Why Is Prostitution Illegal?

Cathy Young asks why prostitution is illegal in this country. Her rationale for questioning this status is that

prostitution is perhaps the ultimate victimless crime: a consensual transaction in which both parties are supposedly committing a crime, and the person most likely to be charged—the one selling sex—is also the one most likely to be viewed as the victim.

Heading Right responds by appealing to inherent human dignity:

At its most basic, this transaction involves the selling of a human being for the most intimate of purposes. It makes little difference whether the women (or men, for that matter) sell themselves or someone else sells them, or even “rents” them. It exploits humans for no purpose other than meaningless gratification; it turns people, and usually women, into nothing more than a commodity like pork bellies or cattle futures.

There is something essentially missing from a society that protects that transaction in law: the idea of humans as sacred, and not just in a religious sense. Human societies have almost always structured themselves on the notion of the exceptional status of humans; Western civilization has built itself on the concept of the individual human as the center of existence. Selling women in red-light districts cheapens everyone by denying the exceptional in humans — the religious would call it the soul — and reducing people to the value of their component parts, or even less. The prostitute is valued for her vagina and possibly her breasts, and the rest comes as a package deal that some customers barely notice.

The response is reasonable, but how often in our culture do people sell themselves in one way or another?

The film industry features women disrobing constantly, and defends doing so as "art". Is the unknown actress who is taking off her top and getting groped valued for much more than the breasts she is baring? But should we attempt to regulate film-making again to ban nude scenes?

The backbone of the advertising industry is using hot women to sell their products. Are those models valued for much more than the bits hidden behind the bikini?

What about the canonical gold-digger, giving her body to a man in exchange for his money? Is that any different than the prostitute, other than the prostitute doesn't make any pretensions about what she's doing or why? What about the woman who sleeps with the boss to get a promotion?

What about ordinary women who use sex with their partners as leverage to get something they want? She wants a weekend in the country, so she makes sex conditional on hubby agreeing to go. Isn't she selling her body to get something she wants? What about the woman who has sex with somebody just to get their companionship?

I understand what Heading Right is saying, but it seems to me people in our culture, particularly women, are broken down into body parts all the time. Are we to regulate all of those situations to prevent such "degradation?" Are we to have a national dress code so that women aren't tempted to show off their bodies in order to get ahead? Are we to regulate marriage and relationships in general so that women are only having sex for the "right" reasons, and not trading access to their bodies for other compensation? It's a noble sentiment, but ultimately unenforceable in a free society.

Right makes the mistake of associating legalization of prostitution with protection or endorsement of prostitution. This is not correct. Legalization simply recognizes that the people involved are consenting adults, and if a woman is willing to give access to a piece of her body for some compensation (money, companionship, a house, fame, promotion, whatever) she is free to do so.