Prostitution

Scene from Amsterdam's red light district.

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“”Why is it immoral to be paid for an act that is perfectly legal if done for free?

—Gloria Allred

“”"Les, we're talking about the oldest profession." "Darlene is a farmer?"

—WKRP in Cincinnati

Prostitution is the selling or trading of sexual favors and a prostitute is the person who engages in sexual activity for money (or, sometimes, to barter for other goods or services).

The term "sex worker" was first coined by activist Carol Leigh at a conference in 1978. More recently it has been used by those who work in the industry to avoid the stigma traditionally associated with terms like "prostitute". Sex workers are harmed by the pervasive stigma against them and are trying to gain more rights and respect. They believe more education and a better understanding of sex work will help to alleviate the criminal/victim dichotomy.

History and prevalence

Prostitution is often referred to as "the oldest profession", though that's debatable, especially on how you define "profession" (an exchange has to be made first, for instance). The phrase has been widely referred to prostitution only relatively recently, as other professions such as tailoring, farming, military, teachers, nurses, and doctors were called the same. Prostitution is not a uniquely human phenomenon, as some social animals also engage in a form of prostitution. It's likely that humans have long had a system of "me give meat, you smoosh now", far longer than civilization has existed.

Prostitution is more or less ubiquitous in human society. It has existed in some form in virtually every culture in existence, from the "Sacred Prostitution" of Aztec Priestesses to the Red Light District of the Netherlands, from the seedy underbelly of Thailand to the courtesans of the European aristocracy, it's everywhere. At the same time, attitudes towards prostitution, the regulations involved, and the socio-economic status of those involved have varied wildly as well.

However, that's not to say everyone has been involved in prostitution. In any given year, only 1% of men (in the Western world) will use the services of a prostitute, and only 14% of men overall ever have. But that's still a wide swath of the population. Furthermore, research into those men who have paid for sex have found that "[t]here is no evidence of a peculiar quality that differentiates customers in general from men who have not paid for sex." As for providing those services, about 6% of the population has engaged in prostitution at some point in their life, which again means that we aren't talking about some fringe portion of the population.

Issues with prostitution

French prostitutes being hauled to the clink, 1745.

“”I was taught from the tender age of seven that my worth was between my legs. How I knew this was that I was raped repeatedly by a family member at the age of seven. It was only reinforced by my mother, who was a prostitute, that my value was between my legs. As long as I had a vagina, I should never be broke. I believed this. So when I was poached at the age of 15 by yet another family member, I had already been groomed. I lied to myself and stayed in the life until my own daughter was sexually assaulted.

Historically, religion and prostitution have often been intertwined, with church-run brothels being common in many areas up until only a few hundred years ago. Presently, however, it is considered a sin by a number of religions — particularly the three desert dogmas — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Because of this, the practice has been relegated to an often illegal — and therefore dangerous — underground profession.

Considering the fact that, regardless of the boons of legalized prostitution, much prostitution worldwide is still operated in connection with the local criminal underworld (with all the drugs and violence that inherently brings), and with young men and women being duped or forced into the profession, the current state of prostitution in many places is a human rights atrocity. And just like with the war on drugs, legalization is the only approach that actually champions harm reduction approaches to the benefit of the fellow human beings involved, since they are often worse off without it.

• There are a number of prostitutes who are not in the occupation by choice, either because of forced prostitution, societal pressure, or poverty. Surveys conducted by clinical psychologist Melissa Farley and author Louise I. Gerdes indicate that up to 88% of prostitutes wish to leave the profession, but lack the means to do so. However, other studies have indicated that prostitutes generally enjoy their line of work, and have entered the industry voluntarily. Though some men and women appreciate the opportunities or "better standard of living" that sex work offers them, trans women of color are more likely to experience homelessness and financial insecurity, which may push them into the industry more out of desperation than choice.
• Criminalization has led to the rise of pimps and organized crime in the sex work industry. In the early 20th century, madams and other brothel operators became dependent on organized crime connections for legal protection. The mob's influence wasn't all bad; the Mafia had a code of chivalry and set standards that kept the pimps in line. The postwar turn away from prostitution by the mob in the wake of Tom Dewey's prosecutions of Lucky Luciano and others heralded an extremely nasty "Wild West" era of prostitution dominated by pimps which reverberates to this day.
• Sexually transmitted diseases are a common hazard for sex workers, as is the risk of rape. According to UNAIDS, "[o]n average, sex workers are 13 times more likely to become infected with HIV than adults in the general population", although "there is significant variation between regions and countries." Decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution has not only been linked with a lower prevalence of HIV and other STDs amongst sex workers, but also reduced instances of rape and sexual violence.
• The so-called "Swedish Model", (also known as the "Nordic Model") in which selling sex is legal but buying it (and connecting sex workers with customers) is illegal, makes sex work even more dangerous. While supporters have claimed that "prostitution and trafficking have declined dramatically" in Sweden as a result of the law, a 2014 study found "no reliable data demonstrating any overall decline in people selling sex", and argues that the law "has resulted in increased dangers in some forms of sex work". In Ireland (which adopted the law in 2017), reports of violence against sex workers have nearly doubled, while in France (which adopted the law in 2016), 10 sex workers were murdered in the latter half of 2019 alone. According to UNAIDS, there is "very little evidence to suggest that any criminal laws related to [sex work] stop demand for sex or reduce the number of sex workers. Rather, all of them create an environment of fear and marginalisation for sex workers [...] These laws can undermine sex workers’ ability to work together to identify potentially violent clients [...] The approach of criminalising the client has been shown to backfire on sex workers." On top of which, if a service is legal to sell, how does it make any sense for it to be illegal to buy?^{[citation NOT needed]}
• Sex workers are often harassed by the police as well as members of the general public, and can be subjected to overwhelming amounts of bigotry and stigma from society in general, compounding the issues which already result from the illegality of the profession. As a result, sex workers may be reluctant to contact the police or go to other people for help, even in cases of violence or sexual assault.

US Congress Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing on how to prevent the recruitment of foster kids into sex slavery, 2013.

• In countries or jurisdictions where prostitution is illegal, reporting abuse and/or rape is difficult (if not impossible), as police may arrest the victims as well as (or instead of) the people who assaulted them — one of many situations where illegality and social ostracization puts sex workers at even more risk of harm. Even if sex workers aren't subject to arrest, lack of police protection or intervention can put their lives in danger.
• There are many instances where sex workers (especially in poor areas with limited or corrupt law enforcement, or areas where prostitution is effectively or de jure illegal) become virtual slaves to their pimps; these women have often been brought into the business against their will or under false pretenses, in violation of informed consent, or are underaged to begin with — abandoned in an unregulated industry left to be operated by criminals, they tend to wind up effectively slaves in the places where prostitution is illegal, arguably as a result of said illegality.
• It has been reported that two-thirds of prostitutes suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research conducted by Melissa Farley and others. The researchers claimed "that psychological trauma is intrinsic to the act of prostitution", even in the absence of violence. Whether this is because people go into prostitution untraumatized and become traumatized, or because traumatized people seek out prostitution, still appears to vary from case to case. However, the aforementioned research has been heavily criticised "for selecting specific vulnerable samples and ignoring data that do not comply with authors' assumptions [...] In this research, comparison groups are either missing or largely inappropriate and other possible determinants of mental health problems, such as homelessness or exposure to violence, are not considered." According to Canadian Superior Court Judge Susan Himel, Farley "failed to qualify her opinion regarding the causal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and prostitution, namely, that it could be caused by events unrelated to prostitution", and stated that her "advocacy appear[ed] to have permeated her opinions". Farley has been described as an "anti-pornography and anti-sex work" activist, and has compared prostitution to incest, paedophilia, and slavery, describing escorts and call girls as "house niggers". She has also admitted that "some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including, "that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her." The quality of Farley's research and the validity of her conclusions have been questioned by other academics. Dr. Calum Bennachie described a paper she had written concerning the decriminalization of prostitution in New Zealand as "a mix of deliberate misinformation, fiction and out of context comments"; Bennachie subsequently wrote a letter of complaint to the American Psychological Association, describing Farley's work as "unethical", a view shared by one of the researchers who was employed by Farley. Another paper which Farley was involved in authoring regarding men who pay for sex (which was not submitted for peer review) was lambasted by a group of academics, who stated that "the purpose of the research appears to have been to vilify the population of men who were chosen to be interviewed." They further stated that the paper was "not grounded in empirical research ethics", and denounced the researchers' methods as "dangerous". Bennachie has also highlighted the fact that "[i]n her research, between 1998 and at least 2003, Dr Farley claim[ed] to be able to diagnose sex workers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the completion of a 15 minute self administered questionnaire"; however, the National Center for PTSD states that "structured interviews with brief, single-item, closed-ended questions for each PTSD symptom are likely to be no more valid for making a diagnosis than self-report measures." Sociologist Ronald Weitzer, who has also written about the numerous issues with Farley's research, argues that "[i]n no area of the social sciences has ideology contaminated knowledge more pervasively than in writings on the sex industry. Too often in this area, the canons of scientific inquiry are suspended and research deliberately skewed to serve a particular political agenda." By comparison, a 2010 study conducted in Switzerland, where sex work is legal, concluded that the mental health of sex workers "depends heavily on what kind of sex work they do" and the circumstances they find themselves in.
• According to research published by the London School of Economics and Political Science, countries where prostitution is legal have higher human trafficking inflows. However, "the study reported an increase in all human trafficking, which includes forms of labor far beyond sex. It is entirely possible that the higher rates of human trafficking were in industries that had nothing to do with sex — the researchers, by their own admission, had no way to find out if that was the case." Furthermore, "[i]n their introduction, researchers state that the data "does not reflect actual trafficking flows", and that it's "difficult, perhaps impossible, to find hard evidence establishing" a relationship between legal prostitution and human trafficking — disclaimers that suggest the study's findings are essentially meaningless." Eric Neumayer, one of the study's authors, admitted that "[d]ue to the clandestine nature of both trafficking and prostitution markets, our analysis had to rely on the best available existing data on reported human trafficking inflows. That legalised prostitution increases human trafficking inflows is likely, but cannot be proven with available evidence."
• Organizations which oppose sex work are fond of making bold claims in order to raise awareness. For example, they allege that the "average age of entry into prostitution is thirteen", and that sex workers have an average life expectancy of "seven years". While underage sex workers certainly do exist, and violence against sex workers is an ongoing issue, the specific claims cited above are either founded on highly dubious or misrepresented research figures, or are simply incorrect.

Anti-prostitution legislation is often criticized for disregarding any proposals actually made by sex workers for how their jobs could be made safer — somehow, moralists argue that the same things that make other professions safe, such as regulation, police oversight, ID systems, well-lit dedicated buildings, unions, and media coverage won't do the sex workers any good just in the specific unique case of this thing that's really a little dirty and shouldn't be going on anyway, right? This complaint was summed up by the viral PSA spread across YouTube entitled "Nothing About Us Without Us."

Views on prostitution

  Decriminalization - No criminal penalties for prostitution

  Legalization - Legal and regulated

  Abolitionism - Legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated

  Neo-abolitionism - illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex

  Prohibitionism - prostitution illegal

  Legality varies with local laws

Conservatism

As a general rule, social conservatives say they don't like prostitution because they say it's immoral and inherently sinful, being a sort of fornication or adultery. If one believes the old adage about it being the oldest profession in the world, this is perhaps an odd position, as conservatism is about holding on to such old values. Other conservatives may see it as undesirable but inevitable, and perhaps necessary; it should be kept out of the public eye for the sake of appearances and scandal, but expecting it to end is unreasonable.

Fascism

In Italy, under fascist rule, state-run brothels with licensed prostitutes were allowed, and even encouraged as a "normal part of life for the virile fascist male".

Religion

As sex is very much a central part of life along with birth, death, marriage, and eating, every religion says something about prostitution, though obviously they say different things. Christianity states that prostitution is immoral, but not so much so that prostitutes such as Mary Magdalene were beyond redemption. Islam forbids prostitution, but some Shia get around this through "temporary marriages" where a man marries a woman for an hour then divorces her, so technically the man and woman were married; Allah knows all but can be easily defeated by such trivialities. Hinduism has "sacred prostitution", which is mostly a fancy way to say "church-owned brothel", but such practices were not unknown in Ancient Greece or Rome. Often, there are blatant double standards when it comes to prostitution, e.g., a man may be able to visit a prostitute so long as she's not a member of the in-group because no one of value was defiled.

Feminism

Because prostitution is rarely perceived to be about a woman having control over her body in exchange for money, and more often perceived to be about a woman becoming the property of a pimp (or worse), feminists are often torn on the issue of prostitution. On the one hand, most feminists accept that when a woman is able to be in control of choices, it is her right to use her own body as she wishes, as long as the sex is safe, consensual, and fair. This view is especially true of so-called "sex positive" feminists. On the other hand, prostitution is often unsafe, under impaired consent, or unfair, causing many feminists to see it as exploitative. Some feminists have argued that in most societies and relationships, prostitution is the norm, though it might be "sex for a zirconium carbon diamond ring". In this view, any prostitution reinforces the view of females as property to be bought and sold (though this ignores male prostitutes).

Radical feminist or SWERF (sex worker-exclusionary radical feminist) objections to sex work also often align with older, religiously-based objections. This has led to a number of misguided efforts to somehow end demand (akin to the logic behind unsuccessful anti-drug campaigns such as "Just say no!"), and a push for criminalisation laws to be passed in countries which have previously not had laws specific to, or have otherwise tolerated, prostitution. Of course, this ignores the fact that there is no evidence that these laws do anything to reduce the dangers associated with sex work.^{[dead link]}

Liberalism

Liberals are somewhat divided on it much in the same way that Feminist thought is. On the one hand, social liberalism that focuses on freedom of expression and freedom to do what you want would be for the legalization and protection of prostitution. On the other hand, they can view it as exploitative, unnecessary, and a barrier to social mobility. In many if not most cases, these two views are held together as being two sides of a complex issue; they aren't especially contradictory.

Libertarianism

As with social liberals, libertarians are fine with it. But because of the basic libertarian principle of letting people do what the fuck they like, they don't tend to hold the same reservations as liberals because that might mean too much Government Interference. Whether they'd change their minds on this if their kids got into it is a different story.

Socialism

Generally, democratic and libertarian socialists (in the US at least, although positions supporting it are not unheard of elsewhere) are fine with it, supporting decriminalization, seeing criminalization as an attack on working class women although it cannot be a profession one must take if available as a condition of getting unemployment insurance.^{[citation needed]} This is a form of Special pleading, but it's less about socialist ideology having a belief that sex work is somehow inherently different from any other job and more about the simple reality that literally forcing people into prostitution is not very popular with the public for some reason. Both Socialists and Communists encourage sex workers (and all others) to get organized into labor unions of various forms, which leads to this old joke; A man walks into a unionized brothel. He says "I'll take the blonde bombshell over there!" The Madame say "Excellent choice, sir", and motioning towards a large, elderly women in the back, "but I'm afraid Olga has seniority."

However, self-identified socialist countries and associated self-identified socialist revolutions have a century old record of punishing or attempting to 're-educate' prostitutes, including sending them to labor camps. The Cuban socialist revolutionaries sent female prostitutes to re-education and male prostitutes to forced labor camps on the basis of alleged homosexuality. Cuba declared 'victory' against prostitution in 1976, stating that prostition had been eradicated, and subsequently removing laws against such. And today, prostitutes in Cuba are prosecuted under loitering laws and related.

Stalin, in his efforts to establish "socialism in one country", sought to "re-educate" prostitutes, but this effort failed and so prostitutes were sent to labor camps. Trotsky, a socialist and harsh critic of Stalinism argued that the fact there was prostitution in Russia at all during Stalin was evidence of how far Russia was from socialism.

Utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier argued against all trade in general and instead proposed a new amorous order in which the sexually deprived have a 'guaranteed minimum' of free sexual intercourse (due to love being bound to sentimentality and duty). Fourier, for example, felt that civilization (which he frequently derided) was fundamentally against such a new amorous order and display this through ridicule of 'sentimental love' and through ridiculing love entirely.

Social Democracy

Among the most social democratic nations, the Nordic countries, they all prosecute solicitation of prostitution (but not individual selling), also known as the 'Swedish model'. The exception being Finland, which allows solicitation, but not in public. The 'Nordic Model' has been used by sexual authoritarians in various countries to make their anti-solicitation laws more strict, for example when Canada did so in the late 2010s.

The founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), August Babel, wrote a paper in which he argued that prostitution was as necessary as capitalism is to the existence of a bourgeois society. Babel argued that prostitution rises in direct correlation to the number of women entering the workforce and is also spurred primarily by poverty. He also argued against the popular notion that prostitution is natural or a part of the human condition. Babel's paper about prostitution fearmongers about numerous social ills supposedly associated with prostitution and he asserts that a deprivation of sexual activity is less harmful than the overabundance of it. Today, the SPD, in coalition with other left-leaning governments maintains prostitution in Germany as legal with regulations. Germany is one of 9 European states which legalize prostitution, a few arguably being social democratic.

Communism

Communists think that it's bad, seeing prostitutes as victims of the Capitalist system. Communists in general have no high opinion of dependent labor as a system, and as such, many communists see no difference in principle between prostitution and bone-crushing factory work for minimum wage. Chinese communist revolutionaries, including Mao Zedong saw brothels as an example of a social ill, and ordered all brothels to be closed.

Anarchist

Similarly to libertarianism, anarchists oppose the use of force to prevent prostitution. However, they disagree about whether sex work itself is acceptable. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, feminist anarchists in Barcelona tried to get prostitutes to leave the profession by putting up posters in the red light district offering training courses so that they could acquire skills for alternative occupations (although some of the more impatient anarchists simply started shooting pimps instead). Modern anarchists focus on helping to improve prostitutes' lives, which includes opposing laws prohibiting their work.

In any case, the issue of prostitution is often tied up with matters of slavery, illegal immigration, and sometimes child molestation in public dialog, vastly complicating the moral issues involved.

George Carlin once wondered why it was illegal to sell something that was perfectly legal to give away, and Maddox maintains that not paying a hooker should be considered shoplifting.

Hierarchy of prostitution

One of the general trends among prostitution is that the more money you make, the less sex you actually have.

The highest-end prostitute would be a "courtesan", which as the euphemism implies will service only extremely wealthy or powerful clients, possibly even just a single client. Similar to this are the "sugar babies", who have a single "daddy" who pays for their rent and lifestyle. Some "sugar babies" will have multiple "daddies", because money. While these services are sexual, surprisingly, most of the services are non-sexual; at the higher end, prostitutes aren't just selling "insert tab A into slot B", but the fantasy of an attractive, high-class person being in love with you.

In the middle are prostitutes who make individual appointments such as "call girls" or "escorts" — referring to the way that they contact and become involved with their clients. They often work independently, service middle to rich clients and can earn a decent amount of money. Some prostitutes will go into stripping or porn for additional money or for a way to advertise their services, whereas some strippers and porn stars go into prostitution because that work alone doesn't provide the income they want. At the end of the day, cash is just as green no matter how you earn it. There's also the legal question of whether porn itself is a form of prostitution; the legal argument is that you are not paying two (or more) people to have sex with each other, but rather, they are already having sex and you are paying for the right to film it. Of course, this relies on the assumption that the people involved would be having sex regardless of being paid, which might be true for the occasional couple posting their videos online but is definitely not the case most of the time.

Somewhere in the hierarchy but very rarely at the top or bottom are the brothelworkers. Depending on the brothel they are a part of and the clients serviced, they might anything from professional laborers to actual slaves. The advantage of a brothel is that the worker has a place to ply her trade, there's generally some form of security to screen out and protect against the more dangerous clients, and of course there's someone who can ensure the worker gets paid. The disadvantage is that all of this really depends on the whims of the people running the brothel, and they have a bad reputation for good reasons, especially if trafficking (aka slavery) is involved.

At the bottom are the "streetwalkers" who, as their name implies, walk the streets to find clients, and generally speaking, the worse of an area they work in the worse their pay and conditions. They generally make much less money from each of their customers, which means they have to service more customers to make ends meet, and are much more likely to be involved in the more unsavory activities that are most often associated with prostitution; slavery, drug addiction, disease, sexual abuse, etc.

Male prostitutes/"escorts" may be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, while their sexual proclivities have no bearing on the clientele they service, just as for women in the industry. Male prostitutes who service wealthy women are often known as "gigolos". Some conservatives who are against prostitution, like Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard, have a history of not practicing what they preach — or, rather, practicing what they preach against.

Marriage as "legalized prostitution"

Marriage is considered to be legalized prostitution by a few feminist scholars, such as Dale Spender and women's rights activist Victoria Woodhull. Despite this claim, many men and women are happily married in loving relationships, including both of the aforementioned (Woodhull thrice). Wedleases (temporary marriages) are especially subject to this perception. This is because wedleasing may be viewed primarily as a financial endeavour for sex rather than one involving commitment to a fellow wedleaser. This can be readily contradicted by the very existence of "marital rape" laws, which more or less outright declare that even in marriage, sex in itself is not something that either spouse is inherently entitled to, contradicting the whole idea of marriage being nothing more than a long-term sex contract. Though in fairness, those laws only appeared in the 1970's, and only because of the hard work of generations of feminist activists.

Technically speaking, Iran does not have prostitution, but it does allow for temporary marriages that last for a short period of time, which may be the only literal case of institutional legal prostitution through marriage.

There are some who view doing anything that you don't want to do, but are willing to do for money, as a form of prostitution. This would make most of the global work force, and almost all politicians, filthy stinking whores.

See also

• Comfort women — Japanese sexual slavery during World War II

External links

• 5 Myths About Prostitutes I Believed (Until I Was One) — from Cracked.com, Note that article deals with and reflects on the experience in a legalized and somewhat regulated setting.
• Inside London’s Prostitute Graveyard — from The Daily Beast.com