Sex work is just WORK!

Sex work is just as a legit job just as any other job is. It’s a profession in a field that people may find very different from what they’re accustomed to but is still someone providing a service for money in order to insure a financially secure life for themselves and their family. For the longest time women have been at the forefront of men’s oppression. This has been done through a organization of patriarchy. Having a male at the top of a organization who able to depict what is going on below him subjects everyone to his needs. This is even thought to be in a relationship between a man and a women where sex is what the women provides to the man. A patriarchy organization can be seen in our capitalistic economy and an integral part to that organization is prostitution. In an article by Carole Pateman called What’s Wrong with Prostitution?, she discusses prostitution as a form of professional work and not as a degrading profession to women.

I would have to think the same because it’s a women right to do what ever type of work she likes. Especially with how popular prostitution is, it is estimated that there are 1.5 million customers to prostitution in the United States each week. This is an astounding amount of people involved in this work. And to think of it as something that should be hidden from society when it is intact an important part of society. It provides work to both women and men who find them as being able to provide a service to both men and women.

In Pateman’s article, she discusses the theory of contracts and how it applies to prostitution. Contract theorists argues that “a prostitute contracts out a certain form of labor power for a given period in exchange for money” (Pateman). This is very similar to contracted work that people do for their employers. For instance, a carpenter is contracted by a homeowner to do some work on a house, the homeowner is hiring the contractor for his service and the contractor agrees to provide this work in exchange for money. Another way to look at the contract is to think that the prostitute is an owner of property which is herself who then contracts out part of her property into the market. The market being what is being paid and in return for the service. There is no different between a prostitute and any other work or seller of services. Even though prostitution is no different from another work they are definitely treated differently with the types of contracts. Employees have labor unions and rights that are backed up by laws that protect them and make sure they are paid and treated right by their employers. This is all stated in contracts signed by employees and their employers. For most prostitutes though there is no contract that is constructed to protect the prostitute nor the customer. In most instances the prostitute is a female and the customer is a male and this can cause an unequal balance in power. Which can lead to the prostitute not getting paid and there is no contract that insures she will be getting paid. This can lead to an unfair and unsafe working environment. If this were the work environment for someone in the United States it would be corrected right away with uproar from people and laws changed. But since people don’t see prostitution as a legit form of business there is not a demand from the public to progress laws through legislation to protect prostitutes.