Chapter 30 Chapter Summary

Debra Satz offers a nuanced take on the morality and proper legal status of sex work in contemporary circumstances. First, she argues that prostitution is immoral by virtue of its contribution to widespread gender inequality. She bases her case on the notion that there is an asymmetry between the morality of selling sexual and reproductive services, on the one hand, and the morality of selling the use of other bodily capacities such as wage labor, secretarial work, athletics, and so on. However, Satz argues that this moral asymmetry does not rest on sex work’s impact on selfhood or happiness but its contribution to pervasive gender inequality.

Satz concludes her discussion by asking whether legal prohibition is the appropriate response to the moral wrongness of prostitution for which she has argued. She answers that it is not, arguing instead that criminalization only exacerbates the very factors that make sex work wrong in the first place.