Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (45 page)

19. Monto “Final Report.”

20. Julia O’Connell Davidson, “The Rights and Wrongs of Prostitution,”

Hypatia
17 (2002): 84–98; Monto “Female Prostitution.”

21. Weitzer, “Prostitution Control”; Monto “Final Report.”

22. Monto, “Female Prostitution.”

23. ABT Associates,
Final Report on the Evaluation of the First Offender
Prostitution Program
, Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 2008. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/222451.pdf.

24. Matthew Freund, Nancy Lee, and Terri Leonard, “Sexual Behavior of Clients with Street Prostitutes in Camden, NJ,”
Journal of Sex Research
28

(1991): 579–591.

25. See Chapter 1 of this book, and Ronald Weitzer, “The Politics of Prostitution in America,” in Ronald Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale
, New York: Routledge, 2000.

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26. John Lowman, “Violence and the Outlaw Status of (Street) Prostitution in Canada,”
Violence Against Women
6 (2000): 987–1011.

27. Julia O’Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, “Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism: Dominican Republic,” Research paper, ECPAT International, 1995.

28. Martha Burt, “Cultural Myths and Supports for Rape,”
Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology
38 (1980): 217–230.

29. Martin Monto and Norma Hotaling, “Predictors of Rape Myth Acceptance among the Male Clients of Female Street Prostitutes,”
Violence
Against Women
7 (2001): 275–293.

30. Kinsey, et al.,
Sexual Behavior
.

31. Elroy Sullivan and William Simon, “The Client,” in James Elias, Vern Bullough, Veronica Elias, and Gwen Brewer, eds.,
Prostitution
, Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998; Martin Monto and Nick McRee, “A Comparison of the Male Customers of Female Street Prostitutes with National Samples of Men,”
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
49 (2005): 505–529.

32. McKeganey and Barnard,
Sex Work on the Streets.

33. Holzman and Pines,”Buying Sex.”

34. Jordan, “User Buys.”

35. Holzman and Pines, “Buying Sex.”

36. Jordan, “User Buys.”

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11

NEVADA’S LEGAL BROTHELS

Kathryn Hausbeck and Barbara G. Brents

In Nevada’s dusty desert, in a small gambling town, visitors might turn off main street and find themselves facing a row of otherwise nondescript wooden buildings with signs saying Mona’s Ranch, Inez’s D&D, or Sue’s Fantasy Club.

These rural brothels remind us of a bygone era of itinerant miners, small-town saloons, powerful sheriffs, and women who survived by selling one of the rarest and most sought-after commodities in the Old West: sex.

While this depiction projects a mythic version of the Old, Wild West, the 10 counties in Nevada that license brothels exist within a modern political and economic culture. The Old West culture of ranching and mining is fast becoming a part of the New West’s consumer culture built on a service-and-information economy that increasingly sells experiences and adventure tourism, and links the local to the global.1 Coexisting with frontier towns that grew up around railroad, agricultural, or mining hubs, the New West is marked by fast growing urban centers surrounded by sprawling suburbs. Near the urban centers of Reno and Las Vegas, visitors can find brothels that are generally larger, more upscale, and more modern than those in the frontier towns. Nevada’s brothel culture of frontier individualism, libertarian values, mining, agriculture, and ranching exists within the commercial, cosmopolitan, touristic New West.

Nevada is the only place in the United States to have legalized prostitution. Unlike some other countries, where brothels exist in major cities, Nevada’s brothels are prohibited in major metropolitan areas. But despite
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Nevada’s uniqueness and over three decades of legal prostitution, few studies of the industry exist.2 This chapter examines how legal prostitution in Nevada is evolving from its origins in a rural, Old West culture toward a New West economy and culture situated within modern service and leisure industries.

We examine (1) the contemporary structure of the Nevada brothel industry, (2) the relationship between the brothels and the government, (3) brothel owners’ relations to one another, and (4) the relation of the brothel industry to the broader tourist economy and culture in Nevada.

R E S E A R C H M E TH O D S

This study is based on several data sources. We examined newspaper articles and archival data for the historical and sociopolitical context in which brothel prostitution was legalized in Nevada and to identify existing regulations governing the industry; we conducted observations in and collected documents from 13 brothels in Nevada beginning in 1997; we interviewed 40

female brothel workers and 13 owners and managers. In addition, we conducted numerous interviews with a variety of other individuals, including government officials, lobbyists, businesspeople, brothel regulators, former industry employees, and the head of the Nevada Brothel Association. The chapter describes how these individuals view the brothel system, their role and association with this industry, and what they identify as the challenges and benefits of this system of legal prostitution.

H I STO RY O F N E VA D A’S B R OTH E L S

The few studies that have addressed the anomalous existence of Nevada’s brothels attribute it to some combination of economics and political culture.

Most historical studies argue that prostitution arose from the mining economy of the Old West and survived thanks to a libertarian political philosophy that persisted in Nevada more than in other western states.3 Others have argued that the economic needs of declining rural economies allowed prostitution to outlive its Old West past.4 We argue that the culture and political economy of the West had several features that help explain the rise of the brothels: an economically unstable, migrant economy; libertarian sexual values; a particular political culture, and the beginnings of a tourist economy.

Nevada’s brothels were born of a boom-and-bust mining economy and became a stabilizing force on the frontier. They existed in a sexual culture that
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saw a legitimate function for prostitution by meeting the biological “needs”

of a migrant labor force, while offering a means of survival for some women.

As towns developed, prostitution became institutionalized in brothels, which could be regulated in accordance with local sex and gender norms. A libertarian, antigovernment, antiurban political culture also contributed to the eventual legalization of brothels. Over time, the brothels remained in the rural areas despite the growing urban dependence on tourism and a gaming industry that sought to legitimate itself through opposition to legal brothels.

These factors remain salient today, and help explain why brothels with origins in the Old West persist today in Nevada’s modern New West leisure economy and tourist culture.

The gold rush and silver mining, as well as the railroad industry, drew large numbers of single men to Nevada’s harsh desert environment. The instability of this migrant labor force and boom-and-bust economy made it difficult to bring families to settle in Nevada’s first isolated mining towns. In these communities of single men and enterprising single women, prostitution thrived. This migrant mining economy was also associated with a particular set of sexual values and politics. Prostitution, if not always individual prostitutes themselves, became an accepted part of the community from the perspective of working men. Women were considered far from equal to their male counterparts. “Good girls” on the frontier needed protection; “bad girls”

were sexually available and provided necessary services to frontiersmen.

Patriarchal gender roles reflected and reinforced the idea that male sexuality was driven by biological needs that required frequent tending.

Together, the migrant economy and the corresponding libertarian yet paternalistic sexual values kept prostitution alive as mining camps grew into small towns. In the 1920s and 1930s, Nevada created the quick divorce and legal gambling to lure in tourists, and began diversifying its economy. But, during World War I and World War II, the Federal Security Agency pressured county governments throughout the West to pass ordinances banning prostitution in order to prevent “the spread of venereal disease to the detriment of members of the armed forces of the United States sojourning in said city or in the neighborhood.”5 Many counties strongly resisted federal intrusion, but many brothels nevertheless closed.6

The rural counties reopened their brothels as soon as World War II ended, although, in 1949, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that brothels were a public nuisance. Federal military spending and works projects had already begun to transform the Old West culture in urban areas, and these forces slowly chipped away at the brothel businesses in Reno and Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, city managers promised to close down the brothels so that the federal
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government would build Nellis Air Force Base nearby. In the context of a profitable gaming industry, Reno, Las Vegas, and their county governments had a strong desire to legitimate themselves. They closed the remaining brothels in and near the two cities. Meanwhile, the rural counties, still dependent on their traditional economies and resenting government interference, passed ordinances to avoid the nuisance charges and retain their brothels.7

Nowhere is the antigovernment culture more evident than in the popular story of the passage of the statewide legislation in 1971 that allowed the first official brothel licensing. A brash individual, Joe Conforte, opened several brothels beginning in the 1950s and for years battled the local district attorney, claiming the best way to deal with orders to close down was to ignore them.8 In the 1960s, Conforte took over the famous Mustang Ranch in Storey County, but a district judge ordered him to close the brothel and repay Storey County $5000 to offset costs. Conforte paid but kept the brothel open. Three years later, a county attorney advised Storey commissioners that they needed an ordinance to make the $5000 fee legal. On December 5, 1970, commissioners passed the first brothel-licensing ordinance in the nation.9

Meanwhile, rumors spread that Conforte planned to open a brothel in Clark County, the home of Las Vegas. State legislators representing Clark County, still fighting to make gambling look legitimate, scrambled to introduce a statewide bill banning prostitution, which was fought by legislators from rural counties. Finally, in 1971, legislators succeeded by passing a bill making prostitution illegal in counties with populations of more than 200,000, which, at that time, meant only Clark County. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that this prohibition of brothel prostitution in one county tacitly allowed the other 16 counties to license brothels. In the following years, brothel owners in a majority of counties successfully lobbied county commissioners to pass brothel-licensing ordinances.10 Each county created its own unique ordinance that essentially formalized the existing practices.

TH E C U LTU R A L C O NTE XT

A key to the rise and persistence of brothel prostitution is the neoliberal political and sexual culture. The sale of sex in Nevada’s brothels became acceptable because there was both a transient labor force and tourist population and a need to generate revenue; because the values of the citizenry were open to a particular definition of gender roles and sexuality; and because there was no powerful external body like the federal government opposing
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legal prostitution. Legal brothel prostitution is justified by a discourse that maintains that (1) the sale of sex is one of the world’s oldest professions and is unlikely to disappear; (2) state and local government-regulated prostitution is superior to illegal prostitution insofar as it is allows for limitations on what is sold, on the terms and conditions of sales, and on brothel ownership and employment practices; (3) such businesses are revenue generating; (4) legal prostitution provides a valuable service to certain individuals who have desires that cannot be easily fulfilled otherwise; and (5) limiting such activities to particular licensed venues curtails related criminal activities (drugs, pimping, violence) and helps control the spread of disease.

Central to these five beliefs is the notion that humans are sexual beings, and that it is inevitable that some women will resist traditional feminine roles and sell sex and that men will want to have sex available on demand. As one local politician explained to us:

Prostitution isn’t going anywhere. There will always be guys passing through town, trucking or working, and guys who can’t get a woman themselves. This is a community service to meet natural needs. If we got rid of brothels it would still happen at the truck stops, on streets, and that just isn’t good. There will be drugs, violence; it looks bad in the community, bad for families.

The form of legal prostitution that emerged in Nevada places limitations on the kind of sex for sale permitted, the parties involved, and the circumstances under which the exchange may occur. These norms reflect the dominant discourses of gender and sex: in Nevada, only women have ever been recognized as legitimate prostitutes, and the norm of heterosexuality permeates brothel regulations.

Common, too, are discourses of health and safety. It is typical among brothel supporters, community members, and the workers themselves to argue that brothels keep things safe. First, it is perceived as safer for the community—minimizing rape, sexual assault, extramarital affairs, and the spread of disease. Second, it is safer for the workers and the clients. An owner of a small-town brothel told us, “It’s safer for the girls here than anywhere else.