Many feminists claim that women in sex industry are being exploited. This is just capitalism. By that standard the computer programmer or the manual worker is being exploited as well.
The real problem with the sex industry is that women in it are treated badly. Many of their clients are ugly to them, and they get disrespected in society. I most certainly would not want such a thing for my daughter. However for many women who don’t have supportive parents, it is the best option they have.
I do not hate such women. I feel sorry for such women. But I also feel sorry for people in places like Haiti and Nigeria. Some have more; others have less. I don’t think that it will ever be possible to do away with that. We can however do away with abuses against people who have less than we do; and it is important to both prevail on clients to be better to such women and to give them greater respect in society.
Now some people claim that anyone who breaks any kind of a social rule is a sociopath or a narcissist. By that standard America owes its nationhood to sociopaths and narcissists. The ancestors of white Americans – immigrants – all disliked rules in their countries enough to go looking for freedom on the other side of the world. The women in the sex industry are not all bad people, although some are. Many of them are as good as the next person, and it is wrong that they be portrayed as more narcissistic or sociopathic than the next person.
Are women in the sex industry being exploited? Once again, for many, it is the best option they have. Not everyone has good parents. Not everyone is with a good man. For many, the sex industry is the way to make ends meet or put oneself through a university. That is not exploitation. That is survival.
Are such women immoral? We see unethical practices all around us, and this is in no way limited to the sex industry. When people flood the atmosphere with CO2 or when they burn the rainforest they commit far greater moral wrong than anything that is practiced in the sex industry. People’s sexual behavior is between them and their partners; whereas harm done through these practices affect everyone. I do not see women in sex industry as being less ethical than Brazilian ranchers or Texas Oil.
I was close to a number of women who’ve worked in the sex industry, and I did not find them to be bad people. Some of them were sweethearts. There will be bad people in any industry, whether or not it is socially acceptable. As for these women, I’d like to see the conditions for them improve. Men who patronize the sex industry must have demanded on themselves gentlemanly behavior. And more needs to be done at the societal level to improve conditions for these women.