Emily, how did you manage to get through an entire article about the illegality of prostitution without once mentioning the "M" word?

"Protecting women from predation" is lipstick on the pig. It's morality that drives the consensus against exchanges of sex for money, not concern for poor women. The protections prostitutes receive from making prostitution illegal are nonexistent; it places them at greater risk.

From whence does this moral imperative come?

1. Religions. "God doesn't like it."

2. The endless battle for control over reproduction. Wives want their husbands spending resources on them, not other women. Men want women to be loyal, not free (how else can they be sure the kid is theirs?). If sleeping around is ok for prostitutes, women might get the idea they can do what they want! Everyone, both genders, are attempting to control their partner's sexuality, and they don't want any examples or temptations interfering with that control.

3. Fear. Nobody wants a surprise STD from a partner who has been sleeping around.

Actually, all three boil down to fear. Fear of God's approbation, fear of infidelity, fear of disease. Concern for some hooker who might get a black eye in a dark alley doesn't even rate - it can't rate, because those black eyes (and worse) are made infinitely more likely by criminalization.

The people who are least afraid are those who feel least threatened by prostitution, but there aren't many of those around. Fear dominates us, drives our politics, builds a consensus for ever-greater state authority, more and more intrusive legislation which curbs, curtails, limits, abridges, and eliminates individual freedom.

In America, you're free to be moral. The other kinds of freedoms will get you in deep, deep trouble.

As for MacKinnon, it doesn't surprise me that she would applaud criminalizing consensual behavior for men, and not for women. She's nothing if not ruthlessly consistent.