General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I have the right to perform a sexual service in exchange for money. [View all]Unvanguard
(4,588 posts)Take a minimum wage law, which you explicitly say is fine. The federal minimum wage law bans me from making an agreement with someone else to sell my labor for less than $7.25 an hour. That's a substantive restriction on what I can do with my body.
Now, you can say, well, it's just a regulation, because the minimum wage law permits me to do exactly the same labor as long as I get paid at least $7.25 an hour. But maybe the employer won't agree to pay me $7.25 an hour. I want to do the work (maybe I want the extra income, maybe I want the experience) but the law won't let me; it's a deal that both of us think will benefit us, but we can't do it, the law won't let us.
Or think about maximum-hour laws. Maybe I'd love to work more hours a week--but my employer, who'd be happy to pay me my normal wage for that, doesn't want to pay overtime pay.
We tend to think these laws are justified, though, because they enforce workplace norms that, on the whole, make society better off. A minimum wage protects low-wage workers. Maximum-hour laws help keep work from totally taking over people's lives. Looking at them solely through this sort of individual-rights market logic--it's consensual, we both want to!--is a destabilizing norm that threatens these social gains.
On a certain view of prostitution, you can see how the same thing can be true there. Yes, on the abstract individual level, it makes sense to say, if people want to engage in a consensual sexual commercial arrangement, why not let them? But what happens socially, institutionally, if you adopt that rule? What happens to social norms about the treatment or sexualization of women? What happens to cases to the ability to control prostitution where it's not so consensual, where the limitations a ban puts on demand are done away with? Maybe these problems can be alleviated but you can't address them by just pointing to this individual rights framework.