Does Legalized Prostitution Lower Rates of Rape?
Only if your definition of "rape" is from 1934
I hope your heart finds grace + gumption in this free letter, but just a reminder that Letters From a Catholic Feminist is not free to create. That’s why it’s a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy our monthly free content, I’d ask if you could prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. Full subscribers have access to our entire archives, our summer read-alongs, our Advent podcast, our booklists, and so many other perks. Thank you so much, and peace be with you.
Many tirades have been scribbled, including in this very newsletter, about our modern culture’s desperate attempts to make prostitution palatable.
We no longer call victims prostituted women, we call them sex workers—because, after all, it’s a real job!
We no longer guilt men who purchase sex—because, after all, sex is great and men have needs!
We no longer fight for an end to prostitution, we just aim to make it legal—because, after all, we can clearly make it work in our very broken system if we just give the deadliest “occupation” free healthcare and a union! (I mean, they’re 60 times more likely to be murdered than non-prostituted women, but at least they won't have a high copay1.)
We no longer try to eliminate brothels—because, after all, sex-for-payment probably lowers the rates of rape?
There are statistics and studies that show that the “sex industry”, as our media prefers to call it, “leads to a significant decrease in rape rates”. But this only stands true if you’re looking at rape from the stereotypical perspective of a man in all black jumping out at women from a dark alley.
Rape involves any sexual act that is not consensual. But what is consent?
Consent is an agreement between parties to engage in sexual activity where both parties are able to say yes.
What this means is that drunk sex is not consensual. Take a moment and recall the Brock Turner case, where a 19-year-old star swimmer at Stanford sexually assaulted a 22-year-old woman. He forced himself on her when she was drunk, unconscious, and completely unable to agree to it. Nobody of good will who even slightly understands the dignity of sexuality would claim that was “consensual” sex.
Similarly, when money enters the picture, the act automatically becomes coercive. If goods are being exchanged in order to secure sex, the sex is exploitative, and therefore not consensual. Taking a fuller understanding of the definition of consent into the picture, we begin to see that legalized prostitution doesn’t lower rates of rape—it raises them. By championing legalized prostitution, we are are facilitating rape on a mass scale.
“Any form of prostitution is a reduction to slavery, a criminal act, a disgusting vice that confuses making love with venting out one's instincts by torturing a defenseless woman . . . It is a sickness of humanity, a false way of thinking in society." - Pope Francis
Furthermore, we need to remember that Catholics can’t do evil so that good may come of it. When people claim that we should keep abortion legal because having children out of wedlock has the potential to drive women into poverty in our society, they’re not wrong about the outcome but they are wrong about what it allows. We don’t murder people so that other people are able to be financially comfortable. And we don’t rape some people so that others aren’t raped.
It's also been repeatedly shown that the legalization of prostitution leads to an increase in sex trafficking.2
Every form of economics has downsides, and prostitution is toxic capitalism3 at its most brutal. It’s where human beings become products, available for purchase and sale.
So why, exactly, have groups like Amnesty International, which reportedly has a mission “to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights,” decided to openly support exploitation of women? Legalized prostitution, which increases levels of exploitative and non-fully-consensual sex, is not in line with promoting human rights.
Amnesty International, the Human Rights Campaign, and the The UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls have abandoned women.
These groups, and many other groups that claim to be for the dignity + freedom of women, would prefer to promote a position that will keep them exploited and continue to feed the machine of men paying for access to women’s naked bodies.
A Teen Vogue article from a few years back recently caught my eye. It’s entitled “Why Sex Work is Real Work” which, just as a reminder, it isn’t. The article states:
“The clients who seek sex workers vary, and they’re not just men. The idea of purchasing intimacy and paying for the services can be affirming for many people who need human connection, friendship, and emotional support. Some people may have fantasies and kink preferences that they are able to fulfill with the services of a sex worker.” A magazine that pretends to be a women’s empowerment publication promoting female exploitation? Color me shocked in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
Much ink has been spilled on how social media robs of our actual connections for a substituted connection. A black-and-white farce that favors emojis over emotions. The kind of relationship you can enter, get what you need, and leave. This is exactly what prostition-based “relationships” look like, and they aren’t real relationships. Real relationships aren’t needs-based. Real relationships do not exist for you to get something out of them. Real relationships that foster connection and growth are not paid for. Yes, you pay therapists, but your therapist is not your friend or your spouse, and any non-sleazy therapist will be very clear and upfront about that.
What we need to do is starve prostition of its oxygen.
How do we do that?
By implementing the Nordic model. The Nordic model decriminalizes prostitution for women, instead going after the men who sell and purchase sex. This is how supply chains work: you cut off the demand, you’ll cut off the supply.
By putting real resources into our country’s mental healthcare. Yes, I’m aware that there are very popular books right now saying we’re all over-therapized. I haven’t read them and maybe they’re terrific. I’m open to giving them a shot when I’m in a less busy season. But if you want my two cents, we need more qualified mental healthcare in this country, not less. We need better understandings of little-or-big-T traumas, less stigmatization surrounding mental healthcare, and healthcare financial assistance so that people aren’t forced to pay 400 dollars a week to emotionally survive. We need therapists who aren’t on TikTok but who do have actual degrees, certifications, and training in attachment-based therapy. If men are emotionally healthy instead of morally stunted, if they’ve drunk living water instead of Andrew Tate kool-aid, and are therefore able to seek and find real relationships, they’ll be less likely to go out and attempt to pay for them.
By not giving into culture’s normalization of exploitation. We need to stand firm against our modern culture’s attempts to normalize the abusive practice of prostitution. It is not a sanitary, safe, acceptable career choice. It is terrifying, abusive, and not what any woman deserves. There is no woman, anywhere, who is making the right “choice” by being prostituted; indeed, it’s VERY rarely a “choice” at all. Providing paid access to women for sexual pleasure does not empower anybody.
Because prostitution does not lower rates of rape: it raises them, turning a gift from God (the sexual act) into a commodity and dangerous practice cosplaying as dignified labor.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from one of television’s greatest shows, The West Wing:
Josh: How is making prostitution illegal not suppressing women's rights?
Amy: How is making heroin use illegal not suppressing a heroin user's rights?
Josh: It is, but heroin's bad for you.
Amy: So is being a prostitute.
Hit me in the comments with your thoughts. Do you prefer the term “sex work”? Do you see the benefit of legalizing it anywhere? Does it ever really cross your mind, or is it more of a niche topic you’re learning more about? And who, in your opinion, is the greatest West Wing character? (There’s a right answer, and it’s a three-way tie between CJ, Amy, and Ainsley Hayes.)
On My Nightstand
That Woman by Anne Sebba: A really interesting biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. She’s such a complex, multi-layered figure and she’s been fascinating to me for a long time.
The Unexpected Village: A really lovely piece on the importance of community care for moms in need (which…aren’t we all?)
Panic and Prayer: A great read by
, one of my favorite substackers, on the importance of prayer, especially when wrestling with anxiety. “Anxious? Touch some grass. Drop and give me 10. Eat a Warhead. Escape the prison of imagined reality and be where your feet are. Better still would be to recognize that not only are you an embodied creature, inextricably endowed with skin and blood vessels and taste buds and neurons; you are the imago Dei, a living icon of the One who is not one, but three—the God whose innermost secret is that he is ‘an eternal exchange of love.’”
In case you missed these Letters:
Hey, did you know this newsletter isn’t actually free?
I mean, this letter is free to you, right this second. Which is great! But it costs me time + money to create. That’s why I’m so thankful for the full subscribers of Letters From a Catholic Feminist. Without those faithful feminists in my corner, these letters wouldn’t exist, or they’d exist with a whole lotta ads. So if you enjoyed this letter, I ask you prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. Full subscribers receive at least two extra newsletters a month, access to our entire archives, our summer read-alongs, and whatever else my footloose + faithful feminist brain dreams up.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260507312946
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453#:~:text=We%20find%20that%20countries%20with,control%20for%20in%20the%20analysis
I am not anti capitalism. I’m anti toxic capitalism that treats human beings as products.
I never considered how payment rendered consent impossible. That was an important point to articulate. In economic terms, I also think the “demand” for prostitution will always outpace the “supply”—and where it’s been legalized, where market demand is unleashed, the supply can only be met with trafficking. It seems to inherently feed another illegal and immoral market. As far as the language used to describe the women, maybe “sex worker” imparts more dignity than “prostitute”? Maybe not. How can we talk about women who have sold or been sold into sex in a way that honors their dignity and personhood?
"Real relationships aren’t needs-based. Real relationships do not exist for you to get something out of them. Real relationships that foster connection and growth are not paid for."
I feel like this is actually a really profound and counter-cultural message. Our culture has been pretty quietly but consistently insistent that relationships should give you something - and if they don't, you should shut them down. I've struggled with this mentality in my own marriage and I see it as a huge contributing factor to people chosing not to have children - as it's pretty obvious it's a one sided relationship. The quest to "get my needs met" has become the holy grail of modern society, so it makes sense that ethics are getting swept aside when they get in the way of that ideal. It also perfectly correlates with a turning away from a loving God (who provides all things) because now we are each responsible for securing our own needs - which is a terrifying mindset.
As for me, I'm team CJ.