Question: Isn't this sort of opposition a little
impractical? What are we going to do about the oversexed perverts out
there who can't find anyone, and end up raping someone when they find that
they can't get their needs met?
Answer: Several points come to mind ...
- Let us note that the communities in which the laws against prostitution
have been decisively enforced have scarcely become hotbeds of rape. In
fact, they haven't even attained the incidences of rape common in those
places in which the institution have enjoyed the sort of de facto
legalisation seen in the major cities, where the law has been
effectively repealed through the minimal character of its
enforcement.
While it is true that one might argue that a high incidence of rape
might incline law enforcement to look the other way when dealing with
an illegal activity that contributes to lowering that statistic, it
would be quite hard to argue that small town America has ever had a
shortage of oversexed perverts. Given this, where is the bumper crop of
rapes that this theory would predict?
- Quite the contrary, by granting the potential rapist access to a woman
who doesn't really want him, this institution helps get him used to the
notion that he can have a woman who doesn't want him. This might lessen
his reluctance to take by force, that which it might have never occurred
to him might be his for the taking.
- Beyond this, we have the intensely troubling notion that it is OK
to take an unfortunate individual, almost at random, it would seem, and
toss her to the wolves in order to buy the other women an added margin
of safety. The fact that the coercion would be economic rather than
directly physical, would make the effects of the coercion no different
and certainly no less real.
Even if the argument were correct in its predictions about human
behavior, would it be morally permissible to reduce the probability
that the typical woman would be forced into a sexual encounter which
she didn't want by trading it for the certainty that a relatively few
unfortunate women be forced into a lengthy string of sexual encounters
that they didn't want? By taking the burden off of the shoulders of
the many and dumping all of it onto those of the often unwilling few,
rather than having it be borne by all equally? What of equity?
- For that matter, once one simply accepts this sort of violation as a
business transaction, what happens to the notion of crime prevention,
and the protection of the possible victim, once one defines the crime
away in this fashion, by disguising it as "free" trade? How does one
begin to address a problem of violence, in a legal sense, once one
creates a loophole of this nature? Is it the responsibility of the law
to protect the defenseless, or is it adequate for it to merely create
the illusion that they've been defended?
- Sex is not a need. Sex is a desire. Note that celibate individuals can be found. Our indulged
pervert is not as the man who is allowed to steal a loaf of bread to avoid starvation, nor
does he do anything to meet the real need that sex sometimes is mistaken for - the need to
connect on an emotional level with another human being. Where there is no empathy, as there
surely is not if one acts to degrade another, there is no connection. There is only an act
stripped of all meaning, and an emptiness in one's heart that will nag at one, even after one
has consciously forgotten that it is there, and no longer knows why that which one expected
to bring pleasure is so unsatisfying.
Where there is no real willingness to take "no" for an answer, there is no empathy, no respect,
no affection, and as much as one might lie to oneself, no heartfelt desire, just a desire to
feel a desire that is satisfied, and the brief, ultimately unconvincing illusion that this is what one
is getting.
return to previous discussion
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