Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business (39 page)
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Authors: Ronald Weitzer
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23
. The most recent polls are from the 1990s. See Ronald Weitzer, “The Politics of Prostitution in America,” in Ronald Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry
, New York: Routledge, 2000.
24
. The figures were 41 percent in 1984 and 33 percent in 2008, but the 2008 figure may be exceptional rather than marking a trend, given that the figures for 2004 and 2006 were 38 percent and 39 percent, respectively (Davis and Smith,
General Social Survey
). The question asked respondents which policy is closest to their own view: “There should be laws against the distribution of pornography whatever the age. There should be laws against the distribution of pornography to persons under 18. There should be no laws against the distribution of pornography.” The figures presented here are for the first option, a universal ban on distribution. Women are more likely than men to want porn outlawed: 40 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in 2008.
25
. Gallup,
Gallup Poll Monthly
, 1991; 46 percent thought female strippers and 45 percent thought male strippers “should be illegal at bars or clubs.”
26
. Arlene Carmen and Howard Moody,
Working Women: The Subterranean World of Street Prostitution
, New York: Harper and Row, 1985; Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds.,
Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry
, Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1987; Nadine Strossen,
Defending Pornography
, New York: Anchor, 1995; Wendy McElroy,
XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography
, New York: St. Martin’s, 1995; Wendy Chapkis,
Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor
, New York: Routledge, 1997.
27
. Noah Zatz, “Sex Work/Sex Act: Law, Labor, and Desire in Constructions of Prostitution,”
Signs
22 (1997): 277–308, at p. 291.
28
. Chapkis,
Live Sex Acts
,
p. 30
.
29
. Paglia, quoted in Robert Meier and Gilbert Geis,
Victimless Crime? Prostitution, Drugs, Homosexuality, Abortion
, Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1997,
p. 44
.
30
. Shannon Bell,
Whore Carnival
, New York: Autonomedia, 1995,
p. 16
.
31
. Annie Sprinkle, “The Forty Reasons Why Whores Are My Heroes,”
Social Alternatives
18 (1999): 8.
32
. Dolores French,
Working: My Life as a Prostitute
, New York: Dutton, 1988,
pp. 176
,
178
.
33
. Paglia, quoted in Chapkis,
Live Sex Acts
,
p. 22
.
34
. Russell Campbell,
Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema
, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
35
. Patty Kelly,
Lydia’s Open Door: Inside Mexico’s Most Modern Brothel
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008,
pp. 202
.
37
. Cleo Odzer,
Patpong Sisters: An American Woman’s View of the Bangkok Sex World
, New York: Arcade, 1994,
pp. 181
.
38
. Ibid., p. 303.
39
. Sukanya Hantrakul, “Prostitution in Thailand,” paper quoted in ibid.,
p. 133
.
40
. Peter Aggleton, ed.,
Men Who Sell Sex
, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999; Jude Uy, Jeffrey Parsons, David Bimbi, Juline Koken, and Perry Halkitis, “Gay and Bisexual Male Escorts Who Advertise on the Internet: Understanding the Reasons for and Effects of Involvement in Commercial Sex,”
International Journal of Men’s Health
3 (2007): 11–26; Akiko Takeyama, “Commodified Romance in a Tokyo Host Club,” in Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta, eds.,
Genders, Transgenders, and Sexualities in Japan
, New York: Routledge, 2005.
41
. Joe Thomas, “Gay Male Pornography since Stonewall,” in Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale
, 2nd ed.,
p. 84
. For a similar argument regarding the liberatory potential of gay porn, see Carl Stychin, “Exploring the Limits: Feminism and the Legal Regulation of Gay Male Pornography,”
Vermont Law Review
16 (1992): 857–900.
42
. Katherine Frank and Michelle Carnes, “Gender and Space in Strip Clubs,” in Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale
, 2nd ed.
43
. Don Kulick,
Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Prostitutes
, Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1998,
p. 136
.
44
. Lydia Sausa, JoAnne Keatley, and Don Operario, “Perceived Risks and Benefits of Sex Work among Transgender Women of Color in San Francisco,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior
36 (2007): 768–777, at p. 772. See also Cymene Howe, Susanna Zaraysky, and Lois Lorentzen, “Transgender Sex Workers and Sexual Transmigration between Guadalajara and San Francisco,”
Latin American Perspectives
35 (2008): 31–50.
45
. Jill Bakehorn, “Women-Made Pornography,” in Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale
, 2nd ed.
46
. Carole Pateman,
The Sexual Contract
, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988,
pp. 199
,
208
.
47
. Kathleen Barry,
The Prostitution of Sexuality
, New York: NYU Press, 1995; Andrea Dworkin,
Pornography: Men Possessing Women
, New York: Putnam, 1981; Andrea Dworkin,
Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War against Women
, New York: Free Press, 1997; Sheila Jeffreys,
The Idea of Prostitution
, North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex, 1997; Catharine MacKinnon,
Feminism Unmodified
, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987; Catharine MacKinnon,
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
48
. Melissa Farley, “Affidavit of Melissa Farley,” in
Bedford v. Attorney General of Canada
, Case No. 07-CV-329807PD1, Superior Court of Justice, Ontario, Canada, 2008,
p. 16
.
49
. Janice Raymond, “Prostitution Is Rape That’s Paid For,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 11, 1995, p. B6.
50
. Melissa Farley, “Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia: What We Must
Not Know
in Order to Keep the Business of Sexual Exploitation Running Smoothly,”
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
18 (2006): 101–136, at
p. 114
.
51
. Janice Raymond, “Prostitution on Demand: Legalizing the Buyers as Sexual Consumers,”
Violence Against Women
10 (2004): 1156–1186, at p. 1183.
52
. Jeffreys,
Idea of Prostitution
, p. 330.
53
. Melissa Farley, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries,”
Journal of Trauma Practice
2 (2003): 33–74, at
p. 34
.
54
. It could be argued that the phrase “buy women” objectifies women who work in prostitution by treating them as commodities, rather than as people supplying a sexual service.
55
. Jody Raphael and Deborah Shapiro,
Sisters Speak Out: The Lives and Needs of Prostituted Women in Chicago
, Chicago: Center for Impact Research, 2002,
p. 137
.
56
. Melissa Farley, “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart: Prostitution Harms Women Even If Legalized or Decriminalized,”
Violence Against Women
10 (2004): 1087–1125, at p. 1102.
57
. Melissa Farley, quoted in Annie Brown, “Sex Industry in Scotland: Inside the Deluded Minds of the Punters,”
Daily Record
(Scotland), April 28, 2008.
58
. Jan Macleod, Melissa Farley, Lynn Anderson, and Jacqueline Golding,
Challenging Men’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland
, Glasgow, Scotland: Women’s Support Project, 2008,
p. 27
.
59
. Donna Hughes,
The Demand for Victims of Sex Trafficking
, Kingston: University of Rhode Island, 2005,
p. 7
.
60
. Dworkin,
Life and Death
,
p. 145
.
61
. Farley, “Bad for the Body,” p. 1101.
62
. Farley, “Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia,”
p. 107
.
64
. Catharine MacKinnon, “Pornography as Trafficking,”
Michigan Journal of International Law
26 (2005): 993–1012, at pp. 993, 1004.
65
. Ibid., p. 999.
66
. These claims are repeatedly made by oppression writers and activists, in publications and on their organizations’ websites, such as that of Raymond’s Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Farley’s Prostitution Research and Education.
67
. Marianne Hester and Nicole Westmarland,
Tackling Street Prostitution: Towards a Holistic Approach
, Research Study 279, London: Home Office, 2004.
68
. Maaike van Veen, “HIV and Sexual Risk Behavior among Commercial Sex Workers in the Netherlands,
Archives of Sexual Behavior
39 (2010): 714–723.
69
. Institute for Population and Social Research,
2007 Survey of Sexual and Reproductive Health of Sex Workers in Thailand
, Salaya, Thailand: Mahidol University, 2007,
pp. 19
,
35
. It is possible that there was some underreporting of drug use.
70
. Ine Vanwesenbeeck, Ron de Graaf, Gertjan van Zessen, Cees Straver, and Jan Visser, “Professional HIV Risk Taking, Levels of Victimization, and Well-Being in Female Prostitutes in the Netherlands,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior
24 (1995): 503–515.
71
. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Carole S. Vance, ed.,
Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality
, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 301.
72
. Janice Raymond, “Ten Reasons for
Not
Legalizing Prostitution and a Legal Response to the Demand for Prostitution,”
Journal of Trauma Practice
2 (2003): 315–322, at p. 325.
73
. Melissa Farley,
Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections
, San Francisco: Prostitution Research and Education, 2007,
p. 22
.
74
. Ibid.
77
. Farley, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries,”
p. 52
.
78
. Melissa Farley, “Prostitution Harms Women Even If Indoors: Reply to Weitzer,”
Violence Against Women
11 (2005): 950–964, at p. 954.
79
. This tendency is documented in Weitzer, “Mythology of Prostitution.”
80
. Karl Popper,
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
, New York: Basic Books, 1959.
81
. Helga Hallgrimsdottir, Rachel Phillips, and Cecilia Benoit, “Fallen Women and Rescued Girls: Social Stigma and Media Narratives of the Sex Industry in Victoria, BC from 1980–2005,”
Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology
43 (2006): 265–280.
82
. Ronald Weitzer, “Legalizing Prostitution: Morality Politics in Western Australia,”
British Journal of Criminology
49 (2009): 88–105.
83
. In addition to ruling that the prostitution laws were unconstitutional because they had the effect of further endangering prostitutes, the judge stated,
I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. … Her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley’s unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence. Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions. For example, comments such as, “prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family,” and “just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children … men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women” make her opinions less persuasive. Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including “that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her.” Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley’s evidence. … Similarly, I find that Drs. Raymond and Poulin were more like advocates than experts offering independent opinions to the court. At times, they made bold, sweeping statements that were not reflected in their research.
Bedford v. Canada
, 2010 ONSC 4264, Superior Court of Justice, Ontario, Canada, Justice Himel, September 28, 2010, paras. 353–357. The ruling struck down the criminal-code sections that outlawed keeping a bawdy house, living on the avails of prostitution, and communicating in a public place for the purpose of engaging in prostitution.
84
. Julia O’Connell Davidson,
Power, Prostitution, and Freedom
, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
85
. Campbell,
Marked Women
.
86
. Ine Vanwesenbeeck, “Another Decade of Social Scientific Work on Prostitution,”
Annual Review of Sex Research
12 (2001): 242–289; Frances Shaver, “Sex Work Research: Methodological and Ethical Challenges,”
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
20 (2005): 296–319; Christine Harcourt and B. Donovan, “The Many Faces of Sex Work,”
Sexually Transmitted Infections
81 (2005): 201–206.
87
. See Gail Hershatter, “The Hierarchy of Shanghai Prostitution: 1870–1949,”
Modern China
15 (1989): 463–498; Ruth Karras,
Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England
, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Over the course of the 20th century in Shanghai, for instance, “what had been essentially a luxury market in courtesans became a market primarily geared to supplying sexual services for the growing numbers of commercial and working-class men of the city.” Up-market sex work persisted throughout the century, but less refined forms multiplied as well. Gail Hershatter,
Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999,
pp. 64
–65.
