3 ms·

They're not selling a service. They're selling their bodies. With a service, someone is performing something, not having something done to them. With a service,

• grinnbearit 12y ago
  I don't think thats true, if that was the case, the price of prostitution would drop with experience/skill/quality. A quick google leads me to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-prices-worldwide http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-price... From this, it looks like the price for prostitutes increases with quality.
  • jordigh 12y ago
    I see no indication that "quality" here means "expertise" or "experience".
    • oxide 12y ago
      come on, now you're just grasping at straws.
      • jordigh 12y ago
        Not at all. The very article linked above says, "India -- $1,000 for virgin, $1-$4 for adult."
      • anigbrowl 12y ago
        He's not, though I don't agree with him (think it's a him?). Yes, experienced prostitutes can and do charge more. but there is a parallel traffic in vulnerable prostitutes, for whom their pimps charge more because they are young or less willing/able to stand up for themselves. I'm in favor of legalization, but there is some economic research suggesting that at least in the short term, expansion of the market for prostitution (through decriminalization or legalization) results in a net increase in illegal trafficking, because market sector growth >> the substitution effect (whereby many customers prefer the legal alternative). It's not the simple 'ban it or legalize it' dichotomy that advocates on both sides suggest.
• jessaustin 12y ago
  ...the least experienced people are the most valuable, and there is no training required nor even desired. I think you're right about a certain segment of the market. After all, we know that pedophiles exist, so some "customers" would want the "services" of a child who lies there crying, which would require no "training". I think those would be few in number when compared to a legal market for adult prostitution, although they would necessarily be a larger portion of any illicit market.
• CWuestefeld 12y ago
  With a service, someone is performing something, not having something done to them The idea that sex is having something done to you, as opposed to something you're doing for or with someone, strikes me as a rather old-fashioned and sexist attitude. I'd like to believe that my wife and I share something better than that. Of course, there are a lot of personal values tied up in this question, so I don't think that either your opinion or mine necessarily prevails. That being the case, I think the best indicator is what each individual chooses to do of their own free will.
  • jordigh 12y ago
    Sex can certainly be done to someone, and comparing prostitution sex with marital sex is a bit disingenous. I imagine you don't pay your wife each time you two want to have sex, nor that she would have sex with you only if she had few other options left. The problem with "what each individual chooses" and prostitution is that it's extremely difficult to get an accurate reading of what people truly want. There's lots of coercion, pressure, and outright threats. I think it's fair to say that given the opportunity, most people would not choose prostitution. It's very important to have a society where no one ever feels the need to become a prostitute. The whole "consent" argument also tries to ignore the question of harm. If someone consents to be harmed, should we harm them? If a drug addict wants to keep drugging themselves, should we not do anything about it? I'm not outright saying that prostitution harms every prostituted person or not, just that this question should be considered, not elided with the "consent" argument.
    • humanarity 12y ago
      The implicit assumptions that ones' choice to have sex with strangers for money is coerced, wrong, constitutes self harm, and must be protected against are telling a story that denies the people who make that choice the very same autonomy such a statement pretends to protect against. I'd say that is incorrect and based on incomplete understanding. I'd say it's a choice, made, no matter how incomprehensible, for money. Like other choices people make, eg choosing such and such career path, or such and such relationship, sometimes there's peer pressure. And because it's connected with orchestration by criminal enterprises, tainted by that association. However, when you come down to it, people could sell themselves before criminals wanted a cut. It works to consider how you might come to make that choice, and whether your assumptions about prostitutes are filtered through the landscape of what you perceive as your own possible choices. So before I pronounce prostitutes as victims to fit a narrative of exploitation I've chosen (seductive also for it suggests my moral superiority that I would never make such a choice! :), maybe I'll remember it doesn't work to victimize the people I'm talking about by pretending they had no autonomy. Isn't that, the very same hypocrisy I'm trying to accuse others of? Using a person for a purpose? And when that person may have done the choosing, and I in my argument may be doing the using, haven't I neatly reversed the roles all by myself, and undermined the very argument I was making? Tl;Dr - when you're talking about people you want to paint as victims it works to consider them as autonomous, choice making beings, to gain more accurate insight, even tho it's seductive to pretend that somehow you've more autonomy than they. Stl;Dr - fantasising that prostitutes have no autonomy is trying to use them for an intellectual "dry sex", without paying, for the sake of argument without their consent! Definitely only for scoundrels!! :)
• oldmanjay 12y ago
  Can one be said to sell something if one still maintains possession after the sale?
  • x3n0ph3n3 12y ago
    How about a haircut?
  • mkr-hn 12y ago
    This is the premise of software as a service.