Social Theory and Practice

Volume 46, Issue 4, October 2020

Natasha McKeever
Pages 765-784

Prostitution and the Good of Sex
A Reply to Sascha Settegast

In Sascha Settegast’s recently published article, “Prostitution and the Good of Sex” in Social Theory and Practice, he argues that prostitution is intrinsically harmful. In this article, I object to his argument, making the following three responses to his account: 1) bad sex is not “detrimental to the good life”; 2) bad sex is not necessarily unvirtuous; 3) sex work is work as well as sex, and so must be evaluated as work in addition to as sex.