Academic

Dempsey on the Feminist Case for Abolition of Prostitution

By Lawrence Solum

Michelle Madden Dempsey (Villanova University School of Law) has posted Sex Trafficking and Criminalization: In Defense of Feminist Abolitionism (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 158, No. 6, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article provides an overview of the feminist abolitionist response to sex trafficking and defends criminalizing the purchase of sex on grounds of complicity and endangerment.

And from the paper:

In debates regarding what sort of policy and legal responses are most appropriate in addressing the problem of sex trafficking, it is possible to identify two sides: abolitionists and nonabolitionists. Abolitionists seek to end both sex trafficking and prostitution generally, while nonabolitionists seek to end sex trafficking while allowing pros- titution to continue.1 The motivational grounding of the abolitionist movement is diverse: some people support abolitionist reforms based on conservative or reactionary political commitments, while others support abolitionism from a feminist point of view. An approach to sex trafficking that seeks to abolish both sex trafficking and prostitu- tion generally, as part of a larger set of feminist commitments and goals, is typically referred to (and will be referred to below) as ?femin- ist abolitionism.?

Broadly speaking, feminist abolitionism tends to favor developing policy and legal responses to sex trafficking that implement what has been coined the ?Swedish model.?2 This model includes social-welfare policies that assist people in exiting and avoiding prostitution; public education campaigns to raise awareness of the harms experienced by prostituted people3 and to change social norms that support sex trafficking and prostitution; and criminal law reforms that penalize trafficking, pimping, and the purchase of sex, while decriminalizing the sale of sex.4

In general, feminist abolitionism?s recommendations with respect to social-welfare provision, education, and criminalizing both traffick- ing and pimping have been largely uncontroversial. Similarly, the call to decriminalize the sale of sex is relatively uncontroversial, at least among feminist reformers.5 However, the abolitionist recommendation to criminalize the purchase of sex has been a source of considerable controversy.6

Some think that the feminist-abolitionist call to criminalize the purchase of sex faces insurmountable objections. Typically these ob- jections are based on the purported existence of prostituted people whose experiences do not fit the feminist abolitionists? conceptualiza- tion of commercial sex as violence against women.7 If selling sex is a genuinely consensual and valuable experience for some people, the argument goes, then feminist abolitionism?s arguments against buying sex must fail.8 This Article considers what concessions, if any, feminist abolitionism should make in response to this objection and articulates two justifications for criminalizing the purchase of sex that are immune to the objection.

Highly recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on November 18, 2010 (boomark / email).