ADAPTIVE PREFERENCES AND TESTIMONIAL INJUSTICE

1. Introduction

My goal in this paper is to provide a two-prong argument in favor of rejecting Serene J.

Khader’s notion of Adaptive preferences. The first part of the argument aims to render the label
“adaptive preferences” ambiguous, while the second part seeks to prove that Khader’s theory of
adaptive preferences (AP) is unnecessary and unethical. To ground my claims in the present
society, I will be invoking (counter) examples from the context of sex workers in India simply
because that’s where I’ve done most of my research.

Khader’s theory of adaptive preferences seeks to draw attention to those preferences

whereby agents perpetuate their exploitation without “seeming to truly want to.”1 The motivation
behind her AP theory is to provide moral grounds to justify the social scrutiny of an oppressed
agent’s compliance with unjust norms. Furthermore, to protect real-world oppressed people from
disrespectful treatment, a theory of adaptive preferences must not deny the capability of
oppressed agents to formulate and pursue ends that are genuinely their own. This capability is an
integral component of Khader’s conception of autonomy2.

Adopting Khader’s terminology for the purposes of this paper, it follows that a respectful
AP theory must not represent the bearers of adaptive preferences as agents with deficient
autonomy. This requirement, when applied in the context of sex workers in India, prompts the
following puzzle: Suppose adaptive preferences do not necessarily involve autonomy deficits.
Should feminists then treat an individual sex worker’s exploitation (as a consequence of
manifesting their adaptive preference to sell sex commercially) as consented to and morally
unproblematic?

Khader’s solution to the puzzle mentioned above involves providing a moral account of
the intuition that adaptive preferences seem to not be an agent’s true desires. Her theory of
Adaptive Preferences would suggest that even if a sex worker’s socioeconomic exploitation is a

1
Khader, S. J. (2012a). Must Theorising about Adaptive Preferences Deny Women’s Agency? Journal of Applied
Philosophy, 29(4), 302–317. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00575.x---page 302
2
Khader’s conception of autonomy further involves “exercising the deliberative and self-interpretive capacities
that allow an individual to sustain her own normative point of view.”—Khader, 2012, page 306

1
consequence of their preference to sell sex commercially, we have the following (moral) grounds
to question the authenticity of their preference and (scrutinize) the justification of their resultant
exploitation: (1) the sex worker’s preference seems to not be their truest desire, and (2) there
exist (structural and psychological) impediments to (their ability to make) choices3.

I will begin the next section by elucidating Khader’s AP theory. I will then underscore
the ambiguity characteristic in using the label “adaptive preferences” by demonstrating that most
of our preferences satisfy the conditions of being an adaptive preference. Let’s assume my
arguments concerning the ambiguity in ascribing the label “AP” hold. Then unless Khader’s
theory of adaptive preferences fulfills morally justified goals relevant to some (as opposed to all)
agents, it may seem unnecessary to attribute Adaptive preferences to some people and not others.
Khader notes that her theory's primary purpose is to support the intuition that adaptive
preferences seem inauthentic. However, as I will show in section 3, by invoking the notion of
testimonial injustice from Miranda Fricker, serving this purpose is morally unacceptable because
the intuition Khader intends to support is unethical and epistemically corrupt. Given the moral
unacceptability of the primary reason Khader’s AP label exists, I believe we should do away
with her notion of Adaptive preferences.

The final section invokes the notion of Ethical Loneliness to provide an alternate solution
to the puzzle of justifying the social scrutiny of an individual sex worker’s socioeconomic
exploitation. Jill Stauffer defines ethical loneliness as the isolation one feels when one, as a
violated person or as one member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by humanity or by
those who have power over one’s life’s possibilities. I will begin this section by explaining
Stauffer’s notion of the “self” and its relation to ethical loneliness. Next, I will show that sex
workers, as a group, are subject to ethical loneliness because a consistent invalidation of their
voices by all of us allows the violation of their selves (or their selves’ boundaries). This result
has two implications (1) any sex worker’s socioeconomic exploitation is not justified because it
is partly a consequence of the ethical loneliness inflicted upon them, and (2) all of us bear the
responsibility for a sex worker’s ongoing exploitation.

Furthermore, if my claims in section 3 hold, it would follow that Khader’s theory of

Adaptive preferences is also complicit in the ethical loneliness inflicted upon sex workers. This
3
Khader, 2012, page 311

2
is because Khader’s theory invalidates the voices of AP agents4 (including those of many sex
workers) by imposing harms understood as testimonial injustice and credibility deficit upon
them. Lastly, I will demonstrate that the notion of ethical loneliness is a better approach than a
theory of adaptive preferences to address the central puzzle of this paper (justifying the
scrutinization of an autonomous sex worker’s socioeconomic exploitation). I will conclude this
paper by considering how one can fulfill some of their obligations to sex workers.

Some clarifications: Firstly, borrowing Stauffer’s terminology, whenever I use third-

person pronouns like “we” in this paper, I refer to the diffuse and large (but not universal) “we”
of those who care about justice.

Secondly, this paper does not attempt to theorize the experiences of all sex workers (even
in the context of India). The sex work industry is highly heterogeneous and largely responsible
for further perpetuating class, race, caste-based, and other hierarchies. This makes the sex work
industry morally reprehensible, but I believe its implications have been discussed elsewhere5.
Most of the examples I draw from are from the context of red-light areas in India. While these
examples may not be entirely relevant for relatively privileged sex workers, I believe that this
should not be a problem for my account. As I attempt to show in this paper, sex workers, as a
group, are subject to abuse understood as ethical loneliness. Thus, it’s highly likely that even a
relatively privileged sex worker is subject to ethical loneliness, and this alone makes their
exploitation (at least, the exploitation resulting from imposed ethical loneliness) unjustified. All
that I am trying to achieve in this paper is to encourage us to initiate conversations with people
we perceive as oppressed without making any unwarranted presumptions about their lives. We
must do this not merely for the sake of some end, like getting a particular sex worker’s opinion
on legal policies concerning them. I believe that we also owe this demand to hear well to sex
workers (and other AP agents) because we inflict harm upon them when we refuse to, for once,
just listen and validate their stories.

4
I choose to use the notion AP agent under double quotes when emphasizing the fact that it is ultimately a label
imposed upon agents perceived as oppressed by third parties. I use it without any quotations when referring to an
agent possessing a preference that qualifies as an adaptive preference, as conceptualized by Khader. To be clear, I
do not wish to perpetuate (what I believe to be) an imaginary divide between AP and non-AP agents since most (if
not all) of us qualify for the label “AP agent”.
5
For instance, Debra Satz makes a similar claim in her paper “Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor”. Satz argues that
sex work is wrong insofar as the sale of women's sexual labor reinforces broad patterns of sex discrimination.
Satz, D. (1995). Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor. Ethics, 106(1), 63–85. https://doi.org/10.1086/293778 (pg 64)

3
 2. Khader’s account of Adaptive preferences

“On Khader’s account, an Adaptive preference is a preference that is incompatible with

an agent’s basic welfare and is causally related to unjust conditions. Furthermore, an agent would
reverse their adaptive preference upon exposure to better conditions6.” 

Roadmap for this section: I will begin by clarifying Khader’s account of Adaptive
preferences. I will then argue that there is no robust relationship between basic welfare (this
refers to one’s absolute wellbeing unless stated otherwise) and Adaptive preferences. For the
sake of this end, I will show that given the current state of the world, most of our “ordinary”
preferences are not just causally related to unjust conditions but can also be perceived as being
incompatible with our basic welfare. I will conclude this section by demonstrating that the
“reversal upon exposure” condition doesn’t seem to help clarify the distinction between adaptive
preferences and most other “ordinary” preferences any further, thereby rendering the notion of
Adaptive preferences ambiguous and possibly unnecessary.

In the context of sex workers in India, Khader’s theory of adaptive preferences suggests
that a sex worker (who chooses to sell sex commercially) may tolerate their physical, sexual, or
economic abuse for any of the following reasons: they may be unaware of other possible
opportunities that would be less oppressive; Or they may deprive themselves only because of
conditions in which working as a sex worker is the best way for them to ensure access to income,
safety, and so on. A sex worker who tolerates their exploitation for any combination of these
reasons has a preference that is (perfectly or imperfectly) incompatible with their basic wellbeing
and is causally related to injustice. Consequently, they have an adaptive preference (to sell sex
commercially) and are, thus, an AP agent on Khader’s conception of Adaptive Preferences.

Khader’s theory of Adaptive preferences is consistent with recognizing rationality and

agentic capacities in the oppressed for, on her account: (1) “agents can perpetuate their
exploitation without experiencing a distortion of their normative and non-normative beliefs7”;
and (2) “adaptive preferences arise because of defects in the world, and not defects in the

6
Khader, 2012, page 310
7
That is, AP agents can choose to perpetuate their exploitation without experiencing lack of reflectiveness about
their self-worth, plan, etc.

4
agent.8” Her conception of Adaptive preferences discourages coercion by “making a project of
figuring out whether the impediments to an individual’s actualizing her true desires are
psychological (or structural).”9 Khader further suggests Nussbaum’s Ten Central Human
Functional Capabilities10 to clarify her conception of “basic welfare.” Intuitively, X is conducive
to one’s basic welfare if X is conducive to one’s central functional capabilities, which include
life, bodily health, bodily integrity, and control over one's environment.

Next, to understand what Khader might mean when claiming that Adaptive preferences
are incompatible with an agent’s basic welfare, let us consider the relationship between an
agent’s wellbeing and their adaptive preferences. It seems to me that Adaptive preferences need
not be perfectly incompatible with an agent’s wellbeing11 (not conducive to one’s wellbeing in
any relevant sense). For instance, constant sexual harassment in prior work was a justification
for taking up sex work because it paid better than respectable jobs, which anyway demanded
sexual favors.12 Here, an agent decides to be a sex worker because they find this option the least
oppressive, thereby making a preference that is (partially) conducive to their wellbeing.

Moreover, a theory of Adaptive preferences just seeks to support the intuition that
adaptive preferences seem to not be an agent’s true desires. If this is true, then the
“incompatibility with basic welfare” claim does not give us enough information to establish a
(robust) relationship between an Adaptive preference and an agent’s wellbeing. We live in a
society enmeshed in patriarchal, ableist, capitalist, and heteronormative institutions.
Consequently, most of our preferences are somewhat incompatible with our wellbeing, for these
institutions inevitably ensure our exploitation. There is thus no clear answer as to what
distinguishes an ordinary preference that is even the slightest bit incompatible with an agent’s
wellbeing from an adaptive preference. I don’t believe that the criterion of being “causally
related to injustice” explains the distinction any further. For, as I argue in the final section, our

8
That is, adaptive preferences arise because APs are causally related to unjust conditions. Khader, 2012, page 314
9
Khader, 2012, page 312
10
Nussbaum, M. (1988). Nature, function and capability: Aristotle on political distribution. Oxford studies in
ancient philosophy, supplementary volume (Vol. 6), 145–184. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
11
I believe that Khader would accept this claim because she herself claims that APs are welfare maximizing
responses to bad options. Khader, 2012, page 312
12
Sex Work Series, page xxxix (DMSC 1999: 58)

5
selves are shaped by the worlds in which we live. Hence, most of our preferences are causally
related to injustices, directly or indirectly.

To illustrate, our preference to ignore/dismiss sex workers’ voices is causally related to

the injustices inflicted upon sex workers. This preference is incompatible with our wellbeing
because it prevents us from living in a just society and enjoying the pleasures that would afford
us. For me, it would be living without the pervasive threat of being raped disproportionately
affecting me as a queer woman of color. Nevertheless, our preference to ignore/dismiss sex
workers’ voices is also compatible with our wellbeing. We don’t have to make an effort to fulfill
our obligations to sex workers, and we can continue living in our convenient little bubble.
Whether or not our preference qualifies as an Adaptive preference by crossing the threshold of
being “incompatible with one’s wellbeing” depends on our priorities. Do we prefer comfort or
justice? Do we prefer suffering now to have a better future tomorrow or living a convenient life
now while hoping that no one wakes us up to the horrors of the world?

Let us consider the next part of Khader’s theory of Adaptive preferences. If X is an

adaptive preference, then according to Khader, an agent would reverse X upon exposure to better
conditions. Her argument for it goes something like this:

(1) Adaptive preferences are formed under unjust conditions and are inconsistent with an
agent’s basic wellbeing.

(2) It is part of human nature to desire one’s basic welfare.

Consequently, we can reasonably suspect that AP Agents would not wish to retain their
adaptive preferences upon exposure to better conditions.

For instance, Khader claims that “the preference for undernutrition is unlikely to belong
to an agent with sufficient access to food.” The preference for undernutrition is incompatible
with one’s bodily health (a component of one’s basic wellbeing). So, it seems true that if an
agent formed this preference because of unjust conditions, they would probably give up the
preference upon exposure to better conditions.

6
 To respond, I don’t believe it is necessarily true that an agent would not endorse their
adaptive preferences upon exposure to better conditions. In particular, I don’t think this stands
true in the context of sex workers in India. For one, many women who used to be sex workers
actively advocate for the realization of current sex workers 'preferences to continue working in
the sex work industry. Secondly, whether an agent would endorse their adaptive preference in
better conditions largely depends on what we mean by “better conditions .” If, by better
circumstances, we merely mean that a sex worker is given more economically viable options
where they are treated with dignity (while all else remains equal), then it might be true that they
would not wish to retain their preference to be a sex worker. However, suppose better conditions
refer to a more just world where no stigma is attached to paid sex, and sex workers are
appropriately compensated for their labor. In that case, it is not necessarily true that a sex worker
would no longer prefer to sell sex commercially in this world.

Put differently, I don’t think we can reasonably suspect that an agent would not endorse
their adaptive preferences upon exposure to better conditions. It can very well be the case that
under different circumstances, an agent’s adaptive preferences are no longer inconsistent with
their basic wellbeing. Moreover, most preferences, and not just Adaptive preferences, are liable
to revision and reversal by an agent upon a change in conditions. Consequently, individual cases,
where an agent reverses their current preference upon exposure to better conditions,13 may tell us
something about the unjust conditions under which the agent formed their preference or the
relationship between their priorities and preferences. Nevertheless, such cases do not necessarily
reveal anything special about the preference itself for it to deserve a label like “AP.”

To be clear, I agree with Khader that not every preference is an adaptive preference14. For
instance, my preference for Indian food over American food is not an adaptive preference
because it is not incompatible with my basic wellbeing. However, based on the notion of
Adaptive preferences provided by Khader, we cannot make any real distinction between (most)
“ordinary” preferences and preferences attributed the label of Adaptive preference. More often
than not, our preferences are causally related to injustices in several ways, liable to change, and
to some extent, incompatible with our wellbeing. Hence, unless the notion of Adaptive
13
Either because they no longer desire it, or because they no longer choose to satisfy it even
though they still hold it
14
Khader, 2012, page 310

7
preferences serves some (morally permissible) purpose that cannot be fulfilled by revising our
understanding of preferences, it seems unnecessary to have adaptive preferences as a separate
notion from preferences and absurd to associate adaptive preferences with only some, as opposed
to most (or even all), individuals or groups.

3. Purposes of a theory of Adaptive preferences

Khader believes that the concept of Adaptive Preferences serves two15 functions in
feminist theory. The primary purpose is to account for the intuition that preferences whereby
people perpetuate their exploitation often seem inauthentic (P2)16. The other function served by a
concept of Adaptive Preferences is to supply a widely applicable narrative about why actual
women perpetuate their exploitation17; To note, P2 is the crucial premise in AP theorists’
response to the puzzle mentioned in the introduction: Suppose adaptive preferences do not
necessarily involve autonomy deficits. Should feminists then treat an individual sex worker’s
exploitation as consented to and morally unproblematic? I believe that responding to this puzzle
involves refuting the following claim: If an agent chooses to be a sex worker while being
cognizant that this preference perpetuates their socioeconomic exploitation, then the agent’s
resultant exploitation is justified (call this claim P1).

I will begin this section by explaining how Khader’s theory accounts for the
“inauthenticity of adaptive preferences” (P2). Next, I will show that presuming P2 is equivalent
to committing testimonial injustice. Consequently, invoking P2 as a premise to justify the
scrutinization of a sex worker’s preferences is morally unacceptable, for it imposes epistemic and
moral harm upon them. Similarly, invoking P2 to show that P1 is not necessarily true is also
15
Khader also claims that another goal of a notion of Adaptive Preferences is to “help us identify real-world
preferences that are problematically adapted to oppressive conditions” (Khader, 2012, abstract). Given my limited
space in this paper, I want to very briefly discuss this goal in this footnote: Firstly, labels such as “Adaptive
preference” or “AP agent” are political, and so they can’t just be imposed upon people for the mere purpose of
categorization. Each human being is a distinct individual in their own right, and grouping them or their preferences
together for the mere sake of labelling amounts to homogenization. Secondly, from my analysis of Khader’s paper,
the purpose of having this goal might be providing moral grounds to justify the moral scrutiny of preferences
whereby people perpetuate their own exploitation, and/or the resultant exploitation from the manifestation of
those preferences. I have dedicated section 3 towards arguing against the sufficiency or morality of these grounds,
so if my arguments hold, I believe I would have succeeded in showing that Khader’s theory of Adaptive Preferences
doesn’t provide any help with the concerned goal or the purposes behind having that goal.
16

Khader, 2012, Abstract, 305

17
Khader, 2012, page 303

8
morally problematic for the above reasons. To note, I am not claiming that a sex worker’s true
desires cannot diverge from their preferences. Instead, I am arguing that making such a
presumption is ethically and epistemically culpable. I will end by briefly showing that we can
supply the kind of narratives provided by Khader— which explain why agents perpetuate their
exploitation— without referring to a theory of adaptive preferences. Thus, invoking a notion of
adaptive preferences for merely serving the second function is unnecessary, while invoking it to
serve its primary function is morally and epistemically unacceptable.

Khader defines an agent’s true desires as preferences they would endorse under
conditions conducive to their wellbeing. For instance, I have an adaptive preference to be
closeted in specific public spaces, but not a true desire. This preference is not my true (or
truest18) desire because, under more just conditions, I would prefer to be uncloseted.

Next, Khader argues that we have grounds to scrutinize an agent’s adaptive preference
and analyze their (socioeconomic) exploitation because their adaptive preference is not their
genuine desire. If a sex worker’s oppression results from choices that do not truly belong to
them, then we might have sufficient ethical reasons to question the moral permissibility of their
resultant exploitation. Hence, accounting for P2 also shows that P1— If an agent autonomously
chooses to be a sex worker, then the agent’s consequent exploitation is justified --- is not
necessarily true.

Khader’s theory accounts for the intuition that agents’ preferences to perpetuate their
exploitation are often not “truly theirs” by showing that adaptive preferences are an unreliable
indicator of an agent’s true desires. She argues,

“Their (APs) unreliability as indicators of the agent’s true desires stems from a
combination of the perfectionist assumption that most people do not desire their deprivation and
a recognition of manifold ways that unjust arrangements prevent the oppressed from living out
their true desires.” 19

According to Fricker, “negative identity-prejudicial stereotype is a widely held

disparaging association between a social group and one or more attributes. This association
18
Khader uses the notions “true desire” and “truest desires” interchangeably in her paper
19
Khader, 2012, page 303

9
embodies a generalization that displays some (typically, epistemically culpable) resistance to
counterevidence owing to an ethically bad affective investment”20. Furthermore, Fricker
conceptualizes testimonial injustice as a “kind of injustice in which someone is wronged
specifically in their capacity as a knower21. The speaker sustains such a testimonial injustice if
and only if they receive a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice (this refers to “negative
identity-prejudice” unless stated otherwise) in the hearer.”22

I argued in section 2 that the label “AP agent” can be attributed to many sex workers
because one’s preference to sell sex commercially can (in some cases) satisfy the conditions of
being an adaptive preference. Consequently, on Khader’s theory, any sex worker who qualifies
for the label “AP agent” will be subject to the predisposition that their adaptive preference is an
unreliable indicator of their true desire. I believe that A is an unreliable indicator of B if we
cannot derive anything definitive about B from just A. If this is true, then the assumption that an
oppressed agent’s adaptive preferences are an unreliable indicator of their true desires implies
that Adaptive preferences (by themselves) cannot be an indicator of anything definitive that an
AP agent (like an individual sex worker) might genuinely want.

However, as evidenced by numerous testimonies provided by sex workers, a sex worker

can have an adaptive preference and a genuine desire to remain in the Sex Work industry
because of increased economic independence, freedom from reliance on a male partner, etc.
Thus, it’s wrong to presume that “adaptive preferences are necessarily an unreliable indicator of
anything that AP agents might truly want” (P2). I believe that in presuming P2, we do not
attribute appropriate sincerity to testimonies given by AP agents. P2 also seems resistant to
counter-evidence provided by sex workers, which shows that by using appropriate dialogue and
conversation, we can learn a lot about an agent’s true desires from their adaptive preferences.

The presumption that “adaptive preferences are not a reliable indicator of an agent’s true
desires” (P2) is, thus, another instance of prejudicial stereotype. Sincerity is a component of
epistemic trustworthiness, which is itself a component of credibility. So, in attributing less
sincerity to an AP agent’s claims, we undermine their epistemic trustworthiness and credibility.

20
Fricker, 2009, page 35
21
Fricker, 2009, page 44
22
Fricker, 2009, page 28

10
Consequently, AP agents are wronged qua givers of knowledge and sustain testimonial injustice,
for they receive a credibility deficit owing to the presumption P2. Fricker argues that epistemic
objectification is an intrinsic harm of testimonial injustice. This is because, as Fricker puts it,
“testimonial injustice demotes the speaker from informant to the source of information, from
subject to object.” 23 Thus, even though Khader acknowledges the presence of agentic capabilities
in AP agents, in presuming P2, she inflicts a sort of dehumanization upon them.

Khader acknowledges that “preferences among poor options still express rankings and
thus tell us something about an agent’s values” (P5)24. For instance, P5 implies that a sex
worker’s adaptive preference can (though not necessarily) be a reliable indicator of the fact that
they value financial freedom. Based on Khader’s conception of true desires as preferences that
an agent would endorse under conditions conducive to their wellbeing, a sex worker can
genuinely desire financial independence. It seems then that a sex worker’s adaptive preference
can also be a reliable indicator of their true desire for financial freedom. Thus, I believe that
Khader’s claim that adaptive preferences are not a reliable indicator of an agent’s true desire is
also problematic because it seems inconsistent with her claim that adaptive preferences can tell
us something about an agent’s values.

Furthermore, Khader’s conception of true desires, as preferences that an agent would

endorse under conditions conducive to their wellbeing, tells us nothing about an agent’s (true)
desires in non-ideal conditions/ conditions not conducive to their wellbeing25. Knowing that A
has a true preference P among an option set Y in conditions conducive to their wellbeing tells us
nothing about A’s true desires in the current non-ideal condition because A's option sets would
be radically different and constrained as compared to the option set Y. Contrary to Khader’s
understanding of true desires, I suggest assuming that an agent’s adaptive preference can be their
true desire for the purpose of a non-ideal theory. This assumption allows for the possibility that
an agent’s “adaptive preference” can be compatible and even a reliable indicator of what they
genuinely want. Every sex worker’s voice (and those of other individuals perceived as
23
Fricker, 2009, page 133
24
Khader, 2012, page 309
25
This further clarifies that Khader presumes-- rather than argues for--- the claim “APs seem to not be an agent’s
true desires”. This is because---(1) she does not argue that an agent would not endorse their adaptive preference
under conditions conducive to their well-being (I believe that Khader would not even support such a claim), and (2)
her conception of true desires---as preferences that an agent would endorse under conditions conducive to their
well-being---does not tell us anything about an agent’s true desires in their present circumstances.

11
oppressed) deserves to be heard with appropriate sincerity. Their normative/non-normative
viewpoints about the world might not be completely accurate, and they might not make moral
choices every time, but that is true of every other human being. We do not go to great lengths to
analyze the choices of an “ordinary” human being. Consequently, the social scrutiny of a sex
worker’s preference renders the sex worker as the other. I believe the same holds for any other
person attributed the label “AP agent.”

AP proponents might believe that theorizing a notion of “adaptive preferences” is

necessary to identify the oppressive conditions that enable an agent’s socioeconomic
exploitation, even when they are doing their best to further their interests. However, a theory that
presumes an agent’s preference is not their true desire (P2), even before initiating conversation
and dialogue with them, is susceptible to further perpetuating the oppression it meant to address.
For instance, definitive claims about sex workers’ preferences and true desires can fall prey to
misrepresenting an individual sex worker’s life. Therefore, making a presumption like P2 about
AP agents is not warranted. Furthermore, if a preference is an adaptive preference merely
because it is formed under or causally related to oppressive/unjust conditions, then, as I argued
before, most of our preferences qualify for the label of “adaptive preference.” Thus, preferences
considered “worthy” of the label “adaptive preferences” aren’t doing any extraordinary job of
identifying unjust conditions since most preferences can pick out oppressive conditions similarly.

Before ending this section, let us address the other function of a notion of adaptive
preference: supplying a widely applicable narrative that explains why actual women perpetuate
their exploitation. I believe that the narrative provided by Khader suggests that people perpetuate
their exploitation because the unjust social arrangements in which agents find themselves impose
“various types of constraints on oppressed people’s abilities to choose.”26 These constraints can
be structural (where an agent’s options prevent them from doing what they really want) or
psychological (which includes cases of low self-worth or where an agent lacks normative points
of view that are genuinely theirs or a reflectiveness about their life plan). Ultimately, what
explains an agent’s exploitation is the fact that their lives are being shaped by unjust
arrangements which they did not choose. If this is true, it seems we do not need to invoke a
notion of adaptive preferences to provide such an explanation or narrative.

26
Khader, 2012, page 313

12
 Put differently, narratives that seek to explain why actual women perpetuate their
exploitation, including the one supplied by Khader, need only reference the unjust systems in
which these women find themselves. Grouping the preferences of a whole lot of women under a
political label like “adaptive preferences,” despite recognizing that unjust systems shape
preferences in too many unpredictable and nuanced ways, does nothing to serve the goal of
explaining why a particular woman might be perpetuating their exploitation.

Assuming (or acknowledging) that an agent’s preference is inconsistent with their

wellbeing does not grant us any moral grounds for scrutinizing specific preferences labeled as
“adaptive preference” and not others. Neither does it provide any reasons for considering the
former as inauthentic without any first-person testimony that proves otherwise. To be clear, I am
not claiming that scrutinizing one’s preference is not beneficial in any sense. In fact, I agree with
Khader that “criticizing another’s values can be a way of respecting them--- of treating them as a
co-participant in a moral community.” I am merely claiming that we don’t have any a priori
moral ground to scrutinize an AP agent’s preferences without respectfully engaging with them
first.

So, let’s go back to where we started. Khader seems to accept that Adaptive preferences
are not an agent’s true desires or their reliable indicator (P2) to argue against the claim (P1) that
an autonomous sex worker’s socioeconomic exploitation is justified. I’ve argued that P2 is an
unreasonable (if not false in many cases) assumption here. In the final section, I will argue that
P1 is false because sex workers, as a group, are subject to unjustified exploitation in the form of
imposed ethical loneliness.

Ethical Loneliness

In the rest of this paper, I will show that sex workers, as a group, are subject to
exploitation, understood as “ethical loneliness .” This ethical loneliness can be imposed through
a consistent violation of a sex worker’s self (as Stauffer defines it) or their self’s autonomy
and/or consistent invalidation of their voice. One implication of this is that all of us are also
responsible for the harms inflicted upon sex workers. Next, I will argue that Stauffer’s theory of
ethical loneliness is a better approach to refute the claim P1, sex workers’ socioeconomic

13
exploitation is justified, than Khader’s theory of Adaptive preferences. I will end by considering
ways we can fulfill our obligations to sex workers.

Let us begin by defining the self.

Stauffer argues that we are shaped by the worlds in which we subsist27. Analogous to how
we rely on others to be able to decide and follow what our values dictate, we all similarly rely on
each other for the formation of our self. So, we are all responsible for each other’s selves as well.
Stauffer refers to this fact about our selves as “intersubjective reliance .” I identify as a
pansexual, and my sexual identity is an integral part of my self which was constructed over time.
I assumed that I identified as straight for 19 years of my life, partly because I never critically
analyzed how I perceived my relationships with other same-sex people. And this changed after I
started doing feminist philosophy, which encouraged me to examine my attitudes toward others
critically. My “self” was formed in part by Marilyn Frye’s “The politics of reality,” Mariame
Kaba’s “We Do This ’Til We Free Us,” and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s “Care Work:
Dreaming Disability Justice.”

This account of the self as exposed, vulnerable, and formed in part in relation to others
can help us understand why human beings are able to destroy the selves and worlds of other
human beings28. Our self’s autonomy is appreciable only when others acknowledge its worth and
observe its boundaries29. This is because, as Stauffer puts it, “if we are sovereign, it is in a
dependent kind of way.”30 As a proud and uncloseted pansexual, my self is exposed and
vulnerable to harm (or trauma) from homophobic people, including many people who are close
to me. Consequently, I cannot freely express my sexual identity (reasonably and consensually)
without any shame wherever and whenever I want to, and this deeply impacts me.

Let us now consider the relationship between the self and ethical loneliness. Stauffer
defines ethical loneliness as:

27
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 2
28
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 23
29
This is not to say that my autonomy has no value if I am in a deserted island. My autonomy has value regardless
of the circumstance. However, my ability to exercise my autonomy is meaningful only when others acknowledge
my boundaries.
30
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 10

14
 “Ethical loneliness is the isolation one feels when one, as a violated person or as one
member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by humanity or by those who have power
over one’s life’s possibilities. It is a condition undergone by persons who have been unjustly
treated and dehumanized by human beings and political structures, who emerge from that
injustice only to find that the surrounding world will not listen to or cannot properly hear their
testimony—their claims about what they suffered and about what is now owed them—on their
own terms. So ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity compounded
by the experience of not being heard.”31

For instance, Jean Améry experienced ethical loneliness as a holocaust survivor because
of the unwillingness around him to hear survivor stories and to recognize the specific harms/evils
inflicted upon him. Ethical loneliness is imposed upon sex workers in at least the following two
ways:

(1) Dehumanization

(2) Consistent Denial/Invalidation of sex workers’ voices

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is used to classify certain forms of bad treatment whereby human beings
are deprived of their status as human beings. Stauffer notes that “part of what we take humanity
to encompass is that the expectation of help or just treatment should be rewarded.32” If Stauffer is
right, and I believe that she is, then one way in which dehumanization can be imposed upon a sex
worker is through a violation of their self or their self’s sovereignty. We all usually possess a
basic sense of security and trust in the world, which, when broken, may undermine a self or its
sovereignty.

31
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 1
32
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 15

15
 Many sex workers live with the trauma of the loss of safety---" the loss of the sense the
lucky among us have that other human beings will treat us as human beings, rather than as
objects to be disposed of or abused at will.”33 For instance, the Sex Workers’ Forum, Kerala,
1999, notes that the police consider sex workers as “sitting ducks” to fill the quota of cases they
have to charge monthly. Since there isn’t much risk involved in charging sex workers, police
arrest them for trespassing and detain them, beat them if they resist, and let them loose if they
bribe. This is so prevalent that there are “bail workers” whose only responsibility is to bail sex
workers out when they are (regularly) targeted by the police.34 A pan- India survey conducted
with sex workers found that 37 percent have been physically abused by the police, 51 percent
stated that they had faced verbal abuse from law enforcement officers, and 22 percent had been
forced to pay bribes to the police35.

Sex workers worldwide are often subject to the dichotomy of victimhood and perception
of immoral sexual deviance. They are either rendered mere victims with no agency, whose only
identification is that they are a victim/survivor of sex trafficking. Because they are perceived to
be coerced into working as sex workers, we justify the same use of coercive forces to “save”
them from the sex work industry. This includes the use of police force and “protection” homes,
which barely treat sex workers with dignity or care about their basic human needs.

Otherwise, if a sex worker is not rendered a mere victim, they are considered a “whore”,
and it’s assumed that they deserve the wrongs inflicted upon them. The idea of police brutality is
an abstraction36. It’s wrongly assumed those sex workers who are subject to police brutality
deserve it because they are a “whore”. They (society in general) might (wrongly) assume that
physical abuse may be necessary for police interrogation and to regulate trafficking, or they are
certain that such things could never happen to them. Those who haven’t been dehumanized may
lack the empathy or understanding required to respond to it.

Many sex workers, whose bodies are consistently violated by their customers, pimps, and
the state that was meant to protect them, also lose a sense of “trust in the world .” This trust
consists in the certainty that the other person will respect one’s physical and metaphysical
33
Stauffer, 2021, Ethical Loneliness, page 27
34
Sex Work Series, page 211 (Sex Workers’ Forum, Kerala, 1999)
35
Sangha (2013).
36
Stauffer, 2021, page 12

16
boundaries. And if that boundary is threatened or violated, then the expectation of help is one of
the fundamental assumptions we usually take for granted as we live our everyday lives
(Améry)37. Most sex workers in India have lost the sense that they could expect just treatment
and would be offered help if treated unjustly. For instance, Lakkimsetti notes that police
humiliate and illegally detain sex workers (and other sexual minorities in general) instead of
registering their complaints against their violators38. Many sex workers lost a world where they
could live with a basic sense of security and trust. This is a world in which many of us live very
peacefully, “fairly confident that we will not be subject to emotional or physical attack without
warning, except perhaps in places we know to be particularly dangerous.”39 Many sex workers’
worlds continue to be compromised, and, as I will show next, we are all responsible for it.

Consistent Denial of Sex workers’ voices

As I mentioned in the introduction, Sex Work is a very heterogeneous industry. The

experience of a sex worker working in a red-light area is very different from that of a more
economically advantaged sex worker who might have a better clientele. The socioeconomic
differences among sex workers are exploited to ensure that their stories are not heard. Neither
can sex workers form trade unions and make their demands heard since sex work is, for all
practical purposes, illegal40, and they can be subject to state violence if they try to protest.
Instead, as the Sex Workers’ Forum notes, “there is no semblance of unity among sex workers.
The men divide them, rule them, and exploit them thoroughly.41”

Stauffer argues that being abandoned by those who have the power to help produces
loneliness more profound than simple isolation. In the context of sex workers, this loneliness is
inflicted upon them by all those who either choose to remain silent or who advocate for policies
different from what sex workers want without having consulted them before. Sex workers, who
have to navigate their way to meet their basic survival needs, know the path and the obstacles
facing them much better than someone who has a very reductionist or oversimplified
understanding of their circumstances. We forget that we are stuck in the same patriarchal, ableist,
37
Améry, “Torture,” 28
38
Lakkimsetti, 2020, page 61
39
O’Connell, “Gambling with the Psyche,” 295, 310.
40
While sex work in India is constitutionally legal, several activities like sex work in a hotel, owning and managing a
brothel are illegal
41
Sex Work Series, page 210 (Sex Workers’ Forum, Kerala, 1999)

17
capitalist, and casteist web as sex workers. We forget that the system/web has rendered us unfair
advantages at the cost of severe harms inflicted upon a sex worker.

There is a difference between living a life and just reading about it. Those who live it
would generally be understood as having a better idea of what they are talking about (unless we
have reason to think otherwise). Without imposing a non-controversial conception of the good
(happiness, money, etc.) on sex workers, I don’t think we can reasonably claim that we know
what serves the wellbeing of an individual sex worker better than them. Moreover, claiming that
we do is equivalent to claiming that sex workers cannot accurately judge their circumstances,
and such a claim is unwarranted. This is evidenced by the fact that sex workers in India can (and
often do) serve as both advocates of their cause and educators to human rights and HIV/AIDS
groups in India like the DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee), LC (Lawyers
Collective), and NACO (National AIDS Control Organization)42.

The harms inflicted upon sex workers, as a social group, are caused by widespread
neglect of human responsiveness. The legal system meant to protect and serve them needs to get
off their backs because state violence (either in the form of police violence or “protection”
homes) only furthers their abuse by the state. The circumstances of many sex workers are
perceived as so unjustified/wrongful that we justify measures that end up harming them instead.
And this is a wrong inflicted upon them by all of us. We are all collectively responsible for the
abuse inflicted upon any sex worker because our silence/ignorance/indifference/failure of
protection allows the voices of sex workers to go unheard. Our silence allows consistent
violation of many sex workers’ selves and/or the selves’ autonomy. We have power over the
selves of other people, and so we have power over the selves of sex workers. In a just society,
each human being would have the responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of each other’s self. Our
“self” matters to us. We live in an unjust world if this power is exploited or abused merely to
gain unfair benefits. We live in an evil world if this power stigmatizes an entire section of society
and allows inhumane violation of an agent’s self. I believe we live in an evil world, not just an
unjust one43.
42
Lakkimsetti, 2020, page 87
43
Here, I am drawing upon the distinction between injustice and evil provided by Claudia Card. Card, C. (2005). The
Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil. Oxford University Press. According to Card, Conduct is morally bad when it is
culpable and wrong. It becomes evil when it also foreseeably deprives others of basics needed for their lives
or deaths to be tolerable or decent (page 102).

18
 According to a theory of Adaptive preferences, an individual sex worker’s socioeconomic
exploitation is not necessarily justified because unjust conditions prevent the sex worker from
living out their true desires. On the other hand, according to a theory of ethical loneliness, a sex
worker’s exploitation is unjustified because their voice is subject to consistent invalidation. I
think ethical loneliness is a better approach to argue against the claim that “an autonomous sex
worker’s socioeconomic exploitation is justified” (P1) than Khader’s theory of Adaptive
preferences. This is because I believe Stauffer’s theory of ethical loneliness successfully refutes
P1 without making morally impermissible and unwarranted assumptions about an individual sex
worker’s true desires. Moreover, as I argued in section 3, a theory of adaptive preferences does
not demonstrate that P1 is false but, at most, gives us reasons to believe that P1 is not necessarily
true.

One of the reasons why many sex workers continue to be (socially and economically)
exploited is that we invalidate sex workers’ voices when they’re trying to advocate for what they
truly want. Our ignorance or indifference renders their voice mute. A theory of ethical loneliness
refutes the justification of a sex worker’s socioeconomic exploitation by underscoring these
crucial aspects of their exploitation. As I argued in this paper, making unwarranted presumptions
about sex workers’ preferences and desires is one such way of invalidating their voices.
Therefore, AP theorists are as complicit in sex workers’ socioeconomic exploitation as anyone
else.

How can the selves that have been undermined be put together?

Selves that have been undermined by human beings can only be put together by human
beings. The truth of intersubjectivity reliance implies that each of us is indirectly responsible for
how the selves are made. All of us have power and influence over the self of others. But we have
been abusing this power long enough just so that we can avoid the reality of the atrocities
happening all around us. State power and all the other systems, which allow the sex work
industry to exist while exploiting and abusing many sex workers simultaneously, are thriving
because we have implicitly consented to the use of destructive forces. A self that tries grasping
the evils in the world can end up traumatized, and to avoid even a slight bit of inconvenience, we
allow the evils to continue.

19
 “Formal equality,” where one is treated as an equal, merely, in theory, is not sufficient to
address this issue. “Only a self capable of being jolted out of its mundane complacency is up to
the task of both hearing what repair demands and, helping to invent new responses to harms that
no preexisting remedy fully comprehends.44” In other words, we should be willing to recognize
the limits of our hearing. Responding well to sex workers requires that we be prepared to hear
things we don’t want to hear or things that challenge our worldview.

For people whose voices have been rendered mute for so long by all of us, we cannot
expect that the law would be sufficient to make amends for the harms that continue to be
inflicted upon them. Every sex worker must be provided with broad social support that functions
as a promise that they will never be abandoned by humanity again.

So, what can we do? Jill Stauffer recommends starting (the beginning of an end) by
asking the following questions:

“Whenever we settle on a course of repair, we ought first to consider what repair is, the
ethics of how repair proceeds, who gets to decide what needs to be fixed, and whether there are
things that cannot or should not be repaired. Repair, after all, is not a neutral practice. It is an
intervention preceded by decisions made about value. It will matter whose voices get heard when
those decisions are made.”45

Taking the demands seriously and the voice of a sex worker requires that we presume
that a sex worker’s choices can reflect their true desires. We are responsible for the formation of
each other’s selves. And so, we are complicit in the ethical loneliness inflicted upon a sex worker
that traumatized their self or the self’s boundaries and invalidated their voice. We need to
recognize the power dynamic among sex workers and between sex workers and those who call
themselves feminists. We need to start hearing well and ensure that the voices of sex workers are
not overpowered or rendered mute by those more privileged. Injustices and evils continue not
merely because those who are inflicting them are powerful but also because others allow them to
continue. This is because people either wrongly assume that it is none of their business or think
that sex workers deserve the treatment they get. How a sex worker’s self is constructed and

44
Stauffer, 2021, page 7
45
Stauffer, 2021, page 6

20
destroyed greatly depends on us. Our silence destroys it, but some willingness to hear well can
heal it.

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