I get a big kick out of political correctness. Not because I feel like it has any productive value for me compared to reading about US-Chinese tensions in Foreign Affairs, for instance, but primarily because it is a source of personal amusement. I pore over PC issues, in all the news I subscribe to. With glee, I’ve taken PC tests in the Washington Post and the New York Times invariably. I’ve read survey evidence of words people did and didn’t think were appropriate to say. And so I’m surprised that for all my PC’ness binge reading, I have not once landed on any discussion of, or any list that featured, the sterile euphemism, sex work or sex worker.
I think this phrase is really stupid. Rather than attempt to destigmatize prostitution, here we see more of an effort to neutralize or neuter it, which is tantamount to an attempt to cleanse sex itself of all provocative content. I understand the point is to expunge prostitution of stigma because of its demeaning connotation, with its associations with self-degradation, when many prostitutes are in reality willing, you might say, happy prostitutes, proud to do what they do for money.
Now I’m not averse to sex work, because I’m against prostitution. I am personally against prostitution. It strikes me as immoral to make sexual love a trade, whether you are a prostitute or partaking of one. It’s objectively a seedy business to me on either end. But even given how indecent I find it, to the extent it can be made safe, I’m actually not sure I would be against its legalization. Just because I think it’s gross, doesn’t mean I get to prevent others from engaging with it, if that’s their prerogative (otherwise I would be a conservative). Perhaps you could say this is a good measure of how libertarian I am. I have a similarly ambiguous stance on abortion. Nevertheless, I have doubts on whether it can be regulated, so that if I were asked whether I were for or against prostitution-legalization today, I would certainly answer: probably not.
The reason, however, I don’t like the political correctism, sex work, is that it’s so sterile and euphemistic that it sounds as if it were making bureaucracy out of sex. Sex work. That’s bureaucratic. It’s a contradiction in terms isn’t it? What kind of sex have you ever had, or could you have, that was “work?”
I dislike the phrase, sex work, because it dresses up sex in a gray suit. Since sex worker is the bureaucratization, so it is by necessity, the reduction and subordination of hot sex to dry menial labor; or it’s the watering down of intimacy in way of transforming it into the objects of commercial exchange: collapsing the private, personal almost spiritual-religious spheres of orgasmic ecstasy on one hand, and public commercial occupational intercourse on the other hand.
And while I can’t say I know what this portends for work, I’m inclined to think this does not bode well for the future of the pleasures of the bedroom. Half of the excitement of sex—maybe this is just me (let me know in the comments what you think)—has to do with the notion that it’s naughty, that it’s dirty. Part of the joy of sex in other words, consists in the fact that it is is outre, that the sexual act is taboo, that it’s silly, that it’s awkward, that it’s messy, that it’s bad in a sense, the notion going all the way back to original sin, and that you have to do it out of sight, and that we go about it with a thrilled kind of guilt. The vast majority of us would be mortified if someone even heard us doing it. Most of us also would never share what our intimate lives are like, even with our closest friends. Just talking about sex in a disinterested way makes most of us uncomfortable.
The forcefully sterile, oppressive phrase sex worker then expresses a disdain, if not a hostility, for the naughty pleasure which constitutes a good part of sex’s fundamental joy. Now I can understand why if we want to legalize prostitution, we wouldn’t want prostitutes to feel ashamed of what they do safely and happily for work ideally, but I would not advocate for substituting the word, prostitute, for a political-correctism. In our desire not to demean prostitutes here, ironically we run the risk of taking the immoral fun out of sex while almost ironically expressing shame of one of the essential constituent features of sex’s enjoyment—the fact that we have an instinct that is guilty and fearful about it.
If anything given we want to legalize prostitution (if we wanted to), we would be better advised to go out of our way deliberately to preserve the scandalousness of sex which we would run the risk of losing, just by virtue of making sex commercial or public in any capacity.
If we should commercialize and therefore socialize, and also trivialize sex, then all of us who care about it must be prepared to fight against its impending desacralization.
Please for goodness’ sake, let’s keep calling sex employees prostitutes at least.
— Jay
I will note under a traditional common law view of criminality(like you still have to a large degree in places like England and Australia) prostitution is NOT illegal and never has been. Things associated with prostitution like public soliciting, brothel keeping/bawdy houses(having more than two prostitutes at a single establishment) and vagrancy are illegal under a traditionalist common law view of prostitution but not the act itself. Criminalization of prostitution in the US comes from a moralistic early 20th century rejection of English judge made common law principles in favor of what American moralists saw as more democratic statute law morality(Common law for example says little about alcohol consumption or drug taking either).
In England the closest catch all law to banning prostitution historically has been the living on the avails offense however, in practice given the arcane and ancient language of the statute in effect advertising platforms and escort "agencies" have long been effectively legal in the UK(Is an "agent" living on the avails of prostitution? Who knows?). In Australia most state governments(which have even more extensive powers over criminal law than US states) largely repealed all prostitution related statutes in the late 1980s and early 90s.
**The treatment of gambling is another not well known in America aspect of traditional English common criminal law. Most Americans I used to always assume must be shocked to find out how many upscale but discreet "escort" agencies and casinos operate out of the high income London neighborhoods of Mayfair and Kensington as I was when I first visited London.