I have a hard time with sex work and porn. The social libertarian in me says people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, even sell it. But it isn’t that simple.

Sex work and modeling are the only two professions where women consistently make more money than men. And that is where it gets complicated.

I’ve been offered substantial amounts of money to do porn. I have only ever considered doing it when I was broke as hell and wasn’t sure if we were going to lose our home, etc. That is how it works for a lot of women (not all, yes some choose to do it happily and others don’t choose to do it all but are forced into it). In the end, I’ve always turned it down because while I might not leave my day job for a million dollars, porn is one of those things that I wouldn’t do if I had an extra $500, hell even $200. It is a job of desperation. It is physically much riskier than almost any other job. There is disease and violence. There are the mental health issues (most drug addicted prostitutes become that way after- not before they start working). Without the combination of a big payoff AND serious desperation, there is no incentive to do it.

But does that mean prostitution should be illegal?

No.

Right now the majority of people who get arrested for prostitution are prostitutes. Not Johns, not pimps. We have to stop punishing the victims of sex work and it starts by decriminalizing what they do to survive. When prostitution is legal (and not in the Nevada brothel rape houses kind of way, but simply not something you can be arrested for) then the price tends to go down, making it less rewarding for the girls and giving them more incentive to get out. Then we can concentrate on doing things like busting human traffickers.

So all this is on my mind because of the Elliot Spitzer case, of course. He’s not my governor, but had it merely been a case of him getting some action on the side, I don’t think it’s a big deal. But he wanted the woman to do something risky. General consensus is that he wanted to have sex without a condom. For a guy with a wife visiting a prostitute, that’s pretty low down. You’re not just risking yourself, but two other people. One who needs the money from you and may have to put herself in danger to pay rent, the other who is a probably unsuspecting wife. NOT COOL.

But none of this fixes the most basic problem, the reason why the only 2 jobs where women make more money than men are jobs where they sell their bodies. Women are not fuckholes, they are human beings. Until we are treated as human by all of society, then we will continue to be looked at first and foremost as fuckable or not fuckable before anything else about is acknowledged.