All Work Is Like A Bad Simile

About a month ago, Audacia Ray made a post that ended with the sentence "And so help me, if anyone says that all work is like prostitution, I will scream."

I've been seeing this statement or statements like it, and if I see another I won't scream, but I will wince. The underlying argument is that everyone is a prostitute because everyone has to exchange something for money. Using the same logic, all workers are computer programmers because computer programmers exchange something for money. And all workers are lawyers for the same reason.

It's easy to see why some prostitutes make the argument that all work is like prostitution. Prostitution carries a stigma, and some prostitutes want to overcome that stigma by pointing out the similarities between prostitution and other work. That attempt is understandable but bound to fail because everyone recognizes the fallacy it's based on. People who aren't sex workers don't sell sexual services, and that difference is what creates the stigma. Pointing out the similarities won't make the difference go away or cause people to stop stigmatizing it.

When the "all work is prostitution" statement is made by non-prostitutes, it's generally less benign. It's usually made by someone who believes that some aspect of their job is morally dubious, and the "prostitution" statement is an attempt to claim that everyone's work is immoral in the same way. But instead of removing the moral stigma of sex work, this reinforces it by using sex work as an archetype of immorality. All in all, the "all work is prostitution" statement works against prostitutes.

However, there are ways in which all jobs are like prostitution. First and most obviously, all jobs involve the exchange of work for money. Secondly, workers, both prostitutes and non-prostitutes, wouldn't be doing their jobs if they weren't being paid. And all workers choose their jobs by comparing jobs that are available to them and ranking them based on pay, flexibility, prestige, security, and any of a large number of other characteristics. Or sometimes they pick a job because someone offers it to them when they need a job. So while different prostitutes choose their job for different reasons and through different processes, the reasons and possesses are the same as those that lead other people to choose other jobs. People opposed to prostitution argue that prostitutes are forced into prostitution, or that they choose prostitution because the lack the correct political consciousness, or because they are immoral; in other words, they try to explain prostitution by identifying what makes prostitutes different from other people. But the evidence indicates that people become prostitutes because they are like everyone else. Normal, ordinary decision making causes different people to choose different jobs, one of which is prostitution.

Prostitution is unlike other jobs for the same reasons that any job is unlike other jobs. In addition, prostitution has a socially determined stigma. Even if you don't agree that prostitution should be stigmatized, you have to acknowledge that the stigma has important consequences, and the stigma is therefore an important difference. However, prostitution also has similarities to other types of jobs, and those similarities stem from the fact that prostitutes are drawn from the same population as other professions. It's a fact that prostitution is unlike other jobs. It's a delusion that prostitutes are unlike other humans.