history of prostitution

History Of Prostitution

"There hasn't been a place on my body that hasn't been bruised somehow, some way, some big, some small," Marcia (pseudonym), a prostitute, reports in a study noted by Farley (2000). In addition to suffering the pain of a broken arm three times during the course of her "work," Marcia states she also had her nose broken twice and currently has a small fragment of a bone floating in her head that gave her migraines.

Along with experiencing these maladies, and suffering from a fractured skull, Marcia had her toes broken. The bottom of her feet had been burned and "whopped with a hot iron and clothes hanger." Marcia was cut with a knife, and beat with guns and two by fours. She also reports: "... The hair on my ***** had been burned off at one time...I have scars." (Giobbe, 1992, p. 126, cited by Farley, 2000)

Some scars from sexual scenarios prostitutes suffer may not be as visible or poignant as the ones Marcia notes, but instead may take invisible forms such as health and/or psychological problems. In San Francisco, when a john attempted to kidnap one prostitute, she broke her hips when she jumped out of a moving car. Some prostitutes report having teeth knocked out by their pimps and johns. (Farley, 2000)

Prostitution

Prostitution, according to Webster's, consists of "Offering sexual intercourse for pay." (Parker, 2008) prostitute, by definition," according to Overall (1992, cited by Dalla, 2000, p. 344) "is one who exchanges sex or sexual favors for money, drugs, or other desirable commodities). During the past decade, researchers have specifically focused more attention on women who engage in prostitution. (Dalla, 2000, p. 344) This research effort explores a number of components contributing to prostitution, including its history, aspects evident in contemporary American society and various related laws.

Prostitution, noted throughout recorded history, depicts the buying and selling of sexual services and favours, reportedly continues to reflect a part of the human condition. Evidence of prostitution is evident "in mythology, art, sculpture, drama, literature, music, and archaeological structures and ruins." (HISTORY TOPICS, 2008) a number of societies in various countries, including some in the U.S., during different times in history accepted prostitution as a norm, portraying one extreme. At differing times, albeit, a number of societies, including some in the U.S., deem prostitution to be a punishable crime. Between the two extremes of being the norm and depicting a crime, prostitution has variously been regarded, as "a necessary evil."

It is portrayed as a blight on the community, with those who engage in prostitution, often judged as the immoral dregs of a society. Even though men and boys have been "used" as prostitutes in some cultures, women primarily have been associated with prostitution. In the U.S., during the past quarter century, Minnesota reports the number of young girls and boys, often homeless children, many of them runaways or throwaways, forced into prostitution, has risen. Frequently, instead of the abusers or patrons being penalized by social stigma, fines, or jail time, victims of sexual and physical abuse, particularly prostitution have been punished. (HISTORY TOPICS, 2008)

In the U.S., during the years from 1870 to 1930, more women than ever in the recorded past reportedly supported themselves through prostitution. Prostitutes were more visible in the cityscape, in towns such as New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans, than in less populated areas.

New York, London, Paris, and shanghai had the highest numbers of prostitutes, but the phenomenon was far more apparent in... New Orleans, "the greatest brothel city of all times." Ringdal (2005, p. 315)

Myth and Facts

Some proponents of legalizing sex-work in the United States insist prostitution is "just another recreation-oriented service industry.... Working outside the law, prostitutes have few legal protections and no right to unionize. Making sex-work criminal reinforces what philosopher Martha Nussbaum, of the University of Chicago, believes to be 'an unjust prejudice of the sort that once denigrated the activities of women actors, dancers, and singers.'" (Prostitution and Freedom," 2003)

Allowing prostitution might even be a social good, advocates contend. The freedom to use one's body as one wishes seems a basic right. And it gives everyone at least some fall-back employment. Prostitution might gain public esteem as what City University of New York philosopher Sybil Schwarzenbach calls "erotic therapy," and allow the sex worker to "be respected for her wealth of sexual and emotional knowledge."

Three kinds of arguments are usually made against legalization. One is based on traditional morality. A second asserts that prostitution spawns crime and disease. Finally, many feminists argue that prostitution furthers the degradation and subordination of women.

Anderson, a visiting professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany, makes a fourth case. Sex for pay should be illegal, he asserts, because the chance to sell sex impinges on the seller's freedom -- what he calls her right to "sexual autonomy." "If sexual autonomy means anything, it means that sex does not become a necessary means for a person to avoid violence, brute force, or severe economic or other hardships." Recognizing sexual autonomy, in other words, requires barring any interchange between the bedroom and the marketplace. Sex cannot be "just another use of the body."

If society does not acknowledge sexual autonomy and legalizes prostitution, he asks, what's to prevent an increase of pressure to provide "unwanted sex"? Imagine the eerie results. Would schools offer vocational training in sex-work? Might welfare-to-work programs demand that clients consider prostitution as employment?

Legalized prostitution exists under tightly restricted conditions in a few places in Europe and elsewhere. But Anderson does not see how it advances sexual equality. Commerce, built on openness and mutual agreement, will always be at odds with intimate matters of sex, ever founded on privacy and self-determination. (Prostitution and Freedom," 2003)

The following table (1) reflects nine common myths related to prostitution and its legalization (Nevada, particularly).

Table 1: Myths and Facts About Prostitution (Myths and Facts. 2008)

MYTH: Legalization of prostitution will stop illegal prostitution

FACT: Legalization of prostitution in Nevada, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands has resulted in an increase in illegal, hidden, and street prostitution. Decriminalization and legalization promote sex trafficking. Germany and the Netherlands are currently reconsidering whether to get rid of legal prostitution.

MYTH: Legal prostitution protects prostitutes from rape and physical assaults.

FACT: Women can report rapes and assaults to the police under current laws. The problem is that contempt toward prostitutes stays the same whether prostitution is legal or illegal. Women are frequently raped in escort and brothel prostitution, according to a number of studies. Almost everyone in prostitution was raped as a child before she got into it.

MYTH: Nevada's rural counties reap economic benefits from legal prostitution. The rural economies would not survive without the brothels.

FACT: Pimps tell women in prostitution: You'll get rich! You'll make $15,000 a week? They also lie to Nevada's citizens, telling them that rural counties are supported by brothels. it's actually the other way around: the counties are supporting the brothels. By the time licensing, policing, and other state-paid tasks are performed, most counties with legal brothels barely break even. In both northern and southern Nevada, major developers have stayed out of the state because of counties' proximity to legal prostitution.

MYTH: When prostitution is legal, licensed brothel owners do not hire illegal, underage or trafficked women.

FACT: Legalization increases child prostitution. This has been well documented in the Netherlands since brothel prostitution was legalized. Pimps want to make money. They don't care if someone is illegal, age 16, or whether she was trafficked. Pimps, organized criminals, and especially johns flock to wherever a thriving prostitution industry exists such as Las Vegas.

MYTH: When prostitution is legal it eliminates pimps by providing prostitutes with an occupational alternative.

FACT: Prostitution is about not having a range of educational and job options to choose from. Most women in prostitution end up there only because other options are not available. They do not have stable housing, they urgently need money to support children or pay for school, and they often have limited or no education. Prostitution is not labor, it is paid sexual exploitation. It is often paid rape. It is intrinsically harmful and traumatic.

MYTH: If prostitution is legalized it would promote the mental health of prostitutes because they feel ashamed and stigmatized by illegal prostitution.

FACT: It's not the legal status of prostitution that causes the harm, it's the prostitution itself. The longer she is in prostitution - legal or illegal - the more she is psychologically harmed. The shame and the isolation persist even if prostitution is decriminalized or legalized. Even though they'd be earning retirement benefits if they registered, women in Dutch prostitution don't register as legal prostitutes because they are ashamed to be known as prostitutes. Regardless of its legal status, women would prefer to get out of prostitution and usually feel ashamed of it....prostitution inevitably means that you're treated like an object to be masturbated into.

MYTH: Decriminalizing prostitution would save a lot of money because police wouldn't have to arrest prostitutes or johns or pimps.

FACT: Decriminalization of prostitution has resulted in expensive legal challenges because no one wants prostitution zoned into their neighborhood or near their kids' schools. Mustang Brothel was shut down because of tax evasion. Pimps are simply not going to hand over the massive profits that they make from the business of sexual exploitation.

MYTH: Prostitution is ugly, but we have to do something to make it a little better.

Legalization is better than nothing at all.

FACT: Prostitution can't be made "a little better" anymore than domestic violence can be made "a little better." Women in prostitution tell us clearly: they want the same options in life that others have: a decent job, safe housing, medical care and psychological counseling. They deserve that, not just an HIV test to make sure that they are "clean meat" for johns or a union to ensure that they get an extra dollar or two for being paid to be sexually harassed, sexually exploited and often raped.

MYTH: Legal prostitution is a progressive solution to an age-old problem.

FACT: A progressive law promotes women's equality, not women's prostitution.... A 1999 Swedish law describes prostitution as a human rights violation against women. Understanding the massive social and legal power difference in the prostitution transaction, Sweden arrests johns but not the women in prostitution. Trafficking and prostitution have plummeted in Sweden since the law was introduced....Women in prostitution do not want to be in the brothels: 81% of the women in the Nevada legal brothels urgently want to escape prostitution

Considerations

Brown et al. (2003) argues that women who frequently "share histories of abuse, violence, residential instability, racism, and discrimination." Most individuals became involved prostitutions as a means of survival. Along with a lack of formal educational or job experience, these recurring combined experiences, contribute to economic insecurity. (Brown et al., 2003) Prostitution not only scars and marks victims, it "marks" one of the more common "revolving door" offenses routinely occurring in many major metropolitan areas. Even though the behavior rarely reaches the felony level, Nelson (2004) argues that dealing with prostitution presents one of the more perplexing challenges within the criminal justice system. Using an earlier landmark study on criminal justice costs for prostitution, Nelson (2004) reports estimated 2001 costs in Chicago for each prostitution arrest was $1,554, with $9,089,252 estimated to be the legal system total.

In a 1994 study of health consequences of prostitution, it was found that women engaged in a variety of prostitution activities, including at strip clubs, in the street, at crack houses and through escort services. The study also found that prostitution had a profound impact on the women's personal health and that of their children. (Parriott, 1994, cited by Nelson, 2004). There also are the added burdens to welfare, child welfare, and neighborhoods and communities, which experience more costs and deterioration in quality of life. (Nelson, 2004)

Commercial sexual exploitation of minors by international tourists, Andrews (2004) notes, is one particularly disturbing aspect of prostitution.

Tourism, one of the largest, most lucrative global industries, and the sex industry mutually reinforce each other with some vacationers paying for sex with a male or female in their destination country. Every year, foreign travelers from predominantly Western countries, including the U.S., spend billions of dollars to purchase sexual services. This usually illegal practice, referred to as "sex tourism," has become widely acknowledged. (Andrews, 2004) Prostitution of children in developing countries, Andrews (2004) reports, continues to rise basically due to the increase in the number of foreign tourists. Some individuals contend the U.S. is one of the "sending" countries contributing to the market flourishing because of more wealthy and willing and customers. As the U.S. recognizes and understands more about the problem of prostitution regarding children, it also needs to establish more laws to counter international child prostitution. President Bill Clinton signed one such law, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the Crime Bill. This Bill states it constitutes "a criminal offence to travel abroad for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with a minor." (Andrews, 2004)

No country, including the U.S., Matthews (2005) argues, is immune from the drama and tragedy of international child sex trafficking for prostitution. "Ling was thirteen years old and living in Burma when her family sold her to a neighbor under the guise of becoming a domestic worker in another country.

The neighbor transported Ling to the Thailand border where she crossed into more than a new country -- she walked into a terrifying new life.

Her captors took her to a brothel and forced her to have sex up to ten times per day, primarily with clients traveling from wealthy countries where such activities are illegal.

All the money she earned went to the brothel manager, who forced Ling to live with the most meager of possessions.

After enduring a year of this life and being exposed to the AIDS virus, police arrested Ling in a raid on the brothel and charged her with prostitution.

Upon completion of her sentence, officials deported Ling to Burma where there are no laws to protect victims of trafficking.

Her perpetrators remain unpunished.

In neighboring Cambodia, however, the police arrested sixty-nine-year-old Michael Clark, an American tourist, for participating in illicit sexual conduct with two boys under the age of fourteen.

Clark has since become the first person in the United States to be indicted under the PROTECT Act -- the U.S. legislation designed to curb sexual abuse of children.

Due to this strong new legislation and Cambodia's willingness to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement, the Cambodian victims may see punishment meted out, unlike the young girl in Burma. 9) Due to this strong new legislation and Cambodia's willingness to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement, the Cambodian victims may see punishment meted out, unlike the young girl in Burma.

Sexual exploitation and trafficking in children is a growing affront on human dignity that has gained greater international attention in recent years.

Trafficking in persons is one of the most rapidly growing transnational criminal enterprises, with child prostitution skyrocketing despite legislation designed to prevent and control the illegal activity.

In response, countries must pool their efforts and unify in the fight against the international trafficking trade -- both in those where children are forced into prostitution, as well as those providing a market for such trade.

Much legislation has been passed in response to this problem.

To date, this legislation has been "all bark and no bite," professing the importance of ending trafficking, but lacking the necessary force to impact this insidious crime.

Despite slight efforts by the United States and the international community, the system has not worked to protect children.

A multinational response with international coordination of law enforcement is required to thwart the enormous problem of trafficking.

The United States is not immune to the atrocities of sex trafficking in children. (Matthews, 2005)

Steps Away From Prostitution Taking steps to help reduce prostitution of children in developing countries, however, requires more than the U.S., taking steps to help reduce the problem. It also needs other countries to join forces with each other and the U.S. To do whatever needs to be done. On April 30, 2003, President Bush signed the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act (the "PROTECT Act"). This law significantly improved the United States government's ability to pursue American citizens and resident aliens who commit sexual crimes against children outside of United States territory. (Messigian, 2006)

Counters to "the World's Oldest Profession" as time has passed, Saban (2006) reports, the prostitutes' lot constantly shifted, as "whores and harlots have been elevated, abused, exploited and commodified sic)." Prostitution, nevertheless continues to constitute a "resilient profession that has defeated all attempts to suppress and control it." A current concern noted by several sex workers Saban (2006) interviewed questions if in the age of the internet and the cyber-hooker, the profession can ever be kept under check. A "John School," considered a success in combating prostitution, reported in the Washington Times, constitutes one current counter being implemented to try to check prostitution, also known as "the world's oldest profession." "Only one of the more than 500 men who have taken the District's 2-year-old anti-prostitution course has been arrested again for solicitation. 'I think it's certainly fair to say [the program is] a resounding success,' said Anthony Asuncion, chief of the misdemeanor section of the U.S. Attorney's Office. 'The only big change that has happened in the last two years is we have become very successful.'" ("John School' Called, 2003, p. a" B01)