essay writing on prostitution

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

9.4 Prostitution

Learning objectives.

• Summarize the history of prostitution in the United States.
• List the reasons that lead many people to dislike prostitution.
• Explain the problems that streetwalkers experience and why these problems occur.

Prostitution , the selling of sexual services, is yet another controversial sexual behavior. Many people, and especially those with conservative, religious views, believe prostitution is immoral because it involves sex for money, and they consider prostitution a sign of society’s moral decay. Many feminists believe that prostitution is degrading to women and provides a context in which prostitutes are robbed, beaten, and/or raped. These two groups of people might agree on little else, but they both hold strong negative views about prostitution. Regardless of their other beliefs, many people also worry that prostitution spreads STDs. All these groups think prostitution should remain illegal, and they generally prefer stricter enforcement of laws against prostitution.

Other people also do not like prostitution, but they believe that the laws against prostitution do more harm than good. They think that legalizing prostitution would reduce the various harms prostitution causes, and they believe that views about the immorality of prostitution should not prevent our society from dealing more wisely with it than it does now.

This section presents a short history of prostitution before turning to the various types of prostitution, reasons for prostitution, and policy issues about how best to deal with this particular sexual behavior. Because most prostitution involves female prostitutes and male customers, our discussion will largely focus on this form.

History of Prostitution

Often called the world’s oldest profession, prostitution has been common since ancient times (Ringdal, 2004). In ancient Mesopotamia, priests had sex with prostitutes. Ancient Greece featured legal brothels (houses of prostitution) that serviced political leaders and common men alike. Prostitution was also common in ancient Rome, and in the Old Testament it was “accepted as a more or less necessary fact of life and it was more or less expected that many men would turn to prostitutes” (Bullough & Bullough, 1977, pp. 137–138). During the Middle Ages and through the nineteenth century, prostitution was tolerated as a necessary evil, as legal brothels operated in much of Europe and were an important source of tax revenue. As the dangers of venereal disease became known, some cities shut down their brothels, but other cities required regular medical exams of their brothels’ prostitutes.

Prostitution was also common in the United States through the nineteenth century (Bullough & Bullough, 1987). Poor women became prostitutes because it provided a source of income at a time when they had few other options for jobs. Some prostitutes worked for themselves on streets and in hotels and other establishments, and other prostitutes worked in legal brothels in many US cities. During the Civil War, prostitutes found many customers among the soldiers of the Union and the Confederacy; the term hooker for prostitute comes from their relations with soldiers commanded by Union general Joseph Hooker. After the Civil War, camps of prostitutes would set up at railroad construction sites. When the railroad workers would visit the camps at night, they hung their red signal lamps outside the prostitutes’ tents so they could be found if there was a railroad emergency. The term “red-light district” for a prostitution area originated in the red glow that resulted from this practice.

Many US cities had legal brothels into the early 1900s. Beginning in about 1910, however, religious groups and other parties increasingly spoke out about the immorality of prostitution, and in addition claimed that middle-class girls were increasingly becoming prostitutes. Their efforts succeeded in shutting down legal brothels nationwide. Some illegal brothels continued, and among their number was a San Francisco brothel run during the 1940s by a madam (brothel manager and/or owner) named Sally Stanford. Her clientele included many leading politicians and businessmen of San Francisco and nearby areas. Like other earlier brothels, Stanford’s brothel required regular medical exams of her employees to help prevent the spread of venereal diseases (Stanford, 1966). Despite or perhaps because of her fame from being a madam, Stanford was later elected mayor of Sausalito, a town across the bay from San Francisco.

Prostitution in the United States Today

Estimates of the number of prostitutes in the United States range widely between 70,000 and 500,000. Streetwalkers comprise about one-fifth of all prostitutes.

Eric Parker – Prostitute 3 am – CC BY-NC 2.0.

No one really knows how many prostitutes we now have. Prostitutes are not eager to be studied, and because their work is illegal, the federal government does not compile statistics on their numbers as it does for physicians, plumbers, teachers, and hundreds of other legal occupations. One well-analyzed estimate put the number of female prostitutes at 70,000 and further concluded that they engage in an average of 700 acts of prostitution with male customers annually, or almost 50 million acts of prostitution overall each year (Brewer et al., 2000). However, other estimates put the number of prostitutes as high as 500,000, with many of these prostitutes working part-time, whether or not they also work in a legal occupation (Clinard & Meier, 2011).

Regardless of the actual number, prostitution is very common. The GSS asks, “Thinking about the time since your 18 th birthday, have you ever had sex with a person you paid or who paid you for sex?” In 2010, 11.9 percent of men and 1.7 percent of women answered “yes” to this question. These figures translate to about 13.5 million men 18 and older who have engaged in prostitution, usually as the customer, and 2.1 million women.

In 2010, police and other law enforcement agents made almost 63,000 arrests for prostitution and commercialized vice (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2011). Most of these arrests were of prostitutes, but some were of customers. Women accounted for almost 69 percent of the arrests in this entire category.

Types of Prostitutes

Several types of prostitutes exist. At the bottom of the prostitution “hierarchy” are streetwalkers (also called street prostitutes ), who typically find their customers, or are found by their customers, somewhere on a street. They then have a quick act of sex in the customer’s car, in an alleyway or other secluded spot, or in a cheap hotel. Although streetwalkers are the subjects in most studies of prostitutes, they in fact compose only about one-fifth of all prostitutes (Weitzer, 2012).

The remaining 80 percent of prostitutes generally work indoors. Call girls work as independent operators in their homes or fairly fancy hotels and charge a lot of money for their services, which include sex but also talking and dining. Their clients are typically businessmen or other wealthy individuals. Many call girls earn between $200 and $500 per hour, and some earn between $1,000 and $6,000 per hour or per session (Weitzer, 2009). Escorts work for escort agencies, which often advertise heavily in phone books and on the Internet. They may operate out of an apartment rented by their agency or come to a client’s hotel room or other location. Although they may actually act as an escort to a dinner or show, typically their services include sexual acts. They, too, are generally well paid for their work, but do not earn nearly as much as call girls because they have to give at least 30 percent of their earnings to their agency.

Call girls and escorts rank at the top of the prostitution hierarchy (Weitzer, 2009). Below them, but above streetwalkers, are three other types of prostitutes. Brothel workers , as the name implies, are prostitutes who work in brothels. The only legal brothels in the United States today are found in several rural counties in Nevada, which legalized prostitution in these counties in 1971. Workers in these brothels pay income tax. Because their employers require regular health exams and condom use, the risk of sexually transmitted disease in Nevada’s brothels is low. Massage parlor workers , as their name also implies, work in massage parlors. Many massage parlors, of course, involve no prostitution at all, and are entirely legal. However, some massage parlors are in fact fronts for prostitution, where the prostitute masturbates a man and brings him to what is often termed a “happy ending.” A final category of prostitution involves prostitutes who work in bars, casinos, or similar establishments ( bar or casino workers ). They make contact with a customer in these settings and then have sex with them elsewhere.

The lives and welfare of streetwalkers are much worse than those of the five types of indoor workers just listed. As sociologist Ronald Weitzer (2012, p. 212) observes, “Many of the problems associated with ‘prostitution’ are actually concentrated in street prostitution and much less evident in the indoor sector.” In particular, many streetwalkers are exploited or abused by pimps, use heroin or other drugs, and are raped, robbed, and/or beaten by their clients. A good number of streetwalkers also began their prostitution careers as runaway teenagers and were abused as children.

In contrast, indoor workers begin their trade when they were older and are less likely to have been abused as children. Their working conditions are much better than those for streetwalkers, they are less likely to be addicted to drugs and to have STDs, they are better paid, and they are much less likely to be victimized by their clients. Studies that compare indoor prostitutes with nonprostitutes find that they have similar levels of self-esteem, physical health, and mental health. Many indoor prostitutes even report a rise in self-esteem after they begin their indoor work (Weitzer, 2012).

Explaining Prostitution

By definition, prostitution involves the selling of sex. This means that money is the key feature of prostitution. As such, money is also the major motivation for women who become prostitutes, as most of them come from low-income backgrounds. For indoor workers, and especially call girls, prostitution is a potentially well-paying occupation. Streetwalkers hardly get rich from prostitution and suffer the many problems listed earlier, but prostitution still provides them a source of income that they are unlikely to receive through legal occupations because they have few marketable job skills.

Despite this financial motivation, most women do not become prostitutes, and scholars have tried to understand why some women do so. Because prostitutes are not eager to be studied, as noted earlier, we do not yet have studies of random samples of prostitutes, and probably never will have such studies. As also noted earlier, most studies of prostitutes involve streetwalkers, even though they compose only about 20 percent of all prostitutes. Several of these studies cite high rates of child abuse in the backgrounds of streetwalkers, but other studies find that their rates of child abuse are similar to those of women from similar sociodemographic backgrounds who are not prostitutes (Weitzer, 2009). Although some studies find certain psychological problems among streetwalkers, it is unclear whether these problems existed before they became streetwalkers or developed (as is very possible) after they became streetwalkers. Methodologically, the best way to clarify this causal question would be to randomly assign young women to become prostitutes or not to become prostitutes, and then to study what happens to their psychological health afterward. For many reasons, this type of study would be highly unethical and will never be done. In the absence of studies of this type, it is difficult to determine what exactly prompts some women to become prostitutes.

Customers of prostitutes tend to come from the same kinds of social backgrounds as do noncustomers. They have certain motivations for wanting to be with a prostitute, but many noncustomers have the same motivations yet still do not pay for prostitution.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.5.

There is an old saying that “it takes two to tango.” Prostitution obviously cannot occur unless a customer wants to pay for the services of a prostitute. Despite this essential fact of prostitution, there are very few studies of why men choose to become customers. The implicit message from this lack of studies is that it is normal for men to have sex with a prostitute but abnormal for women to charge these men for this sex. The few studies we do have do not find any substantial differences between customers and noncustomers (Weitzer, 2009). Just as men come from various social backgrounds, so do the men who choose to have sex with a prostitute.

Customers do have certain motivations for choosing to pay for prostitution (Weitzer, 2009). These motivations include (1) the desire to have sex with someone with a certain physical appearance (age, race, body type); (2) the lack of a sexual partner or dissatisfaction with a sexual partner, including a desire to have unconventional sex that the partner does not share; (3) the thrill of having sex with a prostitute; and (4) the desire to have sex without having to make an emotional commitment. Although one or more of these motivations may be necessary for a man’s decision to seek prostitution, they do not entirely explain this decision. For example, many men may not have a sexual partner or may be dissatisfied with a partner they do have, but they still do not decide to pay for a prostitute.

Sociological Perspectives

Beyond explaining why individual women and men are more likely than others to pay for sex or to receive pay for sex, the three sociological perspectives outlined in Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems” —functionalist theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism—offer more general insights on prostitution. Table 9.5 “Theory Snapshot” provides a summary of these insights.

Table 9.5 Theory Snapshot

According to functionalist theory , prostitution exists because it serves several important functions for society generally and for certain people in society. As we have already mentioned, it provides a source of income for many women who otherwise might be jobless, and it provides a sexual alternative for men with the motivations listed earlier. Almost eight decades ago, sociologist Kingsley Davis (1937) wrote that prostitution even lowers the divorce rate. He reasoned that many married men are unhappy with their sex life with their wives. If they do not think this situation can improve, some men start an affair with another woman and may fall in love with that woman, threatening these men’s marriages. Other men turn to a prostitute. Because prostitution is generally impersonal, these men do not fall in love with their prostitutes, and their marriages are not threatened. Without prostitution, then, more men would have affairs, and more divorces would result. Although Davis’s hypothesis is provocative, there are no adequate studies to test it.

According to conflict theory , prostitution reflects the economic inequality in society. Many poor women feel compelled to become prostitutes because of their lack of money; because wealthier women have many other sources of income, the idea of becoming a prostitute is something they never have to consider. Sad but interesting historical support for this view comes from an increase in prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many women lost husbands and boyfriends in the war and were left penniless. Lacking formal education and living in a society that at the time offered few job opportunities to women, many of these bereaved women were forced to turn to prostitution to feed their families and themselves. As American cities grew rapidly during the last decades of the nineteenth century, thousands of immigrant women and other poor women also turned to prostitution as a needed source of income (Rosen, 1983). This late nineteenth-century increase in prostitution, then, occurred because of women’s poverty.

According to the feminist version of conflict theory, prostitution results not only from women’s poverty but also from society’s patriarchal culture that still views men as the dominant figure in heterosexual relationships and that still treats women as “sex objects” who exist for men’s pleasure (Barry, 1996). In such a culture, it is no surprise and even inevitable that men will want to pay for sex with a woman and that women will be willing to be paid for sex. In this feminist view, the oppression and exploitation that prostitution inherently involves reflects the more general oppression and exploitation of women in the larger society.

Symbolic interactionism moves away from these larger issues to examine the everyday understandings that prostitutes and their customers have about their behavior. These understandings help both prostitutes and customers justify their behavior. Many prostitutes, for example, believe they are performing an important service for the men who pay them. Indoor prostitutes are perhaps especially likely to feel they are helping their customers by providing them not only sex but also companionship (Weitzer, 2009). A woman who owned a massage parlor named “The Classic Touch” echoed this view. Her business employed fourteen women who masturbated their customers and offered a senior citizen discount. The owner reasoned that her employees were performing an important service: “We have many senior citizens and handicapped people. We have some men who are impotent and others who are divorced or in bad marriages. This is a safe, AIDS-free environment…that helps marriages. Husbands come in here and get a stress release and then they are able to go home and take on more. These are men who aren’t in bars picking up strange women” (Ordway, 1995, p. 1).

Dealing with Prostitution

With prostitution, past is once again prologue. It has existed since ancient times, and it has continued throughout the United States long since prostitution was banned by the United States in 1920. The legal brothels that now exist in rural counties in Nevada are the exception in this nation, not the rule. Yet prostitution is common outside of Nevada, and thousands of arrests occur nationwide for it.

As with illegal drugs (see Chapter 7 “Alcohol and Other Drugs” ), as we think about how to deal with prostitution, we should consider both a philosophical question and a social science question (Meier & Geis, 2007). The philosophical question is whether two people should be allowed to engage in a behavior, in this case prostitution, in which both want to participate. Many people may dislike this behavior for various reasons, but is that sufficient justification for the behavior to be banned if both people (let’s assume they are legal adults) want to engage in it? In this regard, and without at all meaning to equate prostitution with same-sex sexual behavior, an analogy with homosexuality is worth considering. Homosexual sex used to be illegal because many people thought it was immoral. When the US Supreme Court finally invalidated all laws against homosexual sex in its 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas , the majority opinion declared that “the fact that a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice.” It further asserted, “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.” Although the majority opinion specifically said its decision did not apply to prostitution, a reasonable argument may be made that respect for privacy of consensual sexual conduct also means that prostitution, too, should be legal.

Here it may be argued that prostitution still victimizes and objectifies women even if they want to engage in it. This is a reasonable argument, but there are many occupations that victimize employees, either because the occupations are dangerous (such as coal mining and construction work) or because the job requirements objectify women as sex objects (such as fashion modeling and cheerleading). Because hardly anyone would say these occupations should be illegal, is it logical to say that prostitution should be illegal? Former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders thinks it makes no sense to ban prostitution simply because it objectifies women: “Why are we so upset about sex workers selling sexual acts to consenting adults?” she asks. “We say that they are selling their bodies, but how different is that from what athletes do? They’re selling their bodies. Models? They’re selling their bodies. Actors? They’re selling their bodies” (McCaslin, 1999, p. A8).

The social science question concerning laws against prostitution is whether these laws do more good than harm, or more harm than good. If they do more good than harm, they should be maintained and even strengthened; if they do more harm than good, they should be repealed. A growing number of scholars believe that the laws against prostitution do more harm than good, and they say that the best way to deal with prostitution might be to legalize and regulate it (Weitzer, 2011).

Proponents of legalization argue as follows. Although many people cite the horrible lives of many streetwalkers as a major reason for their support of laws against prostitution, these laws ironically cause the problems that streetwalkers experience (Weitzer, 2011). When US prostitution was legal a century ago in brothels across the nation, brothel prostitutes were safer than streetwalkers are now. Prostitutes working today in Nevada’s legal brothels are safer than streetwalkers. Whatever we might think of their behavior, legal brothel workers are relatively safe from being robbed, beaten, or raped, and their required regular medical exams leave them relatively free of sexually transmitted disease. The health problems and criminal victimization that many streetwalkers experience happen because their behavior is illegal, and legalizing and regulating prostitution would reduce these problems (Weitzer, 2011).

In this regard, legalization of prostitution is yet another harm reduction approach to a social problem. As Weitzer (2012, p. 227) observes, “Research suggests that, under the right conditions, legal prostitution can be organized in a way that increases workers’ health, safety, and job satisfaction. Mandatory condom use and other safe-sex practices are typical in legal brothels, and the workers face much lower risk of abuse from customers.”

Legalization of prostitution would also yield a considerable amount of tax revenue, as is now true in Nevada. Let’s assume that 50 million acts of prostitution occur annually in the United States, to cite our earlier estimate that is probably too low, and that each of these acts costs an average $30. Putting these numbers together, prostitutes receive $1.5 billion annually in income. If they paid about one-third of this amount (admittedly a rough estimate) in payroll taxes, the revenue of state and federal governments would increase by $500 million. Because the tens of thousands of arrests for prostitution and commercialized vice annually would reduce significantly if prostitution were legalized, the considerable financial savings from this reduction could be used for other pursuits.

Legalizing prostitution would add the United States to the lengthy list of other Western democracies that have already legalized it. Although their models of legalization vary, the available evidence indicates that legalizing prostitution does, in fact, reduce the many problems now associated with illegal prostitution (see Note 9.25 “Lessons from Other Societies” ).

Workers in legal brothels are relatively safe from victimization by customers and from the risk of incurring and transmitting sexual diseases.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Lessons from Other Societies

Legal Brothels in Other Western Democracies

In many other Western democracies, prostitution is legal to varying degrees that depend on the specific nation. In some nations, streetwalking is permitted, but in other nations, only brothels are permitted.

The legal brothel model is what the United States had a century ago and has today only in rural Nevada. As in Nevada, other nations that permit legal brothels usually require regular health exams and the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of sexual diseases. They also license the brothels so that the brothels must fulfill various standards, including the safe-sex practices just mentioned, to receive a license. In addition, brothels must pay taxes on their revenues, and brothel workers must pay taxes on their incomes.

As in rural Nevada, brothel workers in these other nations are unlikely to be abused by their customers. A major reason for their relative safety is that they work indoors and that any abuse by customers might be heard or witnessed by someone else inside the brothel. In addition, brothels in many nations have implemented certain measures to ensure workers’ safety, including the provision of panic buttons, the use of listening devices, and screening of customers when they enter the brothel.

A report by the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands, where legal brothels operate, has concluded that most brothel workers say that they feel safe. A government report in New Zealand, which legalized prostitution in 2003, concluded that legalization made it more likely that prostitutes report any problems to the police and also increased their self-esteem because their behavior was now legal. A government commission in Australia that evaluated legal brothels in the northeastern state of Queensland concluded, “There is no doubt that licensed brothels provide the safest working environment for sex workers in Queensland…Legal brothels now powering in Queensland provide a sustainable model for a healthy, crime-free, and safe legal licensed brothel industry.”

Assessing all these nations’ experiences, sociologist Ronald Weitzer concluded that “legal prostitution, while no panacea, is not inherently dangerous and can be structured to minimize risks and empower workers.” The United States, then, has much to learn from the other Western democracies that have legalized prostitution.

Sources: Weitzer, 2009, 2012

Key Takeaways

• Prostitution has existed since ancient times and continues to be common today around the world. The United States had legal brothels before 1920, and legal brothels are found today in rural counties in Nevada.
• Many people oppose prostitution because they feel it is immoral or because they feel it degrades and victimizes women. Because prostitution usually involves consensual behavior, some scholars say it should not be illegal in a society that values a right to privacy.
• Some scholars also say that laws against prostitution do more harm than good and in particular account for the various problems that streetwalkers experience.

For Your Review

• Do you think prostitution should become legal and regulated? Why or why not?
• The major difference between prostitution and sex resulting from a casual pickup involves whether money is exchanged. Write an essay in which you first take the “pro” side on the following debate question, and then take the “con” side: that prostitution is worse than sex from a casual pickup.

Barry, K. (1996). The prostitution of sexuality . New York, NY: New York University Press.

Brewer, D. D., Potterat, J. J., Garrett, S. B., Muth, S. Q., John M. Roberts, J., Kasprzyk, D., et al. (2000). Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97 , 12385–12388.

Bullough, V. L., & Bullough, B. (1977). Sin, sickness, and sanity: A history of sexual attitudes . New York, NY: New American Library.

Bullough, V. L., & Bullough, B. (1987). Women and prostitution: A social history . Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.

Clinard, M. B., & Meier, R. F. (2011). Sociology of deviant behavior (14th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.

Davis, K. (1937). The sociology of prostitution. American Sociological Review, 2 , 744–755. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Crime in the United States, 2010 . Washington, DC: Author.

McCaslin, J. (1999, October 13). Vaginal politics. Washington Times , p. A8.

Meier, R. F., & Geis, G. (2007). Criminal justice and moral issues . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Ordway, R. (1995, May 26). Relaxation spas perplex officials. The Bangor Daily News , p. 1.

Ringdal, N. J. (2004). Love for sale: A world history of prostitution (R. Daly, Trans.). New York, NY: Grove Press.

Rosen, R. (1983). The lost sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univesity Press.

Stanford, S. (1966). The lady of the house . New York, NY: G. P. Putnam.

Weitzer, R. (2009). Sociology of sex work. Annual Review of Sociology, 35 (0360-0572, 0360-0572), 213–234.

Weitzer, R. (2011). Legalizing prostitution: From illicit vice to lawful business . New York, NY: New York University Press.

Weitzer, R. (2012). Prostitution: Facts and fictions. In D. Hartmann & C. Uggen (Eds.), The Contexts reader (pp. 223–230). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery Essay

Introduction, works cited.

There are a variety of perspectives on the issue of legalizing prostitution. Legalization supporters know this kind of divisiveness will continue despite all sorts of prohibitions. The existence of shadow business will always be present in any country, despite a number of adopted laws. Therefore, supporters of legalization propose to establish legal protection for people working in prostitution officially. This approach can significantly reduce the number of sexually transmitted diseases. Moreover, with the establishment of taxation, as a result, workers in the field of prostitution will receive social guarantees. Furthermore, recognizing prostitution as a commercial form of life adjusts state intervention. In other words, control over the sale of sexual slavery can improve. Thus, legalizing prostitution is a good option to improve people’s livelihood and prevent human trafficking and sexual slavery. The plan for developing this concept includes legalizing prostitution and prohibiting sexual slavery or incitement.

One of the main advantages of legalizing prostitution is the possibility of an official medical examination of workers. Medical control of such enterprises at the official level makes it possible to establish a higher standard of living for workers. This is due to the taxation that arises from the legalization of prostitution (Geo, 2019). Medical insurance and other social guarantees appear. In other words, the possibility of promoting sexual slavery is greatly reduced. This is due to medical and state control over the activities and sales of organizations providing sex services.

Another reason why the legalization of prostitution becomes the optimal solution is the decriminalization of business. In countries that ban prostitution entirely, buying and selling sex services occurs at the underworld level. Researchers believe that bringing this business out of the shadows excludes the participation of criminal groups from it (Joulaei et al., 2021). Accordingly, such changes reduce the number of opportunities for people to be sold into sex slavery.

The third reason why the legalization of prostitution is practical is the increase in the social status of people. According to recent studies, people’s experience in sexual slavery shows that money prevented them from leaving the sphere (Joulaei et al., 2021). Good pay and being in shadow conditions made it possible to exist in society without exposing the proper type of activity. People were afraid of social condemnation and problems with the law. Such people are often shoved into a corner and do not see other alternatives. Therefore, the recognition of prostitution as a profession by the state can change the social perception of prostitutes by society. This can help many people who are in sex slavery to seek help from the state or people around them. The barrier of social humiliation will be minimized.

One of the main arguments against legalizing prostitution is a significant increase in workers. As the Netherlands’ experience in the legalization issue shows, the number of sex workers has increased significantly with the adoption of laws (Janssen, 2021). However, this problem did not affect the government of the Netherlands at all. In fact, by legalizing prostitution, the state recognizes the importance and contribution of sex workers. As a result, the overall growth of representatives of this profession should not be in doubt. In the Netherlands, on the contrary, they are trying to support sex workers and get rid of their stigmatization (Janssen, 2021). Thus, this argument is not relevant to preventing the legalization of prostitution.

Another counterargument is the position that the legalization of prostitution will contribute to the growth of sex slavery. The legalization of prostitution automatically increases the demand for such services (Ham, 2018). Those people who were afraid to break the law cease to be afraid of legal prosecution. Traffickers in prostitutes can more easily lure people under the pretext of official work and the provision of social guarantees. There may attract people from poorer countries (Ham, 2018). Undoubtedly, this topic is a severe consequence of legalizing prostitution. However, it is worth noting that such effects can be minimized by closer state control. With a complete ban on prostitution, the problem does not change at all. The attraction of people from poorer countries will be present regardless of the adoption of the law on legalization (Ham, 2018). In this situation, the state should address the decriminalization of criminal associations. As mentioned above, as part of the legalization of prostitution, a decrease in the level of influence of criminal groups can be achieved. Thus, sexual slavery will exist regardless of the legalization of prostitution. Therefore, the counterargument is also not relevant.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the issue of legalizing prostitution is complex and requires the collaborative work of the state in various fields. The problem of sex slavery will not be solved only by adopting a law legalizing prostitution. Efforts are also needed toward the decriminalization of criminal organizations. However, the decision to recognize prostitution indirectly reduces the risks of sex abuse through medical, governmental, and social factors. Protection and support for sex workers should be provided by the state, which results in a higher standard of living. Because of this, people with more excellent stability will be more likely to avoid falling into sex slavery.

Freeman, Joelle. “Legalization of Sex Work in the United States: An HIV Reduction Strategy.” Legal Ethics, vol. 32, 2019, pp. 597–613.

Ham, Juile. “Using difference in intersectional research with im/migrant and racialized sex workers.” Theoretical Criminology, vol. 24, no. 4, 2018.

Janssen, Marie-Lousie. “Sex work activism and intersectionality.” Reconfiguring Stigma in Studies of Sex for Sale , edited by Jeanett Bjonness, Lorraine Nencel, & May-Len Skilbrei, Routledge, 2021, pp. 81–99.

Joulaei, Hassan, Keshavarzian, Amir, Khorsandian, Mohammadali, and Zarei, Nooshin. “Legalization, decriminalization or criminalization; could we introduce a global prescription for prostitution?” International Journal High Risk Behaviors & Addiction, vol. 10, no. 3, 2021, pp. 2–8.

• The Benefits of Legalizing Prostitution
• Sex Work: Decriminalizing or Legalizing?
• Piety Aside, Legalizing Prostitution Is the Way to Go
• Enslaved Women in the United States
• The Juneteenth for African Americans
• The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams
• The Impact of the Slaves' Journey to the United States
• Reflection on Human Trafficking Studies
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 1). Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-prostitution-and-impact-on-sex-slavery/

"Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery." IvyPanda , 1 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-prostitution-and-impact-on-sex-slavery/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery'. 1 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-prostitution-and-impact-on-sex-slavery/.

1. IvyPanda . "Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-prostitution-and-impact-on-sex-slavery/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Legalization of Prostitution and Impact on Sex Slavery." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-prostitution-and-impact-on-sex-slavery/.

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

6 Ideas and Practices of Prostitution Around the World

Magaly Rodríguez García is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Leuven.

• Published: 07 July 2016
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This essay provides a global overview of prostitution from the early modern period to the present. Although the distinction between “premodern” and “modern” prostitution is not necessarily sharp, the profound political, military, and socioeconomic changes from roughly 1600 onward had an important impact on the sale of sex. Worldwide, the practice of prostitution and societal reactions to it were influenced by processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation-states, military modernization, nationalism, and war, as well as revolutions in politics, agriculture, transport, and communication. A long historical and broad geographical perspective reveals the continuities and discontinuities in the way commercial sex was practiced, perceived, and policed. This essay paper approaches prostitution from a double (top-down and bottom-up) perspective that integrates criminology and labor theory, presenting the views of authorities, anti-vice campaigners, and society at large while situating prostitution as an integral part of labor history.

Introduction

This essay provides a global overview of prostitution from the early modern period to the present. The focus on female prostitution in urban settings is justified by the fact that commercial sex has nearly always been a city-based phenomenon involving women servicing men. Although the distinction between “premodern” and “modern” prostitution is not necessarily sharp, the profound political, military, and socioeconomic changes that occurred from around 1600 onward had an important impact on the sale of sex. Worldwide, the practice of prostitution and the societal reactions to it were influenced by processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation-states, military modernization, nationalism, and war, as well as by revolutions in the realms of politics, agriculture, transportation, and communication.

A long historical and broad geographical perspective permits us to observe the continuities and discontinuities in the way commercial sex was practiced, perceived, and policed. The necessities that accompanied nationalist and imperialist projects from the late eighteenth century onward had a profoundly negative impact on the understanding of prostitution but did not really alter the motivations of women to engage in the sex trade. Evidence derived from classic works on prostitution and studies collected for the project “Selling Sex in the City” 1 proves that while the efforts of authorities to control, repress, or prohibit prostitution crescendoed, more diverse and inventive methods of carrying out the trade were developed by the men and women involved in it. Similarly, the growing involvement of non-state actors in debates on prostitution—particularly whether to condemn it or to redefine it as sex work—led to the development of alternative ways to sell sex and to an increased vocalization of the workers concerned.

This contribution approaches prostitution from a double (top-down and bottom-up) perspective that integrates criminology and labor theory. On the one hand, it presents the point of view of authorities, antivice campaigners, and society at large. As these groups perceived prostitution in terms of sin, deviancy, crime, or victimhood, their responses to commercial sex variously attempted to control, conceal, or repress it. On the other hand, this essay studies prostitution as an integral part of labor history. If we follow Marcel van der Linden’s “very simple definition,” of work as “the purposive production of useful objects or services” ( van der Linden 2011 , p. 27), then prostitution can be defined as work. The trade’s structure and working conditions are therefore included in this analysis. Furthermore, analyses focusing on the women’s profiles and motivations for prostitution are integrated in the narrative, as they are considered essential for a more comprehensive understanding of this type of work. In so doing, this essay attempts to contribute to contemporary debates and to warn against the dangerous generalizations, myths, and gendered misconceptions that often emerge whenever prostitution (and migration for prostitution) is discussed. In particular, the popular image of young females forced into the prostitution milieu by malevolent (male) traffickers calls for a more nuanced analysis.

The essay unfolds in five sections. Section I discusses the legal and cultural definitions of prostitution across time and space. In section II , I examine the societal reactions toward prostitution and de facto or legal regimes governing commercial sex, including tolerance, regulation, abolition, and prohibition. Related to these themes is the real or imaginary link made between prostitution, deviancy, and crime, which constitutes the focus of section III . The spatial organization of the trade and the working conditions of women engaged in it are described in section IV . The final section examines the demography and causes of prostitution. 2

I. Definitions

The online Cambridge Dictionary defines prostitution as “the work of a prostitute,” and the latter as “a person who has sex with someone for money.” 3 Although commonly accepted, these definitions do not permit identification of the immense range of remunerated sex activities that exists. Moreover, if taken literally, these definitions can include practices that have most often been accepted as mainstream and very different from prostitution. Marriages or other forms of intimate relationships, for example, have often involved sexual exchanges for livelihood, but society—except for radical feminists—has never linked them to commercial sex. Perhaps the metaphoric definition of prostitution provided by the online Oxford Dictionary will give us a clearer clue to its symbolic meaning across time and space: here, prostitution is “the unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for personal or financial gain” (emphasis mine). 4 Indeed, it is the moral or status connotation attached to it, and not so much the exchange of sexual favors for money or in-kind goods or services, that has characterized the understanding of prostitution in most societies.

In Europe and the Americas, common prostitutes were identified with marginality and were arrested under regulations against “disorderly people,” lewdness, and vagrancy until the first half of the twentieth century (Rosen 1982; Svänstrom 2006 ). Slave or pawned prostitutes in American colonies or from African and Asian countries belonged to the lowest rank of society. On the other end of the spectrum, some early forms of prostitution were linked to high prestige and were characterized by a range of entertainment services much broader than pure sexual intercourse. But although commercial sex was legal and regulated in several places in Renaissance Europe and precolonial Asia, high-level courtesans refused to be identified as prostitutes. Furthermore, early regulations always included more than the exchange of sex for money ( Gronewold 2013 ). Premarital sex, adultery, or “indiscriminate availability” ( Karras 1996 , p. 17) were encompassed in the more commonly used term “whoredom.” In Europe and the Americas, a clear distinction between “whores,” “harlots,” “mistresses,” and “prostitutes” was nonexistent. From the mid-eighteenth century onward the terms “prostitution” and “prostitute” became more widely used to differentiate them from fornication and adulterous women, respectively ( Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ; Laite 2011 ).

The reinstallation of systems of regulation in the nineteenth century required a clearer categorization of prostitution. Henceforth, the monetary transaction became central to the legal definition of prostitution. Sexual barter, however, has remained difficult to categorize. During the twentieth century, the so-called “charity girls” in the United States exchanged sex for entertainment expenses but made a clear distinction between their acts and prostitution, which they considered immoral. The figure of the “cocotte” in Paris and Berlin at the turn of the century also defied easy categorization. In some African and Asian cities, too, sexual bartering for material goods or privileges seems to have been—and to still be—common. As in Europe, the identification of “real” prostitutes was problematic in colonies or countries that had introduced regulation systems in their territories. Often, any suspect woman was registered as a prostitute and exposed to intrusive medical examinations ( Clement 2005 ; Guigon 2012 ; Smith 2013 ; Ekpootu 2013 ).

Colonization brought a radical shift to the conceptualization of prostitution. Women who in precolonial periods had provided more spiritual than sexual services (e.g., temple dancing girls in India and courtesans in China, Japan, and other parts of Asia) became automatically identified as prostitutes by European colonists. In places like Australia or New Zealand, European colonization laid the foundations for prostitution, and although little is known about the sexual practices of precolonial populations in Africa and the Americas, it is clear that prostitution as we know it today took off after the European conquest ( Absi 2013 ; Frances 2011 ; Frances 2007 ; Lauro 2005 ; Levine 2003 ; White 1990 ).

The terms “prostitution” and “prostitute” were commonly used by officialdom during the twentieth century, but more insulting words like “whore” and its foreign equivalents were and still are popular in common parlance. However, with the development of the prostitutes’ rights movement from the 1970s onward, the pejorative names came under attack. A restructuring of the trade’s language took place in which prostitution came to be defined as “sex work.” The new usage of the terms “sex work” and “sex worker” was an important semantic shift that signified the strengthening of a movement that understands prostitution in terms of labor and human rights ( Bindman 1997 ; Delacoste & Alexander 1988 ; Pheterson 1989 ). For their part, radical feminists are virulently against the idea of prostitution as sex work. Instead, they define prostitution as “sexual slavery” and prefer to speak of “prostituted woman” rather than “prostitute” or, worse still, “sex worker,” as the former term “brings the perpetrator into the picture” ( Jeffreys 1997 , p. 5; Barry 1979 ; Barry 1995 ).

II. Societal Reaction and Legal Situation

The definition of prostitution and societal reactions to it have had an important impact on the legal regimes that have aimed to control, repress, or regulate the sale of sex. Nearly everywhere, and during much of the period studied here, legal and cultural attitudes toward prostitution have overlapped. Although some forms of high-level prostitution in earlier times commanded respect and prestige, most societies have despised it ( Stearns 2009 ). Most cultures have at one time or another tolerated or regulated prostitution, but more often than not non-elite prostitutes have been perceived as low status or outcasts. The view of prostitution as “an evil”—a necessary one for some and an unwarranted one for others—seems to be ubiquitous. During most of Chinese history, prostitution was legal and monitored by the imperial or local state. Within a highly patriarchal society, commercial sex was recognized as an occupation, but one that was meant to protect “good” women from those who provided social companionship and sexual services to men ( Gronewold 2013 ). For hundreds of years in precolonial India, common prostitutes formed part of the mainstream labor population but were perceived as “sinners.” Furthermore, the caste-based, hierarchical society accorded them a low social status, placing them just above sweepers ( Frances 2011 ). In medieval Europe, too, the municipal authorities of most large cities (with the exception of London) regulated prostitution and accepted prostitutes because they supposedly served as outlets for male sexual drives and protected “honest” women from rape ( Karras 1996 ; Perry 1990 ; Trexler 1981 ). In cities of the United States, prostitution was quietly tolerated during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but whorehouse riots and violence against prostitutes were common (Rosen 1982).

Cultural, politico-military and socioeconomic changes from the late fifteenth century onward altered the perception of prostitution and, above all, the government responses to it. Parallel to the religious revival of the time, an increased number of unregulated prostitutes became visible. As the early modern state and its large military apparatus developed, independent prostitutes started to follow the armies. The new situation led to a spread of venereal diseases, to which authorities reacted with the adoption of ordinances prohibiting prostitution and confining women in hospitals or prisons. Religious societies became increasingly involved in campaigns against prostitution and in rehabilitation programs for “fallen women.” During much of the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth centuries, prostitution was linked to sin ( Conner 2013 ; Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ).

But the negative effects of agricultural disruptions, urbanization, and industrialization on the working population led once again to a fairly tolerant attitude toward prostitutes. Parallel to the language of sin, a view of prostitution as a social or pathological condition became increasingly popular. And, as uncontrolled sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases became a constant preoccupation of bourgeois society ( Foucault 1976 ), more and more persons called for the regulation of prostitution. Embryonic forms of regulation appeared in the late 1700s in Berlin and Paris. By the early 1800s, Napoleon had installed a regulatory system that included the licensing of brothels, registration of prostitutes, and compulsory health examinations. In the 1830s, the sanitary engineer Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet developed a comprehensive and virtually carceral system of regulation consisting of legal and regulated brothels, hospitals, prisons, and reformatories. Known as the “French system,” regulation itself spread to cities around the world over the course of the nineteenth century ( Bliss 2001 ; Corbin 1990 ; Guy 1991 ; Schaepdrijver 1986 ). Moreover, amid a period of nationalist fervor, political considerations motivated authorities to regulate the sex trade in many places. State control of brothels and medical examination of prostitutes were seen as ways to protect citizens, the military, the family, and the nation from political threats, disease, and homosexuality ( Bernstein 1995 ; Gilfoyle 1999 ; Guy 1991 ). Among large cities, London and New York remained exceptions, as they never implemented the modern regulatory system. Yet there, too, prostitution was tolerated and informally regulated. Prostitution as such was not illegal, but women could be arrested under laws against “nightwalking,” soliciting, public disorder, or vagrancy ( Gilfoyle 1992 ; Laite 2011 ; Walkowitz 1980 ). In Rio de Janeiro, an extralegal form of regulation, in which the police possess a strong authority but lack a specific legal mandate to control and organize the sex trade, has characterized the history of prostitution ( Blanchette & Schettini 2013 ).

In the colonies, the expansion of prostitution posed a serious threat to the imperial project. Interracial sex and prostitution of white women could undermine colonial power and prestige, while the spread of venereal disease could cripple colonial administrators and troops. The Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s were not meant to regulate prostitution in all British cities, but, as legal instruments designed to protect the empire’s army, were confined to ports and garrison towns and therefore never applied to London ( Levine 2003 ). They created a great controversy, not only because any woman suspected of being a prostitute had to undergo a compulsory genital inspection, but also because they targeted women only. Although men were equally responsible for the spread of diseases, the blame fell on women only. Of the case studies of the “Selling Sex in the City” project, Nigeria was the only country where males (soldiers) were the target of measures against venereal disease. Hence the issue generated an intense debate in Britain on the double standards governing men and women ( Walkowitz 1980 ). But generally, the various forms of regulation that were introduced in the colonies were tougher than the system adopted in England. Colonial legislation of prostitution applied to the whole territory, was more invasive in women’s lives, and was tougher on poorer and nonwhite prostitutes. Regulationist countries like Belgium, France, and the Netherlands also introduced strict methods of control in their colonies. And, while some U.S. states experimented briefly with regulation, moving toward a more muscular repression of brothel prostitution, the Americans in the Philippines took over the official system of regulation that the prior colonial authorities had introduced in the last years of Spanish rule ( Corbin 1990 ; Frances 2011 ; Howell 2004 ; Lauro 2005 ).

But increasingly, public opinion turned against the official regulation of prostitution. As the number of unregistered prostitutes grew and the failure of the regulation system to control the spread of venereal disease became apparent from the 1850s onward, an abolitionist movement became stronger. Abolitionism, the movement to eliminate state-regulated prostitution, appeared for the first time in Great Britain under the leadership of Josephine Butler. Opponents of regulation viewed this form of state control of women not only as morally unacceptable but also as inefficient, because clandestine prostitutes and male clients were not part of the system. Vigorous antiregulation campaigns resulted in the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in England in 1886 and in the annulment of various regulation laws in British colonies in the late 1880s. Yet in several colonies, the authorities refused to repeal their legislation or opted for an unofficial continuation of the regulation system. As in the mother country, regulation in French colonies went undisturbed until deep in the twentieth century (Corbin 1900; Levine 2003 ).

From the end of the nineteenth century onward, a frontal attack on regulation of prostitution and, above all, the obvious failure of the system led to the passage of municipal and national laws against brothel keeping, procuring, and soliciting, as well as stringent migration legislation in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The First and Second World Wars saw a brief revival of regulation of prostitution, but soon after both 1919 and 1945, abolition became more widespread. In countries such as Argentina, China, Japan, and the Soviet Union, abolition or the outright prohibition of prostitution was associated with the construction of a modern twentieth-century state. Latecomers in the official abolition of regulation were Belgium, Japan, Mexico, and the preeminent regulationist country, France, which criminalized brothel keeping in 1946 and procuring, pimping, soliciting, and organized prostitution in 1960 ( Conner 2013 ; Gilfoyle 1999 ; Hershatter 1997 ). In abolitionist countries, prostitution itself is not illegal but the activities surrounding it are. There, prostitutes are not criminalized, but because activities that facilitate the trade are included in the penal code, they become immersed in a criminal circuit.

By the latter part of the twentieth century, calls for the recognition of prostitution as sex work had led to liberalization in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. In Istanbul, too, where the system of regulation existed for most of the twentieth century, prostitution is today legal and regulated. Since the nineteenth century, however, the trend in most countries has been toward a strong moral condemnation of the sex trade. Worldwide, the number of countries where prostitution is outlawed, or where prostitution is legal but procuring and soliciting are not, is much larger than the number of countries that do not criminalize prostitution or activities related to it ( Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2008 ). Yet, in spite of the official position, municipal authorities of many abolitionist countries tolerate and regulate prostitution under public order or hospitality industry laws. This reflects the ambiguity surrounding prostitution, which leaves the persons active in the sector in a legal limbo.

III. Prostitution, Deviancy, and Crime

To varying degrees, the last two centuries have been characterized by a strong identification of prostitution with deviancy and crime. Until the late 1700s, some forms of social disorder like prostitution were accepted as sinful but inevitable or even vital behavior, as they would prevent worse evils. Advocates of regulation of prostitution followed this Augustinian logic. 5 However, the nineteenth-century system of regulation, with its enclosed brothels, compulsory registration, harsh medical treatment, confinement to specialized hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases, 6 or imprisonment for clandestine prostitutes, handled women not as sinners or fallen women, but as quasi-criminals.

Writing in a period during which public transgressions were perceived as potential threats to the social order and as a problem that called for intervention ( Lee 2013 ), the ideas of Cesare Lombroso, the Italian founder of positivist criminology, reinforced the perception of prostitutes as deviants and offenders. In spite of the contemporary criticism of the scientific validity of his theory of the atavistic, born, or genetic criminal, Lombroso’s book La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893) 7 continued to influence interpretations of female crime until deep in the twentieth century; some of its ideas are still discernable in some contemporary representations of prostitutes. Lombroso and his co-author, Guglielmo Ferrero, were convinced that lawbreakers constituted a throwback to a more primitive form of human being, who could be distinguished from “normal” persons by physical imperfections and abnormalities, the so-called stigmata of degeneration. They classified women into three groups: criminals, prostitutes, and normal. Generally, they found that all women were less evolved than men but stressed that female criminals and prostitutes were more anomalous than “honest women and even lunatics” ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 , p. 112; Rafter & Gibson 2004 ). If prostitutes did not show as many anomalies as other criminals, it was because their youth and use of makeup helped them to minimize their degenerative characteristics.

Since Lombroso and his positivist colleagues focused on the physiological traits of criminals, they understood crime as a disease, not as a rational individual choice. Although offenders could not be held responsible for their acts, society had the right to protect itself from them. Incurable born criminals and innate prostitutes were to be incarcerated or locked up in brothels, but occasional offenders were viewed as having the capacity for reform, and, because born female criminals were in Lombroso’s view rare, he proposed alternatives to prison for most female offenders. Furthermore, he distinguished between “born” and “occasional” prostitutes. The former resembled both female and male criminals. Moral insanity characterized the innate prostitute, as well as a lack of maternal and family feelings, aggressive or masculine behavior, a passion for liquor, unrestrained greed, a lack of decency, sexual frigidity, laziness, a passion for dancing, and a propensity for lying. These women were considered “mildly criminalistic” ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 , p. 216) but as rarely committing serious crimes because of their physical weakness or intellectual backwardness. Theft and blackmail were the most common offenses among them. Hence Lombroso and Ferrero concluded that, “in women, criminality generally takes the form of prostitution.” Occasional prostitutes showed less degenerative traits but remained “notably abnormal” (pp. 221–22). They were pushed into prostitution by external factors such as early loss of virginity, coercion, poverty, or bad examples.

During the first part of the twentieth century, more sophisticated theories on female crime and prostitution became increasingly popular. Contrary to Lombroso, they embraced psychological and social-structural factors but still relied on implicit assumptions about the “distinct” nature of women ( Klein 1973 ). The concept of “feeble-mindedness” entered the debate as a major cause of prostitution. Whereas Lombrosian practitioners set out to measure cranial and other physical traits of presumed criminals, antivice authorities and reformers who relied on psychiatrists’ and eugenecists’ theories subjected women accused of prostitution to mental tests and humiliating examinations (Rosen 1982). Long and impertinent questioning on their family background, education level, sexual life, habits, and employment history sought to distinguish “normal” from sexually “deviant” women. Even international organizations such as the League of Nations viewed social profiling as a useful tool to obtain indications as to the best methods of rehabilitation ( Rodríguez García 2012 ). Indeed, many persons concerned with the issue of prostitution did not believe in punishment but called instead for rehabilitative and preventive measures that sought in extreme cases to suppress the number of prostitutes through sterilization, or, more often, to control minds through socialization ( Klein 1973 ).

However, benevolent societies provided rehabilitation programs that women often experienced as being similar to or worse than prison terms. In colonial Mexico, so-called Recogimientos (seclusion institutions) attempted to safeguard women from sinful life but turned into virtual prisons for those (suspected of) practicing prostitution. Although Magdalen Homes had already existed in thirteenth-century Europe, asylums aimed at reform and control of women’s sexuality spread after the mid-1700s in England, Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. Magdalen Homes’ methods for the reform of prostitutes and other “fallen women” were penitence, hard work, and prayer. The importance of laundry work was emphasized, as it was seen as symbolizing the spiritual cleansing of the inmates. In early twentieth-century American cities, women accused of prostitution were not jailed but were put on probation or sent to reformatories or workhouses. Many women preferred fines or prison sentences in order to avoid officers’ scrutiny during probation. French feminist Avril de Sainte-Croix was a fervent defender of rehabilitation institutions. During a meeting of the Committee of Social Questions of the League of Nations, she reported that in one of the institutions in which she was active, successful rehabilitation of young women had been achieved through “skillful administration of drugs,” which “very speedily brought calm to their souls and bodies.” 8 In general, rehabilitation was not attractive to women because life in a reformatory meant entrapment in programs in which they were trained in feminine “domesticity” and taught low-paid occupations such as sewing, embroidery, scrubbing, spinning, and cooking. What made reformatories even worse was the fact that the individual reform at which they aimed was not sentence-based, meaning that women could be detained for years instead of days or months in a prison ( Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ; Rosen 1982).

Ultimately, those who focused on the consequences rather than the causes of prostitution prevailed in the United States. During the so-called Progressive era (ca. 1890s–1920s) reformers became increasingly preoccupied with all kinds of “social evils” and their link to politicians and policemen. Like drug consumption or gambling, prostitution came to be viewed as a victimless crime, but one that could harm society through moral degeneration, public disorder, corruption, delinquency, violence, and venereal disease ( Weitzer 2010 ). After many failed attempts to repress prostitution, authorities opted for a frontal attack. A few weeks after the American entrance into the First World War, the Commission on Training Camp Activities was created to repress prostitution and liquor sales among troops; in 1917, the Chamberlain-Kahn Act created a Division of Venereal Diseases; and in 1918, President Wilson established an Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board. In 1919, the latter communicated to the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives that the board had helped to close down more than a hundred red-light districts near military camps and had incarcerated 30,000 women and girls. Whereas the international armed conflict came to an end, the federal, state, and municipal authorities continued to pursue their war against commercial sex. Prostitution has been outlawed in the United States since the Standard Vice Repression Act of 1919, after which every state enacted laws prohibiting prostitution ( Clement 2006 ). Only some counties of the state of Nevada have legalized brothels since the 1970s, with most of them today isolated in rural areas.

Socialist revolution in various countries also led to the (de facto) criminalization of prostitution. In the Soviet Union, for example, prostitution was perceived as a symbol of capitalism and gender inequality. Instead of reintroducing criminal measures or medical supervision of women, the Bolsheviks tried to rehabilitate and educate former prostitutes. But the labor camps that were installed for this purpose became punitive institutions against women. Former prostitutes were regarded as “social parasites” harmful to society, and many were shot in the 1930s under Stalin ( Alexopoulos 2003 ). Also in China after 1949, the Maoist regime sought to completely eradicate prostitution and the sale and use of opium, which were seen as the ultimate symbols of capitalist vice. Prostitution was harshly punished until 1958, when it was (wrongly) considered totally eradicated ( Hershatter 1997 ).

Yet a perception of prostitutes as outright criminals has never been prevalent among the public. The idea of the fallen woman was used to refer not only to sinful or unruly behavior for which she was responsible, but also to situations of vulnerability in which women fell prey to malevolent men. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, women involved in prostitution became increasingly perceived as victims. In Great Britain, feminists and libertarians helped to publicize a series of sexual scandals in the 1880s, which ended with the reporting of Jack the Ripper and the murder of five prostitutes. W. T. Stead’s newspaper publication on the abduction of English girls sold to continental brothels, as well as the media attention given to the Ripper murders rendered all men suspect and strengthened the notions of urban danger and female fragility ( Walkowitz 1982 ). The link between (migration for) prostitution, male violence, and traffic was established then; by the late 1890s, a movement for the suppression of “white slave traffic” had emerged in Britain and spread internationally. From the early twentieth century onward, national and international initiatives to curtail the traffic in prostitution mushroomed 9 ( Limoncelli 2010 ; Rodríguez García 2012 ), in spite of the fact that empirical evidence of widespread trafficking or appropriate tools to measure it are lacking ( Knepper 2013 ).

The idea of prostitution as a harmful activity in which women are the main victims has become increasingly influential since the last decades of the twentieth century. As at the turn of the century, supporters of this interpretation of prostitution are of the opinion that commercial sex fuels human trafficking. In the United States, feminists have called into question the notion of prostitution as a victimless crime. Since they view prostitution as a “blatant example of the sexual oppression of women” ( Bennetts & Carlton 1973 , p. 137), they demand the decriminalization 10 of prostitutes as a short-term solution and the radical transformation of the socioeconomic structure of society to eliminate prostitution in the long run. In Sweden, a similar logic but a different approach has been applied. Focusing on the demand side of prostitution, Swedish feminists called for the criminalization of clients. After a long debate, the purchase of sex became illegal in Sweden in 1999 ( Svänstrom 2004 ). Prostitution is thus viewed as a crime, but one committed by men upon women—strengthening the idea of male clients as predators. With some variations, the so-called Swedish model spread to several European countries. In February 2014, the European Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution that recommends that EU countries reevaluate their sex work policies in order to reduce the demand for prostitution and trafficking by punishing the clients. Since commercial sex is seen as inherently exploitative and as a violation of human rights, supporters of the Swedish model make no distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution. In their view, most women involved in prostitution are forced into the trade by third parties and/or poverty. As the following sections will illustrate, the structure of the trade, its working conditions, and the motivations of women involved in it are more complex than that described by pure harm-based analyses of prostitution.

IV. Trade Structure and Working Conditions

The structure of the sex trade and the working conditions within it are influenced by governmental and societal attitudes toward prostitution, as well as by the (extra-) legal, market, technological, and medical forces that govern female labor in general. Gender segmentation in the labor market in most places during much of the period studied here resulted in a general marginalization of women and led many into full-time or casual prostitution. During the early modern period, brothel and street prostitution were the most common forms of the trade. Brothels entrapped women in a system of financial exploitation, and often physically in enclosed buildings and segregated zones, but they also protected prostitutes from aggressive clients or police extortion. Although women had to divide their earnings with madams, 11 income from prostitution was always higher than in other branches of the economy. Furthermore, women often developed strategies to increase their revenues. In colonial Casablanca, for instance, prostitutes were not allowed to leave the walled brothel district (Bousbir) without permission, but when permitted to go out, they sometimes used their free time to engage in clandestine encounters in other parts of the city ( Kozma 2013 ).

Registered women bore the stigma of prostitution but had more opportunities to use official institutions (e.g., courts) than did independent prostitutes or other females who had to rely on men to have access to public services. In Cairo, state-run brothels did not exist until the late nineteenth century, but prostitutes were taxed, had access to the courts, and were allowed to participate in guild processions—albeit at the end of the parade ( Hammad & Biancani 2013 ). Other benefits of brothel prostitution were the familiar environment and the relative comfort for women who had no ties with kin and friends because of either death, family ruptures, or the ostracism that derived from involvement in the sex trade ( Clement 2006 ; Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ). Many women scorned the mandatory health controls and treatment of the regulated brothels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they sometimes used the system for their own purposes. While some used the health checkups to solve problems other than venereal disease, others asked medical staff for help when they wished to get out of prostitution ( Absi 2013 ; Frances 2013 ).

The stigma attached to registered prostitutes, as well as accumulated debts or (induced) drug addictions, often impeded women from leaving the bordellos, but their working conditions were also dependent on their position within society. Legal systems that allowed for the sale and pawning of women, such as those in existence in China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Turkey, often led to dire working conditions, as women had little control over the number and kind of clients they received, or the services they were to provide. But young women could also be sold to luxurious brothels or wealthy men. In these cases, services were provided in sumptuous surroundings and in much better conditions, but always at the cost of personal freedom ( Henriot 2001 ; Hershatter 1997 ; Tong 1994 ; White 1990 ).

New spaces and working conditions developed with the politico-military, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations from the 1600s onward. Women wanting to avoid the strict municipal or unofficial brothel rules increasingly opted for independent prostitution. With the development of large armies, independent prostitutes moved to garrison towns to provide soldiers with their services. With the further growth of the entertainment and hospitality industry starting in the nineteenth century, many prostitutes began to work in cafés, restaurants, taverns, massage parlors, theaters, saloons, hotels, and speakeasies, or took their clients to their own rooms and apartments. Until the mid-1950s, London prostitution was primarily street-based. Everywhere, self-employed prostitutes were often better placed than their counterparts in brothels to negotiate their working conditions with clients and the owners of the establishments where they practiced their trade. Also, when working in secrecy, they avoided stigmatization. Yet women working outside the official or de facto regulated system always risked punishment or extortion from authorities. In such cases, the involvement of third parties to help women escape police harassment, provide money for bail or lawyers, and to attract trustworthy clients often became necessary ( Clement 2006 ; Gilfoyle 1992 ; Laite 2011 ).

A particularly interesting case of independent prostitution that developed in colonial times was that of Nairobi. Malaya prostitutes rented rooms and waited discreetly for men to purchase access from the house owner. This method allowed women to avoid arrest and societal condemnation, but with the disadvantage that they could not choose their clients. Like elite courtesans in China or the geishas of Japan, malaya women offered much more than sexual services (conversation, food, baths, cleaning, etc.); they claimed that their work mimicked marriage. In economic terms, malaya prostitution was a form of long-term investment—not a survival strategy, but a way to accumulate capital and to prosper independently. In contrast, wazi-wazi women solicited from the windows, doors, or porches of the houses where they rented a room. They had much more control over the clients that came in and the time they spent with them. Contrary to the malaya prostitutes, wazi-wazi women provided brief encounters and usually sexual services only. Most of them worked only temporarily in prostitution. Typically, they were daughters helping their parents to reestablish themselves in smallholdings or in trade. Finally, watembezi were streetwalkers or prostitutes soliciting in public places like bars or hotel lobbies. They cherished their independence to choose clients and determine the labor time, and mocked malaya prostitutes for their passivity and marriage-like practices. Their profits were used for family support and not so much for independent accumulation, as in the case of malaya women. Like streetwalkers in other parts of the world, watembezi developed strong ties, shared rooms, and helped each other in difficult times ( White 1990 ).

Luise White’s (1990) study of prostitution in Nairobi helps us to rethink the assumptions and myths that often surround prostitution, like strict hierarchies and limited room for agency. In such hierarchies, elite courtesans in Asia, malaya prostitutes in Nairobi, or high-class escorts and call girls are typically placed at the top, with other indoor and outdoor prostitutes being assigned a lower status. However, freedom and the capacity to control working conditions was (and is) in all cases relative and dependent on the locations where and the types of clients with whom women worked. With a much larger pool of middle- or low-class clients, outdoor prostitutes were able to pick and choose. Past and present elite prostitutes, self-employed or not, are in the position to entertain clients in luxurious surroundings and to live in considerably more comfortable circumstances than regular ones, but they probably have less control over the services they provide—ranging from working hours spent in nonsexual entertainment to the provision of extreme sexual favors. A high-class prostitute dependent on a few wealthy men may be less inclined to refuse certain demands than a common prostitute who provides fast and unceremonious intercourse or only manual or oral sex to ten, fifteen, or twenty customers a day ( Laite 2011 ). Whereas upper-class prostitutes are expected to follow patriarchal rules and protocol, common prostitutes often reverse the gender roles. Ethnographic research in Bolivian brothels shows the ways in which men there are humiliated by prostitutes, with clients being robbed or induced to spend more than they have in food and drinks, thereby reversing the traditional roles by making clients indebted to women. By making fun of men’s appearance or way of talking, prostitutes make sure that clients do not view them as submissive women willing to do anything for money ( Absi 2013 ).

The issue of violence and health in relation to prostitution also needs careful reevaluation, as there exists no reliable empirical evidence on the matter. Until the twentieth century, rates of venereal diseases were extremely difficult to determine. Whether prostitutes in the past suffered more from these diseases than other sexually active persons is unclear. Nowadays, HIV/AIDS has replaced syphilis and gonorrhea as the most dangerous sexually transmitted disease, but it remains unclear whether persons active in the sex industry get infected during sexual contacts at work or in private, or whether it is transmitted through intravenous drug use. Julia Laite’s (2013 , p. 15) conclusion with regard to the situation in London can be applied to other cases: “It remains difficult to separate the actual health experiences of prostitutes from their pathologization within criminal justice and social work systems”.

Generally, it has been assumed that prostitution leads to poor physical and psychological health, particularly among low-class prostitutes. The question is whether prostitutes suffer(ed) more than other workers engaged in substandard jobs, and whether brutal clients are (or were) the rule in the commercial sex exchange. Some contemporary case studies point to physical and mental problems as being the result of stigma and state repression, not an outcome of the sale of sex as such. Indeed, ego-documents and other sources containing firsthand accounts testify that prostitutes have been as (if not more) afraid of the police as customers’ or pimps’ violence. The paradox of state repression of prostitution is that it has never succeeded in abolishing the trade, but it has produced sufficient material evidence of the high incidence of official abuse and violence against prostitutes. Execution, drowning, mutilation, compulsory separation from children, flogging, forced sterilization, torture, and forced (sex) labor have occurred in places as varied as Turkey, colonial Egypt, France, England, Sweden, Austria, China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. Historical data also sustain the contention that streetwalkers were not necessarily more vulnerable to male violence than were indoor prostitutes ( Frances 2013 ; White 1990 ).

Official and unofficial abuse of prostitutes led to increased protests not only by feminists but also by the affected women. Although formal organizations appeared only in the second half of the twentieth century, prostitutes’ protests took place sporadically in the late 1800s and early 1900s in such places as India, Russia, and Argentina ( Bernstein 1995 ; Guy 1990; Levine 2003 ). With the development of the feminist movement, cultural changes, and new attitudes toward sex in the 1960s, prostitutes from different parts of the world became more vocal and started to organize themselves. The first well-known demonstration was organized by French prostitutes who occupied a church in Lyon in 1975 to protest police harassment and a lack of state protection. The initiative spread to the rest of France and inspired many other women worldwide. Factors that contributed to the militancy and mushrooming of sex workers’ organizations were increased travel opportunities and the growth of the Internet, which facilitated connections between women ( Janssen 2011 ).

Indeed, technological developments in communication and transport have had an important impact on the working spaces and conditions of prostitution. Just like the more widespread use of the telephone in the early twentieth century, the Internet and mobile phones have enabled women to engage in full-time or casual prostitution. These technologies have increased the independence and invisibility of prostitutes, but procurers and pimps have not become totally absent. In early twentieth-century New York, for example, the increased use of the telephone facilitated the operations of call girls and of male “bookies” who controlled, booked, and moved women and madams to different houses and flats on a weekly basis ( Clement 2006 ). Nowadays, too, the secrecy of sexual encounters can lead to unsafe situations. And, as in past venues for prostitution, websites for sexual commerce are often constructed on an ethnic basis. Racial segregation of red-light districts was institutionalized in many colonial settings, but an ethnic hierarchy was also common in many other cities of the world. The demand for certain types of women, as well as the socioeconomic factors that led to the further development of the sex industry, has contributed to increased female mobility and a more diversified prostitution population over the last centuries.

Although foreign migration of women was not an unknown phenomenon in the early modern period, the rate of interstate female migration increased with the development of the transport infrastructure from the late eighteenth century onward. Parallel to voluntary migration, a trade in women for prostitution also existed in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian cities ( van Voss 2012 ). This led to a more marked presence of foreign women in the worldwide sex trade, and to the conflation of migration for prostitution and white slavery or human trafficking. But the rates of foreign prostitution are uncertain. Moreover, the demography and causes of prostitution have always been more complex than the narrative of foreign or rural women being forced into the sex trade.

V. Demography and Causes of Prostitution

Estimates of the number of women active in prostitution, as well as data on their backgrounds, are problematic. To nineteenth-century urban observers, prostitution appeared to be a growing problem, although this assertion cannot always be proven. In colonial cities, it is clear that the number of prostitutes increased along with the development of new economic activities and the huge male labor migration that supported them. Women became heavily affected by the breakdown of traditional means of survival and social norms. Because the new urban economies offered few labor opportunities for women, and as human relations became increasingly commodified and commercialized, women turned in large numbers to the sex trade ( Frances 2011 ; van Voss 2012 ).

In noncolonial cities where prostitution had existed for a long time, it is much more difficult to establish the extent to which the sex trade increased as a result of industrialization and urbanization. As Christine Stansell (1986 , p. 173) noticed for nineteenth-century New York, “there were more prostitutes simply because there were more people.” In other cities, too, the amount of prostitution is virtually impossible to establish because of the groups that were often included in (e.g., unmarried, “unchaste,” or “promiscuous” women) or excluded from (e.g., disguised or part-time prostitutes) the category of prostitution ( Clement 2006 ; Laite 2011 ).

For the same reasons, data on the nativity of prostitutes are inconclusive. Past and present reports, popular writings, and media stories often stress the share of foreign-born women in prostitution. Undoubtedly, large capital cities and hubs of international migration have always attracted foreign men and women to the sex trade, but because of its furtive nature, it is not possible to state with certainty how large the foreign population in prostitution was and is in relation to the local one. For instance, a 2009 TAMPEP report on the prostitution population in Europe states that most sex workers are (foreign) migrants. Yet, as its authors admit, these results “should not be considered as absolute ‘data’ or as entirely representative of the actual situation.” As in the past, the quantification of the sex industry and its workers remains extremely difficult, as clandestine or hidden prostitution is not reported, and many prostitutes successfully evade controls ( TAMPEP 2009 , pp. 8–9). Often, migrant prostitutes and women from minority groups become involved in the most visible forms of the sex trade, which possibly explains their overrepresentation in the statistics. This does not mean that the presence of foreign or minority women in prostitution was or is negligible. The available sources do confirm a strong presence among prostitutes of women (and men) of foreign origin or from ethnic minority groups. Particularly during the 1800s and early 1900s, and again from the late twentieth century onward, the growth of the global economy and increased labor migration propelled more women into interstate migration ( Henderson 1999 ; Laite 2011 ; Mechant 2013 ; van Voss 2012 ).

As well, racial discrimination in the labor market pushed many women into the sex trade. In colonial and many noncolonial cities, subordinate women only had access to a limited number of badly remunerated menial factory or domestic occupations. In New York City, for example, where the share of black women in the population was low (2 percent in 1910; 5 percent in 1930), they accounted for 13 percent of the detentions at the state reformatory for women at Bedford Hills in 1910, and for 54 percent of all arrests recorded in the Women’s Court in the second half of the 1930s ( Clement 2006 ; Gilfoyle 1992 ).

But not all racially, socially, or economically discriminated women turn(ed) to prostitution, so the question of what motivates women to become involved in the sex trade remains. Across time and space, prostitution has offered many economic and noneconomic advantages. Although it is impossible to compile and compare the different payments for prostitution in different societies in this study, it is clear that the sale of sex was (and in many cases still is) significantly more lucrative than most occupations available to women. The literature on the history of prostitution contains sufficient evidence of women who appear to have become engaged in the trade to ameliorate their personal living conditions. Many others seem in the first place to have had the maintenance of their underage, ill, or unemployed relatives in mind as a strong motivation to become and stay involved in prostitution. Everywhere, prostitution often formed part of the family economy. Hence, economic hardship is certainly discernable in most cases, and in several instances the fear of starvation or sheer want also appears. As Kingsley Davis (1937 , p. 149) argued, “prostitution embraces an economic relation, and is naturally concerned with the entire system of economic forces”.

Yet the economic motivation does not answer the question of why so many women with similar socioeconomic backgrounds did or do not become attracted to prostitution. The available literature evidences numerous noneconomic motivations for prostitution. A crucial one was the negative perception of conventional jobs available to women. Whereas domestic service, waitressing, peddling, or factory work were considered burdensome, discriminatory, tedious, and/or dangerous, prostitution was often linked to the idea of a more flexible and independent life. Contrary to what former authorities, doctors, social workers, antiprostitution reformers, or society at large often thought, prostitutes do not reveal any particular psychological or physical defect that makes them different from “normal” women ( Corbin 1990 ). Generally, they were not less educated than other working-class women, and although most prostitutes came from the (heterogeneous) laboring classes, not all of them were part of destitute families. Hence, “if there are any discernable patters,” Eileen McLeod affirms (1982, p. 31), they are “an independent stance” and the wish for “distance from family controls.” Case studies of cities as varied as Lagos, London, Moscow, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, and Shanghai provide evidence of thousands of women making use of the sex trade to evade the limitations of the patriarchal order and enter the consumption society independently.

Popular narratives of prostitution also tend to portray the sector as being overpopulated by young girls. Certainly the sex industry has always been dominated by the demand for young women, but empirical studies demonstrate that nearly everywhere the mean age of prostitutes has been between twenty and twenty-five. Child prostitution was already heavily debated in Victorian England by the end of the nineteenth century, but the available literature indicates that extremely young girls were very rare. Children in prostitution also seems to have been infrequent in cities like Amsterdam, New York, Perth, and Sydney ( Mechant 2013 ; Walkowitz 1980 ). 12

This does not mean that exploitative third parties and trafficking were merely the fantasy of moral antiprostitution crusaders. Many women, particularly those from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, were sold, pawned, or led by false promises of marriage or employment to brothels. Often, young women were sold to procurers by parents trying to escape starvation after the social turmoil and socioeconomic transformations of the colonial period. In many cases, however, women seem to have been aware of the situation and to have accepted this as a survival strategy for their families and themselves. Moreover, the traffic in Asian women between the 1850s and the 1950s seems to have been only supplementary to the much larger voluntary migration of seasoned prostitutes ( van Voss 2012 ).

Although an almighty white slave conspiracy and trade has never been satisfactorily proven, some evidence of forceful or deceptive recruitment for prostitution in Western cities does exist. Cases of coercion seem to have been infrequent and unconnected to the larger networks of intermediaries of prostitution throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ruth Rosen (1982) estimates that during the first decades of the twentieth century, less than 10 percent of the whole prostitute population of the United States experienced situations that fell under the white slavery label. Findings of the studies collected for the “Selling Sex in the City” project also sustain the contention that cases of women being forced or tricked into prostitution existed but were rare. Most often, third parties did not constitute the main cause of prostitution, but they did play an important part in the recruitment of women and the organization of the trade. The more risky and secretive commercial sex became, the more important a role pimps and other intermediaries played in the management of prostitution from the late nineteenth century onward. As labor migration increased, a diverse range of intermediaries (e.g., procurers; madams; brothel keepers; escort agents; owners of theaters, massage parlours, barber shops, or apartments; and female relatives, friends, or acquaintances active in the sex trade) became involved in arranging the movement of females to overseas brothels or into other forms of prostitution. Their methods included smuggling; fictitious marriages; employment contracts; facilitation of boat, train, or plane tickets; and provision of forged documents ( Clement 2006 ).

The tripartite organization of prostitution seems to have been typical when or where women had (or have) not yet acquired sufficient political and socioeconomic power to work as independent prostitutes. Migratory impediments and labor restrictions, as well as stigma, marginalization, and violence, encourage the involvement of third parties. The available literature and source material for the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide evidence of pimps and procurers moving from city to city to secure recruits, but also of women actively looking for intermediaries to help them out with travel tickets, loans, documents, contacts with clients, and so on, a situation that turns the traditional view of recruiting for prostitution upside down ( Rodríguez García 2012 ; Ekpootu 2013 ). French police and emigration officials interviewed by members of a travel committee conducting an international inquiry on human trafficking for the League of Nations in the mid-1920s stated that recruitment often went in two directions. The recruitment of girls for prostitution was well known to the police of all countries and to the public in general, they said—but “what is not so well known is the influence which professional prostitutes have in the recruitment of souteneurs.” 13 Instances of female agency like this still need to be unveiled for a more comprehensive narrative on prostitution.

The study of prostitution in a long historical and broad geographical perspective permits us to understand commercial sex in terms of labor and to overturn the myths that often surround it. Among the commonalities that can be observed in the history of prostitution are the quasi-universal view of the trade as a substandard activity, a continuous effort by municipal (and later also state) authorities to control commercial sex, and a constant supply of women. Indeed, despite the stigma, thousands of women worldwide have viewed prostitution as a logical option compared to the other work alternatives available to them. Scientific studies that include the points of view of the persons concerned provide sufficient evidence of a large group of women entering prostitution voluntarily and experiencing the activities of the trade as less traumatic than generally assumed. In all the works consulted for this essay, prostitution is linked not only to higher wages but also to flexible hours; freedom from abusive employers or family members; liberation from conventional but monotonous, degrading, and exploitative jobs; and exciting experiences such as contact with persons from different classes or origins whom many women would otherwise never meet. Throughout time and space, prostitutes seem to have been as or more afraid of official repression than of violent clients or pimps. Admittedly, a lot of prostitution in different times and societies remained and remains hidden, but one can assume that independent sex work is easier to conceal than are forced activities involving one or more intermediaries.

Harsh measures to regulate prostitution in some cities and to eliminate it in others stimulated women to hide their activities, a situation that strengthened the involvement of exploitative third parties in the trade. The legalization experiments that have occurred in Germany and the Netherlands have not proven ideal (for reasons that go beyond the scope of this study), but have at least awakened the debate on the best way to provide protection to the persons involved in the sector ( Aronowitz 2014 ). The logic behind the legalization of the sex trade is that every (adult) person has the right to use his or her body and sexuality to make a living. Interestingly, the human rights approach is also used by advocates of the criminalization of clients. In their view, prostitution violates human dignity and human rights, regardless of whether it is forced or voluntary.

The contemporary debate demonstrates that neither the decline in religion nor the spread of secularism has changed societal attitudes toward prostitution. Even in countries where prostitution is legal, the main actors (prostitutes, clients, and intermediaries) continue to be stigmatized. According to Belgian sexologist Alexander Witpas, 14 the reason why the stigma around prostitution is so resilient is because sex—especially female sex—continues to be taboo, even in oversexualized societies. This helps to explain why so many prostitutes in past and present societies have opted to hide the nature of their work, and why misconceptions about prostitution often dictate public policy.

This project was organized by the author in cooperation with Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Wageningen University), Lex Heerma van Voss (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands), and Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History). A selection of papers has been compiled in an edited volume that will be published in 2016. See http://socialhistory.org/en/projects/selling-sex-city .

In this essay, I use the terms “prostitute” and “prostitution” instead of “sex work” and “sex worker,” as the latter encompass more than the exchange of sex for monetary or material compensation. The negative connotation attached to the former terms reflects the stigma that has characterized most of the history of prostitution and does not imply a judgmental interpretation of it on the part of the author.

For the definition of “prostitution,” see http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/prostitution?q=prostitution ; for “prostitute,” see http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/prostitute_1?q=prostitute .

See http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/prostitution .

The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo once wrote: “Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society” (quoted in Meier and Geis 1997 , p. 28).

Most famous were the so-called Lock hospitals, which operated in Britain and its territories abroad from the mid-1700s until the twentieth century.

The book was translated into English in 1895 as The Female Offender . This first translation, however, omitted much of the information on prostitutes and “normal” women. The version used in this study was translated by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 ).

This report can be found in the records of the Committee of Social Questions, Geneva, 27 April 1937, League of Nations archives, United Nations Office, Geneva (hereafter “LN archives”), CQS/A.10.

In 1921, the League of Nations replaced the racialized term “white slavery” with “traffic in women and children.”

Advocates of decriminalization are not in favor of the legalization of prostitution. Many radical feminists oppose legalization because it would normalize prostitution.

Usually 50 percent of the woman’s earnings went to the brothel owner or madam. Interestingly, this rate has remained more or less constant throughout space and time.

The issue of child prostitution in contemporary Asia, particularly Thailand and the Philippines, is an extremely complex one that goes beyond the scope of this essay. To understand this phenomenon, not only the age of the persons concerned should be discussed, but also the various definitions and societal attitudes toward childhood, sexuality, filial duty, and child labor in general.

French report, December 1924–January 1925, pp. 10–11, LN archives, Box S174.

Debate during the international colloquium “Reframing Prostitution: From Discourse to Description, from Moralisation to Normalisation?”, Ghent, University of Ghent, 27 March 2014.

Absi, P.   2013 . “ The Future of an Institution from the Past: Accommodating Regulationism in Bolivia, from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century. ” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Alexopoulos, Golfo . 2003 . Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Aronowitz, A. A.   2014 . “To Punish or Not to Punish: What Works in the Regulation of the Prostitution Market?” In Reframing Prostitution: From Discourse to Description, from Moralisation to Normalisation? ed. N. Peršak & G. Vermeulen , 185–213. Antwerp: Maklu.

Barry, K.   1979 . Female Sexual Slavery . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Barry, K.   1995 . The Prostitution of Sexuality . New York: New York University Press.

Bennetts, L. , & E. Carlton , 1973 . “ Prostitution—A Non-Victim Crime? ” Issues in Criminology 8 (2): 137–62.

Bernstein, L.   1995 . Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bindman, J. 1997. “Redefining Prostitution as Sex Work on the International Agenda.” Accessed at http://www.walnet.org/csis/papers/redefining.html#text1 .

Blanchette, T. , & C. Schettini . 2013. “Sex Work in Rio de Janeiro: ‘More than Tolerated—Effectively Managed.’ ” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Bliss, K. E.   2001 . Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Clement, E. A.   2005 . Trick or Treat: Prostitutes, Charity Girls, Courting Couples, and the Creation of Modern Heterosexuality . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Clement, E. A.   2006 . “Prostitution.” In The Modern History of Sexuality , ed. H. G. Cooks & M. Houlbrook , 206–30. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Conner, S. 2013. “Selling Sex in the City: Paris.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Corbin, A.   1990 . Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Davis, K.   1937 . “ The Sociology of Prostitution. ” American Sociological Review 2:744–55.

Delacoste, F. , & P. Alexander . 1988 , Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry . London: Women’s Press.

Ekpootu, M. 2013. “Sexualizing the City: Female Prostitution in Nigeria’s Urban Centers in Historical Perspective.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Foucault, M.   1976 . Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir . Paris: Gallimard.

Frances, R.   2007 . Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution . Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.

Frances, R.   2011 . “Prostitution: The Age of Empires.” In A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire , ed. C. Beccalossi & I. Crozier , 145–70. Oxford, UK: Berg.

Frances, R. 2013. “Working and Living Conditions.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Gilfoyle, T. J.   1992 . City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920 . New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Gilfoyle, T. J.   1999 . “ Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity. ” American Historical Review 104 (1): 117–41.

Gronewold, S. 2013. “Prostitution in Shanghai, China, 1600 to the Present.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Guigon, C.   2012 . Les Cocottes: reines du Paris, 1900 . Paris: Parigramme.

Guy, D. J.   1991 . Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Hammad, H. , & F. Biancani . 2013. “Prostitution in Cairo, 1600 to the Present: An Urban Overview.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Henderson, T.   1999 . Disorderly Women in Eighteenth Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 . London: Longman.

Henriot, C.   2001 . Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949 . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hershatter, G.   1997 . Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth Century Shanghai . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Howell, P.   2004 . “ Race, Space and the Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial Hong Kong. ” Urban History 31 (2): 229–48.

Janssen, M-L.   2011 . “Prostitution.” In A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Modern Age , ed. G. Hekma , 177–202. New York: Berg.

Jeffreys, S.   1997 . The Idea of Prostitution . North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press.

Karras, R. M.   1996 . Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England . New York: Oxford University Press.

Klein, D.   1973 . “ The Etiology of Female Crime. ” Issues in Criminology 8 (2): 3–30.

Knepper, P.   2012 . “ Measuring the Threat of Global Crime: Insights from Research by the League of Nations into the Traffic in Women. ” Criminology 50 (3): 777–809.

Kozma, L. 2013. “Casablanca: An Urban Overview.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Laite, J.   2011 . Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Laite, J. 2013. “A Global History of Prostitution: London.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Lauro, A.   2005 . Coloniaux, ménagères et prostituées au Congo belge (1885–1930) . Loverval, Belgium: Editions Labor.

Lee, C.   2013 . Policing Prostitution, 1856–1886: Deviance, Surveillance and Morality . London: Pickering & Chatto.

Levine, P.   2003 . Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire . New York: Routledge.

Limoncelli, S.   2010 . The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Lombroso, C. , & G. Ferrero . 2004 . Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman . Trans. and ed. N. H. Rafter & M. Gibson . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

McLeod, E.   1982 . Women Working: Prostitution Now . London: Croom Helm.

Mechant, M. 2013. “The Social Profiles of Prostitutes.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Meier, R. F. , & G. Geis . 1997 . Victimless Crime? Prostitution, Drugs, Homosexuality, Abortion . Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company.

Nuñez, F. , & P. Fuentes . 2013. “Selling Sex in Mexico City.” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

Perry, M. E.   1990 . Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pheterson, G. , ed. 1989 . A Vindication of the Rights of Whores . Seattle: Seal Press.

Rafter, N. H. , & M. Gibson . 2004 . “Editors’ Introduction.” In Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman , trans. and ed. N. H. Rafter & M. Gibson , 3–33. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rodríguez García, M.   2012 . “ The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women. ” International Review of Social History 57:97–128.

Schaepdrijver, S.   1986 . “ Regulated Prostitution in Brussels, 1844–1877: A Policy and Its Implementation. ” Historical Social Research 37:89–108.

Smith, J. S.   2013 . Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933 . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Stansell, C.   1986 . City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Stearns, P.   2009 . Sexuality in World History . New York: Routledge.

Svänstrom, Y.   2004 . “Criminalising the John: A Swedish Gender Model?” In The Politics of Prostitution: Women’s Movements, Democratic States and the Globalisation of Sex Commerce , ed. Joyce Outshoorn , 225–44. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Svänstrom, Y.   2006 . “ Prostitution as Vagrancy: Sweden, 1926–1964. ” Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 7:142–63.

TAMPEP. 2009. “Sex Work in Europe: A Mapping of the Prostitution Scene in 25 European Countries.” Accessed at http://tampep.eu/documents/TAMPEP%202009%20European%20Mapping%20Report.pdf .

Tong, B.   1994 . Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth Century San Francisco . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Trexler, R.   1981 . “ La prostitution Florentine au XVe siècle: patronages et clienteles. ” Annales: economies, sociétés, civilisations 36:983–1015.

U.S. State Department. 2008. “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.” Accessed at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/index.htm .

van der Linden, M.   2011 . “ Studying Attitudes to Work Worldwide, 1500–1650: Concepts, Sources, and Problems of Interpretation. ” International Review of Social History 56:25–43.

van Voss, L. H.   2012 . “The Worst Class of Workers: Migration, Labor Relations and Living Strategies of Prostitutes Around 1900.” In Working on Labor: Essays in Honor of Jan Lucassen , ed. M. van der Linden & L. Lucassen , 153–70. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Walkowitz, J.   1980 . Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Walkowitz, J.   1982 . “ Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence. ” Feminist Studies 8 (3): 542–74.

Weitzer, R.   2010 . “ The Movement to Criminalize Sex Work in the United States. ” Journal of Law and Society 37 (1): 61–84.

White, L.   1990 . The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Prostitution — The Negative Effects of Prostitution

The Negative Effects of Prostitution

• Categories: Prostitution

About this sample

Words: 576 |

Published: Mar 16, 2024

Words: 576 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Physical and mental health consequences, social stigma and discrimination, perpetuation of gender inequality.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Law, Crime & Punishment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1254 words

4 pages / 1788 words

3 pages / 1529 words

3 pages / 1494 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Prostitution

Over the years, Canada has had many different views of prostitution in relation to the law. Prostitution is the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual services in exchange for money, and can take the form of many varieties [...]

Prositution, or sex work, can be defined as the practice or occupation of engaging in consensual sexual activity with someone in exchange of payment, in the form of money, favors, goods, or any other benefit agreed upon by the [...]

The majority of people around the world believe prostitution should be Treated as a crime. Perhaps you are one of them? In my opinion it should be legal. You may disagree. However, this essay might change your opinion. Granted, [...]

We have a ‘duty to imagine a world without prostitution as we do a world without slavery, without apartheid, without gender-based violence, female infanticide and genital mutilation’. This statement revolves around a worldwide [...]

The debate surrounding the decriminalization of sex work is a complex and contentious issue that intersects with questions of human rights, public health, and social justice. The concept of decriminalizing sex work challenges [...]

Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by discrimination towards a targeted group. Perpetrators perform harmful acts towards victims and can be as dangerous as murder or death threats to spitting and name calling (Saucier, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Study Today

Largest Compilation of Structured Essays and Exams

Essay on Prostitution

January 15, 2018 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment

The act of prostitution basically means to offer sexual services provided in order to gain monetary or other benefits in kind, in exchange of the same.

The word is generally used with a negative connotation presently, but this certainly has not always been the case. If we are to analyse etymologically, then the origin of the word ‘prostitution’ can be traced way back to the Latin word ‘prostituta’.

The actual meaning of this word has been debated upon, but the usual consensus points at the combination of ‘pro’ and ‘stature’- which can be translated as ‘to place forward’, or ‘to cause to stand’.

Image Credit: Source (prostitute seeking customer)

But in the modern scenario, prostitution is often considered to be violence against women, and can take many different forms- physical, digital, etc.

Examples of the same will include pornographic acts, pole dancing, and other such instances. Whether prostitution should be legalised or not is an important and controversial question in many of the developing nations today.

Prostitution can inevitably be the cause and the effect of human trafficking and sex slavery, and therefore it is also a really grave issue which we shall necessarily look into.

Table of Contents

Historical development

Prostitution is present in almost all the historical accounts of different civilizations, all across the world. For instance, prostitution is evidently a part of the civilizations which had thrived in the ancient east, ancient Greece, Rome, and in Asian and Hebrew culture.

This can be proven through the presence of various shrines or temples dedicated to certain deities, which had evidences of some sort of sacred prostitution. This is an example of how prostitution was viewed differently in the past than it is now, commonly.

In the code of the famous Babylonian emperor Hammurabi, there existed certain provisions which upheld the rights and liberties of sex workers, who can be seen as prostitutes.

There are also instances of keeping records of and registrations for prostitutes in ancient Roman culture, as has been displayed by certain remaining found in Pompeii. Other marked instances were found in the countries like Greece, Japan, and India (the Mughal tradition of having tawaifs).

It is well inscribed in the Urdu literature as well as in the well-known Geisha tradition of Japan and its surrounding nations.

Over the middle ages, this tradition saw some changes, as the terms used to define a prostitute started to become more and more ambiguous and abstract; although, in spite of the same, certain legislative provisions are found scattered over the historical remnants of this period.

However, by the time of the advent of the sixteenth century, prostitution was being treated with a stiffer attitude and certain restrictions were started to be imposed accordingly.

Various types of prostitution

The following can be said to be the main categories of prostitution as it is being practiced in the present world- brothels, escort services (male and female), street prostitution, sex tourism, and virtual prostitution (mostly in digitalised forms of sex).

Brothels: these are specific establishments or settlements dedicated to mass scale prostitution, and are frequently referred to as the infamous ‘red light areas’.

Escort services: these are services where sexual partners can be escorted at one’s will in exchange of payments and the sexual acts often take place at rented hotel rooms or other such settlements. Prostituted who function through escort services are often referred to as call girls and gigolos.

Street prostitution: this is a form of prostitution where prostitutes wait for customers whom they approach at certain street corners.

Sex tourism: these occur through organised trips solely for the purpose of one’s indulgence in various sexual activities.

Virtual prostitution: the main form of virtual prostitution is forced pornography, but also includes phone sex and sex through online chat rooms or websites.

Legal perspectives

In all of its essence, legal perspectives regarding prostitution include the following areas of concern- victim hood, ethics, freedom of choice, and whether it causes any benefit or harm to the society.

Otherwise, legal perspectives on this topic also revolve around feminist theories of how prostitution should be looked at and dealt with. Mostly, the question which arises most often is whether prostitution should be legalised or not.

This has both advantages and disadvantages- for example, some experts on this matter say that because women (or men) choose sex work freely and on their own, there is no harm in giving their professional an official recognition.

On the other hand, it is also arguing upon that since prostitution inevitably brings upon whoever engages in it some sort of sexual violence, it cannot be necessarily legalised.

Also, one cannot possibly overlook the probable health hazards which prostitution can cause, especially several sexually transmissible diseases (for example, HIV and AIDS).

This adds on to the argument of prostitution not being legalised. The question of morality is also important in this context and should also be examined if we are to make sense of the matter completely.

Socio-economic concerns

The main concern which arises out of the socio-economic perspectives regarding prostitution is child prostitution. According to a recent survey conducted, it has been discovered that over 45 percent of all prostitutes in our country are underage and this poses a grave threat to the sustainable development of an entire generation.

The fact that survival has become so important among the underprivileged and they need to resort to prostitution for the sake of the same is an important consequence of one of the most pressing questions- population explosion.

Since we do not have enough jobs or opportunities to feed all the people in our country, they have to resort to such an extent that they have to engage in prostitution to feed themselves.

This is indeed a significant and sad socio-economic problem of India. On the other end of the spectrum, prostitution among the elderly is also a serious concern, health-wise as well.

Violence against women is also rising in prostitution, and the homicide rates have been ever increasing among the same practitioners, especially in the United States.

Another important concern is human trafficking, which refers to selling off people forcefully against their will to engage them in prostitution in a way that the seller makes some profit out of the victim’s sexual acts.

Prostitution is a very commonplace act and I personally believe that a lot of problems relating to it can be solved if a proper recognition can be given to both the act and the people who engage in it.

Therefore, a proper sensitization programme is required in order to stabilise the situation regarding prostitution, especially in India. The rate of violence is also a serious issue and can be probably curbed perhaps only through appropriate legislation and police actions, as sexual violence is an alarming criminal act.

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Top Trending Essays in March 2021

• Essay on Pollution
• Essay on my School
• Summer Season
• My favourite teacher
• World heritage day quotes
• my family speech
• importance of trees essay
• autobiography of a pen
• honesty is the best policy essay
• essay on building a great india
• my favourite book essay
• essay on caa
• my favourite player
• autobiography of a river
• farewell speech for class 10 by class 9
• essay my favourite teacher 200 words
• internet influence on kids essay
• my favourite cartoon character

Brilliantly

Content & links.

Verified by Sur.ly

Essay for Students

• Essay for Class 1 to 5 Students

Scholarships for Students

• Class 1 Students Scholarship
• Class 2 Students Scholarship
• Class 3 Students Scholarship
• Class 4 Students Scholarship
• Class 5 students Scholarship
• Class 6 Students Scholarship
• Class 7 students Scholarship
• Class 8 Students Scholarship
• Class 9 Students Scholarship
• Class 10 Students Scholarship
• Class 11 Students Scholarship
• Class 12 Students Scholarship

STAY CONNECTED

• About Study Today
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions

Scholarships

• Apj Abdul Kalam Scholarship
• Ashirwad Scholarship
• Bihar Scholarship
• Canara Bank Scholarship
• Colgate Scholarship
• Dr Ambedkar Scholarship
• E District Scholarship
• Epass Karnataka Scholarship
• Fair And Lovely Scholarship
• Floridas John Mckay Scholarship
• Inspire Scholarship
• Jio Scholarship
• Karnataka Minority Scholarship
• Lic Scholarship
• Maulana Azad Scholarship
• Medhavi Scholarship
• Minority Scholarship
• Moma Scholarship
• Mp Scholarship
• Muslim Minority Scholarship
• Nsp Scholarship
• Oasis Scholarship
• Obc Scholarship
• Odisha Scholarship
• Pfms Scholarship
• Post Matric Scholarship
• Pre Matric Scholarship
• Prerana Scholarship
• Prime Minister Scholarship
• Rajasthan Scholarship
• Santoor Scholarship
• Sitaram Jindal Scholarship
• Ssp Scholarship
• Swami Vivekananda Scholarship
• Ts Epass Scholarship
• Up Scholarship
• Vidhyasaarathi Scholarship
• Wbmdfc Scholarship
• West Bengal Minority Scholarship
• Click Here Now!!

Mobile Number

Have you Burn Crackers this Diwali ? Yes No

107 Prostitution Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on prostitution, 🌶️ hot prostitution essay topics, 👍 good prostitution research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting prostitution research titles, ❓ research question about prostitution.

• Legalizing Prostitution: Arguments For and Against
• Prostitution Being Deviant: History and Theory
• Tourism and Children Prostitution in Bahamas and Asia
• Child Prostitution in Modern Society
• The Chicken Ranch, a Prostitution Facility
• Prostitution: The Non-Deviant Behavior
• Prostitution as a Social Behavior
• Legitimization of Prostitution There are many reasons why people enter prostitution and some of them are age, early home leaving, childhood sexual abuse, drug abuse and poverty.
• Prostitution: The Non-Deviant Social Phenomenon The key reason why prostitution should be reclassified as non-deviant is to provide people involved in the job with protection, equality and reduce social injustice.
• The Moral Value of Prostitution Criminalization prostitution can cause more havoc to the society, both emotional and physical as compared to almost no damage as reflected in a well organized prostitution setup.
• Prostitution from the Moral System Perspective Prostitution degrades the integrity of women in society, promotes gender-based violence, and increases the risk for sexually transmitted infections.
• Human Trafficking and Forced Prostitution Human trafficking and its connection with prostitution remain a controversial topic, as do their perception and possible remedies.
• Is Prostitution a Victimless Crime or Not? Because victimless crimes involve two contentious issues of morality and liberty, the legalization of this category of crime is always disputed on many grounds.
• Deviant Behavior and Prostitution This provides an annotated bibliography of the six articles which aim to discuss the topics of deviant behavior and prostitution.
• Theodore Roosevelt Reform Movements on Prostitution Theodore Roosevelt’s reform movements on prostitution have been inspired from the time he was still an undergraduate student at Hard University.
• Human Trafficking and Prostitution: Religious Perspective The implementation of an ideal religion is possible in the context of human trafficking and forced prostitution.
• Sex Trafficking and Prostitution in Tennessee Similar to any part of the world, sex trafficking in Tennessee is not unusual. Being illegal, it may be provided in places, such as massage and therapy parlors and nail salons.
• Prostitution vs. Human Trafficking Many people believe that making prostitution a legal activity will help raise the status of prostitutes and promote their protection.
• The Damage in Permitting Prostitution There are many risks for women who practice prostitution which include STD and AIDS, unplanned pregnancy, physical violence, rape, and mental trauma, among others.
• Educational Plan for Prostitution as Health-Related Issue Prostitution is a health issue since exposure to commercial sex often leads to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. This paper discusses this problem in Miami.
• Prostitution in the United States The paper discusses the causes of prostitution in the United States. Prostitution is a situation whereby a woman decides to practice sex with the aim of being paid in return.
• Legalization of Marijuana and Prostitution Every state should develop ways of controlling the influence of selling marijuana and prostitution before establishing a conclusion on legalizing it.
• Radical Feminism Explains Prostitution Radical feminists reject the idea of mental differences but see prostitution as social and economic oppression only.
• Prostitution Legalization in Canada Although legalization reduces the attractiveness of prostitution, in reality it motivates men to overindulge in the procurement of sex in a socially acceptable setting.
• Various Dimensions of Child Prostitution in Thailand An in-depth analysis of various dimensions of child prostitution in ‘ Baan Nua’ a slum community of Thailand. Some of the areas explored include economical and social problems
• Senate Bill 5: Change Penalties for Promoting Prostitution This paper aims at analyzing the Senate Bill 5 that will be enacted in Ohio and discuss its objectives, implications, and main concepts.
• Decriminalization of Prostitution in Canada The paper discusses the negative effects of prostitution and provides an insight into the advantages of decriminalizing prostitution in Canada.
• The Nature and Characteristics of Prostitution in Ancient Rome and Pompeii
• Badges and Brothels: Police Officers’ Attitudes Toward Prostitution
• Causes, Effects, and History of Prostitution
• Female Prostitution and Women’s Rights in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century
• Economic Challenges and Drug Abuse as the Main Causes for Women’s Remaining in Prostitution
• Law Enforcement and the Perception of Prostitution in the United States
• Human Trafficking vs. Prostitution: Is There a Difference?
• Gender Perceptions and Prostitution During the Victorian Age
• Prostitution and Its Long History as a Profession
• Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health
• Analysis and Cross-Cultural History of Prostitution
• Sex and Prostitution Among Troops During the American Civil War
• Legal Prostitution: Turkey and Thailand
• Christianity and Prostitution in the Middle Ages
• Pain and Prostitution: The Evolution of Female Chastity in Ancient and Late Imperial China
• Explaining Teen Prostitution Using Sociological Theories of Deviance
• Prostitution and the Social Welfare Program for Children Affected by the Illegal Profession
• Legalizing Prostitution and the Decriminalizing Illicit Drugs to Benefit All Canadians
• It’s Time for Society to Accept Prostitution
• The Ashley Alexandra Dupre Story: A Look at Female Prostitution in the Twenty-First Century
• Prostitution: The Oldest Profession Known to Humanity
• Early Sexual Experience and Prostitution
• Local Community Attitudes Towards the Impact of Tourism on Prostitution
• Factors Determining Entry Into the Prostitution Lifestyle
• Child Pornography and Prostitution: A Question of Economics
• Prostitution: How Do the Current Law and Society Treat Women Who Are Prostitutes?
• Analyzing Social Behavior: Prostitution
• Regaining Independence and Power Through Prostitution
• Social Classes, Prostitution, and Jack the Ripper in 19th-Century England
• Sociological Theories and the Deviance of Prostitution
• Historical and Cross-Cultural Controversy About the Issue of Prostitution
• The Benefits of the Legalization of Prostitution
• Expanding Global Awareness to Regulate Prostitution
• Moving Prostitution Through the United States
• Illegal Drug Use, Illegal Prostitution, and Money Laundering
• Prostitution: Sexual Intercourse and Strong Religion Conviction
• Legalizing Prostitution and Other Sexually Oriented Business
• Causes and Issues Faced by Prostitution
• Prostitution and Ethical Values Related to It
• Decriminalizing Prostitution and Legalizing Brothels in the United States
• Factors for the Increase of Prostitution
• Child Prostitution and Pornography in Southeast Asia
• Organized Crime: Profits From Pornography and Prostitution
• Legal Prostitution and Its Effect on Society
• Patriarchy and Prostitution: Sex Trafficking in South Korea
• Human Sexuality and Abstract Prostitution
• Military Prostitution During Japan’s Imperial Rule
• Prostitution and Its Effect on Public Health
• Introspect Into the Lives of Aboriginal Women: Prostitution in Western Canada
• Feminist Theory and Women’s Prostitution
• Why Is Prostitution Illegal and Pornographic Films Are Not?
• What Was the Protestants’ Approach to Prostitution?
• What Are the Arguments in Favor of Legalizing Prostitution?
• Is Prostitution a Threat to Marriage?
• Does the Country’s GDP Change After the Legalization of Prostitution?
• Do Alcohol and Drugs Affect the Spread of Prostitution?
• What Is the Status of Prostitution in Us?
• What Is Society’s Attitude to Prostitution?
• Is Prostitution Really the Oldest Profession in the World?
• Should There Be Different Laws Concerning Male Prostitution and Female Prostitution?
• What Do You Think About Making Prostitution a Criminal Offence?
• What Are the Dangers to Society of Prostitution?
• Can Prostitution Be Considered a Profession?
• What Are the Dangers to Prostitutes of Not Legalizing Prostitution?
• How Can Governments Stop Prostitution?
• What Should the World Do to Stamp Out Child Prostitution?
• Is Prostitution a Matter of Personal Choice?
• Are There Any Benefits to Society of Prostitution?
• Why Do So Many Politicians and Movie Stars Get Involved in Prostitution Scandals?
• What Are the Different Types of Prostitution?
• Is Prostitution a Victimless Crime?
• Would Legal Prostitution Better Protect Prostitutes From Violence?
• What Is the Difference Between the Decriminalization and Legalization of Prostitution?
• Is Legal Prostitution a Legitimate Business?
• Should the Government Collect Taxes From Prostitution?
• Is Prostitution Psychologically Harmful to Prostitutes?
• Would Legal Prostitution Decrease Sexually Transmitted Diseases?
• Does Legal Prostitution Lead to Human Trafficking and Slavery?
• Is Prostitution Immoral or Demeaning?
• Is Legal Prostitution an Aspect of Sexual Liberation?

Cite this post

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2022, December 30). 107 Prostitution Essay Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/prostitution-essay-topics/

"107 Prostitution Essay Topics." StudyCorgi , 30 Dec. 2022, studycorgi.com/ideas/prostitution-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) '107 Prostitution Essay Topics'. 30 December.

1. StudyCorgi . "107 Prostitution Essay Topics." December 30, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/prostitution-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "107 Prostitution Essay Topics." December 30, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/prostitution-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "107 Prostitution Essay Topics." December 30, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/prostitution-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on Prostitution were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 28, 2023 .

Essay About Prostitution

This sample essay on Essay About Prostitution provides important aspects of the issue and arguments for and against as well as the needed facts. Read on this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Prostitution forms an age-worn but interesting chapter in the history of civilization and presents an important problem for modern society. All civilized countries have offered solutions, none of which are satisfactory, and only a few of them have even modified its baneful influence. We commonly speak of prostitution as being the oldest of the professions, but in the light of historical investigation, this is hardly in keeping with the truth.

In order to understand the social construction of ‘prostitution’, we begin with common definitions from The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (1989).

In the English language, the word ‘prostitute’ can be used in several ways. Prostitute can be used as a noun: ‘A woman who is devoted, or (usually) who offers, her body to indiscriminate sexual intercourse, esp. for hire: a common harlot’ (OED, 1989a, p.

673) or a verb: ‘To offer (oneself or another) to unlawful, esp. indiscriminate sexual intercourse, usually for hire; to devote or expose to lewdness (Chiefly refl. of a woman)’ (OED, 1989a, p. 673) Dictionary descriptors of ‘prostitution’, the industry or practice, include ‘whoredom’ and ‘harlotry’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989a, p. 74). Prostitution is any, or a combination, or all of the following: a) sexual harassment b) rape c) battering d) verbal abuse e) domestic violence f) racial practice g) a violation of human rights h) childhood sexual abuse i) a consequence of male domination of women j) a means of maintaining male domination of women Dictionary definitions provide only part of the picture.

Proficient in: Moral

“ Thank you so much for accepting my assignment the night before it was due. I look forward to working with you moving forward ”

Discourses surrounding prostitution have varied greatly throughout time, demonstrating its dynamic conceptual nature.

Prostitution Essays

Despite these developments, particular beliefs have prevailed: for example, nineteenth-century morals have a direct influence upon the worldwide prohibition against prostitution (Perkins, 1991). The definition of a prostitute, as Rey (1851) describes her, as “a woman who allows the use of her body by any man, without distinction, for a payment, made or expected. ” Havelock Ellis says practically the same thing- “One who openly abandons her body to a number of men, without choice, for money. Both descriptions emphasize the fact that it is not the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a harlot, but the nature of her relationship with them- “The sale of the sweet name of love. ” In the suppression of individual inclinations she differs from a mistress, a concubine or a polygamous wife. The Roman jurists held that the fee had nothing to do with prostitution. It was the mingling of the sexes, the lack of an individual bond between man and woman and the universal and unrestrained gratification of sex passion that were its essential features.

The fee is always contra bonus mores and not legally collectable. The mercenary side, so prominent today, is a secondary factor, resulting from the development of civilization. Remuneration is only an inevitable corollary of the consideration that a wife is the property of a man and therefore of definite value. The Profession of prostitution,” says Parent Duchatelet (1836), “is an evil of all times and all countries, and appears to be innate in the social structure of mankind.

It will perhaps never be entirely eradicated, still all the more must we strive to limit its extent and its dangers. With prostitution itself, as with vice, crime and disease, the teacher of morals endeavors to prevent the vices, the lawgiver to prevent the crime and the physician to cure the disease. All alike know that they will never fully attain their goal but they pursue their work none the less, in the conviction that who does only a little good, yet does a great service to the weak man. The earliest discourse, based on theology and philosophy, emphasized the immorality and corruption of female souls. Nineteenth-century religious writers considered prostitution to be a ‘social evil that threatened the family as well as the social order’ (Ryan, 1997, p. 20). Prostitution later entered the closely linked medical–legal domains; criminalization of prostitution was facilitated by conceptualizing prostitution as a public health issue, stressing its role in spreading infectious diseases (Ryan, 1997).

During the 1970s, the prostitutes’ rights movement arose, which argued that prostitution represented a form of labor, comparable to other ‘helping’ professions, such as doctors, social workers or lawyers (Perkins and Bennett, 1985; Perkins, 1991). Moreover, it was also conceptualized as a contract between equals, having the effect of describing it as a commercial transaction: ‘In this view, individuals own their labor power and stand in relation to their property in their body and capacities in the same relation as their property as property owners’ (Jeffreys, 1997, p. 73) This view dominates the current reality of the adult prostitution sex industry. This has been evident by its largely visible status through maintaining ‘an important presence in political and sexual culture over the last decade’ (Sullivan, 1997, p. 201). It is alarming that the age of entry into prostitution is clearly geared toward younger and younger groups. Kathleen Mahoney, a professor of law in Calgary University, Canada argued in 1995, “How do we even conceptualize ‘juvenile’ prostitution, when the age of consent for legal sexual activity is constantly lowered, as in the Netherlands and the Philippines? The prehistoric period can, of course, supply us with little accurate knowledge. The earliest human records, about 4000 B. C. , make reference to it, but for anything of value, we must turn to comparative ethnology, where the customs of primitive people throw considerable light on the early stages. There seems no evidence that the elemental sex instinct, “the ever-raging animal in man”, as Plato called it, has been altered in the slightest degree by all the centuries of culture and education.

The advancing development of mankind in early times, brought sex attraction into close conjunction with the religious impulse, and upon this basis sprang up. A free sexual life, along with the social life, has continued to our own day. The origin of prostitution is closely connected with the rise of brothels and the development of the system of free love. No longer do all the girls, but only a certain few, offer themselves to the frequenters of “houses for men”. These few generally live in selected domiciles and are paid for their sex services.

The “common woman” also offers herself to strangers and travelers, and this may be the origin of the “hospitable prostitute”. In Africa, through the influence of slavery, practically all prostitutes were slaves. A young woman was bought, sheltered in a special hut and required to offer herself to anyone in return for a small present, the owner of the slave receiving the earnings. In Dahomey, the King was the proprietor of all these women- a case of “government control”. In ancient Egypt, Arabia and Israel the courtesan was recruited from divorced and cast-off wives who wandered about from place to place.

A study of racial development shows that prostitution exists among all aboriginal peoples where sexual intercourse is restricted or restrained, and that it is nothing more than a new form for the primitive mingling of the races. In its entire history it is a derivative from the free sexual life of primeval man. As Schurtz says, “In all places where free love is separated from passions and their satisfaction prostitution is found. ” In a civilized society, we should organize that the burden of inequalities, which underlie prostitution, should not be carried by children.

Cite this page

Essay About Prostitution. (2019, Dec 06). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/

"Essay About Prostitution." PaperAp.com , 6 Dec 2019, https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/

PaperAp.com. (2019). Essay About Prostitution . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/ [Accessed: 24 May. 2024]

"Essay About Prostitution." PaperAp.com, Dec 06, 2019. Accessed May 24, 2024. https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/

"Essay About Prostitution," PaperAp.com , 06-Dec-2019. [Online]. Available: https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/. [Accessed: 24-May-2024]

PaperAp.com. (2019). Essay About Prostitution . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-about-prostitution/ [Accessed: 24-May-2024]

• Ethics Of Prostitution Pages: 7 (2094 words)
• Prostitution in the USA Pages: 7 (1819 words)
• Prostitution Is One of the Social Problems of Mankind Pages: 3 (635 words)
• Prostitution in Nevada Pages: 4 (985 words)
• Legal Aspects Related to Prostitution in India Pages: 3 (738 words)
• Sacred Games Murder: Violence, Prostitution and Terrors in Urban India Pages: 29 (8521 words)
• Environmental Upbringing as a percursor to prostitution  Pages: 4 (1136 words)
• Prostitution Solutions Pages: 2 (586 words)
• The Issues of Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution Pages: 2 (361 words)
• Prostitution Legalization in New Zealand: Language Diversity? Pages: 2 (367 words)

EssayEmpire

Prostitution essay.

The ethical issues surrounding prostitution are as varied as the profession itself. Prostitution is considered a consensual crime, one in which neither party is acting against his or her own free will; however, there is a strenuous debate over this point, especially in light of the involvement of human trafficking, coercion, and children in prostitution. Prostitution encompasses  a wide range of acts and individuals. For the most part, prostitution is defined as the exchange of some sexual act for money, goods, or services and has been referenced since the origins of written history. Prostitutes can be from any socioeconomic background, any gender, and can be children or adults. Prostitutes exist in a tenuous relationship with the criminal justice system, as their profession gives them reason to avoid or distrust law enforcement, especially if they have been the victim of a crime during the course of their work. Because of the mostly illegal and under regulated nature of prostitution, prostitutes are at a greater risk of criminal victimization from theft, rape, assault, and homicide.

Prostitutes can work alone or in groups, on the street or in a house or brothel; they can be independent or under the supervision of a madam or pimp. Prostitutes can be male or female. They can work for an escort service that provides companionship, frequently of a sexual nature, to the business class. They can work in fetish and strip clubs, or out of clubs in cases where employees are not allowed to engage in sexual acts while on duty, but are not punished by their employer if they make arrangements for sex services outside of the club.

Prostitution has been viewed as everything from easy work to work of last resort. Prostitutes have held positions of power and independence, being permitted to acquire and retain land, inherit property and items of value, as well as speak for themselves in court proceedings in communities where the status  of married,  widowed,  or unmarried women has been near to chattel. Prostitutes have been linked to religion and religious movements. In ancient times prostitution may have been part of rituals and the services of a temple, whereas in more modern times a variety of religious movements have used prostitution of their female adherents as a way to recruit more male members.

Prostitutes have worked  in conjunction with military forces, both willingly and unwillingly. Throughout time, prostitutes have seen military installations and military regiments on the move as a ready source of employment, where even at the height of war, soldiers have access to either money or goods of value, clothes, food, alcohol, and  other  items.  Additionally, military  forces around the world and throughout history have enslaved women  or forced them into brothels for either the personal use of the military or as a means to increase revenue for the war effort. In military and intelligence spheres, prostitutes have also been used for espionage. Brothels have been the source of a variety of intelligence and counterintelligence operations throughout the history of espionage. Sometimes the espionage has been internal, seeking dissension within a population, and  other  times external, seeking information from an individual who may speak more freely in the company of a prostitute.

In law enforcement circles, prostitutes have been used as informants, but are also the subject of vice operations, stings, and entrapment. The relationship between law enforcement and prostitutes is a convoluted one. On one hand, because of the tendency of spree, pattern, and serial killers to target prostitutes as an easily accessible population of victims, law enforcement can take a rather protective or paternal interest in prostitutes, advising them of dangers and seeking information about potential suspects. If other crimes are of more political or media interest prostitutes may work for months or years unmolested by law enforcement attention. If, however, media or political pressure is applied to law enforcement regarding  prostitution, they are targeted with laser focus. Prostitutes working against their will, such as individuals who have been trafficked into sex work, are under the age of consent, or are otherwise coerced into the situation, are seen as victims. If prostitutes admit or show signs that they have chosen prostitution as a profession, they are viewed with contempt. Entrapment and sting operations work in both directions, focused on the prostitutes themselves and on those who employ them. Undercover cops may pose as prostitutes to attempt to root out individuals who are hiring prostitutes, or they may pose as individuals looking for prostitutes in an attempt to identify and arrest prostitutes.

Prostitutes are linked to a variety of other criminal activities, which can affect their interaction with law enforcement and the courts. Prostitutes may supplement their income through theft or by dealing or smuggling narcotics. In a few cases, prostitutes have been linked to homicide and even serial murder.  Prostitutes may use narcotics  to gain information or control over a client they do not want to have sex with or whom they wish to blackmail, rob, or turn over to a criminal organization. A variety of criminal organizations have found uses for prostitutes. Organized crime has used prostitution as one of its rackets for acquiring money and information. Street gangs will often use female members or females associates as prostitutes to acquire money, as bait for rivals, in initiation proceedings, to broker deals, or to transport narcotics. Drug gangs have used prostitutes to acquire money, transport or test narcotics, as bait for rivals, as bait for individuals who will be held hostage, or as dealers. Terrorist organizations have also used prostitutes over time to acquire money, as well as hostages, targets, and information.

Risks Involved With Prostitution

Prostitutes are at risk for a wide range of sexually transmitted diseases. Prostitutes who work in a brothel or in association with a club or organization are more likely to received regular health care and medical attention than those who work on their own. In these cases, a positive test for any venereal or sexually transmitted disease will mean a loss of employment. Very rarely do prostitutes who work with a brothel, club, or organization have an option for unemployment or severance benefits. Prostitutes working alone are at a greater risk for sexually transmitted diseases and are also less likely to receive regular testing and/ or treatment.

Unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy termination, psychological issues, as well as physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological violence and trauma are also risks taken by prostitutes in all variants of the profession. Because of the lack of regulation and oversight in most cases, prostitutes are on their own to handle these issues. While pregnancy termination is a personal decision, a prostitute may not have that control, either because she is informed by her brother, organization, association, location, or pimp that she cannot work if she is pregnant; or she may be the victim of violence from one of these sources at the first sign of pregnancy in order to coerce her decision. While prostitutes that work with some oversight are protected from some level of violence, they are not protected from all violence, or from psychological or emotional abuse. Mental health resources for prostitutes are relatively limited.

Role, Status, and Legal Position of Prostitutes

Prostitutes have been romanticized in some popular media, films, video games, music, and television shows; however, they have been equally demeaned and dehumanized in the same venues. Positive or romantic portrayals have influenced individuals into deciding that this is a way of making money and an enjoyable profession. Negative portrayals have influenced individuals in the misuse of prostitutes and the subjugation of others into the role of prostitutes for personal gain. Both these practices have increased among younger, and therefore below the age of consent, individuals, both as prostitutes and as pimps. In other cases, famous prostitutes, those who have catered to individuals of status or wealth, have greatly benefited from their notoriety, written memoirs, been immortalized in films, and achieved celebrity that has not decreased  with arrest  and/or  imprisonment. In fact, arrest or imprisonment has in some cases improved their appeal and public fascination.

Changes in technology have also had an impact on the profession of prostitution. While the exchange of money or items or services of value for sex is the primary definition, and the best way for law enforcement to identify prostitution activity, Internet  Web sites can allow individuals to pay the prostitute remotely and thereby remove the personal exchange of money from the encounter. In other situations, an individual can pay an individual to perform sexual activities online; through the use of Web cams and other remote access, the individual pays for live pornography, increasing the distance and decreasing the likelihood that either party will be caught.

The role, status, and legal position of prostitutes has changed drastically  over time. However, one thing remains the same; the punishment for a prostitute is typically far more severe than the punishment for the individual who employs the prostitute. The punishment for prostitution throughout history  and around the world  has ranged  from  fines to imprisonment to corporal punishment to death, while individuals who employ prostitutes are more likely to be punished with fines, community service, and short periods of incarceration. Unfortunately, this decreases the likelihood that prostitutes will report crimes in which they have been victimized.

The victimization of prostitutes is an ethical quagmire for law enforcement and the rest of the criminal  justice community. The prostitute, in most situations, is a criminal. The prostitute will likely have a long history of arrests and prosecutions. This decreases the appeal of believing the prostitute when he or she reports a crime of victimization. It can influence the behavior of officers during interviews and the taking of statements. Depending on when the victimization occurred, evidence collection and isolation regarding the prostitute’s home, place of business, personal effects, or physical evidence on the body can be very difficult. For lawyers, it is difficult to present a prostitute as a victim to juries or to judges; it is difficult to separate the person from the profession. In a corrections setting, prostitutes can be subject to an increase of abuse or misuse from the guards or fellow inmates because of the stigma associated with the profession.

Stigma and shame may stay with a prostitute long after leaving the profession, and it may carry on to their children, whether or not those children were born as a result of professional or personal activity. Prostitutes who have left the profession run a continual risk of blackmail, assault, and rape from former clientele. Their children are looked upon as illegitimate by most members of the community that has knowledge of their parent’s profession. Alternatively, children may be used by the prostitute to blackmail clientele as a means to leave the profession. If a former prostitute seeks legal assistance, she may expect disrespect or mistreatment from individuals in the criminal justice system when her previous status is revealed.

Male prostitutes have additional issues with which to contend. Although a male prostitute in general is as likely to be employed with female clients as with male clients, the stereotype is that male prostitutes service other men. There are male prostitutes that only service other men; however, the stereotype brings with it a stigma to nearly all male prostitutes and affects the interactions they have with the criminal justice system, where personal and institutional homophobic prejudices exist. Antihomosexual sentiments are difficult to overcome in the criminal justice system and have a long history, decreasing the likelihood that a male prostitute would seek assistance, perhaps even to a greater degree than his female counterparts.

Illegal immigrants and individuals  trafficked into sex work add another layer to the ethical concerns of prostitution. Their dual levels of illegal status, one as not being legally in the country and the other as engaging in an illegal activity, place this group within the prostitute population at an even greater disadvantage than their legal resident counterparts. However, when individuals in this situation are identified, they are more likely to be treated and dealt with in the criminal justice system as victims, despite their criminal activity or status, with the deciding factor being one of perceived choice to engage in prostitution.

Prostitution is pervasive, both throughout history and in the broad spectrum of locations and situations in which it occurs. It has been argued that it is a consensual crime, one that has no real victim; however, despite its mostly consensual nature, there are inherent dangers in the profession of physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological trauma and violence. Coercion and enslavement are real issues in the profession. Interaction with the criminal justice system is on a very uneven playing field, where the prostitute is equally likely to be the target of an investigation or the victim.

Bibliography:

• Davies, Julian. Hookers: Their Lives in Their Words. Preston, UK: Milo Books, 2011.
• Dewey Susan and Patty Kelly, eds. Policing Pleasure: Sex Work, Policy, and the State in Global Perspective. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
• Flowers, R. Barri. The Prostitution of Women and Girls. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998.
• Morrison, Todd G. and Bruce W. Whitehead, eds. Male Sex Work. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Ringdal, Nils Johan. Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
• Weitzer, Ronald, ed. Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry. London: Routledge, 2009.

This example Prostitution Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

• How to Write an Essay
• Criminal Justice Essay Topics
• Criminal Justice Essay Examples

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

Special offer!

GET 10% OFF WITH  24START  DISCOUNT CODE

Related posts.

•  Order Now

Is prostitution a victimless crime?

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015 Last Modified: 12 May 2017

Disclaimer: This essay has been written and submitted by students and is not an example of our work. Please click this link to view samples of our professional work witten by our professional essay writers . Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of EssayCompany.

Prostitution, as described by the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (1997), is the selling of sexual favors for money or the devoting of oneself or one's talent to an unworthy cause (p. 589). In another frame of reference, prostitution has been called a "victimless crime." What exactly is a "victimless crime"? West's Encyclopedia of American defines it as:

…crime where there is no apparent victim and no apparent pain or injury. This class of crime usually involves only consenting adults in activities such as prostitution, sodomy, and gambling where the acts are not public, no one is harmed, and no one complains of the activities (2008).

This classic definition of these types of crime implies there is not any victim of the criminal behavior who experiences harm. From a theoretical perspective, conflict theorists may hold that victimless crimes are established as a type of social control over morality by politically powerful people or groups who find them offensive or undesirable while functional theorists may hold that social needs, not societal power, are the underlying condition of labeling victimless behaviors as criminal (Greek, C.E., 2005).

Why are some consensual acts considered illegal while others are not? McWilliams (1996) asserts consensual activities' prohibitions and restrictions have their basis in religion while O'Donnell (2000) in addressing the price of victimless crime laws, proposes those crime laws are a form of morality control and religious persecution that uphold the opinions of the law-controlling majority with regards to race, ethnicity and political stances.

The issue in victimless crimes is that society has created laws to prohibit certain types of conduct considered to be against the public interest and when supposed victims freely consent to be the victim in one of these crimes; the question is whether the state should make an exception from the law for the situation. For the purpose of this paper, prostitution and the issues of concern in the legalization of this victimless crime is explored.

Upon examining prostitution as a victimless crime, it seems evident there are victims at some level but most of the harm seems to be self-inflicted. Looking at the puzzle of the involved behaviors, having sex and asking for money, each by themselves are perfectly legal. Having sex with someone, even an unknown person is legal, and asking for money is legal but, when the two behaviors are linked into one single instance, a criminal act results. The two separate legal behaviors cannot constitute an illegal behavior for if no person is harmed, or if harm occurs by informed consent of the willing parties, how can it be considered a criminal act? One arguable stance presented is that consensual acts are not without risk and when adults consent to take part in the acts, why should the resulting action be deemed criminal by legal social rules? What kinds of problems can the law solve and what kind of problems does the law create?

Among the many proponents of de-criminalizing victimless crimes the concept of unconstitutionality is consistently cited (Hardaway, 2000; McWilliams, 1998; O'Donnell, 2000; National Platform of the Libertarian Party, 2002). A prominent vocal critic of criminalizing these termed victimless crimes, such as prostitution, is Robert Hardaway.

Hardaway is a professor of Law at the University of Denver's School of Law who has written and co-written numerous texts and articles on legal and community interest matters. Hardaway's 2003 book, No Price Too High: Victimless Crimes and the Ninth Amendment, as cited by Cox in a 2004 review, presents a powerful and strongly-argued perspective which argues the criminalization of victimless crimes violate the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution (2004). Cox notes the criminalization of these crimes as well as amount of money it takes to enforce the laws are unsound policies according to Hardaway. Although, in the case of drugs, crime against property and person are related to drug use, Hardaway, per Cox (2004), attributes the harm of drug use to the laws rather than the use of drugs themselves. According to Cox, Hardaway uses the example of Prohibition to explain the supply and demand concept of the argument stating: "crime and violence do not emanate from some physiological effect of the drug, but the drug laws themselves" and with the decriminalization of drugs, neighborhood drug dealers would be put out of business effectively breaking the business-end of organized crime (105). Hardaway further posits, according to Cox, "legalizing personal vices is justified by a considered weighing of the costs and consequences of criminalization" (30), (2004).

ProCon.org has a website which addresses the issue of whether or not prostitution should be legalized and many statements were provided on this website of both the pro and con sides of the issue: "No person's human or civil rights should be violated on the basis of their trade, occupation, work, calling, or profession" [Prostitution Education Network, 1996]; "prostitution violates the right to physical and moral integrity…violates the prohibition of torture and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.." [Hoffman, C., 1997]; "…prostitution laws are…a violation of the right of individual privacy because they impose penal sanctions for the private sexual conduct of consenting adults…" [American Civil Liberties Union, 2007]; "…few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution…" [U.S. Department of State, 2004] (ProCon, 2009).

Of all opposition members, the most prominent is Melissa Farley, a research and clinical psychologist at the San Francisco non-profit organization, Prostitution Research and Education. Farley has written numerous peer-reviewed articles on the subject (Farley, M., 2006). Farley's numerous research articles provide a well-rounded look at the subject matter of prostitution, the sex industry, exploitation of women, as well as the myriad of troubling issues arising from when men purchase women in prostitution. In the 2006 article, Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia: What We Must Not Know in Order to Keep the Business of Sexual Exploitation Running Smoothly, Farley posits "prostitution is sexual violence that results in massive economic profit for some of its perpetrators" and is a much like slavery in that it is a "lucrative form of oppression" (p. 102). Farley goes further to remark on "prostitution's legal status (legal, illegal, zoned, or decriminalized)" or the location of the activity "(strip club, massage parlor, street, and escort/home/hotel)" the danger to women is still tremendous (p. 103). Farley's discussion on the peer-reviewed literature which documents the violence so prevalent in prostitution and states: "Violence is commonplace in prostitution whether it is legal or illegal" (p. 106). Citing a Canadian commission on prostitution and pornography which reported the "death rate of women in prostitution as forty times higher than that of the general population" and a 2001 Vancouver prostitution research study by Cler-Cunningham and Christensen which reported a "thirty-six percent incident of attempted murder, Farley contends "prostitution can be lethal" (p. 107).

Farley's detailed look at legalized and illegal prostitution can impact the perception of the sex industry as a whole. However, within the United States Constitution's first ten amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, are provisions which may present a strong argument for abolishing criminalizing prostitution and other victimless crimes.

The First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments are of particular interest in this dialogue of supporting the decriminalization of prostitution. Although victimless crimes such as prostitution are not specifically addressed in the Constitution there seems to be an arguable position that victimless crime laws violate First Amendment restrictions against laws "respecting an establishment of religion" especially since religious and moral values seem to provide the foundation for many of the laws.

The Fourth Amendment's provisions on search and seizure seems to be violated by such devices as warrantless search and seizures which are often utilized to obtain evidence for prosecutorial purposes. The privacy of innocents can be threatened as enforcement of the law requires police and investigators to engage in extensive monitoring, wiretapping, and surveillance of suspects and the public. Some people believe that these warrantless search and seizures and victimless crime laws are a means of political power over selected portions of the population which are unequally enforced against the poor and minorities thereby violating the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (Kruttscnitt, 1984; McWilliams, 1998; Nussbaum, O'Connell, 2000; 1999; Schur, 1971, 1980, 1983).

The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution has direct bearing on such modern day constitutional issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the right to die. Farber (2007) considers the Ninth Amendment the 'key to understanding' the liberties Americans were to enjoy under the Constitution as envisioned by the Founding Fathers describes the purpose of the Ninth Amendment and the Founders' intent: to protect the rights the Founders' assumed but failed to enumerate or specify in the Bill of Rights. Like the rest of the original Bill of Rights, per Farber, the Ninth Amendment only limits federal power rather than state government powers. The Fourteenth Amendment came along later and addressed the state government and within that Amendment the Privileges or Immunities Clause is paired with the Ninth Amendment (Lash, 2004; Farber, 2007).

America is in first place in the world for the number of incarcerated individuals as highlighted by a Pew Center report that found 1 in every 100 American adults are behind bars with its prison population having tripled in the last 20 years. Spending on prisons has more than quadrupled and the American taxpayers are slowly crushed by this wasteful spending. At an average cost of over $19,000 per prisoner, taxpayers are facing a bill of over $44 billion per year to keep people locked away (Pew, 2004).

Coinciding with this rising prison population is the increase in the number of private prisons which increased from five in 1995 to 100 in 2005. Herivel and Wright ( ) in their book "Prison Profiteers-Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration" reports private prison industry has seen increased profits and lobbied extensively for more frequent and longer prison sentences and traces the flow of monies designated for the public good and ends up in the "pockets of enterprises dedicated to keeping prison cells filled" (From their book jacket).

History has shown that criminalizing victimless crimes will drive the practice underground where violence, extortion, and coercion are most likely to thrive. This was particularly noticed when the 18th Amendment and later the Volstead Act, 1919, which made it illegal to manufacture or sell "beer, wine, or other intoxicating malt or vinous liquors" it was not illegal to possess it for personal use. The prohibition, originally intended to reduce beer consumption in particular, actually a failure and ended up increasing hard liquor consumption and created a new business, "bootlegging," defined as the unlawful manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages without registration or payment of taxes which became widespread and a staple of organized crime (Prohibition).

Almost every individual has the ability and moral capacity to judge what is helpful or harmful to them and it does not make sense for other people to dictate what choices should be made. When individuals commit acts harmful to themselves, the action should be termed as immoral, not illegal. The criminalization for the act of prostitution should not be determined by social effects of an individual's actions or by the moral or religious views of society. Every person needs freedom to make choices and accept the consequences for without these consequences, growth and experiential development will be hindered.

If an adult man-or an adult woman, wants to engage in sexual relations with another adult man or woman who charges a fee for his or her services, they should be able to do so without the fear of being guilty of a crime. It does not mean that prostitution should not be subjected to certain legal requirements such as health laws. Removing prostitution from criminal statutes and providing a designation as a business entity subjected to business requirements, prostitution can be taxed, sex workers can obtain health and safety rights other employees have, and problems of abuse and graft associated with police jurisdiction of such a business can be dealt with more effectively with better protection from violence and abuse for those individuals who work within the industry. In a 2001 article written for the New Zealand Herald, Sue Bradford, MA, Member of New Zealand's Parliament says it best: "…prostitution has been a career option for some people since history began. Nothing any law has done has changed or will change that…I believe we would all be better off…to accept the job choice that some adults make as valid and worthy of care and compassion for all our sakes" (2001).

Bradford, S. (2001). Dialogue: Sex workers deserve protection of the law. New Zealand Herald. July 30, 2001.

Cox, G.C., (2004). Book review of Hardaway, R. (2003). No price too high: Victimless crimes and the Ninth Amendment. Department of Political Science, University of North Texas.

Farber, D.A. (2007). Retained by the people: The 'silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional rights Americans don't know they have. Perseus Books.

Fyffe, C. and Hardaway, R.M. (2003). No price too high: Victimless crimes and the Ninth Amendment. Westport, CN: Praeger.

Greek, C.E., (2005). Criminological theory. Lecture notes. CCJ 5606. http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/

Hayes-Smith, R. and Shekarkhar, Z. (2010). Why is prostitution criminalized? An alternative viewpoint on the construction of sex work. Contemporary Justice Review, March 2010, Volume 13 Issue 1, p. 43-55.

Herivel, T. and Wright, P. (2007). Prison profiteers: Who makes money from mass incarceration? New York: New Press

Kruttschnitt, C. (1984). Labeling women deviant: Gender stigma and social control. Contemporary Sociology. 13 (5), 596.

Lash, K.T. (2004). The lost original meaning of the Ninth Amendment. Texas Law Review, Volume 83, Number 2, December 2004

McWilliams, P. (1998). Ain't nobody's business if you do: The absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society. Los Angeles, CA: Prelude Press. http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/201.htm

Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1997). Springfield, MASS: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

National Platform of the Libertarian Party, 2002. (Adopted at the July 2002 convention in Indianapolis, Indiana)<http:..www.lp.org/issues/platform/victcrim.html

Nussbaum, M. C. (1999). Sex & social justice. New York: Oxford University Press

O'Donnell, T. (2000). American holocaust: The price of victimless crime laws. Writer's Digest. Iuniverse.com

ProCon, 2009. Prostitution Education Network, 1996; Hoffman, C., 1997; American Civil Liberties Union, 2007; U.S. Department of State, 2004. http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=1315&print=true

Prohibition. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1085.html

Schur, E. (1971). Labeling deviant behavior. New York: Harper and Row.

(1980). The politics of deviance. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

(1983). Labeling women deviant: gender, stigma, and social control. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

West's Encyclopedia of American Law, Edition 2 (2008). The Gale Group, Inc.

Our Service Portfolio

• Essay Writing Service
• Dissertation Writing Service
• Assignment Writing Service
• Coursework Writting Service
• Article Writting Service

Want To Place An Order Quickly?

Then shoot us a message on Whatsapp, WeChat or Gmail. We are available 24/7 to assist you.

Do not panic, you are at the right place

Visit Our essay writting help page to get all the details and guidence on availing our assiatance service.

Get 20% Discount, Now £19 £14 / Per Page 14 days delivery time

Our writting assistance service is undoubtedly one of the most affordable writting assistance services and we have highly qualified professionls to help you with your work. So what are you waiting for, click below to order now.

Get An Instant Quote

I DON'T WANT DISCOUNT

Our experts are ready to assist you, call us to get a free quote or order now to get succeed in your academics writing.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

I Don’t Write Like Alice Munro, but I Want to Live Like Her

By Sheila Heti

Ms. Heti is the author of the novels “Pure Colour,” “How Should a Person Be?” and, most recently, “Alphabetical Diaries.”

It is common to say “I was heartbroken to hear” that so-and-so died, but I really do feel heartbroken having learned about Alice Munro, who died on Monday.

As a writer, she modeled, in her life and art, that one must work with emotional sincerity and precision and concentration and depth — not on every kind of writing but on only one kind, the kind closest to one’s heart.

She has long been a North Star for many writers and was someone I have always felt guided by. We are very different writers, but I have kept her in mind, daily and for decades, as an example to follow (but failed to follow to the extent that she demonstrated it): that a fiction writer isn’t someone for hire.

A fiction writer isn’t someone who can write anything — movies, articles, obits! She isn’t a person in service to the magazines, to the newspapers, to the publishers or even to her audience. She doesn’t have to speak on the political issues of the day or on matters of importance to the culture right now but ought first and most to attend seriously to her task, which is her only task, writing the particular thing she was most suited to write.

Ms. Munro only ever wrote short stories — not novels, though she must have been pressured to. She died in a small town not too far from where she was born, choosing to remain close to the sort of people she grew up with, whom she remained ever curious about. Depth is wherever one stands, she showed us, convincingly.

Fiction writers are people, supposedly, who have things to say; they must, because they are so good with words. So people are always asking them: Can you say something about this or about this? But the art of hearing the voice of a fictional person or sensing a fictional world or working for years on some unfathomable creation is, in fact, the opposite of saying something with the opinionated and knowledgeable part of one’s mind. It is rather the humble craft of putting your opinions and ego aside and letting something be said through you.

Ms. Munro held to this division and never let the vanity that can come with being good with words persuade her to put her words just everywhere, in every possible way. Here was the best example in the world — in Canada, my own land — of someone who seemed to abide by classical artistic values in her choices as a person and in her choices on the page. I felt quietly reassured knowing that a hundred kilometers down the road was Alice Munro.

She was also an example of how a writer should be in public: modest, unpretentious, funny, generous and kind. I learned the lesson of generosity from her early. When I was 20 and was just starting to publish short stories, I sent her a fan letter. I don’t remember what my letter said. After a few months, I received a handwritten thank-you note from her in the mail. The fact that she replied at all and did so with such care taught me a lot about grace and consideration and has remained as a warmth within me since that day.

She will always remain for me, and for many others, a model of that grave yet joyous dedication to art — a dedication that inevitably informs the most important choices the artist makes about how to support that life. Probably Ms. Munro would laugh at this; no one knows the compromises another makes, especially when that person is as private as she was and transforms her trials into fiction. Yet whatever the truth of her daily existence, she still shines as a symbol of artistic purity and care.

I am grateful for all she gave to the world and for all the sacrifices she must have made to give it. I’m sorry to be here defying her example, but she was just too loved, and these words just came. Thank you, Alice Munro.

Sheila Heti is the author of the novels “Pure Colour,” “How Should a Person Be?” and, most recently, “Alphabetical Diaries.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

LAFCU essay winners: How my environment molded me into the person I am today

Here are the four winners of LAFCU's Write to Educate essay contest. The students were tasked with answering this question: How has the place you have grown up molded you into the person you are today and impacted your life?

The winners each received a $5,000 college scholarship and another $500 was donated to each winner's designated charity.

My community shaped and expanded my worldview

Nature vs Nurture. How much does the environment a person is placed into have an effect on their character versus how they were born?

I have contemplated this question many times when it comes to myself and how much I have allowed myself to be changed by the people around me. From a young age I have always had a strong sense of self. I have known who I am and what I need to do to accomplish my goals of becoming smarter and stronger. I have had little care for the judgments from my peers.

This has been an asset because it has allowed me to reach heights beyond what I thought was possible but that does not mean I always know my path forward. That doesn’t mean I have not changed. As much as I, and every other human on the planet, resists change, it is impossible to grow without changing.

Becoming older means expanding one’s view of the world from a simplified version to a messy one. A world full of complexity and inconsistency which each and every one of us must navigate and find our own path through the shroud known as our future. The community that I have grown up with are my paddles allowing me to navigate the treacherous river, giving me advice and a wider world view of things I never thought existed.

My morality is the first thing that was shaped by my community. Every person has the basics of morality sewn into them from birth but when it comes to more complicated situations, my community has changed my view.

My younger self was much more cut and dry where I would label something as wrong no matter what, with no exception. My community has taught me to view these situations with more context to make more informed decisions.

For example, a kid beats another kid because he was being bullied by him. My old self would say the kid who got into the fight should be punished because he laid his hands on another person and should have taken other outlets to resolve the problem. The way I see it now is that even though his decision was wrong to hurt the other kid, no one was able to stop the bully from bullying him and the system itself has failed the kid by allowing the bullying to happen. I have no wish for anyone to get hurt, but I see that situation as much more nuanced than I once did.

These ideas have been shaped by my own experiences and by the people around me who have been put into tough situations. I have learned from the diverse community around me that the choices people make are rarely simple ones.

My political views have also been shaped by my community. I am growing up in a community that largely has different political views from my own. Having different people to communicate with that have grown up in ways different from my own, has allowed me to find where I stand on certain issues.

Within my community I have been able to find people that I respect, and I take note of the things they believe and challenge their ideas versus my own. Even if in the end our ideas of how the world should be run may differ, I have been able to find common ground with tons of people and I have been able to refine my views into a more well-rounded, multi-faceted, diverse view of the world.

My community is full of people from all different races and cultures, and by combining perspectives from all those different people, we can find a way to have a more united world with the basic necessity of finding common ground and understanding which can unite us all. Where I have grown up has shaped the way I think and how I act. Even though I have always had a strong sense of self, there are parts of my personality that have been changed and molded by my experiences, and my community has influenced the way that I view different situations. Without my community I would not be as accepting and open-minded as I am today.

— Antonio Rojas of East Lansing High School is headed to the University of Michigan. Chosen charity: Cristo Rey Community Center

Lansing Hmong community encouraged my success

Many things in life are taken for granted. During my childhood, I was very active in the Hmong Lansing community. The community would occasionally hold multiple annual events for gatherings. I would meet many new people there and hear their stories, advice or opinions on life. The younger me at the time didn’t know what to take from these experiences and failed to appreciate these moments.

As I matured, I understood what these opportunities meant when I grew around the community. It was the experience of learning from others. The learning experiences growing up in the Hmong Lansing community have molded me to become a person of ambitions, someone who gives back, and the love of cooking for others.

In the Hmong community, the place has molded me into a person of ambitions. I am a first-generation Asian American coming from Hmong immigrants. My parents came to America for a better opportunity. Within my community, most do not have a college education. People from the Hmong community had to adjust to the culture, language, and way of life in America. Born in America, I adjusted to the culture there easily compared to my community.

I felt the need to carry their dreams of being successful. I wanted to take the opportunity that wasn’t given to my community and achieve greater heights. I want to strive for success within the Hmong community.I have grown into a person who gives back to their community. I can always remember the events that brought the community together all over Michigan. It was a yearly cultural event called the Lansing Hmong New Year. It was an event of celebration, bonding, and opportunity to connect with others. I wanted to help continue thisongoing tradition. I started doing community service to involve myself.

Even though it may not have been much, I felt a sense of accomplishment in giving back to the community. Seeing the joy of others is what truly motivates me to give back to my community.

The place I had grown up in created a love for cooking. I vividly remember the times when my parents would have a barbecue for various occasions for the community. I would always ask my dad to teach me how to grill. It was until one particular day that pestering led my dad to teach me how to grill. It was my brother’s graduation event.

Graduation from high school was important in the Hmong community; it was the time for people to gather for the success of one’s education. My dad guided me in the process of grilling until he thought I was ready by myself. I took my first step in grilling, and it was a success. People in the community for my brother’s graduation thought my cooking was delicious. I was filled with joy and pride. I liked having that feeling and having others enjoy what I make. Learning that skill gave me a passion for cooking for others.

Throughout my life in the Hmong Lansing community, it has taught me many valuable lessons in life. Whether it was basic knowledge or insights, these life lessons were appreciated. Without the love, guidance, and support from the community, I wouldn’t have grown into the person I am now. The Hmong Lansing community holds a special place in my heart.

— Elvis Vue of Waverly High School will attend Ferris State University. Chosen charity: Hmong Family Association

Rural upbringing influenced my career choice

Did you know that rural students are now officially recognized as an under-represented group in colleges?

For decades, rural students have faced unique barriers in getting into the best colleges, but in recent years, people have started to realize that the lack of rural representation in academia is a problem. From my own experiences growing up in a small, rural town, I have gained skills vital to my future career as a plasma physicist, allowing me to collaborate with my peers in the scientific community to better the world.

One of the key things that Napoleon has offered me is a close-knit community, which has given me social skills that I would not otherwise have, allowing me to effectively collaborate with others when the time comes to work as a group. These skills will serve me well in my future career, where I will be collaborating with scientists both in my own field and related disciplines.

As a smaller, rural school district, Napoleon had not always had the resources of larger schools. Despite this, my teachers have helped me to develop creative ways to solve problems when not all the tools are available, allowing me to effectively function in situations where I do not have the same opportunities as other students.

For instance, though my school doesn’t offer advanced physics education, I was able to seek out opportunities like the Academically Talented Youth Program at Western Michigan University or Physicists Inspiring the Next Generation (PING) at Michigan State University, which allowed me to gain knowledge I would not otherwise have, and I was supported in this endeavor by my school.

As a student in ATYP, I had to leave school early once a week in order to gain an accelerated honors education in English − not only was my school able to accommodate my periodic absences, they were also willing to accept my ATYP credits in lieu of the school’s English classes. This flexibility let me have more time at school to pursue other modes of education such as dual enrollment.

Similarly, my upbringing in a more rural area has given me a perspective on the world and how it works that is beyond what my more urban peers are familiar with. Growing up in a forest, I have always been surrounded by nature, and I have a deep love for the woods around my home. This has spurred my intention to enter the field of plasma physics, where I can make a difference by working towards the end goal of nuclear fusion energy, a clean and safe source of electricity that will keep the woodlands I have loved safe for centuries to come.

Already, I am able to apply this perspective to the community around me. In my role for the Jackson Community Foundation’s Youth Advisory Committee, I have had an incredible opportunity to serve as a mediator, helping to resolve issues that occur in my group of students working towards a better future for the youth of Jackson County.

— Thomas Hays of Napolean High School will attend Michigan State University. Chosen charity: Jackson Community Foundation

Success comes from overcoming rural limitations

Livingston County has always been my home. Despite continuing development, the area where I live remains rural. Growing up in a rural area is equal parts wonderful and frustrating. Rural means fewer people per square mile with smaller communities and less diversity.

My school is not known in the area for its diversity. There is not much variety when it comes to everything from what grocery store your family shops at to what school you attend.

My education has been limited by my rural community because my school has fewer class selections and availability. For example, both last year and this year I signed up to take classes (AP English Literature and Pre-Calculus) my school offers but I was unable to attend these classes because the only availability conflicted with my other classes. To combat this struggle, I committed to learning these classes online through a virtual education platform with whom my school partners.

One of my other choices, AP biology, did not have enough student interest to schedule the class and I had to change selections. This has been a limiting challenge for me as well as other students in my district. To broaden options, many students participate in dual enrollment classes with community colleges in the area. Limited variety and availability has encouraged me to stretch my idea of traditional school to take the classes that will help shape my future.

Activities like archery and horseback riding are local to me. I attended horse camp at age 6 and have been involved with horses ever since. Currently I am a member of my school’s equestrian team and own my own horse, Gingersnap. Horsemanship has taught me selflessness, hard work, responsibility, and perseverance. Without access to local barns and camps I would have missed out on developing important life skills.

My school’s archery team was started by another student in my grade who had a passion for archery, the outdoors, and hunting. I joined immediately. In addition to memories and friendships, archery has taught me how to set and achieve realistic goals, that practice makes progress, and teamwork. I am grateful for my community being in an area that supports and fosters growth in clubs such as these.

Despite the lack of variety, I strive for excellence in every opportunity to reach my full potential. My classmates and l help encourage each other in many areas from academics to sports and clubs. A friend of mine created the Environmental Club, of which I was a member, to help promote recycling and decrease wastefulness. She also created Students for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Our club not only recognizes diversity but we find solutions to problems in our community every day. We spread awareness at school through bulletin boards displaying achievements by a variety of groups in hopes to foster change and inspire others in our community and the world beyond.

With a smaller school population, there is less diversity but we do have an inclusive program called Peer to Peer. Neurotypical students are paired with neurodivergent students (called “links”) to assist them with participation and making friends. These “links” are often the only friendships these students have at school. I helped encourage my “link” to communicate with me by starting conversations, asking questions, and playing games.

Our school is small enough that our Peer to Peer class was able to meet and play Braille Uno during lunch. The more intimate setting including our whole group may not be possible in a larger district. While we may not have the diversity of a larger school, I embrace any available opportunities to learn about others.

I would not trade growing up in a rural area as I feel I made the most of my opportunities and developed skills that will support my transition to a larger college community and beyond.

— Vivian Hansen of Pinckney High School will attend Eastern Michigan University. Chosen charity: Bountiful Harvest Pantry

• Environment
• Information Science
• Social Issues
• Argumentative
• Cause and Effect
• Classification
• Compare and Contrast
• Descriptive
• Exemplification
• Informative
• Controversial
• Exploratory
• What Is an Essay
• Length of an Essay
• Generate Ideas
• Types of Essays
• Structuring an Essay
• Outline For Essay
• Essay Introduction
• Thesis Statement
• Body of an Essay
• Writing a Conclusion
• Essay Writing Tips
• Drafting an Essay
• Revision Process
• Fix a Broken Essay
• Format of an Essay
• Essay Examples
• Essay Checklist
• Essay Writing Service
• Pay for Research Paper
• Write My Research Paper
• Write My Essay
• Custom Essay Writing Service
• Admission Essay Writing Service
• Pay for Essay
• Academic Ghostwriting
• Write My Book Report
• Case Study Writing Service
• Dissertation Writing Service
• Coursework Writing Service
• Lab Report Writing Service
• Do My Assignment
• Buy College Papers
• Capstone Project Writing Service
• Buy Research Paper
• Custom Essays for Sale

Can’t find a perfect paper?

• Free Essay Samples

Legalization of Prostitution

Updated 13 November 2023

Downloads 29

Category Crime ,  Social Issues ,  Sociology

Topic Prostitution

Prostitution and its Definition

Prostitution refers to engagement of sexual activities in exchange for favors or money. However, this definition has been criticized as inadequate since there are women who become wives because they want a house and livelihood which can be termed as favors as well (Weitzer 23). Therefore, prostitution is defined as an act of offering, in the client point of view, non-reproductive sex against payment. The increasing number of prostitutes globally has called for more research and discussions on whether the activity should be legalized or not. Many health organizations, human activists and other non-government organizations have suggested varied views on this prostitution debate as discussed below.

Amnesty International's Conference and Legalization

In November 2015, Meg Munoz a former sex worker attended a conference that was organized by Amnesty International in Los Angeles to give a presentation on the prostitution experience. After a powerful presentation, the Amnesty International adopted the suggestion of legalizing the prostitution. In support of legalizing the prostitution, Meg Munoz argued that the underground prostitution is more lethal since the sex workers are not legally protected and they have limited access to medication and other contraceptives such as condoms for protection (Nathanson et al). If the trade is legalized, the demand for sex might be discouraged due to the introduction of government policies such as the required age and there will be better access of medication which can reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS by 50%. Again, the voluntary prostitution will also end as the government will issue licenses to traders upon satisfying the set requirements and this will give the government the opportunity to monitor and control the prostitution.

Support from World Health Organization

Other organizations such as World Health Organizations have joined Amnesty International in support of legalizing prostitution. World Health Organization argues that legalizing prostitution can enable the government to have access to the industry and learn everything about it and this can discourage the vice in the long run (Nathanson et al). In countries such as India, there are no legal barriers to prostitution but there is a social barrier that has worked efficiently for India as cases of prostitution is highly condemned in social set up which has led to decrease in cases of prostitution. Legalizing prostitution can also end the black market that encourages human trafficking. Further, it can reduce or eliminate crime against women such as rape and the spread of HIV/AIDS as the government will enact laws that make protection or use of condoms compulsory. However, other schools of thought have argued that legalizing prostitution will promote immorality in the world.

It can be concluded that legalizing prostitution has more merits than demerits and the government should legalize prostitution in order for prostitutes to pay taxes, access better medical services and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS by controlling the prostitution industry.

Works Cited

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men. , 2016. Internet resource.

Weitzer, Ronald J. Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Print.

Deadline is approaching?

Wait no more. Let us write you an essay from scratch

Related Essays

Related topics.

Find Out the Cost of Your Paper

Type your email

By clicking “Submit”, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy policy. Sometimes you will receive account related emails.