The basic reason that I believe prostitution should be legal is because I believe in people as autonomous individuals, who can best decide how to freely make choices for themselves. But I have a lot of discomfort with that belief, largely because I believe the view of individuals as able to make free autonomous choices is often a libertarian fiction—I believe it reasonable to say that people are “forced” to do something by circumstances, even if they are not physically coerced into doing so. But the line between when an individual is acting freely and autonomously, and when they’re forced to by circumstance, is pretty vague in my head. A libertarian might say it’s vague because it’s an incoherent distinction, because I’m essentially saying that people can be “forced to choose” things. I would instead say that the two ends of the spectrum are qualitatively different, but in a way that doesn’t lend itself to a sharp distinction. As you describe the structure of ways that emphasize more than women might be commodities, rather than individuals in charge of their job choice of prostitute, I get more and more uncomfortable with my support of legalized prostitution. Different people draw the line in different places, and the flat-rate brothels don’t personally raise any hackles for me. But I think this distinction between “autonomous individuals” and “forced by circumstance” is why most people, even those in favor of legalized prostitution, have internal conflicts about what is OK.

For me, #10, #11, and #16 are the only ones that seem ban-worthy, because they really emphasize that when prostitution is legal and/or treated like any other job, the structure of incentives can change to force (not physically) women into prostitution who would not, absent legalization, have wanted to choose it. e.g. under #10, the secretarial job that they might freely chosen and gotten, under prohibition, may now only be available when bundled with prostitution. I’m offended by #9, but don’t find it ban-worthy. The rest, I’m not offended by, although they increasing levels of discomfort in correlation with the degree to which they make me think of prostitutes as commodities, rather than individuals choosing to be prostitutes.

Thanks for a fun mental exercise.

For 11 and 16, compare prostitution to working at Hooters. Would you require a girl to get a job waiting tables at Hooters before she could collect unemployment? How about a Muslim working at a pig slaughterhouse? They are, from a relativist perspective, morally equivilent.

The bundles are straight out of Idiocracy, and further, nonsequiturs. What does sex have to do with accountancy? You can offer me a free oil change with my Big Mac, but it won’t make me any less leery to have the same people fixing my car and my food. They only appear to make sense in the patriarchal mind because female cleaning staff (or female teachers or female therapists) and prostitutes are both seen as subservient. So they’re doubly bad for having manipulative advertising and reinforcing gender normative etceteras.

#15 is horrific. Countenancing the enforcement of sexual servitude for religious reasons has been bad enough already.

Other possibilities:

Supporting local children’s sports teams
Accepting food stamps
In lieu of application fee for housing/rental agreements (The “casting couch” would only avoid being wildly inappropriate if the job was to create or emote sexual pleasure, since requiring payment for a job application is already bullshit.)

#7 is a long-standing dream of mine, but I suspect there would be issues with accreditation: the brothels have too much incentive to sell the “diplomas” to anyone, which would sadly devalue them to meaninglessness. But that is well besides the point.

Hmm. Maybe I was jumping to a conclusion. Vichy or Andy, what’s the interpretation that I’m missing?