{"id":102,"date":"2008-03-19T08:58:34","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T08:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2008\/03\/martha-nussbaum-on-spitzer-and-prostitution-laws.html"},"modified":"2008-03-19T08:58:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T08:58:34","slug":"martha-nussbaum-on-spitzer-and-prostitution-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/03\/martha-nussbaum-on-spitzer-and-prostitution-laws.html","title":{"rendered":"Martha Nussbaum on Spitzer and Prostitution Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a succinct and thoughtful essay about the Spitzer debacle by Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago Law School.
\n(University of Chicago<\/span> Philosopher MARTHA NUSSBAUM on the Spitzer Resignation, from the Atlanta Journal Constitution…)<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/a><\/a>Trading on America’s puritanical streak
\nProstitution laws mean-spirited, penalize women<\/b>
\nBy MARTHA NUSSBAUM
\n<\/span>
\nEliot Spitzer<\/span>, one of the nation’s most gifted and dedicated
\npoliticians, was hounded into resignation by a Puritanism and
\nmean-spiritedness that are quintessentially American.
\nMy European colleagues (I write from an academic conference in
\nBelgium<\/span>) have a hard time understanding what happened, but they know
\nthat it is one of those things that could only happen in America,
\nwhere the topic of sex drives otherwise reasonable people insane. In
\nGermany<\/span> and the Netherlands<\/span>, prostitution is legal and regulated by
\npublic health authorities. A man who did what Spitzer did would have a
\nlot to discuss with his wife and family, but he would have broken no
\nlaws, and it would be laughable to accuse him of a betrayal of the
\npublic trust. This is as it should be. If Spitzer broke any laws, they
\nwere bad laws, laws that should never have existed.
\nWhy are there laws against prostitution? All of us, with the exception
\nof the independently wealthy and the unemployed, take money for the
\nuse of our body. Professors, factory workers, opera singers, sex
\nworkers, doctors, legislators \u2014 all do things with parts of their
\nbodies for which others offer them a fee. Some people get good wages
\nand some do not; some have a relatively high degree of control over
\ntheir working conditions and some have little control; some have many
\nemployment options and some have very few. And some are socially
\nstigmatized and some are not. However, the difference between the sex
\nworker and the professor \u2014 who takes money for the use of a
\nparticularly intimate part of her body, namely her mind \u2014 is not the
\ndifference between a “good woman” and a “bad woman.” It is, usually,
\nthe difference between a prosperous well-educated woman and a poor
\nwoman with few employment options.
\nThe sliding stigma scale
\nMany types of bodily wage labor used to be socially stigmatized. In
\nthe Middle Ages it was widely thought base to take money for the use
\nof one’s scholarly services. Adam Smith<\/span>, in “The Wealth of Nations<\/span>,”
\ntells us there are “some very agreeable and beautiful talents” that
\nare admirable so long as no pay is taken for them, “but of which the
\nexercise for the sake of gain is considered, whether from reason or
\nprejudice, as a sort of publick prostitution.” For this reason, he
\ncontinues, opera singers, actors and dancers must be paid an
\n“exorbitant” wage, to compensate them for the stigma involved in using
\ntheir talents “as the means of subsistence.” His discussion is
\nrevealing for what it shows us about stigma. Today few professions are
\nmore honored than that of opera singer; and yet only 200 years ago,
\nthat public use of one’s body for pay was taken to be a kind of
\nprostitution.
\nSome of the stigma attached to opera singers was a general stigma
\nabout wage labor. Wealthy elites have always preferred genteel
\namateurism. But the fact that passion was being expressed publicly
\nwith the body \u2014 particularly the female body \u2014 made singers, dancers
\nand actors nonrespectable in polite society until very recently. Now
\nthey are respectable, but women who take money for sexual services are
\nstill thought to be doing something that is not only nonrespectable
\nbut so bad that it should remain illegal.
\nWhat should really trouble us about sex work? That it is sex that
\nthese women do, with many customers, should not in and of itself
\ntrouble us, from the point of view of legality, even if we personally
\ndon’t share the woman’s values. Nonetheless, it is this one fact that
\nstill-Puritan America finds utterly intolerable. (Note, however, that
\nwe no longer allow a woman’s sexual history to be used in a rape trial
\nbecause we know that the fact that a woman may have had sex with many
\nmen does not mean that she has become a debased character who cannot
\nbe raped.)
\nExploitation the sordid part
\nWhat should trouble us are things like this: The working conditions
\nfor most women in sex work are extremely unhealthy. They are exploited
\nby pimps, and they enjoy little control over which clients they will
\naccept. Police harass them and extort sexual favors from them. Some of
\nthese bad features (unhealthiness, little control) sex work shares
\nwith other job options for low-income women, such as factory work of
\nmany kinds. Other bad features (police extortion) are the natural
\nresult of illegality itself.
\nIn general we should be worried about poverty and lack of education.
\nWe should be worried that women have too few decent employment options
\nand too little health and safety regulation in those that they do
\nhave. And we should be worried if men force women to do things
\nsexually that they do not want to do. All these things are worth
\nworrying about, and it is these things that sensible nations do worry
\nabout. But the idea that we ought to penalize women with few choices
\nby removing one of the ones they do have is grotesque, the
\nunmistakable fruit of the all-too-American thought that women who
\nchoose to have sex with many men are tainted, vile things who must be
\npunished.
\nSpitzer’s offense was an offense against his family. It was not an
\noffense against the public. If he broke any laws, these are laws that
\nnever should have existed and that have been repudiated by sensible
\nnations. The hue and cry that has ruined one of the nation’s most
\ncommitted political careers shows our country to itself in a very ugly
\nlight.
\n\u2022 Martha Nussbaum is a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago<\/span>.
\n(Next week, I promise to include my own writing… I’ve just been more of a reader lately…)
\nLove,
\nCassmaster P<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a succinct and thoughtful essay about the Spitzer debacle by Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago Law School. (University of Chicago Philosopher MARTHA NUSSBAUM on the Spitzer Resignation, from the Atlanta Journal Constitution…) Trading on America’s puritanical streak Prostitution laws mean-spirited, penalize women By MARTHA NUSSBAUM Eliot Spitzer, one of the nation’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":333,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nMartha Nussbaum on Spitzer and Prostitution Laws - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/03\/martha-nussbaum-on-spitzer-and-prostitution-laws.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martha Nussbaum on Spitzer and Prostitution Laws - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a succinct and thoughtful essay about the Spitzer debacle by Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago Law School. 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