An interesting take on prostitution from John Moore up North:

An actor friend of mine once told me he was asked to perform oral sex on a director to secure a supporting role in a movie. “Did you do it?” I asked. “Sure why not,” he responded, “I do it for free– why wouldn’t I do it for $50,000?”
….We know sex has intrinsic value because it is universally coveted (although more by men than by women). We fail to identify the transactional nature of everyday coupling only because of the ineffable and unquanitifiable nature of the major currencies: youth, power and beauty. Those who have these qualities in abundance have little trouble obtaining gratification. If you lack in all of these areas, you can either do without, work exceedingly hard (begging, serial dating) or use the most commonly accepted currency there is, money.
“Jade” is a thirty-something university-educated mother of two young teens living in southern Ontario. She provides sexual services for $200 an hour. Jade started out in the escort business as a driver. Eight years ago, her agency came up short a girl at a gathering of plastic surgeons. “I ended up crossing the line into escorting and I really liked it,” she says.
Jade makes eight calls a week and spends the rest of her time doing volunteer work and raising her daughters. She pays taxes on her earnings and calls herself “a soccer mom.” When people ask what she does for a living she tells them she works for CSIS. She doesn’t feel dirty. No client has ever beaten her up. She’s never had to dress up as a school girl or wear a ball gag. She always practises safe sex and most of her clients aren’t dirty old men. “Even the dirty old men have an interesting aspect to them,” she laughs. Beyond businessmen, athletes and politicians, there are also clients who are aged or have disabilities that would make them completely unmarketable to regular partners.
So if Jade doesn’t feel demeaned by her paid couplings, surely her clients must live in a permanent state of shame, right?

Me: And on it goes. I find this amusing for several reasons but the most glaring is that the argument is really stupid. In formal debate you’d call his opening an “appeal to authority.” This is like arguing “The U.N. is necessary because Henry Kissinger says it is.” But in this case instead of Henry Kissinger, the authority in question is a two-bit gigolo actor who drops to his knees for a part and can’t even imagine why he wouldn’t since he already does it for free so often. The other authority — and his only actual example — is a single mom who whores herself out to make time for “volunteer work” and raising her daughters. No doubt Mr. Moore thinks Mrs. Brady-by-day, hooker-by-night, is a perfectly representative example of a “sex worker.” And we know she’s not being demeaned because she never has to dress up like a school girl. Because that would be repugnant! But servicing even dirty old men is just a straight-forward business transaction.

Moore couches his argument in economics, and one surely hears this sort of thing from libertarians down here as well. But I suspect that there’s another variable at work here. Moore’s Canadian. And as I discovered years ago, lots of Canadians have weirdly amoral views toward prostitution, perhaps because being “judgmental” is just so American.