O’REGAN J and SACHS J sexuality. The element of gender is not just happenstance, but integral to the prohibited conduct and constitutive of the way it is treated by the law, enforcement agents and society. The question of whether such discrimination can be justified or not is something to which we return later in this judgment. The right to human dignity [74] Our Constitution values human dignity which inheres in various aspects of what it means to be a human being. One of these aspects is the fundamental dignity of the human body which is not simply organic. Neither is it something to be commodified. Our Constitution requires that it be respected. We do not believe that section 20(1)(aA) can be said to be the cause of any limitation on the dignity of the prostitute.30 To the extent that the dignity of prostitutes is diminished, the diminution arises from the character of prostitution itself. The very nature of prostitution is the commodification of one’s body. Even though we accept that prostitutes may have few alternatives to prostitution, the dignity of prostitutes is diminished not by section 20(1)(aA) but by their engaging in commercial sex work. The very character of the work they undertake devalues the respect that the Constitution regards as inherent in the human body. This is not to say that as prostitutes they are stripped of the right to be treated with respect by law enforcement officers. All arrested and accused persons must be treated with dignity by the police. But any invasion of dignity, going beyond that ordinarily implied by an arrest or charge, that occurs in the course of arrest or incarceration cannot be attributed to section 20(1)(aA), but 30 We have already dealt with the impact on the dignity of prostitutes caused by their being treated differently from their male patrons. The very fact of differential treatment by the criminal law of prostitutes and customers implicates the dignity of all women, and results in indirect discrimination. Here we are concerned not with differential impact as between customers and prostitutes, but with the question of whether the criminal prohibition on its own and regardless of whether it also criminalises the conduct of customers results in a diminution of the dignity of prostitutes. 45