It is now time to reconsider our moral objections to the sale of sex
Oxford officials appear surprised to discover that some of their students engage in sex work. On a fully-accessible internet website, a young man has advertised his bare-chested wares using the hallowed Oxford name. He and his buddies further have devised a site of their own, uniboys.co.uk, which since has been taken down. Censure is threatened. But what exactly is being condemned? Sexual and economic realms are rarely if ever disentangled.
From traditional wedlock to the briefest of onenight- stands, intercourse involves exchange: whether a free ride home from the bar, an evening’s accommodation, or a lifetime of support. As many feminist theorists have noted, patriarchal marriage enables and sustains men’s political and financial advantage, dominance, and control. ‘Providing’ for wives is understood as direct recompense for their unpaid domestic labour as well as sexual subservience.
Indeed, along with dowries, women have been among the items of exchange, passing from fathers to husbands. Through a perverse biological essentialism, backed by classical ethics’ natural law, this has been declared the innate order of things. For too long it paraded as commonsense. The economic component was suppressed, forgotten, under the guise of duty and, more recently, romantic love.
People ‘out to pull’ likewise engage in a range of indirection and little deceits, glossing elements of character and background to enhance attractiveness and participating in an often calculated gift-giving, to improve prospects. By contrast, sex work • at its best • can be among the most frank and honest of sexual exchanges. Requiring conversation of extraordinary candour, precise cash compensation is agreed for particular sexual services, duly rendered.
Websites are one means by which pimps and procurers • the source of most abuse • can be removed from the transaction. Tragically, some religious figures continue to insist that sexual acts are morally sanctionable only if they hold out the possibility of procreation. Thus, they ban condoms, with fatal results for countless thousands. Though not necessarily representative, students in my ‘Contemporary Sexual Ethics’ class subscribe in large measure to a different system of values.
Good sex is consensual, pleasurable, honest, and responsible. It proceeds from an explicit arrangement, freely entered into, without deception, giving one or more partners an experience of bliss, while weighing and protecting against future adverse consequences. Sex work can and often does meet this standard. Apparently, when a sex worker references another of his occupational affiliations • say, Oxford University • it brings that institution into disrepute.
A ‘reputation’ is not unlike a sexual norm. (Indeed, the very word has been used to connote one: “Oh, she’s got quite a reputation.”) Such reputations are largely ascribed by conservative authorities whose ideas, we see, are increasingly disavowed by students • in theory, in practice, and certainly in the world of fantasy. No less than leather men, bears, and gym bunnies, widely-recognized gay erotic archetypes include geeks, frat boys, and, yes, uni boys.
Such identifications, used in sexual settings, often serve more to promote fantasy and imaginative play than to reveal a detailed personal history. They typically are taken with a grain of salt, suggesting we all could lighten up a bit.
Does Oxford really want to police all adult consensual sexual activity that takes place on its grounds or that, however perfunctorily, invokes its name? What would be the statute of limitations? Oxford graduate Ben Duncan’s newly-revised memoir, The Same Language, narrates tales from the 1950s of hearty • and illegal • gay sex in the rooms of Christ Church and Queen’s.
How many other literary worthies, not to mention ordinary alumni, could be brought up on charges? Surely the role of any institution of higher education should be to promote honest ethical discourse around gender and sexuality, not to squelch it. It should question old norms, not enforce them. As a leader of thought, it should help imagine and articulate new ones.
18th May 2006