Jonathan Chait of The Plank inadvertently puts his finger on why I think prostitution should be legal despite my lack of enthusiasm for prostitution itself.

La Cosa Nostra has always made a lot of money from illegal gambling. In the 1940s, elements of the mob moved into Las Vegas, obviously thinking, “This will be great — we can do what we’ve always done, but this time openly.” Bugsy Seigel tried to open a swanky hotel in Vegas but he did a ridiculously bad job of managing the project. His skill was killing people, but managing construction projects. It’s bizarre that these gangsters forgot that the whole reason they were involved in gambling in the first place is that it was illegal. Once you make it legal, then gangsters have very little added value in the business world.

Source: The Plank.

I think that’s about right. Whereas I happen to believe gambling itself remains pernicious, legalization has mitigated almost all the collateral damage that went with it. Same with post-prohibition alcohol.

Since even extremely high-quality cannabis costs about eleven dollars a pound to grow, and since surgical cocaine still costs seven dollars a gram (even after extortionate medical markups!), there’d be pretty much no money in illegal drugs if it weren’t, well, illegal. Given that drug-crime related deaths far, far outweigh drug-use deaths, and given that drug-related crime (from drive-by shootings to boosting car stereos) is astronomical compared to drug-use crimes, the profit margins on legalized drugs just wouldn’t ever be high enough to justify a) selling to schoolchildren, b) robbing stores to support habits, c) buying bullets, let alone guns, let alone using them to enlarge or defend drug-dealer’s “turf.” And I say that even though I think most drug users are… well… dopes.

Same with porn, I might add. Back when organized crime was responsible for almost all pornography a lot of the hoary stereotypes that continue today were often dead… and deadly… true. Today? I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that while the total amount of available porn is orders of magnitude greater than it was before the 1980s when porn became legally generally acceptable the amount of coercion and exploitation in commercial porn has gone down. I am going to go out on a limb and say I think part of this is due to the much-despised but also much-complied-with Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 records-keeping requirement.

And so for the same reasons I think prostitution should be legal. Because there simply wouldn’t be much use in the system for… well… abuse such as pimping, trafficking, recruitment, let alone the almost routine rape, robbery, assault, serial murder, extortion by law enforcement, and trafficking that seems part and parcel with contemporary illegal prostitution, particularly subsistence/street prostitution. So even though I happen to believe prostitution as currently constructed both reflects and further distorts society’s baffling faith in the egregious Two Rules of Desire.

Update: See also economist Tyler Cowen on a British Journal of Criminology on the generally benign outcome of Portugal’s 2001 decision to decriminalize most illegal drugs. (Hint: consumption of more dangerous drugs declined slightly.)

Speaking of wage premia in sex work, Holly of The Pervocracy’s response to an uninvited solicitation provides another clue.

“I’m not someone you’d actually like, and I’m not interested in making this good for you, so would it help if I asked you to break the law for me?” is not all that that awesome a proposition.”

She said it here.

I’ve got more to say about her post but that sentence really stands on its own.

Note: this post got a little scrambled the first time so I’m bumping it back to the top again.

In her Dollars and Sex blog at Big Think Marina Ashade asked

"Why do sex trade workers make so much more money than other women doing jobs at the same skill level (i.e. no skill)?"

I think it's a bit of an assumption that prostitution requires no skill?  Consider the array of possible barriers to entry Adshade mentions in her post: evasion of law enforcement, avoidance of violence, avoidance of disease.  Those seem like skills.

Add to that the need for considerable marketing and customer management ability.  Those seem like skills too.

Then add the ability to perform acts while sober, alert, and strictly attentive to one's customers preferences that most people do while drunk, horny, and attentive mainly to their own preferences.  (And whereas the average person might have sex infrequently enough to shrug off the aches and pains of a possibly overeager, under-skilled, or inconsiderate partner in the heat of the moment the average sex worker can neither afford such injuries, generally won't have that "heat of the moment" benefit in any case, and so probably needs to be able to avoid them.)  More skills, and as anyone who has frequent sex with one intimate partner for their own enjoyment, let alone many, knows they're not inconsiderable skills.

And finally, remember that Queen Victoria was joking when she produced that "lie back and think of England" quip: sex is a learned, physical activity.

Add it all up and I'm… pretty sure "no skill" probably isn't the right description for what sex-workers do.

I think what she's trying to say is that in theory anyway the barrier to entry seems low enough that anyone willing and interested in trying prostitution ought to have an easy time doing so.  My (informed) guess would be that those who imagine there's "no skill" involved don't stay in the business long enough to register in the surveys and censuses of sex work economists like Adshade rely on for their speculations.

Anyway, I think if Adshade dropped the assumption that prostitution requires no skill it might at least partially answer her questions about the wage gap between sex work and conventional "unskilled" labor.

Note: I’m not suggesting that skill explains the entire wage differential. It’s just that Ashade cited estimates that sex-workers average roughly three times the income of unskilled workers. I just think it’s a mistake to use unskilled labor as the basis for comparison.

I have a number of friends and even more extended family members who are massage therapists. Here in Washington State licensed massage practitioners are required to take ongoing courses in order to maintain their certification. Here’s a catalog entry for the Pacific Northwest School of Massage’s continuing education program from earlier this summer. You’ll notice one of the items on the list is very not like the other ones.

All classes are NCB approved (NCB #451040-09) and valid for NCB, AMTA, and WA state CE Credit. You will be issued a certificate at the end of class.

• Treatment Massage for the Low Back Structures
• Muscle-Specific Deep Tissue Techniques for the Back
• Deep Muscle-specific work of the Anterior Neck
• CTM-Bindegewebsmassage Review
• Massage and Prostitution: What’s Going On?
• Understanding the Somatic Nervous System and Proprioception
• Deep Tissue Chest and Supine Shoulders
• The Neuroendocrine System, Stress, and Massage
• Deep Tissue of the Iliopsoas, Diaphragm, QL, and Paraspinals
• Nutritional Self-Care: Know Your Macronutrients
• Deep Tissue of Legs
• Deep Tissue Techniques for the Iliopsoas, Diaphragm and QL (Quadratus Lumborum)
• Hydrotherapy Principles and Physiology and Banya 5 Field Trip

• Deep Muscle Therapy Workshop in Hilo, Hawaii

Read the list and course descriptions in context here.

Now figleaf, you might be saying, aside from their 90+ inches of rainfall a year what possible problem could you have with privately paid-for education junkets Hilo, Hawaii? And how could it possibly related to recent news about Craigslist’s capitulation to pressure to black out their “Adult Services” category? Which is, after all, a major point of this post.

Eh, if you didn’t have the patience to closely read the list the odd duck in the mix would be…

Massage and Prostitution: What’s Going On?

One of the great frustrations legitimate massage therapists face is the confusion in the public eye between massage therapy and prostitution. We like to believe that there is less of this confusion than there used to be, and that massage is much more accepted as legitimate therapy by the general public. The truth is that the overlap has actually gotten worse in one significant respect: there are more prostitution businesses fronting as massage businesses in Washington than ever before. Some of these businesses are engaged not only in sexual massage, but in human trafficking.

Come and learn why the problem has gotten worse and what we can do about it. Our instructor will be Butch Watson, LMP, a massage therapist and retired police detective who has been studying the problem for 3 years. The situation we find ourselves facing in Washington is a perfect storm of legal, legislative, enforcement, and economic issues. This class is a call to action—our response to the problem will need to be organized, nuanced, and multifaceted if we are to disentangle our profession from prostitution.

This class satisfies the new Washington State Ethics requirement, and fulfills 4 hours of the NCBTMB Ethics requirement.

Instructor: Butch Watson
Ethics CE hours: 4
Location: Redmond, WA
Tuition: $75 if registered by August 20th; $100 thereafter
Registration: Send check to Pacific Northwest School of Massage, 7511 25th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98117

It happens to be a persistent, perpetual annoyance to massage practitioners almost everywhere, that the work they do is confused with sex work. It’s a problem made even worse by the fact that many prostitutes advertise themselves as massage therapists, and that many brothels advertise themselves as massage “parlors.”

It’s a problem in the sense that the spouses, partners, friends, and family members of clients often question the legitimacy of the treatments they’re receiving. It’s a problem in the sense that many state and local licensing authorities impose increasingly stringent certification requirements for licensing*. It’s a problem in the sense that the penalties for letting your license lapse are high** (as is the lack of reciprocity between jurisdictions that leads to sometimes year-long training requirements to get back in compliance in a new jurisdiction!)

And it’s a big fucking problem with customers who show up wondering whether, when, and/or why they’re not getting a “happy ending” with their massage.

And why might this be? Well, it might be because it’s illegal to be a prostitute and so they have to lie about what they’re doing.

Y’know one of the nice things for massage therapists in Washington State? Craigslist had two separate sections for the two kinds of “massage:” a section for real, trained, professional, licensed massage therapists, and one in the Adult Services section called (I think but, of course, I can’t check at the moment) “body rubs.”

Not everyone knew about the difference. And not all sex workers advertised in the “body rub” sections. Some, annoyingly, continued to advertise in the professional massage-services sections.

Now? Well, now they’re all going to start advertising in the massage-therapy sections. And even if they didn’t? Even more of their erstwhile customers are going to start fishing in the pool of real massage therapists to see if maybe, just in case, they’re one of the ones that does more than grind their thumbs and elbows into pressure points in your neck and back.

Anyway, next time you need to fulfill continuing-ed ethics requirements what are the odds you’d be offered a section on the hassles of sex workers pretending to be members of your profession? I’m not saying it never happens in other professions (though I can’t think of many.) I’m definitely not saying there’s anything wrong with sex work per se.

I am saying the burden placed on legitimate body-work professionals it just one more stupid, thuggish, and ill-considered consequence of all these Attorney’s General grandstanding against Craigslist’s Adult Services sections.

* Significant bit of trivia: back in the day a common requirement for a license were tests of anatomy but tests for sexually transmitted diseases! Connection much?

** Amusing anecdote: According to the instructor, former police detective and current massage-therapist activist Butch Watson, state agencies are actually quicker to take action against legal massage practitioners who let their license lapse than they are against individuals and businesses who never bother to get licensed at all!