The Opera Pimp on Prostitution

Sorry I have been a bit absent but I have been playing an Opera Pimp in one of the saddest stories of prostitution that our culture has thrown up.  Verdi’s La Traviata (or the fallen one), first performed in 1853, tells the tale of a courtesan. She has a glamorous life that quickly sours and ends in early death. It is the opposite of the mendacious myth, Pretty Woman, where prostitution merely prepares the main protagonist for a long and happy life.

Our production was performed in The Men’s Gallery, Melbourne’s largest and most famous strip club replete with runway, dancing poles and decorous nudes on the walls.  This was a version of the opera where the subject matter was reflected in the venue. Whilst The Men’s Gallery is both lawful and not involved in prostitution, it is part of the sex industry, the same industry as Violetta’s bordello in La Traviata.  For details see http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/opera-strips-to-bare-essentials-in-kindred-venue-20130402-2h56y.html

In this atheist ethicist, I opine on the morality of regulation of prostitution.  For the opera was not my first collision with the ethics of prostitution regulation. Long ago in my municipal past, when my responsibilities included the Mayoralty of the area that encompasses the street sex work market of St Kilda, I served on a ministerial advisory committee on street prostitution.  So I have had many brushes with the issue of the regulation of prostitution.

The time honoured response of legislators is the prohibition model. When one deems a behaviour to be unworthy, the knee jerk reaction is to ban it. This is particularly the case with sex and drugs. So in the past alcohol, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, pornography and prostitution have all been banned.  But the prohibition model is riven with disastrous unintended consequences. Prohibition calls forth an illegal market. The illegality of the market is inevitably associated with violent crime, exploitation of the vulnerable and higher prices.

The vulnerable whom suffer or die might include the addicts of the heroin market, the women in the unlawful abortion markets and the sex workers in prohibited prostitution markets.  La Traviata sought to champion the position of the latter. Bans counter intuitively seem to harm the weak and promote the interests of the criminal. Therefore I always champion the opposite of the prohibition model, which is the harm minimisation approach.

Faiths and religions are a problem in this moral debate.  For these archaic relics from the past are full of prohibitions.  Let’s start the Divine Decalogue.  The 10 Commandments might as well be the 10 Prohibitions. But more than prohibition, religions routinely glorify those who go beyond obedience and embrace hair shirt self loathing. Ascetic behaviour is lauded. Temperance in food, drink and particularly sex is found in most faiths.  Take the monastic vows of poverty, obedience and chastity versions of which can be found in the faiths of East and West. These are appalling commitments to self deprivation deserving of a volume on their own.  And the vow of obedience has silenced evidence of priestly crimes that now dominate our news. 

In the context of prostitution, the damaging legacy of prohibition and self deprivation is that open discussion of prostitution is clouded and difficult.

On the other hand, the harm minimisation model does not make a “moralistic” judgement on the activity but merely seeks to understand the consequences for the community.  For those who have been following my moral pontificating for some time, this Consequentialist approach is consistent with the atheist morality I follow called Utilitarianism. I believe that Consequentialism is one of the great moral contributions of atheism.  It takes out all of the archaic moral judgements that cloud the assessment of complex social situations. It looks at the impact on the humans involved and seeks to minimise the harm and maximise the good. 

Prostitution when it is an equal bargain struck between two consenting adults, must be seen as moral. Prostitution in a prohibition model though, inevitably involves an unequal bargain. The transaction is an illegal one with unregulated violence.  It is a situation where the victim (the sex worker) cannot easily be protected by the police because the sex workers are committing a crime.  In the illegal sex markets, the women are often incredibly vulnerable with sexual abuse and drug dependence often part of the story.

La Traviata is a prescient work. It acknowledges that prostitutes often have nasty outcomes. It also recognizes the hypocrisy of moralistic judgment. The parochial and the bourgeois father who denounces Violetta the courtesan, come across as cruel and hypocritical. 

In the contemporary world, the traditional foes of law reform in the drug, prostitution and related markets are cruel. They allow their prejudices, formed in the Sunday Schools of their youth, to be a barrier to humanitarian reform.  Have they learnt nothing since 1853?  Have they learnt nothing from the current paedophile crisis? 

Progress from the religious taboos and ascetic practices of the faiths is slow but necessary.

What is your view?

·         Do you like the certainty of rules and prohibitions or do you like the humanity of the harm minimisation model?

·         Should prostitution be banned in all circumstances?

·         What is the moral position of those who use prostitutes?  Do you use prostitutes?

·         Why is prohibition such a popular regulatory regime?

·         Why does the prohibition of drugs still remain in the face of decades of failure??

Over to you guys.