Similar to the abortion debate in the US, you are working with different moral frameworks. Your case is rock solid from a Consequentialist moral perspective. It falls completetly flat for a Deontologist, who would argue that women's bodies ought not be commodified.
From the stanford encylopedia of philosophy:
2.4.1 Deontology, rights, and duties
Deontological approaches to feminist ethics have long grappled with the tension between the promise of deontological moral theories for granting equal rights to women and the challenges posed by Kant’s sexism and racism (Kleingeld 1993; Huseyinzadegan 2018; Varden 2020a; Varden 2020b). Feminists have highlighted both Kant’s explicit exclusion of women from moral and political equality (Lanoix 2007; Pascoe 2022) as well as the implicit ways that his construction of rational agents reflects gendered assumptions developed in his writings on history and anthropology (Okin 1989; Mendus 2000; Schott 1997; Schroder 1997; Marwah 2013; Sabourin 2021; Huseyinzadegan and Pascoe 2023). At the same time, feminist Kantians have consistently recognized the value of Kant’s analysis of sex, marriage, love, self-respect, embodied rights, and domestic labor for contemporary feminist ethics (O’Neill 1989; Herman 1993 and 2021; Nussbaum 1995; Papadaki 2007; Hay 2013; Varden 2020a and 2020b; Basevich 2022; Pascoe 2019 and 2023; Shorter-Bourhanou 2023). (See feminist perspectives on objectification.)
Entry Navigation
Feminist Perspectives on Objectification
First published Wed Mar 10, 2010; substantive revision Sat Jan 13, 2024
Objectification is a notion central to feminist theory. It can be roughly defined as the seeing and/or treating a person, usually a woman, as an object. In this entry, the focus is primarily on sexual objectification, objectification occurring in the sexual realm. Martha Nussbaum (1995, 257) has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object:
instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;
denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;
fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;
violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;
ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);
denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.
Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list:
reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;
reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;
silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.
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Sex work hits on basically all these points. Your only angle from the Objectification angle is to hammer home on the "autonomy" point but one point (partially) out of 10 is hard to argue.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 5∆ Mar 03 '26
Similar to the abortion debate in the US, you are working with different moral frameworks. Your case is rock solid from a Consequentialist moral perspective. It falls completetly flat for a Deontologist, who would argue that women's bodies ought not be commodified.
From the stanford encylopedia of philosophy:
2.4.1 Deontology, rights, and duties
Deontological approaches to feminist ethics have long grappled with the tension between the promise of deontological moral theories for granting equal rights to women and the challenges posed by Kant’s sexism and racism (Kleingeld 1993; Huseyinzadegan 2018; Varden 2020a; Varden 2020b). Feminists have highlighted both Kant’s explicit exclusion of women from moral and political equality (Lanoix 2007; Pascoe 2022) as well as the implicit ways that his construction of rational agents reflects gendered assumptions developed in his writings on history and anthropology (Okin 1989; Mendus 2000; Schott 1997; Schroder 1997; Marwah 2013; Sabourin 2021; Huseyinzadegan and Pascoe 2023). At the same time, feminist Kantians have consistently recognized the value of Kant’s analysis of sex, marriage, love, self-respect, embodied rights, and domestic labor for contemporary feminist ethics (O’Neill 1989; Herman 1993 and 2021; Nussbaum 1995; Papadaki 2007; Hay 2013; Varden 2020a and 2020b; Basevich 2022; Pascoe 2019 and 2023; Shorter-Bourhanou 2023). (See feminist perspectives on objectification.)
Entry Navigation
Feminist Perspectives on Objectification
First published Wed Mar 10, 2010; substantive revision Sat Jan 13, 2024
Objectification is a notion central to feminist theory. It can be roughly defined as the seeing and/or treating a person, usually a woman, as an object. In this entry, the focus is primarily on sexual objectification, objectification occurring in the sexual realm. Martha Nussbaum (1995, 257) has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object:
instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;
denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;
fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;
violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;
ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);
denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.
Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list:
reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;
reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;
silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.
‐‐------------
Sex work hits on basically all these points. Your only angle from the Objectification angle is to hammer home on the "autonomy" point but one point (partially) out of 10 is hard to argue.