Prostitution

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A prostitute in Germany.

Prostitution describes sexual intercourse in exchange for remuneration. The legal status of prostitution varies in different countries, from punishable by death to complete legality. A woman who engages in sexual intercourse with only one man for support is a mistress, and not normally considered a prostitute. Male prostitutes offering services to female customers are known as "gigolos" or "escorts."

The term is used loosely to indicate someone who engages in sexual acts that are disapproved of, such as sexual promiscuity or sex outside of marriage. Cultural usage varies widely, and the use of the term as a pejorative indicates acts that are not formally considered prostitution in a cultural context.

Terminology

"The Procuress" by Dirck van Baburen

The English word whore, referring to (female) prostitutes, is taken from the Old English word hōra (from the Indo-European root kā meaning "desire") but usage of that word is widely considered pejorative and prostitute is considered a less value-laden term. In Germany most prostitutes' organizations deliberately use the word Hure (whore) since they feel that prostitute is a bureaucratic term and an unnecessary euphemism for something not in need of euphemisms. Male prostitutes offering their services to male customers are called "hustlers" or "rent boys." Male prostitutes offering services to female customers are known as "gigolos." Prostitution is sometimes called the "world's oldest profession."

Brothels are establishments specifically dedicated to prostitution, often confined to special red-light districts in big cities. Other names for brothels include Bordello, Whorehouse, Cathouse, and General houses. Prostitution also occurs in some massage parlours, and in Asian countries in some barber shops where sexual services may be offered for an additional tip. Organisers of prostitution are typically known as pimps (if male) and madams (if female). More formally, they practice procuring, and are procurers, or procuresses.

In some places, men who drive around red-light districts for the purpose of soliciting prostitutes are also known as kerb crawlers.

Prostitutes are not the only people who have sex for money. Porn actors and actresses get paid for having sex, but they are both paid by a third party, the porn producer. A prostitute is paid by the person with whom she/he has sex.

Prostitutes are stigmatized in most societies and religions; their customers are typically stigmatised to a lesser degree. The sexual counterparts of prostitutes are known as johns in the United States. Another generalization is using the term or an equivalent to mean any form of earning well in an unscrupulous degrading manner, e.g., 'quote whore', 'media whore', 'cam whore'. The term pimp is also sometimes similarly used figuratively, as in poverty pimp, or as a word that means improve or fix.

History

In the ancient world

Near East

One of the earliest forms of prostitution was sacred prostitution, supposedly practiced among the Sumerians. In ancient sources (Herodotus, Thucydides) there are many traces of sacred prostitution, starting perhaps with Babylon, where each woman had to reach, once in their lives, the sanctuary of Militta (Aphrodite or Nana/Anahita) and there have sex with a foreigner as a sign of hospitality for a symbolic price.

Prostitution was common in ancient Israel, despite being tacitly forbidden by Jewish Law. Within the religion of Canaan, a significant portion of temple prostitutes were male. It was widely used in Sardinia and in some of the Phoenician cultures, usually in honour of the goddess ‘Ashtart. Presumably under the influence of the Phoenicians, this practice was developed in other ports of the Mediterranean Sea, such as Erice (Sicily), Locri Epizephiri, Croton, Rossano Vaglio, and Sicca Veneria.

In a story in the Bible, a prostitute in Jericho named Rahab assisted Israelite spies with her knowledge of the current socio-cultural and military situation due to her popularity with the high-ranking nobles she serviced, among others. The spies, in return for the information, promised to save her and her family during the planned military invasion as long as she fulfilled her part of the deal by keeping the details of the contact with them secret and leaving a sign on her residence that would be a marker for the advancing soldiers to avoid. When the people of Israel conquered Canaan, she left prostitution, converted to Judaism and married a prominent member of the people.

Greece

In ancient Greek society, prostitution was engaged in by both women and boys. The Greek word for prostitute is porne, derived from the verb pernemi (to sell), with the evident modern evolution. Female prostitutes could be independent and sometimes influential women. They were required to wear distinctive dresses and had to pay taxes. Some similarities have been found between the Greek hetaera and the Japanese oiran, complex figures that are perhaps in an intermediate position between prostitution and courtisanerie. Some prostitutes in ancient Greece, such as Lais were as famous for their company as their beauty, and some of these women charged extraordinary sums for their services.

Solon instituted the first of Athens' brothels (oik'iskoi) in the 6th century B.C.E., and with the earnings of this business he built a temple dedicated to Aprodites Pandemo (or Qedesh), patron goddess of this commerce. Procuring, however, was severely forbidden. In Cyprus (Paphus) and in Corinth, a type of religious prostitution was practiced where the temple counted more than a thousand prostitutes (hierodules), according to Strabo.

Each specialised category had its proper name, so there were the chamaitypa'i, working outdoor (lie-down), the perepatetikes who met their customers while walking (and then worked in their houses), the gephyrides, who worked near the bridges. In the 5th century, Ateneo informs us that the price was of 1 obole, a sixth of a drachma and the equivalent of an ordinary worker's day salary. The rare pictures describe that sex was performed on beds with covers and pillows, while triclinia usually didn't have these accessories.

Male prostitution was also common in Greece. It was usually practiced by adolescent boys, a reflection of the pederastic tastes of Greek men. Slave boys worked the male brothels in Athens, while free boys who sold their favors risked losing their political rights as adults.

Rome

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Roman hetaera, relief, around 2nd century—head is missing

In ancient Rome, while there were some commonalities with the Greek system. As the Empire grew, prostitutes were often foreign slaves, captured, purchased, or raised for that purpose, sometimes by large-scale "prostitute farmers" who took abandoned children. Indeed, abandoned children were almost always raised as prostitutes. Enslavement into prostitution was sometimes used as a legal punishment against criminal free women. Buyers were allowed to inspect naked men and women for sale in private and there was no stigma attached to the purchase of males by a male aristocrat. A large brothel found in Pompeii called the Lupanar attests to the widespread use of prostitutes in Rome around the turn of the century. Like Greece, Roman prostitution was highly categorized, with titles for prostitutes and their places of trade.

Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages prostitution was commonly found in urban contexts. Although all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage were regarded as sinful by the Roman Catholic Church, prostitution was tolerated because it was held to prevent the greater evils of rape, sodomy, and masturbation (MCCall, 1979). Augustine of Hippo held that: "If you expel prostitution from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts." The general tolerance of prostitution was for the most part reluctant, and many canonists urged prostitutes to reform.

After the decline of organized prostitution of the Roman empire, many prostitutes were slaves. However, religious campaigns against slavery, and the growing marketisation of the economy, turned prostitution back into a business. By the High Middle Ages it is common to find town governments ruling that prostitutes were not to ply their trade within the town walls, but they were tolerated outside if only because these areas were beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities. In many areas of France and Germany town governments came to set aside certain streets as areas where prostitution could be tolerated. In London the brothels of Southwark were even owned by the Bishop of Winchester. (MCCall) Still later it became common in the major towns and cities of Southern Europe to establish civic brothels, whilst outlawing any prostitution taking place outside these brothels. In much of Northern Europe a more laissez faire attitude tended to be found. Prostitutes also found a fruitful market in the Crusades.

Sixteenth century

By the very end of the fifteenth century attitudes hardened against prostitution. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation numbers of Southern German towns closed their brothels in an attempt to eradicate prostitution. The prevalence of sexually transmitted disease from the earlier sixteenth century may also have influenced attitudes. An outbreak of Syphilis in Naples 1494 which later swept across Europe, and which may have originated from the Columbian Exchange may have been the one of the causes of this change in attitude.

Köçek troupe at a fair. Recruited from the ranks of colonized ethnic groups, köçeks were entertainers and sex workers in the Ottoman empire.

In some periods prostitutes had to distinguish themselves by particular signs, sometimes wearing very short hair or no hair at all, or wearing veils in societies where other women did not wear them. Ancient codes regulated in this case the crime of a prostitute that dissimulated her profession. In some cultures, prostitutes were the sole women allowed to sing in public or act in theatrical performances.

Eighteenth century to present

In the 18th century, presumably in Venice, prostitutes started using condoms, made with catgut or cow bowel.

Many of the women who posed in 19th and early 20th century vintage erotica were prostitutes. The most famous were the New Orleans women who posed for E. J. Bellocq.

In the 19th century, legalized prostitution became a public controversy as France and then the United Kingdom passed the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation mandating pelvic examinations for suspected prostitutes. Many early feminists fought for their repeal, either on the grounds that prostitution should be illegal and therefore not government regulated or because it forced degrading medical examinations upon women. This legislation applied not only to the United Kingdom and France, but also to their overseas colonies.

Originally, prostitution was widely legal in the United States. Prostitution was made illegal in almost all states between 1910 and 1915 largely due to the influence of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union which was influential in the banning of drug use and was a major force in the prohibition of alcohol. In 1917 the legally defined prostitution district Storyville in New Orleans was closed down by the Federal government over local objections. Prostitution remained legal in Alaska until 1953 (though not yet a US state), and is still legal in some counties of Nevada.

In Asia, there is a tradition of forcing the women of an occupied land into prostitution, as was the case with Japanese-occupied China in World War II. These specific women were called "Comfort Women."

Beginning in the late 1980s, many states increased the penalties for prostitution in cases where the prostitute is knowingly HIV-positive. These laws, often known as felony prostitution laws, require anyone arrested for prostitution to be tested for HIV, and if the test comes back positive, the suspect is then informed that any future arrest for prostitution will be a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Penalties for felony prostitution vary in the states that have such laws, with maximum sentences of typically 10 to 15 years in prison. An episode of COPS which aired in the early 1990s detailed the impact of HIV/AIDS among prostitutes to which the felony prostitution laws is deemed as part of HIV/AIDS awareness.

Types

There are many different types and methods of organization to prostitution.

Street

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A stereotypical street-walker in Germany.

In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners(sometimes called "the track" by pimps and prostitutes alike), usually dressed in skimpy clothing. Street prostitutes are often called "street walkers" while their customers are referred to as "tricks" . The sex is performed in the customer's car, in a nearby alley, or in a rented room (motels that service prostitutes commonly rent rooms by the half or full hour).

A "lot lizard" is a commonly-encountered special case of street prostitution. Lot lizards mainly serve those in the trucking industry at truck stops and stopping centers. Prostitutes will often proposition truckers using a CB radio from a vehicle parked in the non-commercial section of a truck stop parking lot, communicating through codes based on commercial driving slang, then join the driver in his truck.

Escort/Out-call

Tart cards in a British phone box advertising the services of call girls

Escort agencies typically advertise in regional publications and even telephone listings like the Yellow Pages. Many maintain websites with photo galleries of the employees. An interested client contacts an agency by telephone and offers a description of what kind of escort they are looking for. The agency will then suggest an employee who might fit that client's need.

The agency collects the client's contact information and calls the escort. Usually, to protect the identity of the escort and ensure effective communication with the client, the agency arranges the appointment. Sometimes it may be up to the escort to contact the client directly to make arrangements for location and time of an appointment. If the agency does not supply transport to and from the client, the escort is also expected to call the agency upon arrival at the location and again upon leaving to assure his or her safe completion of the booking.

The purpose of these details is to attempt to protect the escort agency (to some degree) from prosecution for breaking the law. If the employee is solely responsible for arranging any illegal aspects of their professional encounter the agency could try to maintain plausible deniability should an arrest be made. However in practice, the use of undercover police evidence or the use of links to reviews of the agencies escorts usually results in this failing.

Typically, an agency will charge their escorts either a flat fee for each client connection or a percentage of the prearranged rate. In San Francisco, it is usual for typical heterosexual-market agencies to negotiate for as little as $100, up to a full 50 percent of an escort's reported earnings (not counting any gratuity received). If they work independently doing either incalls or outcalls, prices can range from $200 to over $5,000 for more exclusive services. Most transactions occur in cash, and optional tipping of escorts by clients in most major US cities is customary but not compulsory. Credit card processing offered by larger scale agencies is often available for a service charge.

Independent escorts, also known as providers, have differing fees depending on many factors. For example; different seasons bring about different costs (and differing levels of demand), as do regular and semi-regular customers. Some may charge by the hour, half hour or even in 15 minute blocks. Time extensions (if offered or requested) are usually priced at the same rate as the original booking. Some escorts pay another individual to act as their personal security, thus providing a level of protection to themselves from violent or abusive clients.

An escort who works less often may be able to command a premium for his or her exclusivity. One who sees several clients each day may charge less, but earn more in the end. Independent escorts might see clients for extended meetings involving dinner or social activities, whereas escorts who work through agencies generally provide only sexual services.

Whilst the vast majority of escort agencies are sex related, there are some non-sexual escort agencies, where escorts provide companionship for business and social occasions.

Sex tourism

Sex tourism is travelling for sexual intercourse with prostitutes or to engage in other sexual activity. The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary purpose of effecting a commercial sexual relationship by the tourist with residents at the destination".

Often the term "sex tourism" is mistakenly interchanged with the term "child sex tourism." A tourist who has sex with a child prostitute possibly commits a crime against international law, in addition to the host country, and the country that the tourist is a citizen of. The term "child" is often used as defined by international law and refers to any person below the age of consent.

Popular sex tourism destinations are Brazil, the Caribbean, Thailand, and former eastern bloc countries.

Prostitution and the Internet

Prostitutes use the Internet to find customers. A prostitute may use adult boards or create a website of their own with contact details, such as email addresses.

Religious prostitution

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Religious or sacred prostitution is the practice of having sexual intercourse (with a person other than one's spouse) for a religious purpose. A woman engaged in such practices is sometimes called a temple prostitute or hierodule, though modern connotations of the term prostitute cause interpretations of these phrases to be highly misleading.

Antiquity

It was revered highly among Sumerians and Babylonians. In ancient sources (Herodotus, Thucydides) there are many traces of hieros gamos (holy wedding), starting perhaps with Babylon, where each woman had to reach, once a year, the sanctuary of Militta (Aphrodite or Nana/Anahita), and there have sex with a foreigner, as a sign of hospitality, for a symbolic price. (Cf. Herodotus, Book I, para 199)

A similar type of prostitution was practiced in Cyprus (Paphos) and in Corinth, Greece, where the temple counted more than a thousand prostitutes (hierodules), according to Strabo. It was widely in use in Sardinia and in some of the Phoenician cultures, usually in honour of the goddess ‘Ashtart. Presumably by the Phoenicians, this practice was developed in other ports of the Mediterranean Sea, such as Erice (Sicily), Locri Epizephiri, Croton, Rossano Vaglio, and Sicca Veneria. Other hypotheses concern Asia Minor, Lydia, Syria and Etruscans.

It was common in Israel too, but some prophets, like Hosea and Ezekiel, strongly fought it; it is assumed that it was part of the religions of Canaan, where a significant proportion of prostitutes were male (roughly the same proportion as there were men in society at large, about 50%).

speculates that the Canaanite peoples had a system of religious prostitution, inferring from passages such as Genesis 38:21, where Judah asks Canaanite men of Adullam "Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side?." The Hebrew original employs the word "kedsha" in Judah's question, as opposed to the standard Hebrew "zonah." The word "kedsha" is derived from the root KaDeSh, which signifies uniqueness and holiness; thus it (according to his speculation) possibly represents a religious prostitute. Another speculation, by , is that the same rootword for 'holiness', KaDeSh, is used to express lasciviousness, being that both holiness and promiscuity can be described as 'separate', which is the concrete meaning of that root word.  As a side point, it is known that part of Ammonite tradition, a bride would sit at the gates of a town before the wedding, and sleep with whomever came to the city.[citation needed]

theorizes that the pagan priests called qedeshim (the masculine form of "qedsha") in the Torah regularly engaged in homosexual acts. Some hypothesize that the phrase "mahir kelev" (Deuteronomy 23:18-19), which literally means "the price of a dog," refers to the payment to a male prostitute. Male prostitutes in that time and place usually serviced men, not women. Moreover, Leviticus 18 contains a number of prohibitions regarding sexual relations with different people (some of them incestuous) that are thought to be relevant to Canaanite habits of religious prostitution inside family. 

In Greece, Solon instituted the first Athenian brothels (oik`iskoi) in the 6th century B.C.E., and with the earnings of this business he built a temple dedicated to Aphrodite Pandemia (or Qedesh), patron goddess of this commerce. The Greek word for prostitute is porne, derived from the verb pernemi (to sell), with the evident modern evolution. The procuring was however severely forbidden.

Central America

Bernal Diaz del Castillo (16th century), in his The Conquest of New Spain, reported that the Mexica peoples regularly practiced pederastic relationships, and male adolescent sacred prostitutes would congregate in temples. The conquistadores, like most Europeans of the 16th century, were horrified by the widespread acceptance of sex between men and youths in Aztec society, and used it as one justification for the extirpation of native society, religion and culture, and the taking of the lands and wealth; of all customs of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, only human sacrifice produced a greater disapproval amongst the Spaniards in Mexico. The custom died out with the collapse of the Aztec civilization.

India

The practice devadasi and similar customary forms of hierodulic prostitution in Southern India (such as basavi),[1] involving dedicating adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then work in the temple and act as members of a religious order. Human Rights Watch claims that devadasis are forced at least in some cases to practice prostitution for upper-caste members[2]. Various state governments in India have enacted laws to ban this practice. They include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi (Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1988.[3]

Recent Western occurrences

In the 1970s and early 1980s some religious cults were discovered practicing sacred prostitution as an instrument to recruit new converts. Among them was the alleged cult Children of God/The Family who called this practice "flirty fishing." They later abolished the practice due to the growing AIDS epidemic. Williams, Miriam (1998). Heaven's Harlots. New York: William Morrow/ Harper Collins, 320. 978-0688170127. 

Current Issues Involving Prostitution

Legality

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Prostitutes working in their vans in Lyon, France. This form of prostitution is often referred to as 'BMC'.

At one end of the legal spectrum, prostitution carries the death penalty in some Muslim countries; at the other end, prostitutes are tax-paying unionised professionals in the Netherlands and brothels are legal and advertising businesses there (however, prostitutes must be at least 18 and the age of consent is 16 in other contexts). The legal situation in Germany, Switzerland (where the issue of legal age is a source of avid dispute, some insisting that one can legally be a prostitute as of one's sixteenth birthday, other maintaining it is eighteen), and New Zealand is similar to that in the Netherlands (see prostitution in the Netherlands, prostitution in Germany and prostitution in New Zealand). In the Australian state of New South Wales, any person over the age of 18 may offer to provide sexual services in return for money. In Victoria, a person who wishes to run a prostitution business must have a licence. Prostitutes working for themselves in their own business, as prostitutes in the business, must be registered. Individual sex workers are not required to be registered or licensed. In some countries the legal status of prostitution may vary depending on the activity.

In Thailand, prostitution is illegal as stated in the Prevention and Suppression Act, B.E. 2539 (1996) In all but two U.S. states, the buying and selling of sexual services is illegal and usually classified as a misdemeanor. Regulated brothels are legal in several counties of Nevada (see prostitution in Nevada). In Rhode Island, the act of sex for money is not illegal, but street solicitation and operating a brothel are.

In Turkey, street prostitution is illegal though prostitution through government regulated brothels is legal. All brothels must have a license, and all sex workers working in brothels must be licensed as well. Municipality based "Commissions for the struggle against venereal diseases and prostitution" are in charge of issuing such licenses. In Canada, prostitution itself is legal, but most other activities around it are not. It is illegal to live "off the avails" of prostitution (this law is intended to outlaw pimping) and it is illegal (for both parties) to negotiate a sex-for-money deal in a public place (which includes bars). To maintain a veneer of legality, escort agencies arrange a meeting between the escort and the client. A Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 1978 required that to be convicted of soliciting, a prostitute's activities must be "pressing and persistent." Similarly, in Bulgaria prostitution itself is legal, but most activities around it (such as pimping) are outlawed. In Brazil and Costa Rica prostitution per se is legal, but taking advantage or profit from others' prostitution is illegal. Prostitution is legal for citizens in Denmark, but it is illegal to profit from prostitution. Prostitution is not regulated as in the Netherlands; instead, the government attempts through social services to bring people out of prostitution into other careers, and attempts to lessen the amount of criminal activity and other negative effects of prostitution.

Rules vary as to which roles in prostitution are illegal: being a prostitute, being a client, or being a pimp. In Sweden it is legal to sell sex, but it is illegal to be a pimp and since 1999 also to buy sexual services. The reason for this law is to protect prostitutes, as many of them have been forced into prostitution by someone or by economic necessity. Norway has the same laws as Sweden, except that it's not illegal to buy sex. This situation is liable to change within a year or so, however, as the delegates at the 2007 annual meeting of the Labour Party, Norway's largest, and part of the 2005–2009 coalition government, voted to ban the purchase of sexual services. Prostitutes are generally viewed by the government as oppressed, while their clients are viewed as oppressors. In the case of a prostitute under 18 in the Netherlands, being the client or pimp is illegal, but being the prostitute is not, except if the client is also underage (under 16). In most countries with criminalized prostitution, prostitutes are arrested and prosecuted at a far higher rate than their clients.

1941 Las Vegas hotel sign

In 1949, the UN General Assembly adopted a convention stating that forced prostitution is incompatible with human dignity, requiring all signing parties to punish pimps and brothel owners and operators and to abolish all special treatment or registration of prostitutes. The convention was ratified by 89 countries but Germany, the Netherlands and the United States did not participate.

There has been long and widespread debate as to whether the a toleration of prostitution similar to that seen in the Netherlands and Germany should be extended. Local police forces have historically flipped between zero tolerance of prostitution and unofficial red light districts. Such approaches are often, but not always taken with the stance that prostitution is impossible to eliminate and thus these societies have chosen to regulate it in ways that reduce the more undesirable consequences. Goals of such regulations include controlling sexually transmitted disease, reducing sexual slavery, controlling where brothels may operate and dissociating prostitution from crime syndicates. The Dutch legalisation of prostitution has similar objectives, as well as improving health and working conditions for the women and weakening the link between prostitution and criminality.

Of children

Regarding the prostitution of children the laws on prostitution as well as those on sex with a child apply. If prostitution in general is legal there is usually a minimum age requirement for legal prostitution that is higher than the general age of consent (see above for some examples). Although some countries do not single out patronage of child prostitution as a separate crime, same act is punishable as sex with an underage.

Some pedophiles use sex tourism to have access to sex with children that is unavailable in their home country. Cambodia has become a notorious destination for these pedophiles. Several western countries have recently enacted laws with extraterritorial reach punishing citizens who engage in sex with minors in other countries. These laws are rarely enforced since the crime usually goes undiscovered.

In illegal immigration

A difficulty in many developed countries is the situation where persons immigrate illegally and work as Prostitutes. These people face deportation, and so do not have recourse to the law. Hence there are brothels that may not adhere to the usual legal standards intended to safeguard public health and the safety of the workers.

Violence against prostitutes

Prostitutes are at risk of violent crime, as well as possibly at higher risk of occupational mortality than any other group of women ever studied. For example, the homicide rate for female prostitutes was estimated to be 204 per 100,000 (Potterat et al, 2004), which is sometimes higher than that for the next riskiest occupations in the United States during a similar period (4 per 100,000 for female liquor store workers and 29 per 100,000 for male taxicab drivers) (Castillo et al., 1994). However, there are substantial differences in rates of victimization between street prostitutes and indoor prostitutes who work as escorts, call girls, or in brothels and massage parlors (Weitzer 2000, 2005). Perpetrators include violent clients, pimps, and corrupt law-enforcement officers. Prostitutes (particularly those engaging in street prostitution) are also sometimes the targets of serial killers, who may consider them easy targets, or use the religious and social stigma associated with prostitutes as justification for their murder. Being criminals in most jurisdictions, prostitutes are less likely than the law-abiding to be looked for by police if they disappear, making them favored targets of predators. The unidentified serial killer (or killers) known as Jack the Ripper is said to have killed at least five prostitutes in London in 1888. More recently, Robert Pickton, a Canadian who lived near Vancouver, made headlines after the remains of several missing prostitutes were found buried on his farm. He now stands charged with the murder of 26 Vancouver area women, and is suspected by police of killing at least four more (though no charges have been laid). As of December 2006, a serial killer of prostitutes appears to be active in Ipswich, England (see 2006 Ipswich murder investigation).

Human trafficking and sexual slavery

Human trafficking is the fastest growing form of modern day slavery and is the third largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world.

Poverty, social exclusion and war are at the heart of human trafficking. Many women are hoodwinked into believing promises of a better life, sometimes by people who are known and trusted to them. Traffickers may own legitimate travel agencies, modeling agencies and employment offices in order to gain women's trust. Others are simply kidnapped. Once overseas it is common for their passport to be confiscated by the trafficker and to be warned of the consequences should they attempt to escape, including beatings, rape, threats of violence against their family and death threats. It is common, particularly in Eastern Europe, that should they manage to return to their families they will only be trafficked once again.

The men who will pay to have sex with foreign women and underage girls create the market which the traffickers supply. The demand for cheap unskilled labour creates another market for traffickers.

Due to the illegal and underground nature of sex trafficking, the exact extent of women and children forced into prostitution is unknown. The International Labour Organization in 2005 estimated at least 2.4 million people have been trafficked.

Thousands of children are sold into the global sex trade every year. Often they are kidnapped or orphaned, and sometimes they are actually sold by their own families. According to the International Labour Organization, the problem is especially alarming in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal and India.

In May 2005 the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings opened for signature. Since then over 30 countries have signed the Convention and four countries have ratified it. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has produced a Toolkit to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Globally, forced labour generates $31bn, half of it in the industrialised world, a tenth in transition countries, the International Labour Organization says in a report on forced labour ("A global alliance against forced labour," ILO, 11 May 2005). Trafficking in people has been facilitated by porous borders and advanced communication technologies, it has become increasingly transnational in scope and highly lucrative within its barbarity.

In some countries counselling, accommodation, specialist care exists for trafficked people to help them escape, whilst in other countries, this support is lacking.

Medical situation

Prostitution has often been associated with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV. However, this is disputed by empirical data. Although prostitutes are not regularly studied as a group by the CDC or other recognized institutions, what little has been done on the subject suggests that female prostitutes have either HIV rates similar to the population or lower. Nevertheless, intravenous drug using prostitutes carry very high rates of HIV relative to the population. Studies on non-intravenous drug using prostitutes are scarce to non-existent.

Typical responses to the problem are:

• banning prostitution completely
• introducing a system of registration for prostitutes that mandates health checks and other public health measures
• educating prostitutes and their clients to encourage the use of barrier contraception and greater interaction with health care

Some think that the first two measures are counter-productive. Banning prostitution tends to drive it underground, making treatment and monitoring more difficult. Registering prostitutes makes the state complicit in prostitution and does not address the health risks of unregistered prostitutes. Both of the last two measures can be viewed as harm reduction policies.

In Australia where sex-work is largely legal, and registration of sex-work is not practiced, education campaigns have been extremely successful and the non-intravenous drug user (non-IDU) sex workers are among the lower HIV-risk communities in the nation. In part, this is probably due both to the legality of sex-work, and to the heavy general emphasis on education in regard to Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Safer sex is heavily promoted as the major means of STI reduction in Australia, and sex education generally is at a high level. Sex-worker organisations regularly visit brothels and home workers, providing free condoms and lubricant, health information, and other forms of support.

The encouragement of safer sex practices, combined with regular testing for sexually transmitted diseases, has been very successful when applied consistently. Prostitution appears to have little effect as a vector of STDs when safer sex practices are applied consistently. However, in countries and areas where safer sex precautions are either unavailable or not practiced for cultural reasons, prostitution appears to be a very active disease vector for all STDs, including HIV/AIDS.

Criminal behavior

In areas where prostitution is illegal, sex workers are commonly charged with crimes ranging from pandering to tax evasion. Their clients can be charged with solicitation of prostitution. Prosecution for various other sex crimes can be sought against the client and pimps depending on such things as the age of the prostitute and the nature of the act performed.

Feminism

Since most prostitutes are women, prostitution is a significant issue in feminist thought and activism. Some feminists argue that the act of selling sex need not inherently be exploitative, but that attempts to abolish prostitution - and the attitudes that lead to such attempts - lead to an abusive climate for sex workers that must be changed. In the new discourse, the redefinition of prostitution as "sex work" saw the development of the sex worker activism movement, comprising organisations such as the Australian Prostitutes Collective and COYOTE.

Feminists who believe that prostitution is inherently exploitative, such as authors like Andrea Dworkin, herself an ex-prostitute, argued in the 1980s that commercial sex is a form of rape enforced by poverty (and often overt violence by pimps). Proponents reject the idea that prostitution can be reformed. These feminists believe that the assumptions that women exist for men's sexual enjoyment, that all men "need" sex, or that the bodily integrity and sexual pleasure of women is irrelevant underlie the whole idea of prostitution, and make it an inherently exploitative, sexist practice. One feminist argument against Dworkin's position is that prostitution, insofar as it colludes with the perception of an inherent 'need' on the part of men for sexual release, is exploiting men more than it exploits women.

Sweden's 1999 law forbidding the purchase (but not sale) of sex was a natural extension of this view; the Swedish legal approach represents an attempt to understand prostitution from the prostitute's point of view, rather than that of the buyer. Many prostitutes in Sweden have decried the laws targeting clients, as they say the laws just drive the industry further underground and reduce sex workers' incomes without providing greater safety.

Some jurisdictions have responded to sex worker activism by decriminalising prostitution. The rationale for these legal reforms has been to extend to sex workers the same health and safety standards that apply to other professions involving close bodily contact, for example dentistry, nursing or hairdressing.

Governments that have decriminalized or legalized prostitution find that they become a destination for international sex traffick, replacing one set of harms with another.

Occurrence

According to the paper "Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women" (Potterat et al., 1990), the number of full-time equivalent prostitutes in a typical area in the United States (Colorado Springs, CO, during 1970–1988) is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population (0.023%), of which fraction some 4% were under 18. The length of these prostitutes' working careers was estimated at a mean of 5 years. A follow-up paper entitled "Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners" (Brewer et al., 2000) goes on to estimate a mean number of 868 male sexual partners per prostitute per year of active sex work, and offers the conclusion that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners is seriously under-reported.

A 1994 study found that 16 percent of 18 to 59-year-old men in a U.S. survey group had paid for sex (Gagnon, Laumann, and Kolata 1994).

A number of reports over the last few decades have suggested that prostitution levels have fallen in sexually liberal countries, most likely because of the increased availability of non-commercial, non-marital sex.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Campbell, Russell. Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, 2005 University of Wisconsin Press.
• Castillo DN, Jenkins EL. Industries and occupations at high risk for work-related homicide. J Occup Med 1994;36:125–32.
• D. Brewer et al. Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 24 October; 97(22): 12385-12388.
• McCall, Andrew: "The Medieval Underworld." Hamish Hamilton, 1979. ISBN 0750937270
• Michael, R. T., Gagnon, J. H.,.Laumann, E. O., & Kolata, G. Sex in America, Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.
• Mirbeau, Octave, The love of a venal woman.
• Phoenix, J. Making Sense of Prostitution, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.
• Preston, John. Hustling, A Gentlemen's Guide to the Fine Art of Homosexual Prostitution, Badboy Books, 1997.
• Perlongher, Néstor Osvaldo. O negócio do michê, prostituição viril em São Paulo, 1ª edição 1987, editora brasiliense.
• Potterat JJ, Woodhouse DE, Muth JB & Muth SQ. Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women. Journal of Sex Research 1990; 27: 233 243.
• Potterat JJ, Brewer DD, Muth SQ, Rothenberg RB, Woodhouse DE, Muth JB, Stites HK & Brody S. Mortality in a long-term open cohort of prostitute women. American Journal of Epidemiology 2004; 159(8) 778-785.
  • Full text: [4]
• The UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949)
  • Full text: Status of ratifications, reservations and declarations
• Weitzer, Ronald (ed.), Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• Weitzer, Ronald. "New Directions in Research on Prostitution," Crime, Law, and Social Change, v.43, no.4-5, 2005.
• Weitzer, Ronald. "Moral Crusade Against Prostitution," Society, March-April, 2006.

External links

• Prostitution ProCon.org - Should prostitution be legal?
• Sexual Freedom Coalition – Guide to Sex Laws in the UK
• Prostitution guide in the U.S.
• UK laws regarding prostitution updated for 2006
• Prostitution Resources
• The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
• Prostitutes' Rights Issues and Organizations Around the World – Prostitutes' Education Network
• The International Union of Sex Workers
• StellaTo educate sex-workers in Canada and to fight for their rights and welfare.
• The Canadian Guild for Erotic Labour
• United Sex Professionals of Finland
• Mary Magdalene Project of Mexico
• Working girls : prostitutes, their life and social control – Roberta Perkins
  in Australian studies in law, crime and justice (1991); Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology; ISBN 0 642 15877 0
• An analysis of Roberta Perkins' academic work on prostitution
• Marxism versus Morality by Doctor Helen Ward
• Antonella Gambotto-Burke on prostitution
• Andrea Dworkin's Attorney General's Commission Testimony on Pornography and Prostitution
• Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) — list of resources on the sex industry (primarily focused on prostitution)
• Equality Now feminist activism against various forms of prostitution
• Fair Fund Human Trafficking website
• Hierodulic Servitude
• Stuckey, H. Johanna. "Sacred Prostitutes". MatriFocus. 2005 vol 5-1.
• Phoenician influence on Greek Religion 900-600 B.C.E.

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