but, listen - i don't want to come down too hard around the question of potential prostitution. remember: i'm on the left. and, it's a classical marxist argument that all sexual relations in a capitalist society are necessarily prostitution. i've been over this before: once you reduce the actual issue to the question of prostitution, the next question to ask is whether or not that's worth prosecuting anybody over, and i'm not likely to agree that it is so long as consent is easily established, which it usually is.

the court isn't likely to accept the argument, granted. but, this classical marxist perspective actually pushes the idea rather forcefully that consent is incompatible with capitalism. but, then, what you need to do is look beyond the person soliciting; taking this perspective doesn't indict all men on solicitation charges, or all women on prostitution charges, so much as it indicts the system for making any relationship between the sexes (and much intrasex relations, as well) reducible to a financial transaction. it follows that if you want to establish ideas like love and consent - real consent - then you need to do away with capitalism altogether. for all the pablum that hallmark wants to push, the marxist view is that love and capitalism are in contradiction with each other.

so, the cynic on the left is actually likely to shrug it off - well, you wanted capitalism, didn't you? then, this is what you'll have. no policing can change the capitalist relation, power must be redistributed. and, if you flip the gender, you just change who is holding the whip - preferable to the capitalist female perhaps, but not a real answer, on the left.