Philosophy Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Publication Source

Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence

Abstract

Noting the relative invisibility of prostitution buyers, or Johns, in discussions of the morality of prostitution, this article criticizes Johns’ behavior on the grounds that they are culpably involved in causing the typical harms of prostitution in the lives of the women whom they pay for sex. Those harms are, at bottom, the result of being habitually subjected to unwanted sex, and they are exacerbated rather than mitigated by such sex being bought and paid for. Efforts to normalize and legalize sex-buying should therefore be resisted.

ISBN/ISSN

2472-4181

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

This research and scholarly article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Publisher

DigitalCommons@URI

Volume

2

Issue

2

Peer Reviewed

yes

Keywords

prostitution, trauma, sex, harm, dissociation, money, violence, silencing, men, johns

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