Carole Pateman's The Ethics Of Prostitution

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Prostitution is among one of the most morally and ethically questionable issues that currently challenge communities around the world. Recent report by Havocscope.com shows that there are almost 14 million people worldwide who are making money by turning to the oldest profession with 186 billion dollars spent on their services. There are several countries like Italy and Netherlands where sex work is legalized and regulated, but in the larger part of the world prostitution is illegal and very much deplored. Some people argue that prostitution is an immoral and harmful practice, while others suggest that we should treat it as any other work that involves monetary reward. Sex work raises questions among several different social groups including religion followers and feminists. As academic John Danaher (2013) notes in his article “The Ethics of Prostitution”, “…Feminist scholars think that [prostitution] exemplifies and contributes to a culture of male domination...” One of the authors whose work is examined in this paper, Carole Pateman, is a feminist and political theorist and her views correspond with the Danaher’s statement. Her essay is a response to Lars Ericsson’s work on the same topic, where he defends …show more content…

343). The profession possesses many threats to one’s mental and physical health, and paternalists argue that prostitution is undesirable for the fact that it hurts the prostitute herself, and is not in her “best interest” (p. 343). Some other occupations have the same level of danger, but it doesn’t mean we try to make them illegal, but rather try to find a way for them to be less dangerous. Ericsson makes a comparison with a miner labor, and how we think rather about improving miners work conditions than about prohibiting mining (p.

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