus the “Mayflower Madame” and several people who, honestly, I’ve never seen in the debate around prostitution or sexual morality issues. And, to be honest, the fact that Tyler Cowen is saying he hasn’t even done much reading on the subject is worrisome. It seems like the debate is kind of mismatched, and quite honestly, considering that there are several articulate and currently active sex-worker rights activists and allies (Audacia Ray, Nina Hartley, and Laura Agustin come to mind immediately) that apparently were not called on for the debate, I have to wonder what the organizers of the debate were thinking.
As for reading, there’s quite a bit out there to catch up on. I recommend high-tailing it over to the sex worker rights blog Bound Not Gagged (http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/) and review what they’ve written so far, in particular, their blog-in against Melissa Farley from a couple of years back. Also, give Laura Agustin’s “Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry” a read if you can. Also take a look at the Wikipedia page on Melissa Farley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Farley) and read the citations linked to therein, especially her debates with Robert Weitzer and the critique of her work by Barbara Brents. You’ll need to know this, because Melissa Farley is a one-woman industry of dubious statistics about prostitution, and she sounds very credible to the uninitiated.
One thing I can say, though, is that even though MacKinnon and Farley’s blanket condemnation of sexual commerce is based on some weak arguments (that is, unless you buy into their radical feminist world view a priori), they have devoted their lives to activism on the subject (and MacKinnon in particular is a sharp legal scholar), so if you walk into this debate without sufficient preparation, you’re basically going to be trounced under the weight of feminist arguments you haven’t taken into consideration and pseudo-statistics from Farley that you won’t be able to question the veracity of.
BBC has this look at legalization of prostitution in New Zealand,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7927461.stm
Tyler, I don’t envy you at all. Both MacKinnon and Farley will be hell to debate with. Farley because she doesn’t play fairly (I saw her debate at Berkeley once against Measure Q, a bill to decriminalise– more like de-prioritize– prostitution in Berkeley).
There was a recent post at the Freakonomics blog that has some input in the comments by Farley. I wrote a response, and submitted it repeatedly with no luck, but for what it is worth, here is what I wrote:
http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/my-response-to-farley-on-freakonomics-should-prostitution-be-decriminalized/
It will give you an example of how she argues. It will also be helpful to know that several academics have soundly discredited her “research” on prostitution:
–Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution by Ron Weitzer
–The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade by Ron Weitzer
(online at http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/3/447)
–A Commentary on ‘Challenging Men’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland: A Research Report Based on Interviews with 110 Men who Bought Women in Prostitution’ (Jan Macleod, Melissa Farley, Lynn Anderson, Jacqueline Golding,
2008) by 18 academics around the world.
(Available online at: http://www.scot-pep.org.uk/A%20commentary%20on%20challenging%20men's%20demand%20for%20prostitution%20in%20Scotland.pdf)
Examples of her lack of integrity: She lied to the South African group SWEAT (http://www.sweat.org.za/) to gain access to their community by saying she was a friend of COYOTE’s and Margot St. James’s. She recently wrote a (self-published) book called Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections. It was not just awfully written, but it her methods are questionable. One brothel I visited explained how she chose those with whom she interviewed: she asked them if they liked their job, and if the woman said no, she continued with the interview. If the woman said yes, she moved on to the next.
Martha Nussbaum is an excellent resource, and was interviewed for the CNBC show “Dirty Money.” (I was Jill on that show, and I also know Charlotte and Elise.) Read her paper, also in Sex and Social Justice, entitled, “‘Whether from Reason or Prejudice’: Taking Money for Bodily Services,” 2 Journal of Legal Studies 27 (1998), available at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/724668
She makes excellent points in her paper that you will be able to use.
Ron Weitzer recently had the pleasure of a debate with Melissa Farley, so definitely contact him.
Someone also listed Amanda Brooks’s book and blog. She is a dear friend, and I am sure she would be more than happy to help you in any way she can (she was also featured in the CNBC special). You may also contact me, and anyone you like on Bound, not Gagged, a sex worker rights blog by sex workers (www.boundnotgagged.com). We’ve all dealt with this issue for most of our activist lives, and we all have something to offer.
While they tend to get long-winded and ugly, it is also a good idea to check out certain feminist blogs where the debate is heated, so you can see what they will come up with. It is not too difficult to see what they will say, and they can only say it so many different ways (none of which are logically defensible). It all comes down to basically a religious argument- whether it is from a church of morality or a church of “feminism”. Here is one such thread, and it basically contains every permeutation of their argument, with others effectively trumping them:
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2006/07/23/leave-the-internets-for-a-few-days-and-everything-turns-to-shit
One of their favorite arguments is that we are all so subsumed by the patriarchy that we are complicit in our subjugation. We suffer from false consciousness, and are not in a position to truly choose this work. We suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. It is hard to argue against something like that, because they automatically render any contrary opinions by workers themselves invalid. (I’ve been in the sex industry for over 17 years, so I suppose I am a way-gonner.:) ) It is a brilliant tactic.
The mistake they make is that most of their “research” (i.e., Melissa Farley’s) is based on street-based sex work, which according to other research, is only 10-20% of the industry (http://www.walnet.org/csis/papers/shaver-distort.html). They completely miss the indoor majority. Punterlink will give you a window into much of that kind of population, as will The Erotic Review (www.theeroticreview.com), and many others- if for nothing more than evidence as to the sheer numbers of online workers. One trick is to find someone’s website, go to her links page, and just scroll through, clicking on site after site of independent workers (there are literally thousands of us out there). Malls such as Super Model Escort (www.supermodelescort.com) and the Eros Guide (www.eros-guide.com) are also great places to explore. Tons of us have our own blogs, so you can decide for yourself whether we are victims of Stockholm Syndrome.
You’ll be arguing that it is not wrong to pay for sex. Nussbaum’s paper is pretty much the best I have read succinctly and soundly arguing that very point.
Other resources:
Prostitution and Male Supremacy by Andrea Dworkin: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html
The July ’08 issue of On the Issues online magazine: http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/july08/july2008_archive.php
Prostitution Pro/Con: http://prostitution.procon.org/ (see the Philosophy/Morality section)
Prostitution and Civil Rights by Catherine MacKinnon: http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/mackinnon1.html
(Incidentally, Prostitution Research is Melissa Farley’s website. Have a look through it.)
Arguments Against Prostitution: http://people.exeter.ac.uk/watupman/undergrad/aac/anti.htm
Arguments for the Legalisation of Prostitution: http://people.exeter.ac.uk/watupman/undergrad/aac/pro.htm
Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-sex-markets/
Feminist Issues in Prostitution: http://www.feministissues.com/
Thais! So wonderful to see you here!!
I’ve missed you.
Dr. Ben’s mention of Ince’s book prompted me to recommend another: Defending Pornography by Nadine Strossen. Fabulously written, and chock-full of tid-bits you can use.
Former posters are also correct in that there are inherent issues with debating the word “wrong”.
But if I could boil the opposition’s arguments into a few succinct points, they would be:
1. Paying for sex is wrong because sex should be a special thing between two people.
–But, who says so? Religion? Whose religion? The Pagans believed orgies every spring were divine and that sex in general is the best way to worship.
2. It is wrong because of community standards.
–Whose community standards? Once again, in some communities, monogamy is not important, and in some there are few sexual taboos.
3. It is wrong because it causes broken families, the members of which are victims.
–Then all extramarital sex should be wrong. But what would you say to swingers who willingly engage in extramarital sex, sometimes together? And logically, extramarital sex is a symptom of a preexisting condition, and not causal in a break-up.
4. It is wrong because nobody will actually choose to have sex for money, therefore all transactional sex is exploitation.
–There are thousands of people– women, men, and transgender– who have made this choice. [Again, they will say that their choice is constrained, and therefore not truly a choice. But everyone's choice to do some kind of work is constrained by the fact that in our society, money is needed to survive and obtain basic living needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Then they might say that it is wrong because most prostitutes suffer from PTSD, or wish to exit the industry, or feel exploited. This is all from Melissa Farley's "research", which has been called into question by many academics (see above), not to mention that her "research" depends mostly on the most vulnerable people: people from battered women's shelters, homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation places, jails, and the streets. The people who are the more vulnerable are the ones who end up in such studies. (However, I second Amanda's suggestion to contact Scott Cunningham at Baylor- he has data that will soundly refute Farley's). They might say that some really high percentage of prostitutes have been abused as children, are victims of sexual assault, incest, rape, etc. But those
are all neither necessary nor sufficient in order for someone to sell sex, and therefore irrelevant. Even if they are relevant outside of a logical debate, they are not applicable to all sex workers. Not to mention that according to statistics often quoted by activists against violence against women, one out of every 3 or 4 women has at some point in her life been sexually assaulted. But by no means do one out of every 3-4 women become prostitutes. Not to mention that if you take a percentage of people from any occupation that is predominated by women, you will get very high statistics of abuse given the 1 in 3 or 4 statistic.]
5. It is wrong because it objectifies women as sex objects.
–Should we then assume all men play football because of the Dallas Cowboys? Or that all men fix cars because of The Pep Boys and Meineke? What if a woman is paying men to have sex with her? This happens quite a lot.
If I think of more, I will post…
Prostitution should not only be legal but encouraged for those with low moral standards. Prostitution is the oldest known profession, the first job in which someone received compensation for services rendered. Who are we, as twenty-first century Americans, to make laws prohibiting it? With the economy in bad shape, as it is now, legal prostitution could bring about a natural stimulus. If every man in the US visited a prostitute — let’s say a cheap one, $100 — only once, and they in turn spent that money on much-needed accessories, then a rough estimate of $14,000,000 would be put back into the flow of money where it belongs.
So in conclusion, men need sex, girls without an education need jobs, and the economy needs money. Legal prostitution is a win-win-win situation.
“Whores and Other Feminists” by Jill Nagle, ed., contains informed perspectives on sex work by intellectuals and others experienced in the field. I would caution on using escort websites as a source of accurate material on the industry as they are often heavily self-censored.
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