Chapter 28 Chapter Summary

In this article, Elizabeth Anderson advances a case against the legalization of female sex work on the grounds that commodifying women’s sexuality reinforces the oppression of women and debases sex itself. To commodify sex, she argues, undermines the possibility of sex as a free exchange of the gift of two selves and the creation of a shared, non-market good. Cash payment for a woman’s sexual services makes impersonal and lopsided what might otherwise be a site for the promotion of gender equality and the dignity of women, according to Anderson.

Anderson considers two grounds for prohibiting commodifying a good—liberty and autonomy. She finds both persuasive, emphasizing the way in which, in her view, sex work empowers men by giving them even greater control over women’s sexuality while alienating from women a good that is embodied in their persons. Anderson concludes by sketching some conditions that would have to be met for a culture of sex work to be morally permissible.