Client-Inflicted Violence and Coping Strategies Among Sex Workers in China

To date, very little research has focused on violence inflicted by clients on women working in the sex industry in China. This article examines the nature and extent of client-inflicted violence against sex workers in China and analyzes the coping strategies employed by the victims. It argues that violence is an integral part of sex work. Indoor sex workers are subject to more violence and harassment than their outdoor counterparts, mainly on account of the nature of the sex services provided. The article contends that the criminalization of prostitution places women in a vulnerable position and advocates decriminalization of prostitution to promote health and human rights for disadvantaged women in the sex industry.     

Effects of the criminalizing policy of sex work in Spain

The aim of this study is to analyse the effects on sex workers of new regulations that ban the practice of street prostitution in Spain. This country has not traditionally maintained a clear policy regarding prostitution. However, in recent years there has been a clear turn towards the criminalization of behaviours related to voluntary prostitution. The city councils of several Spanish cities have banned the practice of street prostitution and sanctioned it with fines issued to both prostitutes and clients. Even if few studies on prostitution have been carried out in Spain, none of them had yet analysed the effects of the adoption of civic ordinances on sex workers.In this paper we present the results of an empirical research carried out with a sample of 79 sex workers – in 20 cases with in-depth interviews – to explore the effects of the new regulation on their labour conditions.     

Female street sex workers,sexual violence,and protection strategies

Abstract

This paper reviews empirical findings on physical and sexual violence against female street working sex workers, drawing on the findings from the researcher's own study. Thirty-two female street sex workers were interviewed in a city in the South West of England during 1998. The ethical issues of researching female prostitution are discussed in relation to this specific research project. The main findings from the current literature and this original study highlight the possible connections between childhood sexual abuse, entrance into the sex industry at an early age, and continual experience of violence. This paper explores violence from pimps and clients as well as how the street environment exposes sex workers to risk. Concluding discussion explores the self protection strategies of individual sex workers and the female sex work community as a means of maintaining a survivor identity and not a victim identity.     

Simulating the impact of regulation changes on the market for prostitution services

The paper draws on recent research on the economics of prostitution focussing on the role of stigma in shaping the interaction between demand and supply and the resulting sub-markets in which this activity is typically organised. Here we extend the framework to consider the role of reputation and stigma in determining policy decisions regarding the regulation of prostitution and show how sub-optimal outcomes (from the point of view of the welfare of sex workers) may prevail.     

Prostitution policy and the women's movement

Feminists have consistently viewed prostitution as a social problem and opposed state regulated or legalized prostitution. However, feminists in different eras have taken conflicting policy stands on the problem. Progressive era feminists and their organizations supported severe state suppression of prostitution. In contrast, contemporary feminist groups join prostitutes in support of decriminalization. Through historical analysis that compares feminist thought and organization of the two eras, this paper offers an explanation of this contradiction in policy positions based on shifts in feminist thought about the role of the state, particularly criminal sanctions, in addressing prostitution, and changes in the organizing strategies of feminists. The paper also offers important insights to contemporary feminists contemplating policy stands which rely on legal sanctions as a strategy and facilitate alliances with moral crusaders to redress social problems.     

Prostitution

Abstract

In the recent literature on prostitution, there has been a focus on HIV which has tended to exclude discussion of the physical and sexual violence which precedes and which is intrinsic to prostitution. The literature of two time periods (1980-84 and 1992-1996) is critically reviewed in order to describe this trend.

The normalization of prostitution in the medical and social sciences literature, the tendency to blame the victim of sexual exploitation, and the ways in which racism and poverty are an inextricable part of prostitution are discussed here. The social invisibility of prostitution, needs of women escaping prostitution, and an overview of recent criminal justice responses to prostitution are summarized.     

Professional male prostitution: A neglected phenomenon

Male prostitution is generally regarded as a problematic phenomenon. This paper refutes this view by showing that most researchers have consistently selected only the problematic categories of male prostitution for their studies while ignoring successful prostitutes. A second difficulty is that many researchers explain male prostitution in terms of the individual psychosocial characteristics of those who practice it. Consequently little is known about male prostitution as an occupational/professional career. Based on ethnographic research in the world of male prostitution in Amsterdam, the occupation is analyzed as a commercial service-oriented business with economic and social characteristics typical of other small- and medium-sized businesses.This article was presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, 1991.     

Mobility of Sex Workers in European Cities

This article focuses on mobility as a crucial aspect of prostitution and human trafficking. I distinguish between horizontal (geographical) and vertical (organizational) mobility to analyze the context in which women, their families, agents, and other actors decide to move from one place to another in the framework of sex-work activities. Data used in this article derive from the ongoing research on human trafficking and prostitution in western and eastern Europe. This research is carried out through participant observation among migrant prostitutes and through interviews and content analysis of media reports in several countries.     

New Perspectives from the Oldest Profession: Abuse and the Legal Consciousness of Sex Workers in China

Although prostitution is illegal, millions of women sell sex in China. In the process, they experience significant abuse and harm at the hands of clients, madams, pimps, the police, and health officials. This article examines the legal consciousness of Chinese sex workers through their interpretations of these abusive experiences. It reveals how they think and talk about them, and how their reactions sometimes translate into concrete actions. My evidence shows that sex workers name abuse as harmful, blame others for it, and occasionally make claims. They also have strong opinions about prostitution policies, and the relationship between these regulations and their experiences of abuse. These findings place scope conditions on previous theories of marginalized people and the law, which suggest that powerless individuals perceive a more peripheral role of the law in their lives. In addition, this evidence enriches our understanding of legal consciousness in China by showing how debates around the concept apply more broadly than previously recognized.     

Shame on you,John! Laws,stigmatization, and the demand for sex

The present article contributes to the literature on prostitution by shedding light on the effects of the criminalization of buying sex on the amount of prostitution bought, as well as on the proposed theoretical mechanisms underlying this change. We find indications that criminalizing the buying of sex may decrease the quantity of sex bought. While we find that stigma influences the demand for sex, we do not find that stigma increases as a result of the law. Therefore, the possible reduced quantity of sex bought is probably due to the more direct risk of getting caught.     

When (Some) Prostitution is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform on Sex Work in Australia

In Australia, prostitution regulation has taken a very different path from many other countries. Law reform has led to the opening of some significant new spaces for legal sex work, including the (very different) regulatory regimes established in two Australian states – Queensland (brothels legal if their owners are licensed) and New South Wales (most commercial sex businesses and some street prostitution decriminalized; no licensing regime). The main research question is: how has regulation impacted on the positive rights of sex workers? I argue that law reform has engaged a mix of neo-liberal and other approaches – not to increase personal or corporate freedom but as part of a practical strategy designed to control a range of social problems, such as police corruption and organized crime. Neo-liberal regulation of prostitution in Australia has always been deployed in tandem with other modes of regulation – including new criminal law and policing strategies, planning law, health regulations, and (of course) moral regulation.     

Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Taking a feminist cultural criminological analysis to the regulation of sex work in the United Kingdom, this paper argues against the dominant deviancy and the increasingly abolitionist criminal justice model for regulating sex work. The paper begins by offering a critique of the dominant regulatory regimes which have operated since the Victorian era, amended in part in the 1950s with Wolfenden, and currently being reinscribed with the Home Office strategy on prostitution and various pieces of legislation. The focus is specifically upon research with female sex workers and the usefulness of using Participatory Action research methodologies (PAR) with sex workers, agencies, and policy makers in order to foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work, drawing upon the work of Nancy Fraser.     

Exploring terra incognita: Family values and prostitution acceptance in China

One of the unexamined issues in China is the public attitude toward prostitution. Little is known about public opinion on prostitution in China or Asia, and no work exists regarding the association between family values and public opinion on prostitution. Data from the World Values Surveys were used to explore social determinants of the attitude toward prostitution with a focus on the relationship between family values and acceptance of prostitution in China. The results from the multivariate logistic regression showed that family values were a significant predictor of the attitude toward prostitution, independent of tolerance, feminism, authoritarianism, and employment. While the effects of tolerance and feminism were consistent with the findings in the U.S., the effects of authoritarianism and religiosity were inconsistent. This article concluded with a call for reevaluation of the current harsh policy in order to gain a better handling of prostitution in China.     

Violence and legalized brothel prostitution in Nevada: examining safety, risk, and prostitution policy

This article examines violence in legalized brothels in Nevada. Debates over prostitution policies in the United States have long focused on questions of safety and risk. These discourses inevitably invoke the coupling of violence and prostitution, though systematic examinations of the relationship between the two are sparse. This article explores the issue of violence in the Nevada brothel industry. By drawing on interviews with prostitutes, managers, and policy makers, this article examines both prostitutes' perceptions of safety and risk and brothel managers' practices designed to mitigate violence. Discourses relate to three types of violence: interpersonal violence against prostitutes, violence against community order, and sexually transmitted diseases as violence. The authors conclude by arguing that the legalization of prostitution brings a level of public scrutiny, official regulation, and bureaucratization to brothels that decreases the risk of these 3 types of systematic violence.     

Prostitution as Vagrancy: Sweden 1923–1964

This article argues for the need of a historical perspective when discussing the construction of social and criminal state policy and legislation. The article discusses prostitution and women in prostitution as these were perceived in different commissions in Sweden during 1923–1964. During the period women in prostitution went from being characterized as ‘normal’ but a menace to society, to having hereditary deficiencies, to psychopathological and later to be seen as sociopaths. They should be corrected for the sake of the nation and society but also for their own sake. This article also shows that the conceptualization of prostitution as a question of male demand rather than female supply could be seen as early as in the 1950s. This demand of a change of policy, unheard for decades but then picked up again, has to be seen as a liberal feminist legacy rather than as a social democratic welfare development.     

Would John Stuart Mill have Regulated Pornography?

John Stuart Mill dominates contemporary pornography debates where he is routinely invoked as an authoritative defence against regulation. This article, by contrast, argues that a broader understanding of Mill's ethical liberalism, his utilitarianism, and his feminism casts doubt over such an assumption. New insights into Mill's approach to sex, sexual activity, and the regulation of prostitution reveal an altogether more nuanced and activist approach. We conclude that John Stuart Mill would almost certainly have accepted certain forms of pornography regulation and, in this light, we argue that Mill can provide the foundation for new, liberal justifications of some forms of pornography regulation.     

How to Argue About Prostitution

This article provides a comparative analysis of various methodologies employed in building arguments regarding prostitution law and policy, and reflects on the proper aims of legal philosophy more generally. Taking Peter de Marneffe’s Liberalism and Prostitution (OUP 2010) as a launching point for these reflections, the article offers a mostly favourable review of the book as a whole, and defends the philosophical method as one (amongst other) valuable ways to argue about prostitution.