Legalizing prostitution

Final Research Assignment

PHAM THI PHUONG UYEN – PHAT1D1803

Prostitution, or “sex work”, has long been a heated debate whether it should be fully legalized

and seen as other works or it is still a criminalized occupation that deserves the stigmatization it

has been receiving. In this essay, I will discuss how sex work and sex workers should receive

equal treatment like other works and that legalizing it would make said workers’, especially

women’s, life a bit better.

The stigma of selling your own body existed a long time ago according to Nussbaum. Old

society believed that activities that were not leisure made one political judgment weaker and

made them small-minded. This stigma had a strong link to class privilege. The idea is basically

gentlemen didn’t earn wages, their daily activities should be done amateurishly. We can see from

this idea that not everyone can actually afford it, but only those who were already wealthy, and

they didn’t have to suffer from social stigma.

The stigmatization surrounding sex work mostly comes from the misconception built by media,

along with the stereotypes of sex workers being immoral, promiscuous. They are seen as people

who are unworthy of respect, of equal treatment. Not only that, people make sex workers have

responsibility for their situation but treat them as irresponsible social actors (Bruckert 71). Sex

workers suffer a lot from prejudice caused by the general public that they are immoral. Not only

that, as Nussbaum argued, this stigma is the result of gender hierarchy in our society (379).

Women are deemed as men’s way to release their sexual desires and that women should always

be available and submissive for men. Men see sexually active women as a threat to their control,

so they create stigma by repressing the occupation, or prostitution. The stigmatization also comes

from religious belief, because people always view lust as bad and dangerous, especially if it is

from a woman; consequently, prostitution is bad and dangerous too.

Despite the stigmatization that prostitution has, if we look at it just as other occupations, there

are quite some traits that make sex work the same as other works. Nussbaum has made a total of

six examples in which she compared the similarities and differences between prostitution and

other jobs that are also somewhat related to bodily service. The six occupations were: factory

worker, domestic servant, nightclub singer, professor of philosophy, masseuse and the

colonoscopy artist. The similarities between these works vary from all being low-paid jobs, do as

their clients pleased, require developed skills to use their bodies to provide pleasure (Nussbaum,

375). The differences mostly about how prostitutes are under the effect of being sexually

assaulted, being physically abused and dealing with having their intimate, private part in their

bodies invaded. But according to Nussbaum, she believed that health risk and control over

working condition of prostitutes could be improved by legalizing prostitution (374). However,

some differences might come as a surprise. The first one being sex workers may have more

flexible working hour and working conditions. Not only that, sex workers can also gain certain

sets of skills which help broaden their abilities and flexibility. The labour practices of sex work

show us another view of this occupation. This particular type of work requires stamina and

physical strength, not only that, interpersonal skills are also needed. Sex workers should be able

to be sociable, patient, and capable of dealing with a variety of people (Bruckert). Other skills

that would be necessary are money management (especially to independent workers), conflict

resolution, creativity, acting skill. These skills are those that are transferable to other jobs outside

the sex industry.

If we think of sex work as work, we can easily understand why people choose to be sex workers.

Prostitution offers workers opportunities to make an income, provides them independence, sense
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of self-worth, and in some cases, financial security. Sex workers also gain the chance to associate

with new people, to explore their sexuality through their work.

The reason why prostitution being fully legalized has been an issue is that people are starting to

realize the ugly side of this special type of work. According to a 2006 statistic Canada report:

171 female sex workers were murdered between 1991-2004, 45% of cases remain unsolved.

Street-based workers are extremely vulnerable not only to criminalization but also to violence:

from police, community members to clients, aggressors. They are physically and verbally

abused. But what more concerning is that they are denied help. Due to the criminalization against

them (Criminal Code Section 210 and 211), they tend to evade the attention of police. This leads

to them shift their working locations to less-populated areas, but this also limits the risk of

aggressors being arrested. Criminalization has undermined sex workers access to labour rights.

Another issue that comes from sexual exploitation is sex trafficking. However, Rose stands that

sex workers are not necessary to go through hardship, exploitation to receive protection and

fundamental human rights. Rose has made a point that “sex trafficking narratives have the ability

both to define truths about prostitution and sex work and to determine who the most appropriate

custodians of knowledge about prostitution are” (60). Contrary to popular belief, sex workers’

experience is different from what people assume. The sex worker who “does not speak of

victimization, says that she wants to continue working” may be seen as a fraud (60). People often

see prostitution as an exploited work, and sex workers are those who have no choice but to

choose that work. So when they tell their own stories without adding the “tragic narratives”, the

general public would think they are hiding the truth about their work. Rose also shows agreement
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to Jeffrey who made a point that “sex workers should not have to perform grief in order to have

access to basic human rights and that we are punished for our strength and rewarded for our

pain” (60-61).

In conclusion, we can see that decriminalize and legalize sex work would offer sex workers more

security, helps them get access to labour rights and be able to take advantage of the provision of

Employment Insurance Act. This also helps the sex workers community to feel more protected

and freely enjoy their work without living in fear of stigmatization and marginalization.
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Annotated Bibliography

 Chris Bruckert and Colette Parent, “The Work of Sex Work.” In Sex Work: Rethinking

the Job, Respecting the Workers, eds C. Parent et al (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

Bruckert and Parent’s main idea in their work were how the sex industry operates and strongly

emphasized on the exploitation of sex workers: how they were mistreated and how they deal

with stigmatization. They also dwelled on violence in the sex industry and criminalization’s

effect on sex workers being denied security and undermined their access to labour rights. They

mostly used examples from people they interviewed and reports as their way of supporting their

argument. Throughout the whole discussion, they gave readers a more detailed view on how the

sex industry work contrary to popular belief and the situation sex workers are having due to

stigmatization and criminalization.

 Martha Nussbaum, “Whether From Reason or Prejudice: Taking Money for Bodily

Services,” in The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, eds. Alan Soble and

Nicholas P. Power (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008): 367-400.

In Nussbaum work, she has provided another view of how stigma about selling bodily service

started a long time ago. She implied that the old stigma has already seen as unreasonable and not

fit in society anymore, from which we can hope that people that make the stigma around sex

work would also realize it’s no longer fitting. In her argument, she used six representatives to

compare prostitution and from that, showed us sex work is not much different from other

professions and its disadvantage could be improved by legalizing prostitution. She also analyzed

how people from nearly two hundred years ago think of paid labour or “unleisured activity”.
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Nussbaum also provided us some reasons no why the stigmatization about prostitution is formed

in society.

 Ava Rose, “Punished for Strength: Sex Worker Activism and the Anti-Trafficking

Movement,” Atlantis v. 37 n.2 (2015-2016): 57-64

With Rose’s essay, she gave us readers a new insight into the sex industry and used her

experience in the said industry to make her argument more convincing. She showed a different

side of sex workers, who don’t add the victimization into their stories when talking about their

work. She implied that workers are not necessary to be treated like slavery or make themselves

as victims to be given basic rights. She agreed that doing so means they are “punished for our

strength and rewarded for our pain”. She also emphasized on how stigmatization leads to sex

workers build a community of their own to provide some sorts of encouraging and social

relationship, even to empower each other. She suggested that it’s time we support sex workers of

all circumstances, not only those who suffer from victimization and by doing that it would help

change the situation from within the sex workers community.