Attempts to create a safe, regulated commercial sex market have clearly failed. But perhaps a more profound question is whether prostitution should be part of the market economy in the first place, or should sex be considered as one of many aspects of human life that are inalienable, that is, not for sale and not commodifiable? In a lengthy article in 1987, Margaret Radin explores the limits of the concept of “universal commodification” meaning that “anything some people are willing to sell, and others are willing to buy in principle can and should be the subject of free market exchange” (1860). She argues that as a society we continue to regard certain aspects of personhood significant for “human flourishing” including “one’s politics, work, religion, family, love, sexuality, friendships, altruism, experiences, wisdom, moral commitments, character, and personal attributes as “integral to the self”, and therefore market-inalienable”. Radin includes bodily integrity amongst these attributes as it is not an object and “we feel discomfort or even insult, and we fear degradation or even loss of the value involved, when bodily integrity is conceived of as a fungible object”. Therefore, if bodily integrity is considered as integral to the person and not an object that can be detached from the person “then hypothetically valuing my bodily integrity in money is not far removed from valuing me in money” (1881). Radin contends that a “prohibition theory” applies in relation to certain things being non-commodifiable and highlights “the importance of excluding from social life commodified versions of certain ‘goods’ such as love, friendship, and sexuality”. She also applies a further rationale she names the “domino theory” for resisting commodification of sex and sexuality because of the potential societal impacts as “the existence of some commodified sexual interactions will contaminate or infiltrate every one’s sexuality so that all sexual relationships will become commodified”.

However, in relation to prostitution, she suggests that there is a “double bind” in that whilst it can be argued that the commodification of sex in the market should not be legitimized as “it will harm personhood by powerfully symbolizing, legitimating, and enforcing class division and gender oppression” on the other hand this may deny poor women the opportunity “to improve their relatively powerless, oppressed condition, an improvement that would be beneficial to personhood” (1916).