Argument from Personal Narrative: A Case Study of Rachel Moran's Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution

Abstract

Personal narratives can let us in on aspects of reality which we have not experienced for ourselves, and are thus important sources for philosophical reflection. Yet a venerable tradition in mainstream philosophy has little room for arguments which rely on personal narrative, on the grounds that narratives are particular and testimonial, whereas philosophical arguments should be systematic and transparent. I argue that narrative arguments are an important form of philosophical argument. Their testimonial aspects witness to novel facets of reality, but their argumentative aspects help us to understand those facets for ourselves. My argument takes the form of a case study of the exemplary narrative argument penned by Rachel Moran, a former prostitute who uses her experiences to argue that prostitution amounts to sexual abuse. We'll see that narrative arguments can enjoy expository advantages over analytic ones.

Disagreement from the Religious Margins

“…Third, it is important, in engaging the disagreement of the marginalized, to do so on their terms and in their vocabulary [Collins, 1991], [Meyers, 2016]. Although there are examples of marginalized people who have successfully appropriated mainstream vocabulary to make their cases [Dormandy, 2016], expecting them to articulate themselves in the framework of the mainstream may silence their message 24 -especially when this message challenges precisely that framework.…”

“…In[Dormandy, 2016], I describe the way in which marginalized people can use their own narratives to force conceptual re-evaluation.21[Harding, 1993] calls this "starting from the lives" of the marginalized to see what can be learned from them and how they can be helped to flourish; 222.…”

Policy for People with the Fewest Choices: Ontology and Actorhood for Sex Trade Abolition

“…First, the ontology of actorhood is more clearly and explicitly defined by equality model advocates than by advocates of full decriminalization. This ontology extends not only to the women exploited in the sex trade but also to prostituted women's experiences of actorhood throughout their lifetimes, which is rendered largely invisible in full decriminalization discourse (Lloyd 2012; Moran 2015).…”