CONSENTING TO BE PAID FOR SEX IS STILL CONSENTING!(SEX)

• Author: Mcneill, Maggie

MOST MODERN PEOPLE agree that every individual has the right to set his or her own conditions of consent, even if few of us think about daily life in those terms. "You can borrow my car if you promise to have it back by 4 p.m." is an example of conditional consent at work. "I'll perform this labor for you in exchange for x amount of compensation" is another. "I will have sex with you if you agree to use a condom" is a third.

In the realm of sex, consent has been elevated to the level of a sacred word. But in practice, most of us believe in a host of exceptions. We think that some people (such as minors) should not be allowed to consent to some things and, conversely, that some other people (such as cops) should be allowed to do some things even without consent. Many if not most of these exceptions involve sex, money, or power, so it's not surprising that sex work--which involves all three--inspires some truly absurd mental gymnastics on and around the concept of consent.

Statists, both in and out of government, like to play Kafkaesque games with the idea of consent. We are told by a certain type of feminist that consent must be explicitly verbal, ongoing, and "enthusiastic." They say it must be tiresomely re-ascertained over and over and over again, no matter how clearly it was expressed in the first place. Modern Puritans, meanwhile, claim that people who engage in "deviant" sexual behavior (including sex work, BDSM, and--until very recently--homosexuality) are suffering from "Stockholm syndrome," "trauma bonding," or "false consciousness" and thus cannot consent to things they claim to enjoy because they are not in their right minds.

But the most bizarre of these tortuous mind games, popular among radical feminists for years but gaining momentum today among "progressives," is the idea that if a person is paid to do something he wouldn't do for free, that constitutes "coercion" or even "violence." As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown pointed out a few years ago, "In Seattle, sex must be a 'leisure activity' for both parties or it's nonconsensual, according to one area prosecutor." Brown was writing about Val Richey, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for King County, Washington, who argued that all sex workers are victims of rape because someone paid them "essentially to turn a 'no' into a 'yes.'"

This dogma is deranged. Richey doesn't do his job for free; does that mean he is coerced, too? This contradiction doesn't seem to occur to...