ââŚWhat is it with liberals and accusations of âmoralizing?â Right before reading Bazelonâs piece, I was scrolling through the comments on a subreddit where someone had shared my last post on prostitution. There too, the most common response by far was a curt dismissal on the grounds that I just have a âmoral problemâ with prostitution.
Well, hereâs my confession: Theyâre right! I do have a moral problem with prostitution. I think buying sex is wrong. Itâs bad. Itâs not okay. Itâs unacceptable, reprehensible, indefensible, shameful, disgraceful, appalling, and every other word the Left has banned for fear of âmoralizing.â But buying sex should be moralized, because buying sex is immoral. Itâs something a person ought not do.
Thatâs not all, though. I donât just want to call it immoralâââI want the government to enforce that morality! I want the police and courts to punish men who purchase sex. I want them fined, or even thrown in jail, and I want that done solely because what they are doing is immoral.
I have no idea why anyone would think I pretend otherwise.
On the subject, I have moral problems with some other things: Police brutality, domestic violence, religion, capitalism, and the entire global system of industrial civilization, to name a few. I think itâs objectively immoral to assault your partner or appropriate the means of production for private profit. A white cop murdering an African civilian is impermissible to me. And destroying the entire planet in an orgy of white supremacist, patriarchal settler colonialism for the profit of shareholders and CEOs is certainly something I think a person ought not do. These things are wrong, like buying sex is wrong, and that is reason enough to abolish themâŚ
Left-wing men have cordoned off sex from ethics because ethics is, at its heart, a search for rules that transcend desire. Most of them donât desire to run a Fortune 500 company, or dig an oil well, or invade another country, so they donât mind prescriptions on behavior that restrict those things. But many, many men on the Left want to fuck female strangers, or want the power that comes from knowing those fucks are an option. No wonder, then, so many oppose âmoralizingâ around sex.
But of course they donât actually escape a moral systemâââthey just construct a remarkably shitty one. Donât tell women what they can and canât do with their own bodies. If itâs consensual, you have no right to judge. Donât be a prude. What are all of these things except universal prescriptions on behavior, which is all that morality ever was? Someone needs to remind these men that Thou Shall Not Slut Shame and Thou Shall Not Lie With Mankind as With Womankind are equally commandments.â
Left-wing men have cordoned off sex from ethics because ethics is, at its heart, a search for rules that transcend desire. Most of them donât desire to run a Fortune 500 company, or dig an oil well, or invade another country, so they donât mind prescriptions on behavior that restrict those things. But many, many men on the Left want to fuck female strangers, or want the power that comes from knowing those fucks are an option. No wonder, then, so many oppose âmoralizingâ around sex.
More people need to read this.
Last week, the New York Times ran Emily Bazelonâs piece, âShould Prostitution be a Crime?â Like most articles in support of the sex tradeâŚ



















