My guest this Sunday is Cathy Reisenwitz, author of the Sex and the State Substack, and one of the clearest thinkers on the topic of decriminalizing sex work.

Too often, Cathy notes, all sex work is conflated with the loathsome and illegal practice of sex trafficking. However, the response by well-intentioned religious groups and certain feminists has been to criminalize the choices of women who enter the profession voluntarily—making their work more dangerous in the process. Thus, these activist groups end up harming many of the very women they are trying to help.

We witnessed the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, which ruined the lives of those falsely accused of abusing children. Today, we see a similar moral panic around pornography and prostitution that must be exposed to the light of day. Cathy has the data on what happens when you legalize sex work, and how places like Germany and New Zealand have combatted genuine sex trafficking by cooperating with rather than prosecuting sex workers.

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