Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

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  ———. and the CDC Multicenter Collaborative Group. “HIV-1 Antibody in U.S. Prostitutes with No Evidence of I. V. Drug Use.” International Conference on AIDS, Stockholm, June 1988.

  ———. “Assessing Targeted AIDS Prevention in Male and Female Prostitutes and Their Clients.” In Assessing AIDS prevention, edited by F Paccaud, J. P. Vader, and F. Gutzwiller. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag, 1992.

  Day, Sophie. “Prostitute Women and the Ideology of Work in London.” In AIDS and Culture: The Global Pandemic, edited by Douglas A. Feldman. New York: Praeger, 1990.

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  Friese, K., et al. “HIV-Infection in Prostitutes: The Potential of HIV Transmission.” International AIDS Conference, Montreal, 1989.

  Gibson, Mary. Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860-1915. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

  Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

  Goldman, Marion S. Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode. Ann Arbor: The University of Michgan Press, 1981.

  Goldstein, Paul J. Prostitution and Drugs. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979.

  Harsin, Jill. Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Paris. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.

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  Hill, Marilyn Wood. Their Sisters’ Keepers: Prostitution in New York City, 1830-1870. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

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  ———. “Motivations for entrance into prostitution.” In The Female Offender, edited by Laura Crites. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1976.

  ———. “Prostitutes and prostitution.” In Deviants: Voluntary Actors in a Hostile World, edited by Edward Sagarin and Fred Montanino. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1977.

  ———. “Women as Sexual Criminals and Victims.” In Sexual Scripts: The Social Construction of Female Sexuality, edited by Judith Long Laws and Pepper Schwartz. Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1977.

  ———. “Self-destructive Behavior and Adaptive Strategies in Female Prostitutes.” In The Many Faces of Suicide, edited by Norman L. Farberow. New York: McGraw Hill, 1980.

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  Laga, Marie, et al. “Non-Ulcerative Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) as Risk Factors for HIV Infection.” International Conference on AIDS, San Francisco, June 1990.

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  Levine, Philippa. “Venereal Disease, Prostitution and the Politics of Empire: The Case of British India.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4(4) (1994): 579-602.

  Lewin, Tamar. “Birth Rates for Teen-Agers Declined Sharply in the 90’s.” The New York Times, May 1, 1998: A21.

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  Nagle, Jill, ed. Whores and Other Feminists. New York: Routledge, 1997.

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  Overs, Cheryl, and Paulo Longo. Making Sex Work Safe. London: Network of Sex Work Projects and AHRTAG, 1997.

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eth. Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980. See the chapter, “Lost Women.”

  Pheterson, Gail, ed. A Vindication of the Rights of Whores. Seattle: Seal Press, 1989. Available in Spanish: Nosotros, Las Putas. Madrid: Talasa Ediciones, 1992. Includes the proceedings of the Second World Whores Congress held in Brussels, Belgium, in 1986.

  ———. “The Category ‘Prostitute’ in Scientific Inquiry.” The Journal of Sex Research 27(3) (August 1990): 397-407.

  ———. The Prostitution Prism. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 1996.

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  ———. Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992.

  Rosen, Ruth. The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

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  Sleightholme, Carolyn, and Indrani Sinha. Guilty Without Trial: Women in the Sex Trade in Calcutta. Calcutta: Stree, 1996. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

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  Sturdevant, Saundra Pollack, and Brenda Stoltzfus. Let the Good Times Roll: Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia. New York: The New Press, 1992.

  Swaddiwudhipong, W., et al. “Sociodemographic Characteristics and Incidence of Gonorrhoea in Prostitutes Working Near the Thai-Burmese Border.” Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health 21(1) (March 1990): 45-52.

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  Truong, Thanh-Dam. Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and tourism in South-east Asia. London: Zed Books, 1990.

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  ———. “Prostitution, Identity, and Class Consciousness During World War II.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11(2) (1986): 255-73.

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  The Social Consequences of Unchastity

  Gail Pheterson

  The prostitute is the prototype of the stigmatized woman. She is both named and dishonored by the word “whore.” The word “whore” does not, however, refer only to prostitutes. It is also a label which can be applied to any woman. As an adjective, “whore” is defined as “unchaste.”1 Significantly, unchastity in a man does not make him a whore although it may determine his status in other ways. The whore stigma is specifically a female gender stigma which can be defined as “a mark of shame or disease on an unchaste woman.”2 This article provides a framework for understanding that stigma along two socially critical dimensions of unchastity, namely impurity and defilement. Those dimensions have been chosen because they expose social justifications for racial, ethnic, and class oppression (grounded in notions of impure identity) as well as for physical and sexual violence (grounded in notions of defilement through experience). Each dimension will be explored for both women and men with the help of research and interview citations.3 Since one function of the whore stigma is to silence and degrade those it targets, this article is self-consciously committed to giving voice and respect to persons traditionally denied such legitimacy.

  Impurity

  One definition of unchaste is impure. Impure is defined as “dirty, mixed with foreign matter, adulterated, mixed with another colour.” Unmistakably, such a definition activates associations of racial and ethnic diversity wherein only white, non-foreign people are chaste. People of color, foreigners (people of different origin than the ethnic norm), and Jewish people become the unchaste ones, the dirty ones. Pure is defined as “clean, white, and unadulterated.” Often clean is used in the sense of clean hands; clean hands belong not only to white people but particularly to white middle- and upper-class people. Servants, workers, and childrearers “dirty their hands.” An analysis of the impurity dimension of unchastity brings us directly to the links between the whore stigma and racism, anti-Semitism, and classism.

  Women of color, Jewish women, and working-class women are vulnerable to the whore stigma as women with a denigrated status. Men who deviate from the white heterosexual male norm are also vulnerable, not to the whore stigma but to racial, sexual, or class stigmas. In fact, no one is immune to accusations of unchastity; it appears that no one can fit all norms and that “the dynamics of shameful differentness are... a general feature of social life.”4

  Racism and the Whore Stigma

  Whores and blacks have traditionally been treated as slaves and criminals. They are considered the unclean ones. They are considered the sexy ones. Black women are often assumed to be whores. One black woman who is not a prostitute said, “When I stand waiting for a bus, especially in a white neigh
borhood, men passing assume that I’m working. My color means whore’ to them.” Black men are often assumed to be pimps. A white woman said, “Since I’ve had a black boyfriend, people look at me suspiciously, as if I was a whore and he was my pimp. One white man actually asked if my boyfriend was my (smirk) boss, although it sure seemed obvious to me that we were a couple. He even had the nerve to ask if I needed help to get away!”

  Black women are assumed to be sexually available; they must prove their honor. Black men are assumed to be sexually predatory; they must prove their worthiness. White men traditionally accuse black men of raping white women, an accusation which has historically led to the murder of black men.5 White men also traditionally rape black women, a transgression which is blamed on the sexual nature of black women. Both sex and race are seen as dark, mysterious, and dirty. Both are judged unchaste and thereby unfit for public life. Accusations of impurity are used to deny visibility, voice, and power to the “sexy ones” and to the “dark ones.” Symbolically, sexy and dark have intertwined into one alluring taboo. People of color are considered mistresses (women) and monsters (men) regardless of their sexual behavior. In essence, the whore stigma together with the racial stigma dehumanizes people of color and transforms human sexuality into a beastial force.

  Prostitutes are considered shady women regardless of their color. A black street prostitute, when asked about differences between black and white whores, said, “We’re all standing on the same corner. We’re all sucking on the same dick. Sure, some white men won’t take me, a black lady, into a hotel because they’re afraid of being conspicuous, but in private or on the street a whore is a whore.” It is true that in some countries (such as the United States), a higher percentage of black women than of white women are sent to jail for prostitution.6 And, in many countries (such as the Netherlands, France, and Germany) third world women are more likely to be exploited in prostitution than native white women. Such racist mechanisms compound the stigmatization of whores of color but they do not minimize the “dark mark” branded on any prostitute.