In history and in literature she has been the subject of unseemly fascination and ceaseless censure, the "wanton woman" capable of wreaking havoc. But she has also been the "hooker with a heart of gold," who provides comfort to the common man, the working girl fallen upon hard times. In the modern era, she has been portrayed alternatively as a symbol of cultural and moral decline, an innocent victim of male lust, a public health nuisance, and even a cinematic heroine.
Prostitution touches the rawest of society's moral nerves. This is particularly true in the United States, which is often viewed by its European cousins as hopelessly unsophisticated in its approach to sex. So the question should be asked: In an era when elementary-school children are suing for sexual harassment, television sitcoms include blatant references to sex of various kinds, and the public is privy to excruciating details about President Clinton's sexual appetite, is it time to reassess our attitude toward the world's oldest profession?
Americans can agree that the exploitation of children for prostitution is wrong and must be ended, but things get muddy when one begins talking about adults. Americans have not reached a consensus on the issue of legalized prostitution.
The dilemma over legalizing prostitution is actually several dilemmas, because prostitution is a highly stratified business. Styles of sexual commerce range from the high-class call girl to the crack whore-perhaps even to participants on the recent television game show "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" Some manifestations of the world's oldest profession can appear glamorous, such as the courtesans of seventeenth-century Europe, who were fixtures of royal households and whose exotic allure was powerful enough, as historian Antonia Fraser has noted, to generate sympathetic and even admiring treatment in the literature of the day. Such flattering portrayals have warred with more negative assessments of prostitutes throughout history as inherently depraved harlots -- the ultimate bad girls.
Historically, debates over prostitution have hinged on society's perception of whether she could or would reform. In the United States in the nineteenth century (when more than 7,000 prostitutes plied their trade in New York City alone) reform was on the minds of members of the American Female Moral Reform Society, who pledged to abolish prostitution through Christian conversion and the curbing of male licentiousness.
Their tactics were confrontational. Members of the New York chapter would decamp to the city's houses of ill repute on Sunday mornings, where they would loudly recite Bible passages and sing hymns.
Today, the debate over prostitution is as much about the question of economic opportunities for women as morality. A loosely organized coalition of people in this country believes the time has come to legalize the oldest profession. They insist that prostitution is a victimless crime.
The most vocal constituency supporting legalization is sex workers themselves. Prostitutes view their work as an outgrowth of the service industry, though admittedly one with an image problem. Removing the taint of illegality would do much toward improving working conditions and clearing up misunderstandings about sex work, they argue. It would also discourage economic exploitation of prostitutes by pimps or brothel owners.
The preeminent prostitute's union is COYOTE, which stands for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics." Founded by Margo St. James in 1973, COYOTE works to decriminalize prostitution and end "the stigma associated with sexual work."
Another key union player is PONY -- Prostitutes of New York, whose logo features a high-heel-clad, naked woman with flowing hair sitting astride a horse. PONY "works to bring all people from different areas of the sex industry together" to "promote professional standards within their sector" and even "to learn more about the history of the world's oldest profession and its allied industries."
Some physicians have come on board favoring legalization. In 1993, a physician and lecturer in women's health -- Dr. Mary Hepburn -- argued for decriminalization of prostitution in the pages of the British Medical Journal. She argued that decriminalization would facilitate better health education among prostitutes and thus prevent the spread of diseases such as AIDS. Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former surgeon general under President Clinton, endorsed the legalization of prostitution in the forward to a book called Prostitution: On Whores, Hustlers, and Johns. "Why are we so upset about sex workers selling sexual acts to consenting adults?" she asks.
There are disagreements among legalization advocates, however. Sex workers' rights groups such as COYOTE and PONY want decriminalization of prostitution; in other words, they want to change the laws that call for the arrest and prosecution of people who sell sex. Other proponents of legalization want decriminalization but also some regulation by the state in the form of licensing and regulation of brothels, mandatory health certification of prostitutes, and the like. The North American Task Force on Prostitution, a small committee of activists, wants legalization because they believe it would lead to the development of "occupational regulations" and the calming influence of government oversight. One can only imagine the quandary OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) would face trying to develop such guidelines.
But like entrepreneurs everywhere, many prostitutes are wary of too much regulation, fearing that it could impinge on their independence and further marginalize their access to the
market. As early as 1985, the International Committee for Prostitutes Rights, an international umbrella group for sex workers, passed a "world charter" that included strong statements against government regulation in the form of mandatory testing for sexually-transmitted diseases or the creation of red-light districts or zoning restrictions. "Prostitutes should have the freedom to choose their place of work and residence," the statement averred.
One of America's best-known bawdy houses, Nevada's Mustang Ranch, embodied this free-market philosophy. Billed as "America's biggest bordello" and run by the outlandish and tax-evading Joe Conforte, it was Nevada's first legal brothel, opening in 1971. (Nevada is the only state in which prostitution is legal.) Conforte's rhetoric was populist: He bragged that he kept the "house minimums" low enough that the average John could afford a visit. But Conforte was also openly defiant of the federal government's efforts to tax and regulate his enterprise (he appeared to have fewer problems with local tax collectors). He eventually lost a bitter feud with the IRS, which auctioned off the ranch in 1999. Still, by all accounts he treated his employees well. Prostitutes at the Mustang Ranch were considered "independent contractors" and earned upwards of $160 per hour.
Opponents of prostitution pay no heed to the comfortable sums of money earned or avowed statements of independence made by prostitutes. Instead, they argue, prostitutes are desperate women, whose judgment is clouded by the unjust economic deprivation in which they find themselves. The choice to prostitute oneself is not an authentic choice.
Leading the charge against prostitution, today as in the past, are social and religious conservatives. Organizations such as Concerned Women for America argue that prostitution undermines the bedrock social institution of marriage and exploits women, as well as poisoning the country's moral climate. Other groups, such as WHISPER -- Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt -- believe all forms of prostitution are akin to violence and must be stopped.
In Nevada, ground zero for prostitution, small groups such as Citizens Against Prostitution have sprung up to try to close down brothels in counties where prostitution is legal. As one activist reasoned, "When something is legal, it's viewed by our children as being acceptable." Arrayed against these local groups are not just brothel owners, but municipal officials who count on the revenue gained from regulating houses of ill repute.
So where, one might ask, do feminists stand on prostitution? More than almost any other issue in contemporary feminism, prostitution exposes serious fault lines in feminism. Only the debates over pornography are as passionate and divisive.
On one side of the debate are feminists who view prostitution as linked to a system of patriarchy-and thus one that is inherently exploitative. Feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon echo the sentiments of earlier moral reformers, who spoke of the "predatory nature of the American male," whose "reckless" sexual appetite was "drenched in sin." In a recent letter to the New York Times, one angry feminist stated, "legalization makes the state the superpimp" and argued that prostitution, a "misogynistic construct," results in the "cultural devaluation of all women."
However, their approach is to blame the sin, not the sinner-at least not the female sinner. These feminist opponents of prostitution assume that if women weren't functioning in an oppressively patriarchal world-and had equal access to economic resources and political power-they wouldn't choose sex work. And they rarely condemn the women who do choose it. Their sisters in women's studies departments, many of whom have dubbed prostitution a form of "erotic labor," do not share feminists' unease with the subject. Viewed from the safety of the ivory tower, prostitutes are brave, "transgressive" warriors in a patriarchal culture. In her book, Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor, Wendy Chapkis, a women's studies professor at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, writes that prostitutes "function as both the literal of sexual slaves and as the most subversive of sexual agents within a sexist social order."
Some feminists have taken women's studies professors to task for celebrating prostitution. Janice Raymond, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and a staunch prostitution-abolitionist, told the feminist periodical Off Our Backs that it is "amazing to me" that "these academic critics of capitalism write about the sex industry and think that what we're dealing with here is sex, not sexual exploitation."
Socialists have always pointed to capitalism as the ultimate culprit in women's exploitation. Following Engels, they noted that marriage and prostitution both resembled the inherently corrupt system of private property. Reminiscing in the pages of Commentary in 1994, Irving Kristol remembered how he used to "read The Communist Manifesto, in which Marx launches a vitriolic attack on the bourgeois family as an institution of legalized prostitution for the unfortunate wives." Early women's rights activists and even some contemporary radical feminists have described marriage as a form of legalized prostitution.
Lurking behind all these debates is the fact that, at its core, prostitution is an economic exchange -- and for many women, a more lucrative choice than other available options. Advocates of legalization celebrate that choice and want society to view prostitutes not as fallen women, but as fearless sex workers, canny businesswomen who are exploiting a market opportunity. Opponents see them as victims of economic and social oppression.
Both agree that prostitution is big business. Most experts note that it is a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S., and according to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization, sex work is one of the largest employers and revenue producers for countries in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, for example, between 2 and 14 percent of the GDP is produced by the sex tourism industry.
As an economic animal, prostitution displays a remarkable adaptability. It finds outlets anywhere, and creates new ones when old ones are blocked off. When police vice squads sweep the streets, prostitution simply goes underground -- to massage parlors, escort services, strip clubs, or on the Internet -- and continues to thrive.
The quandary over prostitution will only continue. But given the state of our culture it seems likely that public opinion will continue to inch towards legalization. Those who oppose prostitution must be able to put forward compelling reasons why prostitution should remain illegal. In an age that has elevated the pursuit of pleasure to new heights, and where the only thing not tolerated is intolerance, this is no small challenge.
