www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/97/10/23/prostitution_theory_101.html. Sarah McNaught’s brilliant introduction to prostitution.
www.bayswav.org/NTFP.html.National Task Force on Prostitution Web Site.
www.worldsexguide.org. Archives from the Usenet newsgroup. alt.sex.prostitution
www.usa-poll.com. Survey on the possible decriminalization of prostitution.
www.capcat.ksc.net. Childwatch International’s Web Site on child prostitution.
www.realm-of-shade.com/meretrix/museum. I cannot comment on the factual reliability of anything in this very personal museum about prostitution, but it’s an interesting site.
Books that might be useful (general interest) include:
Bushnell, Candace: Sex and the City, c. 2000, Time-Warner, audiobook. Derived from the author’s New York Observer column (and made into a television series), chronicles society parties, including presence of prostitutes.
Chapkis, Wendy et. al: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor, c. 1997, Routledge, hardcover & 2nd edition paper
Delacoste, Frederique (ed.): Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, c. 1987, 1998, Cleis Press, 2nd edition is in paper. A 239 collection of short stories, essays, poetry written by street prostitutes, exotic dancers, nude models, porn stars and massage parlor workers.
French, Dolores: Working: My Life as a Prostitute, c. 1998, Gollanc, Victor (publishers), paperback. First-person account of the life of a street prostitute.
Godwin, Rebecca: Keeper of the House, c. 1995, St. Martin’s Press, trade paperback. Story of a famous South Carolina house of prostitution from its inception during the Depression to the end of its 40-year life. Unclear to me whether this is fiction or non-fiction or a mixture of the two.
Goodall, Richard: The Comfort of Sin: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the 1990s, c. 1996, Renaissance Books, trade paper.
Overview of prostitution, its history, causes, arguments for and against legalization, homosexuality in prostitution, brothels, and case histories.
Hensen, Maria Rosa: Comfort Woman: A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under the Japanese Military, c. 1999, Rowman & Littlefield, trade paper. Autobiography of a Filipina woman who was abducted in 1943 at age fifteen and forced into prostitution.
Howard, Keith (ed.): True Stories of Korean Comfort Women, publishing information unavailable, hardcover.
Jeffreys, Sheila: The Idea of Prostitution, c. 1998, SpiniFex Press, paperback. Analysis challenging the ides of prostitution as sexual liberation.
Jenness, Valerie: Making It Work: The Prostitutes’ Rights Movement in Perspective, c. 1993, Aldine de Gruyter, hardcover. A chronicle of the COYOTE movement.
Louis, Lisa: Butterflies of the Night: Mama-Sans, Geisha, Strippers, and the Japanese Men They Serve, c. 1992, Weatherhill, hardcover. Explores what is called in Japan the “ejaculation industry.”
Seabrook, Jeremy: Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry, c. 1997, Pluto Press, paperback. Centers on the sex industry in Thailand.
Seagraves, Anne: Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West, c. 1994, Wesanne Productions, paperback.
Shaner, Lora: Madam: Chronicles of a Nevada Cathouse, c. 1998, Huntington Press, hardcover. Anecdotal stories written from the perspective of a former Defense Department employee who was a madam at Sheri’s Ranch for five years.
Sisters of the Heart: The Brothel Bible: The Cathouse Experience, c. 1997, Sisters of the Heart Publications, trade paperback. Feminist perspective.
Sprinkle, Annie: Annie Sprinkle: Post Porn Modernist: My Twenty-Five Years as a Multimedia Whore, c. 1998, Cleis Press, 2nd edition paperback. Scrapbook of the author’s life as the self-proclaimed “High Priestess of Porn.”
Tattersall, Clare: Drugs, Runaways, and Teen Prostitution, c. 1999, Rosen Publishing Group, hardcover. Explores the path from runaway to teen prostitute.
Washburn, Josie: The Underworld Sewer: A Prostitute Reflects on Life in the Trade, 1871-1909, c. 1909, 1997, University of Nebraska Press, 2nd ed. paper. Reprint of the reflections of a former prostitute and madam talking about her career in a brothel in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Williams, Miriam: Heaven’s Harlots: My Fifteen Years as a Sacred Prostitute in the Children of God Cult, c. 1998, William Morrow & Co., hardcover. An account of a woman’s life in and escape from a cult where she was used by the leader to provide sex to further the cult’s cause.
Wiltz, Christine: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld, c. 2000, Faber and Faber, hardcover, subsequently in paperback. Account of the life of Norma Wallace, who ran the last famous bordello in Storyville, New Orleans.
Books more academic in nature include:
Anderson, Amanda: Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture, c. 1994, Cornell University Press, trade paperback. Examines the conceptions of prostitutes, adulteresses, and other “sexually illicit” women in mid-19th century England.
Bales, Kevin: Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, c. 2000, University of California Press, trade paperback.
Bales’ study is of what he calls the “new slavery” which he documents in Thailand, Mauritania, Brazil, Pakistan, India, the United States and France. Prostitution appears to be a minor part of the industry that he is documenting.
Bernheimer, Charles: Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France, c. 1989, Harvard University Press, hardcover. Discusses prostitution as a social phenomenon and as a subject in literature and art.
Best, Joel and David R. Johnson, eds.: Controlling Vice:Regulating Brothel Prostitution in Saint Paul, 1865-1883, c. 1999, Ohio State University Press, trade paperback. Interesting approach: the criminal justice system in Minnesota regulated rather than attempted to eradicate prostitution.
Bishop, Ryan and Lillian S. Robinson: Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle, c. 1998, Routledge, hardcover. Detailed account of sex industry in Thailand that is the centerpiece of the country’s tourism industry.
Brock, Rita: Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, c. 1996, Augsburg Fortress, trade paper.
Analysis by feminist theologians of the role of religion in prostitution.
Butler, Anne: Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1965-90, reprint 19990, University of Illinois Press, paperback/textbook. Delineates the role played by prostitutes as workers in the development of the West’s institutions, especially the legal order.
Connelly, Mark Thomas: The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era, c.1980, University of North Carolina Press, hardcover.
Corbin, Alain: Women For Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, translation c. 1996, Harvard University Press, trade paper. First systematic study of the commercial and political aspects of the sex trade with a special focus on brothel-based prostitution as an enterprise integral to capitalism.
Davidson, Julia O’Connell: Prostitution, Power and Freedom, c. 1999, University of Michigan Press, trade paperback. The author is a sociologist whose study includes a number of very brief interviews with people from all corners of the international sex trade.
Gibson, Mary: Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860-1915, c. 2000, 2nd ed. trade paper. Traces the history of prostitution during the period delineated, when all prostitutes were required to register with the police, live in licensed brothels, undergo health examinations, and be treated in a special hospital if infected with venereal disease.
Gilfoye, Timothy: City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, c. 1994, WW Norton, trade paper. Examines the role of sex in forming New York’s neighborhoods, social roles, and politics.
Goldman, Marion: Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode, c. 1981, University of Michigan Press, trade paper/textbook.
Gronewold, Sue: Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China, 1860-
1936, c.1982, Harrington Park Press, trade paper.
Guy, Donna: Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina, c. 1995, University of Nebraska Press, trade paper. A study of prostitution in the Argentine capital from the 1860s to 1954.
Hall, Bruce Edward: Diamond Street: The Story of the Little Town with the Big Red Light District, c. 1994, Black Dome Press, trade paperback. Until 1950, Hudson, New York, was “the place to go for a good time,” where prostitution fairly flourished. Straightforward narrative.
Hart, Angie: Buying and Selling Power: Prostitution in Spain, c. 1997, Westview Press, hardcover. Examines the identities of both clients and prostitutes with an emphasis on gender-specific power.
Hershatter, Gail: Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai, c. 1998, University of California Press, trade paperback.
Hicks, George: The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, c. 1997, WW Norton, hardcover. Narrates story of officially sanctioned brothels set up across Asia to service the needs of Japanese forces.
Hill, Marilyn Wood: Their Sisters’ Keepers: Prostitution in New York City, 1830-1870, c. 1993, University of California Press. Argues that prostitution was more positive than negative, releasing women from gender constraints and granting them economic opportunity.
Hoigard, Cecilie and Liv Finstad: Backstreets: Prostitution, Money and Love, c. 1992 Pennsylvania State University Press, trade paperback.
International Labour Office: The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, c. 1998, International
Labour Office, trade paper. Case studies prepared by a number of different researchers.
Karras, Ruth Mazo: Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. c. 1998, Oxford University Press, trade paperback. Issue at stake is not sexuality but women’s independence. In my opinion, should be rewritten for a general audience, too fascinating to keep cloistered in academia.
Kempadoo, Kamala (ed.): Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, c. 1998, Routledge, hardcover. A collection of essays by scholars, journalists, and sex workers with a focus on developing countries.
Kim, Elaine (ed.): The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, and Sex, Vol. 5, c. 1997, Duke University Press, trade paper.
Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil: Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Woman, c.2000, Mid-Prairie Books, trade paper.
Langum, David: Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act, c. 1994, University of Chicago Press, hardcover. Discussion of the underlying basis for the Mann Act (1910) that made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
Lowry, Thomas: The Civil War Bawdy Houses of Washington D.C., c.1997, Sergeant Kirkland’s Press, hardcover.
Moon, Katherine H.S.: Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations, c. 1997, Columbia University Press, trade paperback/textbook. An exploration of how Korean prostitutes were used by the U.S. and Korean governments in their security agreements.
Mumford, Kevin: Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century, c. 1997, Columbia University Press, hardcover. A reconstruction of the mixed-race underworld of the Great Migration and the Progressive era to reveal how these subcultures transformed American culture.
Nagle, Jill (ed.): Whores and Other Feminists, c. 1996, Routledge, trade paper. Uses essay and personal narrative to discuss sex practices and their interface with feminist thought.
Pettiway, Leon: Honey, Honey, Miss Thang, c. 1996, Temple University Press, trade paper. This study, done by a professor of criminal justice, explores the life of five African-American “drug-using, street-walking, cross-dressing gay hustlers.”
Pettiway, Leon: Workin’ It: Women Living Through Drugs and Crime, c. 1997, Temple University Press, hardcover. Anecdotal study of five female drug users involved in a number of crimes, including prostitution.
Rosen, Ruth: The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918, c. 1990, Johns Hopkins University Press, textbook-paperback. Covers a period in which one of the most vigorous campaigns against prostitution took place.
Schellstede, Sangmie Choi (ed.): Comfort Women Speak:Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, c. 2000, Holmes and Meier, hardcover. Accompanied by photographs.
Selcer, Richard: Hell’s Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District, c. 1991, Texas Christian University Press, trade paperback. Details the “Paris of the Plains” existence of Fort Worth, Texas, beginning with the cattle drives of the 1870s and ending after World War One.
Sleightholme, Carolyn: Guilty Without Trial: Women in the Sex Trade in Calcutta, c. 1997, Rutgers University Press, hardcover. Examines the double standards of the Indian sex-trade industry.
Stange, Margit: Personal Property: Wives, White Slaves, and the Market in Women, c. 1998, Johns Hopkins University Press, hardcover. An analysis of white slavery literature between 1909 and 1914 in relation to other key American writings of the time.
Statz, Margaret et. al., eds., The Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, c. 2000, ME Sharpe, hardcover & mass market paper.
Walkowitz, Judith: City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, c.1992, University of Chicago Press, trade paperback.
Walkowitz, Judith: Prostitution and Victorian Society: Woman, Class, and the State, c. 1982, Cambridge University Press, trade paper/textbook. Examines the state regulation of prostitution in mid-Victorian England as established by the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869.
Finally a small sampling of novels written about prostitution
Benderson,Bruce: User
Chua,Lawrence: Gold By The Inch
Cleland, Jamesa: Fanny Hill
Corbett, Jack: Death on the Wild Side
Crane, Stephen: Maggie, A Girl of the Streets
Flanagan, Mary: Adele
Friedman, Josh Alan: Tales of Times Square
Gash, Jonathan: Prey Dancing
Guyotat, Pierre: Prostitution
Hall, Patricia: Perils of the Night
Hamilton, Fritz: Love, Debra
Harvey, James Neal: Painted Ladies
Holman, Sheri: The Dress Lodger
Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
Jennings, James: The Autobiography of a Flea and Other Tart Tales
Kunin, Vladimir: Intergirl
McCabe, Patrick: Breakfast on Pluto
O’Brien, John: Leaving Las Vegas
Rechy, John: City of Night
Robinson, Spider: Lady Slings the Booze
Vollmann, William: Whores for Gloria
The author would like to thank many people who cannot be named here, mostly and especially Peach, as well as the women she employed, for providing so much help in writing this book.
I’d also like to thank my husband, who is my first editor and who lifted this book (and all my books) far above the level at which it started. He is smarter than I’ll ever hope to be and far more creative than he thinks he is.
Many thanks to my agent, Philip Spitzer, who really did make this book better (sending it back to me for revision after revision after revision!), and who patiently submitted it to a lot of publishers before finding it a home. Thanks also to Lukas Ortiz for doing a lot of hand-holding throughout the process. And, finally, thanks to Martin and Judith Shepard of The Permanent Press, for believing in Callgirl when others wouldn’t.
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Page 30