On prostitutes and discrimination
August 15th 2006 02:20
"Are prostitutes who refuse black clients discriminatory? Isn't this both immoral and illegal? Can a shop owner exclude black people from his shop?"
Or, to put the matter differently: Regardless of whether you're a sex worker or not, should you be arrested if you don't find black people attractive?
And what if colour were removed? What if you refused to sleep with anyone with a big nose, or whose name began with "G"? Would you be being discriminatory?
One way to characterize the welfare state is to base it on equality. It's unfair that some are born with wooden spoons and some with silver -- that some are designed for basketball, and others for wheelchairs. Welfare is the attempt to level the differences. Welfare takes from the few to increase the happiness of the many. What a person deserves, we think, is what they earn by their effort -- not what they've accidentally acquired through good bank balances or genes.
But in reply, consider this thought from Will Kymlicka: "[W]hy not extend the principle of equalizing circumstances to genetic engineering, manipulating embryos to be more equal in their endowments (Reinders 2000; Brown 2001)? Or consider biological transfers: if one person is born blind and another person is born with two good eyes, why not require the transfer of one good eye to the blind man (Nozick 1974: 207-8; Flew 1989: 159)?... Again we find a slippery slope problem. Once we start down the road of equalizing natural endowments, where do we stop? Dworkin recognizes this slippery slope and says that we might decide to draw an inviolable line around the body… Libertarians, in practice, simply extend this strategy. If we can draw a line around the person… why not draw a line around her [property] as well?"
The sex worker is refusing his/her services based on colour -- which might have as much opportunity to create unfairness and psychological hurt as any colour-based differentiation. So, personally, I couldn't deny the discrimination. My reaction, rather, would be the claim that discrimination is permissible under certain circumstances.
And what are the circumstances?
In my opinion, there's two ways you could go on this.
The first is libertarian. We want to preserve an individual space: a sanctity of the body, and a freedom of opinion to have any likes you like, and to act on them. This goes to the core of what exercising choice means. -- But we also want equality, fairness, and the levelling of differences; and society can't be separated into individual, non-touching bubbles.
The second appeals to competing interest. Other people's preferences frequently collide with mine. So arbitration is necessary; and we often recognize that the preference of one or the other should take precedence. -- But is there always a principled way to decide which?
Discrimination is permissible under certain circumstances. Yet how, ultimately, can the circumstances be specified? How can the lines be fixed?
Notes
-- Thursday 1 April 2010: A UNESCO report writes: "Hitting people violates their fundamental rights to respect for their physical integrity and human dignity, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Children are people too and equal holders of human rights" (emphasis added).
Presumably it's on these sorts of grounds -- intuitions, beliefs about "physical integrity" and "human dignity" -- that people would try to distinguish sex work from other sorts of work, or to claim that being forced into sex work is more abhorrent than being any other sort of wage slave.
Or, to put the matter differently: Regardless of whether you're a sex worker or not, should you be arrested if you don't find black people attractive?
And what if colour were removed? What if you refused to sleep with anyone with a big nose, or whose name began with "G"? Would you be being discriminatory?
***
One way to characterize the welfare state is to base it on equality. It's unfair that some are born with wooden spoons and some with silver -- that some are designed for basketball, and others for wheelchairs. Welfare is the attempt to level the differences. Welfare takes from the few to increase the happiness of the many. What a person deserves, we think, is what they earn by their effort -- not what they've accidentally acquired through good bank balances or genes.
But in reply, consider this thought from Will Kymlicka: "[W]hy not extend the principle of equalizing circumstances to genetic engineering, manipulating embryos to be more equal in their endowments (Reinders 2000; Brown 2001)? Or consider biological transfers: if one person is born blind and another person is born with two good eyes, why not require the transfer of one good eye to the blind man (Nozick 1974: 207-8; Flew 1989: 159)?... Again we find a slippery slope problem. Once we start down the road of equalizing natural endowments, where do we stop? Dworkin recognizes this slippery slope and says that we might decide to draw an inviolable line around the body… Libertarians, in practice, simply extend this strategy. If we can draw a line around the person… why not draw a line around her [property] as well?"
***
The sex worker is refusing his/her services based on colour -- which might have as much opportunity to create unfairness and psychological hurt as any colour-based differentiation. So, personally, I couldn't deny the discrimination. My reaction, rather, would be the claim that discrimination is permissible under certain circumstances.
And what are the circumstances?
In my opinion, there's two ways you could go on this.
The first is libertarian. We want to preserve an individual space: a sanctity of the body, and a freedom of opinion to have any likes you like, and to act on them. This goes to the core of what exercising choice means. -- But we also want equality, fairness, and the levelling of differences; and society can't be separated into individual, non-touching bubbles.
The second appeals to competing interest. Other people's preferences frequently collide with mine. So arbitration is necessary; and we often recognize that the preference of one or the other should take precedence. -- But is there always a principled way to decide which?
Discrimination is permissible under certain circumstances. Yet how, ultimately, can the circumstances be specified? How can the lines be fixed?
***
Notes
-- Thursday 1 April 2010: A UNESCO report writes: "Hitting people violates their fundamental rights to respect for their physical integrity and human dignity, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Children are people too and equal holders of human rights" (emphasis added).
Presumably it's on these sorts of grounds -- intuitions, beliefs about "physical integrity" and "human dignity" -- that people would try to distinguish sex work from other sorts of work, or to claim that being forced into sex work is more abhorrent than being any other sort of wage slave.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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can you send me a message with your email address please?
thanks!
Comment by jon
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In each case the line will probably be drawn not by logical argument, but by the majority instinctive gut-reactions of the voting public.
Great Post.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Is cynicism all that remains then? Just different power interests competing to impose their point of view?
I have to confess that I'm inclined towards cynicism. I think there's many cases where people are internally conflicted, where in their own heads they have competing intuitions (eg questions of abortion, euthanasia...). For such cases, I might believe that there's often no rational way to resolve the conflicts. But I'm not going to admit that to the person I'm trying to convince.