Sexual crime musings inspired by my wife
By Thoreau
I knew I’d get you to read this with that title!
My wife brought up this point that’s been brought up before, but since the country is again paying attention to prostitution we might as well bring it up yet again: If person A can get money to have sex with person B as part of a pr0n film, why can’t person B give money to person A for having sex without any cameras involved?
Let’s leave aside the issues of child prostitution (for obvious reasons), adults coerced into prostitution (since coercing somebody to do any sort of work–sexual or otherwise–should obviously be a crime), and the fact that Elliot Spitzer is a hypocritical douchebag (another obvious point). Let’s also stipulate that there indeed some desperate people in the sex trade who get taken advantage of, that not all of them fit that bill, that these problems could be better addressed outside of the black market, and that the relative numbers of exploited vs. non-exploited prostitutes is an issue for another day. (There seems to be a cottage industry of people writing about that issue for all sorts of reasons, often ideological reasons.)
So, why is it OK to pay somebody to have sex on a sound stage but not in a hotel room? Or in a hotel room with a camera rolling but not in a hotel room with no camera?
So far, so obvious, but my wife also observed this: If, for the sake of argument, paying somebody to have sex is a harmful thing, isn’t pr0n even worse because other people then watch it and suffer whatever ill effects? Yes, I know, many would argue that watching pr0n isn’t a big deal, but let’s stipulate it for the sake of argument, since there’s a lot of puritanism underlying prohibitions on prostitution and regulations of pr0nography. Why is prostitution regarded as even worse than pr0n? Both involve paying somebody to have sex, but one also involves people not directly engaged in the sexual act(s).
Maybe the biggest mistake here is thinking that puritans can be reasoned with. If anything, they’d respond to this argument by calling for pr0n bans that are enforced at least as strictly as prostitution bans.
Comment by Ben —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:32 am
Being against prostitution makes one a puritan? You’re setting the bar kind of low, eh?
Comment by Teemu —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:44 am
Where does the line go between being in a pr0n film and not being in one?
If I hire a prostitute to have sex with me, and - with her permission - record the act with single camcoder (standing on tripod, so that there’s just two of us in room)…
…is she now an “adult actress”, instead of prostitute, even if I haven’t yet decided whether or not to upload the recording on some amateur video website?
What if I decide to keep the (intentionally) badly-out-of-aim-and-focus film just on my private collection, or show it only to my close group of friends and family?
Comment by Ben —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:55 am
By the way, we’re mostly talking about the moral/logical difference between prostitution and porn, not the actual legal difference, correct?
Also, did I just ask the dumbest question in this blog’s history?
Comment by Leonard —
March 12, 2008 @ 9:27 am
Your wife apparently doesn’t understand what prostitution laws are for. Forget all the justificatory mumbo-jumbo: it is state cartelization of the supply of sex to heterosexual men. Call it the v-cartel. By restricting supply, we know that price goes up. (And incidentally restricting supply of a good with inflexible demand — and sex is that — can drive up price very considerably.) The immediate end is to make it difficult for men to get sex outside of marriage. The ultimate end is to promote and strengthen marriage, “society” having determined that marriage is a useful and desirable institution.
The losers from the v-cartel? At least in the short run: most men, who have to do more and pay more to attract women. And a few of the more marginal women who might otherwise do well as whores. The winners? All women, who thereby manage to extract more from men (including, but by no means limited to, marriages) than they otherwise would.
In the long run, the winners and losers are not so clear. Presumably men did not impose the rules for no reason, so they cannot all be losers. Or at least, they were not in the historical context in which they imposed the rules.
Although porn does serve as a substitute for sex, it is by no means a perfect substitute. So it is not of huge import to the v-cartel. (In fact porn may create demand!) Much more threatening to traditional marriage is the destigmatization of extramarital sex. But that battle is already lost, however much the right may wish otherwise.
If you really could get a porn “actress” to accept the idea of having sex with any man willing to pay a modest price, while rolling film, I’m sure you’d quickly get a reaction from the state to shut you down. Because, again, an actress having sex with a handful of porn actors is no threat to the v-cartel — the extra supply is trivial.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 12, 2008 @ 9:43 am
Leonard, it’s pretty easy for people to have sex before and outside marriage these days. I don’t see the merits of this explanation.
Comment by Aaron Boyden —
March 12, 2008 @ 9:50 am
Prostitution laws in the United States are usually written as prohibiting paid sex where the purpose is gratifying one of the participants. If the purpose is artistic, there are of course free speech objections to banning the activity. But perhaps Leonard has it right as to why this loophole is allowed, since it seems that banning prostitution as normally conceived is much more common than banning the production of pornography even in countries without anything like our first amendment.
However, I think you probably could get away with covering your ass for engaging in hiring prostitutes by turning it into doing porn; the reason this isn’t often done isn’t because the state would then step in to put a stop to that, but because in order to make the defense credible you would have to genuinely publish the video or photos of the activities, and most of the participants in prostitution (both customers and workers) would not wish to do that.
Comment by Leonard —
March 12, 2008 @ 9:54 am
The “merits”? Well, you seemed to be asking questions. I.e.: Why is prostitution regarded as even worse than pr0n? I am handing you a framework for thinking about those questions.
BTW, I know about the existence of extramarital sex. That’s why I discussed it.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 12, 2008 @ 10:29 am
OK, I can see that. Prostitution is regarded as worse because it can be a type of adultery. I guess it’s the “cartel enforcement” aspect that I object to. I agree that marriage and adultery are key issues here, but I think that “cartel” is the wrong terminology. Cartels try to limit entry, usually, but any woman can become a wife if she finds a husband, so I don’t think of wives as a “cartel” for these purposes.
Or so you’ve heard. From your friend.
:)
Comment by First Little Pig —
March 12, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
Leonard has it largely right, but I would add that there is an additional temporal factor at work: the bias prostitution pre-dates that of porn. This works to distinguish the two in a couple of ways. First, the laws on the books precede the invention of film pornography and we all know how difficult it is to overturn stale “blue” laws.
Second, the anti-prostitution lobby can trace its roots to biblical times and cite the bible as justification. Much harder for porn to be so clearly identified. As a modern invention, its contemporary legal arena is that of modern law and must contend with First Amendment arguments. Prostitution is seen as simply WRONG, porno has more wiggle room — as do strip clubs which have blossomed all over the country.
I would add to the temporal idea a commercial one: both parties are being paid for sex in porn and they can argue that both are merely acting and that any pleasure obtained is incidental. Much as a whiskey taster in a dry county where — say — Jack Daniels — is produced can imbibe all he likes. It’s just his job.
Comment by Derek Copold —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
Since others have pointed out the 1st Amendment quirk, I’ll go to a more practical concern. Porn is, for the most part, isolated in a private zone. The films are made in a few locations and the products are viewed in private. The most widespread and public effect are some salacious video stores or naughty racks behind the counter at the 7-11.
Prostitution, OTOH, can be widespread and its effects go beyond the simple transaction. Where you have prostitutes, you generally have all sorts of other undesirable pathologies: loitering, drug use, litter, and alcohol abuse. Often neighborhoods demand that the police clean out the prostitutes and go after johns because of the effect they have on the living environment.
Now the answer to that is, making the oldest profession legal will pull it out of the shadows, which is probably true, but you’ll still have a lot of the pathologies. To control those, you’re going to need our old friend, zoning laws, along with a lot of regulation to ensure employee health and good treatment.
On a darkly amusing note, we’ll probably also have to deal with some of the insanity you see in places like Germany, where it is said a woman was told she couldn’t get unemployment benefits because she would take a job as a “sex worker.”
Comment by Leonard —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
Thoreau, “Cartel” is perfectly apt. Public cartel, to be exact. “Guild” might also work.
Cartels often do limit entry, but that is just one means by which they may try to achieve their goal. Their goal? Wiki: “The aim of such collusion is to increase individual member’s profits by reducing competition.” One prostitute, supplying dozens of men with sexual services, is a lot of competition. It’s not the number of firms in a cartel that determines price, it’s the total output.
Comment by Dave W. —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
Leonard is right.
There does not need to be a monopoly to be an antitrust, or an anti-competition problem. Similarly, there does not need to be perfect control of extramarital sex to meaningfully reduce competition in that area.
Finding extramarital sex is not THAT easy, I don’t think. I mean, I would challenge anyone to walk into an average, crowded bar with me (where we did not know anyone) and see which would happen first: (i) I could get a beer; or (ii) you could find a willing partner. You don’t have to be a “Leonard” to know who is going to win that contest.
Comment by Mr. Nice Guy —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
“So, why is it OK to pay somebody to have sex on a sound stage but not in a hotel room?”
Methinks our delicate collective consciousness is much more comfortable with a married man having a prOn stash then a married man doing that Mayflower Mambo.
All married guys have a stash. The only difference is how their wives deal with it. Most conveniently ignore it. Some treat it as “cheating” (God have mercy on those schmucks), and others actually encourage it (there should be a Federal holiday in honor of those gals).
If they were to jail all the producers and consumers of pRon, pretty much all the men in America would be in the clink.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 12, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
“So, why is it OK to pay somebody to have sex on a sound stage but not in a hotel room?”
“Ok” is undefined. But it’s illegal, in fact, to pay someone to have sex. Period.
If you think otherwise, you’re misinformed. Similarly, putting it that way is apt to misinform people, since it isn’t so.
(Check any contract/release regarding visual rights; people having sex is no longer — mostly — illegal, and neither is filming it. That’s not “paying someone to have sex.” It’s paying someone to film them. If they were paid to have sex, it would violate the law.)
That’s why no one is arrested for it.
“OK,” on the other hand, I’ll leave to discuss until you define your terms.
I’m all for decriminalizing prostitution, but I do suggest that your phrasing really dreadfully minimizes the fact that most women involved don’t do it because they have better options, and find hooking/escorting/dancing preferable to being a well-paid executive, as opposed to being clueless as to what else they might do that pays remotely decently. It’s not as if the highly-paid ones are the norm.
This doesn’t affect what the law should be, but it makes your argument weaker, when it sounds like you’re minimzing the fairly ugly reality for a clean abstraction.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 12, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
I can’t help notice that it’s all men’s opinions so far (so far as visible clues go, etc.).
Comment by Hypatia —
March 12, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
re: douchebag
i believe that cobag (that is, colostomy bag) is the preferred gender-neutral term these days.
Comment by TGGP —
March 12, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Leonard, some economists support your version. Via a commenter, at my blog is Baumeister’s Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions. It views porn similarly to prostitution though, just not as extreme.
Hypatia, why not just “shitbag” then?
Comment by CMN —
March 13, 2008 @ 12:43 am
Heh heh heh…He said “entry”…heh heh heh.
Comment by Hypatia —
March 13, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
>Hypatia, why not just “shitbag” then?
what is a “shitbag” and what is it used for? can one purchase a shitbag? i’m talking about a gender neutral ANALOG of douchebag, which is an item that actually exists.
Comment by Pat —
March 22, 2008 @ 2:37 am
Technically they are the same and both should be illegal as they used to be to prevent any possibility of coercion.
But there is some basis for film-making in that it is a controlled event, in theory under OSHA guidelines with regulations for the industry that all filmmakers would have to abide by. To the extent that this doesn’t take place, it would be in violation of those regulations as well, compounding the penalties for sexual coercion as prostitution.
Prostitution, not as regulated under film-making, etc. is merely unregulated and illegal violations of state laws, and enforcement is good for participants as well as for the state since it fills state coffers as well as deters the crime of sexual coercion done by bribery, or vulnerability, or violence under the control of others who are not regulated, and are not permitted to be regulated since pandering, pimping, and prostitution are all illegal. The only part that is not enforced as it should be is the john, i.e., the client who is a party to the violation, and indeed, the solicitor, inducer to prostitution, the one who makes possible the economic coercion that makes prostiution profitable. Without his penalties, there is no deterrence, and unequal treatment is a certainty. His privilege becomes state unfair discrimination upon women by extension. The argument that he is a part of society and cannot afford a penalty is absurd. The minute he induces the act, he steps out of society into the world of criminality despite the fact that he is allowed to step back in.