It is a post-Enlightenment, rights-oriented outlook that tells us it is not appropriate for a businessman to tell his secretary to dress sexy for the office, or to do his holiday shopping for him;  we draw a basic distinction between the kinds of services that are appropriately exchanged for money, i.e. 'what is in my job description,' and those which are, or should be, a reflection of intersubjectivity and reciprocity.  We look down on people who use sexual favours to get ahead in academia or the workplace.  We don't want to work for bosses who grope the staff, or make pay raises conditional on a quick shag in the storeroom.

If we take a classic laissez-faire neoliberal approach to prostitution and say that there are no services which it is inappropriate to exchange for money, and that therefore performing sex for money is no different from typing or canning fish for money -- hey, it's just supply and demand, rational actors completing a transaction like any other in a free market -- then how do we at the same time maintain that the secretary should not be required to fellate the boss?  After all, if there is nothing shaming or demeaning about performing sexual acts on persons for whom one has no intimate affection, no basis of trust or love, then why should this not be in her job description right along with shorthand and typing?

But instinctively we know that using the lever of money-power to coerce sexual service is a qualitatively different type of transaction from paying for 8 hours of someone's time to translate documents or wash cars.   Permitting extreme physical intimacy from an untrusted and unloved Other or stranger, on their terms, according to their demand, requires a renunciation of fundamental human boundaries, the acceptance of a profound violation of personal space and bodily/emotional integrity.  Having at the same time to maintain a pretence -- an artificial persona -- only adds to the alienation.  Anyone who has ever worked Reception for 8 hours a day can tell you how wearying and crazy-making it can be to smile brightly and make nice with often obnoxious strangers all day, even when you are having trouble at home or not feeling very well -- to have to put on an act all day long;  imagine having to provide them with the most intimate sexual services as well.

We can judge the depth of our attachment to personal integrity by the shock, outrage, and/or fear that we feel when we read about (or heaven help us, experience) male/male prison rape and prostitution.  When men in prison must submit to sexual service in order to survive or to get along or to earn money, we consider this a tragedy and a horror, a dreadful indictment of an inhumane prison system, a damaging and traumatising experience -- even when some degree of (constrained) choice is involved, we know that rape and the threat of rape are forever hovering to sway that choice.  And we know that vanishingly small numbers of men would make those choices if they were free, on the outside.

But we are supposed to believe that women and girls -- who live in a society not so different from prison society for men, where an unprotected female without wealth is at high risk for rape, and where the protection of one man (however exploitative) may seem better than being "thrown to the wolves" -- take no harm from the same experience.  To believe this, seems to me, is to believe that men are somehow more real human beings, with more dignity and sense of self and self-worth, than women;  which, if I may speak strongly for a moment, is the fundamental assumption of a bigot -- whether racial religious, or sexual.  To assume that another person's self-respect and dignity are inherently of less worth or importance than another's is surely the base assumption of anti-democracy, the root of caste and feudal class and race slavery.

When men are treated as sexual merchandise by other men in prison, we are deeply shocked and understand that this experience could wound and scar an individual's soul and pride for life.  We understand the same when men are coerced into playing out pornographic scenes in Abu Ghraib.  When the coercion used is money rather than guns (or money and guns and fists in many cases), and the coerced or constrained person is female, for some reason we collectively believe that she is miraculously resilient and tough and ultra-balanced enough to take no harm from relinquishing her physical boundaries and allowing the occupation and use of her body by an untrusted other.

Right.  And the Iraqis will run to greet the invading US troops, throwing rice and flowers.  There's more than one kind of exceptionalism and double standard in this world...

There's a good paper on this very issue -- why "sex work" is qualitatively different from most other kinds of paid labour -- from, I think, Journal of Ethics.  I'll try to track it down when I have access to my home library.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

every program in women's studies ought to include a little excursion into the world of the bonobo

Bonobos are, with Chimpanzees, humans' closest relatives. Being primates, both species have complex social behaviour. The ability for cultural transmission has been documented in apes as far from humans as macaques.

Anyway, what makes bonobo society remarkable is that their normal social interactions involve the exchange of sexual favours for material gains. If a male has some food, a female may come close, offer to rub her heginals against his, and then take away a portion of the food. In the much more violent chimpanzee society males usually eat first even when the females find the food, and the females eat what's left. Bonobos engage in genito-genital rubbing to make up after a fight, to ask for favours and to establish social bonds, both with the opposite and the same sex.

If there were no cultural stigma associated to sexual behaviour, it is likely that women would voluntarity exchange sex for money or other favours as the occasion demanded.

Bonobos also give the lie to the idea that only humans have sex for enjoyment and not for procreation --- or indeed that human sex should "naturally" be for procreation only.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

It also bothers me that people put all this moral weight on "legalization."  Why can it not be neutral?  We can argue for days whether selling one's body is "good" or "bad," whether it's healthy or unhealthy, a social construct or a cultural more, but why does that even matter?  

What I'm asking, I guess, is how is making laws that take away someone's right to do what they want with their body any different from controlling the person's body?  To my mind, someone owning someone is not a whole lot worse that someone insisting you don't own yourself.  I think both slavery and punitive criminalization are evil concepts.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

Agnesa, I disagree.

I lived in Via del Mandrione in Rome, which not only is the most renowned street for prostitutes, gipsies, poor immigrants from the south, shanty huts, but also famous for its people, their soldarity and the films shot there by P.P. Pasolini (killed by a  male prostitute in Ostia) and - of course - F. Fellini. If you ever lived in a street like the Mandrione and got befriended to the people, ate with them in the trattorie, invited them to your BBQs, you would find that the puttane are quite respectable and respected persons.

Later I lived several months in a hotel, which was really a brothel, in the Dominican Republic. It was not much different from the Mandrione in Rome. Prostitution was a fact of daily life. The girls were very fully integrated in the social life of the community and very much liked.

There is something wrong with America and the UK, which both have serious problems with poor people, prostitutes and non whites. They are all pitied for, despised, or they must be helped out of their  mere existance.

Lutheran countries are morte relaxed and Catholic nations don't have no problem at all with prostitutes. They will always see the individual first and have developed the mamma-santa-puttana thing.

Here are some historic and recent photos and a oil painting of an artist friend of mine of the Mandrione.

Pasolini also made a film called: Il Mandrione. I got to know some of the characters, who still lived in the neighborhood.

http://www.giardinodivenere.it/rubrichefiles/casilina15.jpg

http://tazzuti.com/quadri/carita_mercenaria.jpg

http://users.libero.it/artware/Fotografie/R/r008.JPG

Here is an article from La Repubblica about the street and its people:

Nella città fra elegia e parodia Mandrione, come una vertigine

MANDRIONE è prima di tutto un nome. Praticamente nessuno a Roma che non sia un archeologo o un carrozziere o un pappa o un impiegato della Banca d'Italia (vedremo poi perché) ha una percezione chiara di questo luogo, ma il nome sì, il nome produce una strana eco e uno si ricorda di esserci stato, magari una notte, in un tour avventuroso...

I falò delle prostitute, le grandi sagome buie degli acquedotti che si accavallano l'uno sull'altro, i treni che ti sfrecciano sotto i piedi... Pasolini, il cinema... gli zingari...

Io non ci andavo forse da quindici, vent'anni. Ragazzi, Roma è inesauribile. Ml ci sono ritrovato una mattina per sbaglio, cercando il commissariato di Torpignattara. E allora ho cominciato a tornarci, una, due, tre volte, e ancora: in metropolitana (fermata: Porta Furba-Quadraro), in moto, in Vespa, in automobile, da solo o a piedi con un amico architetto, Alberto Alessi, che mi spiegava l'unicità di questo luogo dove s'incrociano almeno quattro paesaggi totalmente diversi, uno per ogni punto cardinale, e una vertiginosa stratificazione di storia e antropologia.

Il modo migliore è sempre su due ruote, e imboccando via del Mandrione da fuori, da Porta Furba, sulla Tuscolana. Anche qui il nome, allusivo: alcuni dicono che sl chiami cosi per la presenza di briganti o ladri (dal latino -fur). Per me era sinonimo di una porta che frega chi ci passa sotto: una specie di avvertimento sul carattere fraudolento e ironico della città che finge di accoglierti coi suoi grandiosi monumenti - quando in realtà si fa beffe di te. Ti sfila il portafoglio, mentre hai il naso per aria a guardare gli acquedotti. Ti lascia a bocca aperta. E in effetti, oltrepassato il primo arco, si entra in un altro mondo. Innanzitutto, questa è la campagna romana. Ma sì, il mito di viaggiatori e di pittori. Stiamo entrando in città, eppure subito ne siamo fuori. Espulso, sospesi nel tempo. Lo dico senza enfasi, o forse con un po' di enfasi: è un posto meraviglioso. Gli archi sono masse cupe che si inseguono e si accoppiano. I primi sono interamente murati, altri murati a metà o quanto bastava per costruirci sotto una casetta, una capanna, un magazzino. Gli acquedotti sono tre, l'Acqua Claudia, l'Acqua Marcia (romani) e l'Acquedotto Felice, costruito da papa Sisto V usando i pezzi dei primi due, gli avanzi di un immenso Lego (mi viene in mente una frase di Kafka sul fatto che la nostra esistenza è come costruirsi una casa nuova usando i pezzi della vecchia: e intanto abitiamo in questa incompletezza, in questo continuo trasloco). I due antichi corrono paralleli, almeno virtualmente, perché del Marcio non resta quasi nulla, e quello Felice si accoppia ora all'uno ora all'altro scavalcando il Mandrione da destra a sinistra e poi ancora a destra e poi di nuovo a sinistra, come se non sapesse decidersi. Più avanti le arcate scompaiono dietro mura alberi e cancelli.

Il Mandrione era famoso anzi mitico per la baraccopoli. E per gli zingari, per lo più Rom abruzzesi che vennero ad abitarci tra le due guerre. Fu materia di varie indagini sociologiche, tra cui una bellissima ricerca di Franco Pinna che ci tornò a fotografare nel 1956 e nel 1968. Allora: «... c'erano, davanti ai loro tuguri, a ruzzare sul fango lurido, dei ragazzini, dai due ai quattro o cinque anni...» (indovinate un po' chi ha scritto questo). Ancora quand'ero ragazzo io e ci passavo col vespino per le trasferte calcistiche o musicali, me lo ricordo come un posto brulicante. Ora è quasi deserto. Gli zingari pare che abitino le case popolari a Spinaceto o hanno comprato più avanti, sull'Anagnina. Tutta la striscia a sinistra del Mandrione è proprietà della Banca d'Italia, ai cui impiegati invidio i campi verdi bene innaffiati. E l'erba rara per il calciatore romano, abituato a pestare spianate di terra dura come cemento o affondare nella pozzolana. A destra invece: una sfilza di carrozzieri, fabbri, falegnami, e poi fabbricanti di gommapiuma, infissi, profilati, cancelli, porte blindate, metal-qualcosa, sider-qualcosaltro.

Ecco dove sono finiti tutti gli artigiani della città! Ormai a Roma la gente che lavora si nasconde, è diventata invisibile. Riserve indiane, oasi del lavoro manuale.

Di cani invece ce n'è tanti: ogni volta che sosto davanti a un cancello... dieci secondi e arriva una bestia o più bestie ululanti, in genere lupastri dalle orecchie troppo lunghe o flosce o strappate a morsi e dal pelo chiazzato, pastori tedeschi ibridati, improbabili...

Il Mandrione. si snoda lunghissimo e silenzioso. Passata la stazione Casilina, risbucano dal nulla gli archi a fianco della strada e incastonato come una fortezza d'angolo, un mulino. Di li parte via della Marrana. Proprio a ridosso dell'acquedotto, ma sul lato che dà verso la Tuscolana, c'è un bellissimo centro sportivo, l'AS "Le Mura", quintessenza di romanità, cinquantenni che a mezzogiorno si scambiano pallonetti e battute acide. Sullo sfondo. le arcate secolari, tutte sbreccate contro il cielo azzurro, con ciuffi di rampicanti che invece di rampicare penzolano, e appendiabiti inchiodati nella malta. Di nuovo, debbo dire, che questo è meraviglioso: questa compresenza. Di tempi e funzioni. Qualcosa che sta tra un'elegia struggente e la parodia. Nel silenzio quasi campestre risuonano le grida dell'istruttrice dell'Acquagym e i bassi della musica techno.

Ora siamo nella zona più misteriosa del Mandrione. Il piano stradale si alza per cui le arcate si fanno basse, nane. Molte all'interno sono piastrellate, intonacate, dalle tamponature sbucano ancora gli attacchi dei cessi divelti, dei lavandini. Altre sono sbarrate da reti e ondulati metallici. Qui ci abitava un sacco di gente. Hanno strappato via le baracche, scoperchiando le stanzette ricavate nell'acquedotto. Portate violentemente allo scoperto, le maioliche brillano come sui portali di Babilonia. O come nelle case che ho visto nei dintorni di Mostar, Bosnia, fatte esplodere una per una, con metodo, squarciate dall'interno. Materassi sparsi un po' ovunque. Nel pieno sole fervono le tracce dei traffici notturni. Duecento metri più avanti, tecnicamente parlando, il Mandrione termina, ripassando sotto l'acquedotto e ramificandosi in un quartierino di villette e orti molto ben curati, un piccolo feudo giallorosso su cui campeggia, appeso con lo spago tra una palazzina e l'altra, un paio dl forbicioni simbolici, con cui i "cuginetti" (ma perché questa parentela?) hanno scucito lo scudetto dalla maglia del laziali. Lo so, tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner... anche se io sono un po' stufo sia di comprendere che di perdonare!

La strada che continua a correre sotto l'Acqua Felice qui è la Casilina Vecchia, ma ha il medesimo ritmo sonoro scandito dal passaggio radente del maxi-scooter e i flash visuali degli archi: luce-ombra-luce-ombra-luce, arco-pilone-arco-pilone. E ancora fabbrichette di porte blindate (una vera ossessione...), sfasciacarrozze coi musi e le occhiaia vuote di 500 e Giulia Super che sbucano a mezz'altezza tra le arcate, e fasci di binari a stringere a tenaglia l'abitato. Mi fermo di fronte a una deliziosa casetta ridipinta di verde, col cartello VENDESI, è un locale videobar "per soci con tessera Arci", e da una Simca perfettamente mantenuta sl sporge il guidatore per informarmi: «Là, se vuoi, se scopa».

Sento di essere nell'ombelico della visione. All'incrocio perfetto. II paesaggio si è fatto verticale. Cinque o sei livelli sovrapposti e intersecati. L'acquedotto, in alto. Un Eurostar che sfreccia verso Napoli. La schiena arancione dei bus e le facciate gialle dei palazzoni laggiù sulla Casilina. Voltandomi, a occidente, stagliata, la torretta con l'orologio fascista della ex-fabbrica di lampadine Coppola e l'agglomerato della Stazione Tuscolana, verso cui, sbucando all'improvviso dalla galleria sotto i miei piedi, striscia faticosamente un treno merci.

E' la vertigine. E proprio in questo punto, in questo snodo ideale, si affacciano tra gli archi le statue di gesso, anzi, di "marmocemento" (!!) della fabbrica "ROMA ANTICA": Ursus che piega la testa del toro, un imperatore Giulio-Claudio a scelta, un bronzo di Riace (quello più rollaccione) e poi colonne infrante, satiri, veneri callipigie, e la copia della Bocca della Verità, dove mio padre, copiando Gregory Peck (o era Gregory Peck che copia mio padre?) mise la mano dopo aver sposato mia madre A.D. 1955. E' il trionfo di Roma, del suo beffardo gioco vero-falso. La materia dell'illusione, il "marmocemento"...

Torno iindietro sulla Tuscolana e dal Quadraro mi rifaccio il Mandrione per misurarlo sul contachilometri della moto. Incredibile: è come via del Corso, anzi più lungo: due chilometri. E se ci aggiungo l'ultimo pezzo di Casilina, diventa un tragitto come da Piazza del Popolo al Colosseo. Un impressionante pezzo di città...

Proprio al termine del percorso, mentre la Casilina s'imbuca contromano sotto un arco solitario con su scritto: MOTO PERICOLO!!, ripassando sotto l'Acqua Felice la strada prende nome di Via della Stazione Tuscolana e forma un gomito, una piccola ansa di qualche decina di metri quadrati, nascosta dall'ombra di fichi e palme. Qualcuno, la dentro, protetto dall'incannucciata, sta lavorando. Cosa fa? Zappa la terra.

E' un orto di guerra, incastonato nella città.

di Eraldo Albinati

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819

Those from areas where it was illegal were, largely, from broken homes.  The ones in legalized areas were, typically, women putting themselves through law school.

Has this been your experience?  It seems like there should probably be a substantial difference between a prostitute who has been smuggled into (say) the US via Los Angeles from China, and a prostitute in (say) Vegas, where it's legal, regulated, and taxed.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

But, but - the vast majority of prostitutes do their jobs out of desperation brought on by extreme poverty. It is not really a choice but a miserable life brought on by misery.

So as you put it, the question is whether that misery is at least a bit smaller with criminilization or regulation. I'm inclined to believe that it is the latter, though it won't fully eliminate criminal involvement any more than legalized gambling completely gets rid of illegal bookies and their enforcers.

i dziekuje za te 'dzienniki', sa ciekawe, wywarzone dyskusje trudnego tematu.

I would also suggest that a definition of prositution is very difficult in a society where many social arrangements involve the implied exchange of sex for some form of financial support. At one extreme it could be argued that a marriage involving one partner being the sole earner is a form of prostitution - indeed many feminists have made the point. Now you may very well argue that marriage is a social institution to recognise a wider relationship than purely a sexual one. So what about the mistress of a wealthy man who sets her up with home and supports her financially and "keeps her sweet" with gifts of jewllery say. Is she any less of a prostitute than the escort who accompanies her client to a meal and followed by a sexual encounter. Is it different if that sexual encounter is an explicit part of the arrangement or a voluntary extension?

If there is an element of consent or mutual attraction as those interactions, are they qualatively different from a girl being lured from eastern Europe and then forced to work in a brothel under threat of violence to her or her family in her home country? I would suggest that there is but the exact definition is difficult to identify. Is it OK for the rich or attractive to pay for sex as a convenience but not for those who might not otherwise be able to find company? Do we condemn the elderly or disabled for hiring a prostitute because they are not confident or too socially isolated to enter into a relationship leading to a sexual one or with a person whose looks are idealised as the most attractive in our society? What about the women, is there a difference between the street walker in her 30s who is trying to feed a family and the young student doing "escort" work to pay off the University fees and loans that the Blair government introduced?

What you have skimmed over are male protitutes. You link this in your diary above to prison rape and the selling of a man's sexual services by a more powerful one in the jail. I would suggest that that is similar to the position of the eastern European girls forced to work in brothels. Although there is commercial exploitation of their bodies, it is more to do with abuse and the exercise of power. There are many male prostitutes outside of prisons. Some service rich female clients who are using them purely for convenience so they do not have to go out to socialise, just like the businessman. Others alternatively or in addition service gay clients. The motive for the clients of the "escorts" who advertise in the various gay magazines or sites is surely to have sex with someone who has one of the stereotypically ideal bodies withing the community or sometimes to indulge in activities it is difficult to find a partner for. An example here might be the guy in his mid-50s who services clients who are into headmaster/schoolboy fantasies. That is of course not to say that there are not young and vulnerable boys who are forced into prostitution to survive or feed a drug habit.

While I think there would be unanimity that the owners and operators of brothels were force and coercion is used to exploit the workers, there surely is a case to be made that properly run "houses" could provide a safer working environment, certainly much safer than either street walking or setting up in an isolated room without the opportunity of either screening clients or having some personal security. If we accept that, what should be done about those who are streetwalking because they are unable to get work in the "houses" Should they be arrested and most likely fined and forced back on the streets to pay the fine?

At the very least we should ensure that advice, testing and counselling is freely available for sex workers. The abusive brothels I would suggest need no extra legislation in most countries. They are clearly involved in quasi-slavery and those running them should be prosecuted for kidnap, incitement to rape and imprisonment. Proper social services and hostels should reduce the need for the young and vulnerable to use prostitution to fill the funding gap tht means they do not have such help. We should be aiming to provide the sex workers with the best protection and working conditions we can alongside opportunities for alternative employment if they want to "retire".  

Doubtless the high respect in which prostitutes are held in Italy explains the lively business of smuggling in Nigerian women without papers and using them  for rough trade:

        Last October, a local weekly, The News, reported the Italian ambassador to Nigeria, Giovanni Germano, as saying that 60 percent of all sex workers in his country were Nigerians. Statistics show that more than 90 percent of those repatriated or intercepted came from Edo State in the southwest.

        Olateru-Olagbegi, whose organisation has embarked on a campaign against the trend, says even where the girls realised that the object of the trip was to engage in prostitution, most did not bargain for the type of bondage and abuse to which they were subjected.

        "The sponsors usually make them undertake secret oaths or lawyers are brought in to make agreements. They now arrange all the travel documents, give them orientation and send them into the streets," she said.  

        "The type of sex involved often includes bestiality - sex with dogs and monkeys, and many of them didn't bargain for that," she added.  

        The amounts they owe to their sponsors, usually in the region of US $50,000, have to be paid off over years before the women can earn their freedom.

Followups:  Two articles which make it pretty clear that trafficking works about the same in the UK,
where prostitution is technically illegal, and in Italy where it is legal:
BBC article 1,
BBC Article 2

More:

• some statistics on trafficking and its relationship to legal prostitution in Italy


• various statistics on trafficking and prostitution in Italy


• WHO Factsheet on violence worldwide, including family and prostitution-related violence (beware, PDF)


• similar info in article form

Anyway, here's some reading material to enrich the debate.

Here is an argument for the elimination of commercial sex, "counterbalanced" by what I take to be a satire on arguments for its promotion (though it could be serious): Prostitution:  Solutions for a Global Problem ... and here is an interview with one of the most active "investigative journalists" (actually an academic) researching the material conditions of modern prostitution Merge Magazine interviews Dr Melissa Farley, which states the "anti" case pretty succinctly.

This may be the most cogent argument I know of for legalisation, and it makes telling points (but I am not sure it stands up all that well to actual research and testimony from "legalised" countries and brothels): Prostitution in Canada: The Invisible Menace or the Menace of Invisibility?

And this may possibly be the best summary of the counterargument:  Ten Reasons for Not Legalising Prostitution

As to the actual experiences of many prostituted persons and how they compare to the sanitised, "happy hooker" or "top dollar dominatrix" story told by Hollywood and popular humour and folklore: Here is a study on PTSD among prostitutes, a comparative survey across five countries:
"Across countries, 73 percent reported physical assault in prostitution, 62 percent reported having been raped since entering prostitution, 67 percent met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. On average, 92 percent stated that they wanted to leave prostitution. We investigated effects of race, and whether the person was prostituted on the street or in a brothel."    The whole paper is worth a read.

Is prostitution simply a matter of a commercial transaction between adults?  Not really, since a large percentage of prostitutes start working the streets as children or teenagers: "Undercutting the myth that prostitution is an act between two consenting adults, a study of the lives and needs of prostituted women in Chicago reveals that the women started in prostitution as teens. According to the Center for Impact Research, 32 percent first exchanged sex for money between the ages of 12 and 15."

This is a fairly comprehensive paper (warning, PDF!) from the anti-prostitution viewpoint, including specific data based on interviews with legalised brothel workers in Australia (the poster child for legalisation).  I apologise for the somewhat explicit and disturbing nature of the excerpt below, but I think it is important to bear in mind what kind of work this really is, what the customers demand as "sex," and how often and to what extent their demands include, inevitably, the 'right' to treat contemptuously, hurt, and damage the bodies of the prostituted women.

The idea that prostitution should be seen as work is one of the arguments that was made in favour of the legalising or decriminalising of brothel prostitution that has taken place in several states of Australia. In fact there is always an illegal industry vastly larger than that which is licensed or has planning permission. In Victoria, according to the owners of the legal brothel industry, there are 400 illegal brothels to 91 legal ones. So the industry is mostly illegal and run by criminals. Street prostitution, in which women dependent on drugs and girls too young to work in brothels are exposed to the most extreme forms of sexual exploitation and violence, is increasing in Victoria. None of the problems that legalising brothels was said to solve, such as an out of control illegal industry and street prostitution, has been alleviated.

It is well known that street prostitution is extremely dangerous. Women are at risk of rape and murder, beatings, knifings [...] The violence is carried out against so-called high class prostituted women as well. A booklet for call girls in London recommends having mirrored walls so women can see whether the man has a knife behind his back. [...]

In brothel prostitution these extraordinary problems (after all what other form of work includes murder as an ordinary hazard?) are supposed to be reduced. Let us consider the legal brothels of Melbourne, supposedly the créme de la créme of prostitution.

One of my students did research in a legal brothel by interviewing women both before and after bookings about the boundaries they tried to create to control what men were able to do to them and to what extent they were successful.

The brothel she studied contained a lounge in which the introductions took place. All the women waited in the lounge. Men came in one at a time to make their selection and the women had to compete to be chosen. They would come up and touch the men sexually and vie with each other in offering what they would do. Some might offer sex without condoms if they particularly needed the money. Then they went up to the room. Women would often apply lubricant in a bathroom on the way up because the men would be most unhappy if they got the impression the women were not sexually aroused and some would refuse to pay.

Then the women had to try to control the encounter. Men would sometimes want an all around the world i.e. access to any orifice in any way and the right to touch any part of the womans body. The woman must then struggle to restrict him whilst not losing the booking. One woman said that for anal she would charge $500 but this would be according to how large it was i.e. a larger penis means more pain. Another woman said a man had started to put lubricant on his fist and when she asked what it was for he said he intended to fistfuck her. The demand for fistfucking suggests that the increasingly violent and degrading practices carried out upon women in pornography are educating men in what they wish to do to women, first in prostitution and then in their relationships. This applies also to anal sex. When women came down from bookings one would shower for 10 minutes in very hot water to get the dirt off her body.

Before a booking one woman would come out in goose bumps. Her skin was crawling at the thought of what she would have to endure. Sexual harassment is what the man pays for. The women dissociate to survive the ordeal using psychological techniques or drugs and alcohol.  Women in prostitution are not a different kind of women who can endure the unwanted hands and penises of men in and on their bodies more easily than others. It is true that many are seasoned by previous sexual violence in childhood or adulthood.  To such women the violence of prostitution can seem less severe. But they hate it just as much. Any acceptance of prostitution is an acceptance that certain women can reasonably be set aside as appropriate objects of exactly the harassment that other non-prostituted women seek to get out of their workplaces and lives.

This is the story of the most respectable form of prostitution in the world. Here in Australia there are codes for the implementation of occupational health and safety OHS) in brothels drawn up by state authorities, but only for the tiny number of brothels that are legal. It is hard to work out occupational health and safety codes for work in which women are regularly at risk of violence and harassment such as men twisting nipples and shoving fingers up women's anuses. Codes have to deal with diseases which are life-threatening, where women may be required to handle faeces and urine as well as semen, where they have to suffer the psychological damage of dissociation. Codes for other workplaces require the isolation of dangerous substances, wearing gloves etc. Prostituted women are in no position to do these things.

More on Prostitutes and PTSD

The experiences of a woman who prostituted primarily in strip clubs, but also in massage, escort and street prostitution, are typical (Farley et al., 2003). In strip club prostitution, she was sexually harassed and assaulted. Stripping required her to smilingly accommodate customers' verbal abuse. Customers grabbed and pinched her legs, arms, breasts, buttocks and crotch, sometimes resulting in bruises and scratches. Customers squeezed her breasts until she was in severe pain, and they humiliated her by ejaculating on her face. Customers and pimps physically brutalized her. She was severely bruised from beatings and frequently had black eyes. Pimps pulled her hair as a means of control and torture. She was repeatedly beaten on the head with closed fists, sometimes resulting in unconsciousness. From these beatings, her eardrum was damaged, and her jaw was dislocated and remains so many years later. She was cut with knives. She was burned with cigarettes by customers who smoked while raping her. She was gang-raped and she was also raped individually by at least 20 men at different times in her life. These rapes by johns and pimps sometimes resulted in internal bleeding.

Yet this woman described the psychological damage of prostitution as far worse than the physical violence. She explained that prostitution "is internally damaging. You become in your own mind what these people do and say with you" (Farley et al., 2003).

Almost two decades earlier, Norwegian researchers noted that women in prostitution were treated like commodities into which men masturbate, causing immense psychological harm to the person acting as receptacle (Hoigard and Finstad, 1986).

In other words, the harm done to women in prostitution is not merely a byproduct of the illegality of the trade and the secrecy, repression and coercion typical of an illegal business.  Harm is also the commodity being sold.  In the legal brothels of Australia, a woman can lose income if she refuses painful anal intercourse with a client;  her only other option is to charge more for enduring the painful experience.  I suggest the reader -- particularly the hetero male reader -- might wish to think seriously about how much a well-endowed man would have to pay him to cooperate with such a demand -- would it be more than $500 AUD?  How much would it be?  What would it be like to make a living catering to such demands, several times a day?  To lose significant money by insisting on only "safe" or ordinary sex?  To be offered big bonuses for risking HIV infection by not insisting on a condom?  How much money would one have to earn to make it worthwhile?  Would it be preferable to other "dirty" jobs like bricklaying, ditch-digging, or cleaning toilets?

And more fundamentally, is there any such thing as a "fair price" for hurting and demeaning another person?  Perhaps we can calculate one by asking, What price would you or I pay to have our daughter, or any other woman we cared about, spared from such an experience?  What would we pay in ransom to get our daughter safely out of such a situation?  I'm thinking five figures, six figures, heck, most parents would pay whatever was asked, if they had to go into debt for the rest of their lives.  Why are not prostituted women paid these kinds of sums, if that is the fair-market price for the various harms they are expected to endure?

The question of why so many men wish to hurt or demean women is a far larger one.  The scope of a discussion of patriarchy, misogyny, and their bearing on male sexuality as constructed in various cultures around the world, is so vast that I doubt a whole forum could hold it, let alone one thread or diary.  (Head over to Stan's place and join the brawl in progress.) I would suggest that for the moment, rather than fleeing to idyllic fantasies of Bonobo-land, those concerned with social justice should accept the prevailing Hobbesian realities: that many men enjoy hurting women and find sex inadequate unless it includes bullying and hurting;  that these men are very likely to try to buy access to "disposable" women and children for anonymous use, so as to avoid the complications and loss of reputation involved in being a known batterer or abuser within a community;  and working from these distressing but well-attested realities, figure out how to curb this tendency and protect our society's most vulnerable women and children from it.  Figuring out how these men got to be this way and how we could raise boys to be less violent and hateful towards girls and women, would be a fine project;  but that's a multigenerational effort.  In the meantime there is actually-existing abuse and suffering to be addressed, and no easy answers.  

Certainly criminalising the prostituted women themselves is absurd and misogynist.  They are either free agents engaging voluntarily in sexual trade, or victims of coercion, and in neither case are they coercing or doing harm to others.  Perhaps what should be criminalised is "profiteering off the sexual labour of another person" (there have been laws like this in the past prohibiting pimping specifically).  And of course existing laws against kidnapping, rape, assault and GBH should be applied without prejudice to offences against prostituted women (fat chance of that, in a world where male police, judges, lawyers and politicians are often among the men abusing the prostitutes, but it's a nice idea).

The paper on choice, law, and prostitution is S Anderson, "Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy:  Making Sense of the Prohibition of Prostitution", from Ethics July 2002.  I don't think it is available online, unless you have access to Lexis/Nexis or something similar.  Which is a pity as it is one of the best discussions to date of the debate between normalisers and abolitionists.


The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

This is to illustrate the title of the diary: what's consumable? what do we actually buy? The body can be sold, and can be used to sell (other products). Is it the "promise" of an access to that body which you buy when you buy that product? If that's what advertising is suggesting, what's the responsibility of that sector in perpetuating the mindsets and stereotypes that then generate, or at least make posssible and "normal" the abusive behaviors we've discussed?

Or can bodies be enjoyed by simply looking?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

-- I am puzzled with regard to the contribution of prostitutes to world peace.  This would include no doubt the camp followers who have accompanied every imperial army into battle at least since Roman times and probably long before?  Or the legions of women forcibly prostituted for the "comfort" of occupational armies throughout history?  Or the girls and women who "acted" and posed for the video pornography which was provided to US bomber pilots in Gulf War I for their pre-mission viewing, to get them "revved up" and ready to drop explosives on other human beings?  When the Germans occupied Paris, iirc, the first businesses commanded to re-open were the brothels.  Doubtless this was a sincere gesture, on the part of the occupiers, towards world peace?  Colour me puzzled.

-- I am not sure why the example of "typical prostitute" that seems to spring to mind (for liberals attempting to defend the institution anyway) is a high-dollar dominatrix in a Berlin nightclub or brothel ... must be some kind of Weimar nostalgia trip :-)  Anyway, given the choice between wearing an uncomfortable and silly costume and acting out silly rituals either at EuroDisneyWorld or in a brothel, I think I would very quickly choose EuroDisney... even if the pay was considerably lower, which it probably would be.  neither set of customers could be anything other than boring as hell (is there anything more tedious than the same old dozen or so patriarchal sex fantasies with their trivial variations? yaaaawn), and at least I wouldn't have to get as up close and personal with the turistas at Mouse Heaven :-)

I should probably mention the recent (from Australia no less) book Not For Sale, a collection of essays critiquing the global convenience-sex industry.  [Disclaimer:  I did contribute some material to this book, but I don't get a penny from its sales, so there's no profit interest involved.]  Also Christa Wichtericht, The Globalised Woman...  and speaking of Weimar, for historical interest Theweleit's Male Fantasies (in two volumes) iirc (it's been a while) explores the connections between sexual fantasies, masculinity, national identity, militarism, violence and all the rest in the run-up to the Third Reich.  

Lastly I suggest a valuable mental exercise for every contributor who sincerely believes that there is nothing wrong with prostitution, that there should be no quibbling about the perfectly reasonable exchange of sex for money, etc.  Here it is:  every time (every single time) you hear someone, including yourself, use prostitution or sexual accommodation as a metaphor for spinelessness, gutlessness, venality, dishonesty, vacuity, weakness etc. -- stop and issue a verbal correction.  When someone refers to the corporate media as "presstitutes," interrupt and tell them that there is nothing wrong with prostitution, it is an honest profession and quite separate from corruption or cowardice.  When someone talks about spineless Democrats despicably "rolling over for" the Bush regime or the US press "going on its knees" to Bush, remind them that there is nothing at all demeaning about submitting to male sexual demands, particularly if money changes hands.  Every time someone calls a politician "corporate whore", tell them how legit a career prostitution is or should be, and how unfair it is to invoke it as a casual insult.  Every time someone says "lies like a whore" or "whores around" or "what a cocksucker" or "he's Cheney's bitch" or "that sucks" or "I wouldn't just bend over for that" or "jeez we really took it in the shorts that time" or any of the plethora of other everyday expressions that reveal a reflexive equation of sex and domination, receptivity and inferiority... interrupt the conversation, and defend the whores.

Just some more food for thought.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

Actually, the only thing that makes me consider rape to be as awful as it is IS the possibility of life, and also STDs. In of itself, while it can be fairly painful, is not that much of a big deal. Certainly, it's trespassing against your property and could result in great bodily harm, and you have the right to defend yourself, but mostly it's psychologically damaging more than anything else.

I'm always very skeptical of women who claim they were raped- especially to completion- because it is actually extremely difficult to rape a struggling, dry woman. Now, if there's a weapon involved I could see why a woman might not resist, but for the most part I think that if a woman regrets having sex, she thinks it was rape.

And there's lots more where that came from.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

You are touching a very important and controversal topic. One about which I have very mixed feelings, as it involves so many things, power, money, shame, slavery. misstreatment... - but on the other hand I also feel grateful to these women as they are providing a important service, which saves other women from being hurt. I do know of some men who go to prostitutes to live out their more negative phantasies with a prostitute, instead of living them with their wives. Whatever the problem what I consider wrong is that usually there are laws against prostitutes, but no laws against their clients.

Sorry for the ramble, shouldn't write when in a hurry, but wanted to let you know that I appreciate you bringing up the topic.

"Blow Bang #4" was in the "mainstream" section of a local adult video store. For a research project on the content of contemporary mass-marketed pornography, I asked the folks who work there to help me pick out typical videos rented by the typical customer. [editor's emphasis] One of the 15 tapes I left with was "Blow Bang #4."

"Blow Bang #4" is: Eight different scenes in which a woman kneels in the middle of a group of three to eight men and performs oral sex on them. At the end of each scene, each of the men ejaculates onto the woman's face or into her mouth. To borrow from the description on the video box, the video consists of: "Dirty little bitches surrounded by hard throbbing cocks ... and they like it."

In one of these scenes, a young woman dressed as a cheerleader is surrounded by six men. For about seven minutes, "Dynamite" (the name she gives on tape) methodically moves from man to man while they offer insults that start with "you little cheerleading slut" and get uglier from there. For another minute and a half, she sits upside down on a couch, her head hanging over the edge, while men thrust into her mouth, causing her to gag. She strikes the pose of the bad girl to the end. "You like coming on my pretty little face, don't you," she says, as they ejaculate on her face and in her mouth for the final two minutes of the scene.

this is something that no one I know does in their own bedroom or kitchen.  nor do I know -- over a long life in which I have known many women friends well enough to talk about intimate matters -- even one who ever said to me that she had the slightest desire to allow a group of strange men to ejaculate on her face.  

this is, however, a patriarchal disciplinary practise of long standing -- known as bukkake in Japan where it was used as a public humiliation and punishment for women found guilty of adultery;  if you google for it you will find that it is a fetish with an astonishingly large "fan base" online -- hundreds of sites, videos, alleged "home movies", textbased fantasies, etc.  [now why, we ask ourselves, should thousands or millions of men be sexually fascinated and fixated on a practise originally calculated to shame and humiliate a woman for rebelling against male authority?  could this have anything to do with a panicky backlash against the advances in women's status in the industrialised nations during C20?]

yes, these are Z (let alone C) movies -- total drek.  but they are also a mainstay of the US porn industry, with millions of rentals per month.  (McDonalds food is also pretty darned awful, and it is still the most popular "restaurant" food in the US.)  as Jensen coolly notes, Even a cursory review of pornography reveals that great camera work is not a requirement for success. "Blow Bang #4" is one of 11,000 new hardcore pornographic videos released each year, one of 721 million tapes rented each year in a country where total pornographic video sales and rentals total about $4 billion annually.  (that's more cash flow than the "legit" film industry, btw -- so much for the idea that  the trade is "suppressed" in any practical way).

For many of the women who feel so defeated by knowing, the most distressing part doesn't seem to be simply learning what is in the videos but knowing that men gain pleasure from what is in the videos. They ask me, over and over, "Why do men like this? What do you guys get from this?" They want to know why the mostly male consumers spend an estimated $10 billion a year on pornography in the United States and $56 billion around the world.

It is an important question with, no doubt, complex answers. What does is say about our society when men will take home a tape like "Blow Bang #4" and watch it, and masturbate to it? What does it say about our society's conception of sexuality and masculinity that large numbers of men can find pleasure in watching a young woman gag while a penis is pushed into her throat followed by six men ejaculating on her face and in her mouth? Or that other men, who might find that scene too extreme, prefer to watch one man have sex with a woman that begins with tender words and ends with "Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?" and ejaculation on her breasts? What does it say that such a video, made for men to masturbate to, is considered classy and upscale?

I think it says masculinity in this culture is in trouble.

some bitter old cynics would say that masculinity in this culture is doing just great -- adhering to good ol' patriarchal values familiar for millennia -- and that it's women who are in trouble.

Prof. Jensen's freelance articles on the convenience-sex industry.  Author of books The Heart of Whiteness and Citizens of the Empire.  Professor of Journalism (mostly investigative, one suspects) at UT.  Articles on US politics, imperialism, corporate power, Bush regime and related topics

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...