Fantastic article but I have to disagree with regards to Murphy. You make the claim she has “hidden beliefs” about what makes paying for sex unethical. However, I don’t think the example you use supports that.
Murphy is concerned with women in the sex trade as they are the primary victims. In the course of questioning she reiterates that …
Fantastic article but I have to disagree with regards to Murphy. You make the claim she has “hidden beliefs” about what makes paying for sex unethical. However, I don’t think the example you use supports that.
Murphy is concerned with women in the sex trade as they are the primary victims. In the course of questioning she reiterates that her concern is for women, twice.
As per the clip you provide, one of the main reasons she argues that paying a women for sex is unethical, is because of the physical vulnerability of women during sex and the potential to become pregnant. Destiny also concedes that women are at a physical disadvantage during sex.
Destiny goes on to question Murphy with regards to men in the sex trade. In doing so he implies two points. One, that Megan believes the only thing that makes the sex trade unethical is the potential for physical harm. And two, that in order for physical harm to be a valid ethical objection it must apply equally across the sexes.
When she replies that she believes it is unethical to pay men for sex, he responds, “Okay. Then the vulnerability and the penetration part don't matter then. I don't know why you bring that up if a guy can’t even sell his body for sex then”
I find this argument to be incredibly underhanded. While he is right that she must have a different reason to object to male prostitution other than direct physical harm, that does not automatically mean she is not genuinely concerned about the physical vulnerability of female prostitutes.
Women do make up the majority of the sex trade. That men are not as vulnerable as women does not mean that the violence female sex workers face is not a very good reason to be opposed to prostitution.
The lead up to this particular exchange is relevant because Murphy was first arguing that sex work is bad because it's coercive, and it's by definition coercive because it involves someone having sex they wouldn't otherwise have were it not for the money offered. Destiny offers the obvious rejoinder that if you accept that premise, then ALL jobs are also "by definition coercive" as well. There's some anti-capitalists that actually agree with this premise but Murphy doesn't and so she finds herself having to add yet another qualifier to her argument, this time about how women are much more vulnerable during sex. Similarly, there are radical feminists that actually believe that ALL heterosexual sex is "by definition coercive" because it's penetrative and occurs within a patriarchal system where consent is impossible. Murphy has to be aware of these arguments, but as an unapologetic heterosexual woman, she doesn't want to concede that. At this point my impression is she quit because she ran out of pivots.
There's a pattern here. She just moves on to another, then another, then another etc. all without any acknowledgement. It's hard to tell what she *actually* believes in because she just keeps mechanistically cycling through her repertoire! The "coercive because money" argument got immediately thrown out without any acknowledgement and never made a re-appearance, and that's because Murphy knew she'd have to admit that all jobs are coercive. We didn't get much of an epilogue for the "coercive because sex" argument, but I'm guessing she realized she'd have to admit that hetero sex is at least somewhat rapey. I also gather that after already confirming she believes males engaging in sex work is also unethical, she realized she wouldn't be able to offer a reason for that position (I can't think of one based on what she said, but maybe you can?).
If I had to construct an honest form of the basic tenets of her argument, it might be something like this:
"Wage work has an element of coercion, because you're doing work you would otherwise refuse to do freely. Sex also has an element of violence and coercion for women in particular, given how much more vulnerable they are. Taken individually, neither is necessarily a problem because of [reasons]. But there's a symbiotic magnification of the harms that occurs when these two aspects are combined together into what we know as the sex trade. This crosses a line over what we should deem as ethical and acceptable behavior."
I may not agree with the conclusion but I think the argument is perfectly reasonable! If I had to guess, the reason Murphy doesn't adopt this framework is because it would necessarily require her to curtail some of her overall position. For example it would require her to concede at least *some* scenarios where the sex trade is not unethical (e.g. male prostitutes, OF model playing with toys, etc.).
Fantastic article but I have to disagree with regards to Murphy. You make the claim she has “hidden beliefs” about what makes paying for sex unethical. However, I don’t think the example you use supports that.
Murphy is concerned with women in the sex trade as they are the primary victims. In the course of questioning she reiterates that her concern is for women, twice.
As per the clip you provide, one of the main reasons she argues that paying a women for sex is unethical, is because of the physical vulnerability of women during sex and the potential to become pregnant. Destiny also concedes that women are at a physical disadvantage during sex.
Destiny goes on to question Murphy with regards to men in the sex trade. In doing so he implies two points. One, that Megan believes the only thing that makes the sex trade unethical is the potential for physical harm. And two, that in order for physical harm to be a valid ethical objection it must apply equally across the sexes.
When she replies that she believes it is unethical to pay men for sex, he responds, “Okay. Then the vulnerability and the penetration part don't matter then. I don't know why you bring that up if a guy can’t even sell his body for sex then”
I find this argument to be incredibly underhanded. While he is right that she must have a different reason to object to male prostitution other than direct physical harm, that does not automatically mean she is not genuinely concerned about the physical vulnerability of female prostitutes.
Women do make up the majority of the sex trade. That men are not as vulnerable as women does not mean that the violence female sex workers face is not a very good reason to be opposed to prostitution.
I should have made it clearer that the reason I believe Murphy to be dishonest wasn't based on just that one exchange, I was also incorporating many more examples from the longer post I linked: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/meghan-murphys-speedrun-guide-to
The lead up to this particular exchange is relevant because Murphy was first arguing that sex work is bad because it's coercive, and it's by definition coercive because it involves someone having sex they wouldn't otherwise have were it not for the money offered. Destiny offers the obvious rejoinder that if you accept that premise, then ALL jobs are also "by definition coercive" as well. There's some anti-capitalists that actually agree with this premise but Murphy doesn't and so she finds herself having to add yet another qualifier to her argument, this time about how women are much more vulnerable during sex. Similarly, there are radical feminists that actually believe that ALL heterosexual sex is "by definition coercive" because it's penetrative and occurs within a patriarchal system where consent is impossible. Murphy has to be aware of these arguments, but as an unapologetic heterosexual woman, she doesn't want to concede that. At this point my impression is she quit because she ran out of pivots.
There's a pattern here. She just moves on to another, then another, then another etc. all without any acknowledgement. It's hard to tell what she *actually* believes in because she just keeps mechanistically cycling through her repertoire! The "coercive because money" argument got immediately thrown out without any acknowledgement and never made a re-appearance, and that's because Murphy knew she'd have to admit that all jobs are coercive. We didn't get much of an epilogue for the "coercive because sex" argument, but I'm guessing she realized she'd have to admit that hetero sex is at least somewhat rapey. I also gather that after already confirming she believes males engaging in sex work is also unethical, she realized she wouldn't be able to offer a reason for that position (I can't think of one based on what she said, but maybe you can?).
If I had to construct an honest form of the basic tenets of her argument, it might be something like this:
"Wage work has an element of coercion, because you're doing work you would otherwise refuse to do freely. Sex also has an element of violence and coercion for women in particular, given how much more vulnerable they are. Taken individually, neither is necessarily a problem because of [reasons]. But there's a symbiotic magnification of the harms that occurs when these two aspects are combined together into what we know as the sex trade. This crosses a line over what we should deem as ethical and acceptable behavior."
I may not agree with the conclusion but I think the argument is perfectly reasonable! If I had to guess, the reason Murphy doesn't adopt this framework is because it would necessarily require her to curtail some of her overall position. For example it would require her to concede at least *some* scenarios where the sex trade is not unethical (e.g. male prostitutes, OF model playing with toys, etc.).