Buying Sex
A Paradigm Example of Unethical Consumption
This week, we bring you an exclusive excerpt from Featured Author and philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith’s 2024 co-authored book, Is It Wrong to Buy Sex? A Debate. In this section, Lawford-Smith argues against those who think women’s autonomy demands permitting a market in sex.
Buying Sex
Holly Lawford-Smith
What are the injustices in the supply chain of commercial sex, specifically, the end product of a discrete session of sexual acts, paid for by a john? Depending on the individual woman, there may be any of a range of injustices, human rights violations, and other harms.
There is human trafficking for prostitution. There are rapes. There are beatings. There is captivity/confinement. There is coercive control. There is psychological abuse. There is drug and alcohol addiction (whether a habit induced by pimps and traffickers, or a coping mechanism adopted by the sex worker herself). There are thefts, including refusals to pay. There is coercion/blackmail (e.g. police officers saying that they will arrest the sex worker if she does not service him for free). There is mistreatment by police and legal officials. There is social stigma, which may prevent sex workers from accessing physical and mental health services that are desperately needed. Any time a man buys sex, he risks having sex with a woman who has had, or is having, any number of these experiences.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: UK Grooming Gangs, Fertility Idolatry, and No Place Like Home
This week: Julie Bindel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Bari Weiss on the UK grooming gangs, Helen Roy on idolizing fertility, and Ivana Greco on the importance of the home. Plus: defending the privileged girlboss, Dawkins on gender, seasons of motherhood, a Fairer Disputations book club, and more!
From the Archives:
Mia Döring defends the Nordic Model—which criminalizes the act of buying sex, but not the act of selling it—as the best legislation for combatting prostitution.
Prosecute the Men Who Pay for Sex, Not the Women Who Sell It
Mia Döring
“Prostitution—paid rape—doesn’t exist because of poverty or drug addiction. It exists because men create the market for it. The Nordic Model justly recognizes and responds to this reality.”
Thank you for writing this. Like pornography, a total no-brainer. Our society will not survive like this. We are in total denial that we’ve descended into universal levels of sexual abuse. Men by modern internet porno; women by these men.
My concern is with the cavalier dismissal of the price women who are in the sex industry would pay "for the benefit of women generally." To paraphrase: "all women would pay a price, it's just that these women would pay it with their entire livelihood." Whether all women would pay a price is dubious, and the idea that sex workers owe a moral duty to elite women to stop working is grotesque elitism.