I’m confused by some libertarians’ attempts to argue that working in the sex trade is no different than working in entertainment generally or in any other occupation. 

When the story of Miriam Weeks—the Duke University student who also appears in porn films—broke, some seemed eager to promote a young women who described working in the porn industry in glowing terms, as a road to empowerment. Now, a new documentary series on Ms. Weeks (unsurprisingly) paints a more complicated picture of her experience as a porn star.  This clearly disappoints those who want to make a political point with her tale. 

For example, Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes:

Watching the series progress, it's clear Weeks herself is struggling—as anyone who plays a public role must—with how much to give and how much to withold. "If you start becoming Belle," a colleague told her, "you need to leave the industry." 

By the final segment, Weeks has been traveling a lot and is homesick, feeling alienated from family and old friends and frustrated with some of the working conditions in the porn industry. She's tired. Her early, unadulterated enthusiasm for getting paid to have sex has worn off ("the experience has aged me," she says). Some will undoubtedly use this as evidence of the unconscionably negative toll porn takes on women. 

But I thought of that inevitable scene in tour documentaries where the lead singer is sleeping fitfully on a bus seat or talking forlornly with someone back home. Life as a musician on tour—it's not all peachy! Life as a rising porn starlet—sometimes it sucks! "Porn is like any other job, it's labor, and I think that liking it is irrelevant," Weeks says in segment five.

Brown doesn’t mention other aspects of Miriam Week’s personal story revealed in the documentary, but we also learn that she is survivor of rape and a former cutter who left a scar that reads “FAT” carved into her thigh.  One doesn’t have to be an anti-porn absolutist to be concerned that perhaps the 18-year-old didn’t know what she was getting into when she entered the porn industry and was emotionally vulnerable when she made that decision.  From the beginning, Weeks always has seemed a bit conflicted about why, exactly, she decided to appear in porn:  Was it her only option to cover too high tuition bills or a dream come true of feminist empowerment?

Admitting that the sex trade isn’t the happiest, best work environment for women doesn’t mean that one then has to believe the solution is to outlaw pornography.  One can believe that the porn industry is generally bad for women, that the proliferation of porn is damaging to society, and still also recognize that a government prohibition would lead to far worse outcomes, pushing the practice completely underground and leaving young women like Weeks with fewer protections.     

If the decriminalization of prostitution and the like is the libertarians’ goal, then it would seem far more effective to use the best lessons from the drug legalization movement. 

Rather than trying to convince the public that drugs are harmless, and that we should be indifferent to whether someone chooses to eat crackers and use cocaine, the best drug legalization efforts focus on the unintended consequences of the drug war.  Making drugs illegal hasn’t discouraged drug use in America, but has made it a (very profitable) criminal industry and encouraged the creation of our gang infrastructure.  De-criminalizing drugs would make the drug trade less profitable and could lead to a major reduction in crime. There is much evidence to draw from in Europe, where drugs are essentially de-criminalized and crime rates are far lower.  When presented with these facts one can easily be convinced that while drugs may be bad, the drug war is worse.

A similar argument about the sex trade would be far more effective:  Let’s focus on rates of sexual trafficking in places where prostitution is criminalized versus those where it is legal; let’s consider how easily a young woman (or man) can leave the sex industry and rates of slavery, violence and disease.  Let’s further promote the core libertarian concept that America is supposed to be a country of free people, and free people must be allowed to make bad decisions, whether that’s using addictive drugs or appearing in degrading porn.

Trying to convince people that porn is incredibly empowering to women—and that we should be just as pleased if our daughters and sisters pursue a job in the sex trade as we are if they choose to pursue medicine or journalism—simply isn’t going to work.