"The most urgent issue raised by prostitution is that of employment opportunities for working women and their control over the conditions of employment. The legalization of prostitution, far from promoting the demise of love, is likely to make things a little better for women who have too few options to begin with. The really helpful thing for feminists to ponder, if they deplore the nature of those options, will be how to promote expansion in the options set through education, skills training, and job creation. These unsexy topics are not common themes in U.S. feminist philosophy, but they are inevitable in any practical project dealing with prostitutes and their female children. This suggests that at least some of our feminist theory may be insufficiently grounded in the reality of working-class lives and too focused on sexuality as an issue in it's own right, as if it could be extricated from the fabric of poor people's attempt to survive."
"...we need to scrutinize all our social views about money making and alleged commodification with extra care, for they are likely to embed class prejudices that are unjust to working people."
"When we consider our views about sexual and reproductive serices, then, we must be on our guard against two types of irrationality: aristocratic class prejudice and fear of the body and its passions."
"As long as prostitution is stigmatized, people are injured by that stigmatization, and it is a real injury to a person not to have dignity and self-respect in her own society. But that real injury (as with the comparable real injury to the dignity and self-respect of interratial couples, or of lesbians and gay men) is not best handled by continued legal strictures against the prostitute and can be better dealt with in other ways (e.g. by fighting discrimination against these people and taking measures to promote their dignity)."
Martha Nussbaum, "'Whether for reason or prejudice.' Taking Money for bodily services"
