Perspectives and Players

Abstract

Considering sex work is often claimed to be the ‘oldest profession’, it is surprising how much debate continues to surround its legitimacy as a form of labour. Contemporary scholarly literature abounds with many arguments for and against legalising, decriminalising or abolishing sex work. Such diverse understandings can roughly be divided into those grounded in value judgements and those focusing on moral judgements, where ‘value judgement’ refers to the worth of a thing and subsequently the disposition to seek that thing, and ‘moral judgement’ to an imperative to act (Gaus 1999). For example, we make a value judgement when we say that someone is not living up to their potential. A moral imperative, on the other hand, would be ‘People are morally obligated to live up to their potential’. We can exhort others to pursue what we value, but if we fail, then we have no recourse because a value judgement only reflects what we believe is valuable. For example, person A may value high social status, while person B may not, and while person A may wish that person B would give due recognition to their high social status, she has no legal or moral recourse to force person B to do so. It is up to person B whether they choose to recognise high status or not. When we issue a moral imperative, on the other hand, we are not giving others a choice; the moral imperative is to act according to what is right.