The Ethics of Sex Work
On a random Wednesday evening, sitting around a long rectangular table in my debate society’s chambers, my friends and I were having a long-winded conversation that ended up talking about sex work. Should sex work be legal? What would the legislation even look like?After going on several different tangents, we came up with the topic of my post today. Can sex work ever be ethical? In this, I will go through different philosophical frameworks to analyze the ethics of sex work and the additional considerations needed to assess this question fully. Before getting into the nitty gritty, I will be operating through the framework that defines sex work as any labor of a sexual nature that involves a transaction between a customer and a provider.
Sex work is often referred to as one of the oldest professions (Salmon 121) as it has existed in some capacity since the beginnings of human civilization. Despite this, a stigma has long been attached to the profession itself, and although this stigma has waned in our present day, it persists-- as seen by its legal status. Debates on its legality have been going on for decades and are bound to continue for many more years (as several places including New Zealand and much more recently Belgium, have decriminalized sex work). Most countries still have laws in place that criminalize the active buying and selling of sex. With rapid advancement in technology, however, sex work has evolved past just physical or in-person sexual transactions, with a slew of digital alternatives that do not require face-to-face contact between the client and worker becoming widely accessible. This muddies the legal analysis of sex work as certain forms are legal, but others aren’t. Through a legal analysis of sex work, the answer would be: it depends.
The easy rebuttal to legal analysis, however, is that legal does not always mean ethical. This is a fine point to bring up as while legality often aligns with ethics, there are several instances where the two are opposed. For this reason, I will use another ethical framework to question such ethics by embracing the ideas of everyone’s favorite philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Most of Kant’s ethical theory is grounded in the idea that people should be treated as ends in themselves and not as a means to an end. This forms an argument against the ethicality of sex work as it turns the sex worker into a commodity to be used by the customer to achieve an end (sexual pleasure). According to Kantian ethics, this instrumentalization of another person is morally impermissible because it violates the principle of treating people as an end in itself.
Another pillar in Kantian ethics is the universalizability principle which, simply put, argues that for something to be ethical, it must be able to be put into practice in every scenario. With that, if the practice of sex work were universalized for financial reasons, Kantian ethics would argue that it is not ethical because it would lead to a society where individuals are commonly treated as objects rather than as persons. This could create a societal norm that undermines the respect owed to each person, making the practice of sex work ethically problematic even from a Kantian standpoint.
Now, I will use the thoughts of Sartre, everyone’s second favorite philosopher, to analyze the ethics of sex work. Sartre believed that humans are "condemned to be free," meaning that individuals have no predetermined essence or purpose and must create their values and meaning through their choices. This radical freedom comes with the burden of responsibility, as every choice reflects on one’s character and defines one's essence. He also believed in living authentically, this involved acknowledging and embracing one's freedom, and making choices that are true to oneself rather than conforming to societal expectations or external pressures. With that established, we see that from a Sartrean perspective, sex work can be seen as an exercise of radical freedom. If an individual freely chooses to engage in sex work-- understanding the implications and taking responsibility for this choice-- then it can be considered an authentic expression of their freedom. Sartre would argue that what matters most is the individual’s ownership of their decisions and actions, rather than the nature of the work itself.
Sartre would argue that engaging in sex work can be ethical if it is a conscious, deliberate choice made by the individual. If a person chooses sex work as a means to achieve their goals, financial independence, or as a form of self-expression, and does so without coercion or self-deception, it is a valid and ethical choice within the framework of Sartrean existentialism.
I could go on and on analyzing different philosophical frameworks in relation to the ethics of sex work but it seems clear that, like every ethical dilemma, there is no single right answer. We must recognize that while it can be a powerful means of economic, sexual, and personal liberation, it also exists largely within a larger framework of oppression. The industry is both exploitative and abusive, disproportionately harming women as individuals and contributing to societal over-sexualization. Engaging in sex work is not a choice made in a vacuum—it is shaped by the environment people find themselves in, influenced by societal and economic forces. We did not simply fall out of a coconut tree; we are all products of the world in which we live and the systems that came before us. Our actions, including the choice to engage in sex work, reflect these broader contexts and our judgments must also consider this.