prostitution

n.

1. The act or practice of engaging in sex acts for hire.
2. The act or an instance of offering or devoting one's talent to an unworthy use or cause.

Prostitution is widely described as the world's oldest profession; the practice of selling sex for cash or other immediate compensation has existed across cultures and times from the ancient Greeks, through religious servitude, to today's madam scandals that have rocked the British Parliament, America's Hollywood, and America's east coast Blue Bloods. Prostitution also crosses class lines, from the poor ‘streetwalkers’ with their stereotyped drug habits and abusive pimps to the high-class brothel and escort service workers with their designer clothes and stylish apartments.

While the prostitute technically sells a service, namely sexual intimacy, the ways in which prostitution is discussed suggest that, at least to modern sensibilities, she or he is selling far more than that. Common euphemisms for prostitution in English include ‘selling her body’ and ‘selling herself’: conflating the body and the self with sexual intimacy suggests that sexual intimacy both defines and controls the body and the self. What one does, then, defines who one is. A whore is always a whore.

A common misconception of prostitution is that a significant majority of prostitutes are women. While women's prostitution is far more easily talked about, male homosexual prostitution has existed alongside female heterosexual prostitution at least since the time of the ancient Greeks, but it is rarely discussed or studied. Nearly all of prostitution, however, serves the sexual needs of men; very little prostitution services women of any class.

Most analyses of prostitution suggest that both men and women enter prostitution, either professionally or temporarily, as relative amateurs, for economic and monetary reasons. Certainly, through most of history there were few professions open for women, especially if they had little family support or they lacked the education or class status to aspire to the few professions that respectable women could participate in. Conversely, many people who are advocating a departure from the shame culture surrounding sex in a variety of arenas, including sex work, argue that some prostitutes work in order to challenge repressive gender roles which restrict women's sexuality to a romantic ideology and oppressive patriarchal marriages. As these activists are also working to change women's opportunities and thus eliminate prostitution as a forced, last-ditch option for staying alive, they are not simply romanticizing prostitution but complicating it by forcing the world to consider the positive choices of sex workers.

The economic argument, however, has been boosted in the past two decades by the development of the East Asian sex trades, which form significant portions of the economies of countries such as Thailand. American military installations during the Vietnam War helped begin the sex trades as military officials organized R&R for their soldiers. As the global economy forced previously agrarian cultures to move towards a capitalist, cash-based system, the sex trades boomed as young girls were sold or forced into urban prostitution in order to support families in more rural areas. Currently, it is common for men from First World countries to join tours in East Asian countries that consist entirely of patronizing the sex industry.

Although the East Asian sex industries have brought the issue to prominence recently, the issue of child prostitution has always been a rallying cry for those interested in eradicating sex work. The mythologies surrounding virginity — including the regenerative powers of having sex with a virgin, the idea that virgins could cure sexually transmitted diseases, and the thrill of the power differential between an experienced man and a young, inexperienced girl — have always ensured that young girls, sometimes as young as six, will be included in the sex industry. As prostitution frequently involves an economically exploitative relationship with a pimp or a madam, young girls are at even higher risk of abuse and exploitation than their older counterparts.

Forced prostitution, beyond families selling their girl children into sexual servitude, has also become a political issue recently as the Korean women forced to serve as ‘comfort women’ for Japanese troops in World War II have demanded restitution and apology from the Japanese Government. Repeated rape as a form of terrorism and war crime often blurs the line between rape and prostitution as women are forced to provide sex to ensure their very lives.

Social tolerance for prostitution has varied widely; some cultures and times have accepted it as a natural part of life, regulating it to prevent the spread of disease or illness, and to prevent the abuse of women. Other cultures and times have turned a blind eye, criminalizing it but not enforcing the law. Still others, notably Victorian England and contemporary America, have actively worked to eliminate the practice altogether through raids, undercover police work, moral exhortation, and prosecution. While prostitution necessarily involves two people, elimination efforts have focused on the prostitutes themselves, and not their customers.

International feminist coalitions are working to eliminate prostitution on the grounds that sex work is an extreme manifestation of patriarchally-enforced gender roles, whereby women's social position is necessarily one of subservience to men, and women's work is often connected to the sexual or domestic servicing of men in order to achieve financial and social support. Further, prostitution helps to maintain the old dichotomy of the good girl/bad girl; women are either asexual, moral creatures, above reproach, or they are the sexual and dirty things that men go to for the relief of unbearable urges. These feminists argue that the elimination of prostitution would allow women to renegotiate gender roles and sexual experience because they would have a valuable bargaining chip.

Whores' rights activists cite the same problem ‘the virgin/whore dichotomy’ but argue that legitimizing sex work undermines the distinction by highlighting the ways in which women's gender roles are based upon sex as a valuable commodity. They also argue that sex work provides a valuable service that should be granted more respect. Groups like COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) are interested in changing the moral value of sex, and thus the moral value of prostitution as well, while at the same time undermining the idea that consenting adults are any more exploited than they would be in another industry.

While activists and politicians today disagree about whether sex work between consenting adults is legitimate, there is little question on the official level that child prostitution and forced prostitution should be eradicated.

— Julie Vedder

Bibliography

• Barry, K. (1995). The prostitution of sexuality. New York University Press.
• Evans, H. (1979). Harlots, whores and hookers: a history of prostitution. Taplinger Publishing Company, New York

See also paedophilia; sexual orientation.

Prostitution is defined as "the act or practice of engaging in sexual activity for money or its equivalent" (Garner 1999, p. 1238). Except for parts of Nevada, it is a criminal act in the United States. Prostitutes are also referred to as commercial or public sex workers. It is estimated that over 92,000 men, women, and juveniles are arrested yearly for prostitution (FBI, 2000). The number of juveniles engaging in prostitution is estimated at between 100,000 and 300,000 per year.

The greatest health consequences of prostitution are drug abuse, violence, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), gonorrhea, pelvic inflammatory disease, and syphilis. The risk for HIV infection is increased because of multiple partners and limited safe sex practices—some customers are willing to pay more for a sexual encounter if they do not have to use a condom. Based on research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of HIV infection for prostitutes is three times higher if they smoke crack cocaine. Intravenous drug use also increases the risk of HIV infection for a prostitute.

Prostitutes are often victimized by the person for whom they work, and by their customers. Other health issues related to prostitution are early pregnancy for juveniles, rape, tuberculosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, assault, and other acts of violence—including murder. There are also negative consequences besides those related to health issues. In places where it is common, prostitution lowers the value of property. It also degrades the status of women. Published research studies concerning prostitution as a public health issue in urban communities have come primarily from developing countries. It is a topic in need of more research in the United States.

(SEE ALSO: Addiction and Habituation; Crime; HIV/AIDS; Public Health and the Law; Sexually Transmitted Diseases; Violence)

Bibliography

Baseman, J.; Ross, M.; and Williams, M. (1999). "Sale of Sex for Drugs and Drugs for Sex: an Economic Context of Sexual Risk Behavior for STDs." Sexually Transmitted Diseases 26(8):444–449.

Booth, R. E.; Watters, J. K.; and Chitwood, D. D. (1993). "HIV Risk-Related Sex Behaviors among Injection Drug Users, Crack Smokers, and Injection Drug Users Who Smoke Crack." American Journal of Public Health 83(8):1144–1148.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (2000). Uniform Crime Reports. Preliminary Figures, 1999. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice. Available at www.fbi.gov/ucr/htm.

Garner, B. A., ed. (1999). Black's Law Dictionary, 7th edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.

Jones, D. L.; Irwin, K. L.; Inciardi, J.; Bowser, B.; Schilling, R.; Word, C.; Evans, P.; Faruque, S.; McCoy, H. V.; and Edlin, B. R. (1998). "The High-Risk Sexual Practices of Crack-Smoking Sex Workers Recruited from the Streets of Three American Cities." Sexually Transmitted Diseases 25(4):187–193.

Shuter, J.; Alpert, P. L.; DeShaw, M. G.; Greenberg, B.; Chang, C. J.; and Klein, R. S. (1999). "Gender Differences in HIV Risk Behaviors in an Adult Emergency Department in New York City." Journal of Urban Health 76(2):237–246.

— KATHY AKPOM; TAMMY A. KING

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For more information on prostitution, visit Britannica.com.

Prostitution, the sale of sex for money, predominantly by females with male clients, has always been affected by cultural values. Brothels first sprang up in Southwark where Roman soldiers guarded the Thames crossing, to develop into the Bankside stews that were regulated by Henry II (1162); the church took a pragmatic view since the revenue was highly profitable. With the Reformation, moral rather than health concerns began to prevail, so prostitutes were publicly humiliated and imprisoned for ‘correction’. Puritanism merely hardened existing attitudes. During the 19th cent. governments made efforts to regulate the practice, particularly around naval and military garrisons (a third of all sick cases among soldiers were venereal in origin by 1864). Female prostitutes were subject to humiliation and callous treatment under the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s, only repealed in 1886 after the campaigns of Josephine Butler. Female prostitution is now legally tolerated, though with prohibition of open solicitation, but young women are still forced into the practice by poverty or homelessness. Homosexual male prostitution, particularly in large cities, is increasing.

Prostitution, the exchange of money for sex, was not regarded as a serious social problem in the United States until the last part of the nineteenth century. Previously, Americans had followed the practice of English common law in ignoring prostitution, which regarded it as a crime only when it became an offense to public decency. In most areas of America during the colonial and early national periods, prostitution was a more or less irregular occupation for a few women. Only where men greatly outnumbered women, as in the French colonies on the Gulf of Mexico, was it in any way institutionalized.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the growth of industrial cities and the opening of the western frontier had led to an increase in prostitution, which tended to be concentrated in tacitly accepted "red-light" districts. The growth of these districts and the mounting concern over venereal disease resulted in two differing approaches to dealing with prostitution. One group, led by the New York physician W. W. Sanger, wanted to require compulsory medical inspection of prostitutes and to confine all prostitution to the red-light districts. During the Civil War some army commanders adopted such plans, but the only city to do so was Saint Louis between 1870 and 1874. Agitation against the Saint Louis plan came not only on moral grounds but also on public health grounds after an increasing number of physicians began to have doubts about their ability to detect venereal disease during the required inspection.

The second group wanted to abolish prostitution altogether. Josephine Elizabeth Butler, an English reformer, greatly influenced their efforts, but the group also had strong ties to the woman's suffrage movement. Many of the activists of the pre–Civil War antislavery movement joined the cause, and an increasing number of cities and states acted to curtail prostitution in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The movement to outlaw prostitution gained immeasurably when a number of venereal specialists, especially Prince A. Morrow of New York, decided that the consequences of syphilis and gonorrhea were so horrible that traditional attitudes and institutions had to be changed. The result was the formation of the American Social Hygiene Association, which gave "scientific" backing to the movement to abolish prostitution. The Iowa Injunction and Abatement Law of 1909 took direct aim at law enforcement officials who were reluctant to move against established houses, and other states widely copied its provisions. Under this law any taxpayer might institute an action in equity against property used for prostitution. The U.S. federal government also entered the field in 1910 with the Mann Act, or White Slave Traffic Act, which outlawed procuring and transporting women across state borders for immoral purposes. The army's decision in World War I to inspect soldiers rather than prostitutes bolstered the campaign against tolerated houses. By the 1920s legally tolerated districts had mostly disappeared. For a brief period prostitution became a source of income for organized crime, but the difficulties of monopolizing what was essentially a free-lance occupation made prostitution only a minor aspect of the underworld's activities.

After the end of World War II, when effective cures for many venereal diseases had been developed, legal attitudes toward prostitution came under question again. The American Law Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that sexual activities between consenting adults should not be subject to criminal penalties and advocated a return to the earlier common-law regulation of prostitution. In the mid-1970s several states considered action in this area, but only in Nevada did a state legally tolerate prostitution. Thirteen of the state's sixteen counties legalized the activity, but subjected it to careful regulation. In the context of changing sexual norms and more effective contraceptives, some authorities argued that even if legalized, prostitution would continue to decline because of the country's changing moral standards. As women began to gain equality—economically, politically, and sexually—the idea that prostitution was a necessary evil increasingly came under challenge.

Despite these changes, however, most states continued to enforce laws against prostitution and closely associated crimes, including pandering (procuring prostitutes) and pimping (living off the earnings of prostitutes). Between 1975 and 1991 there were an average of 89,000 annual arrests in the United States for male and female prostitution. Prostitution is now overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon, with most arrests in cities of more than 250,000 people. Unlike cities like San Francisco, where neither police nor prosecutors actively pursue prostitutes, most cities unofficially enforce a policy that confines sexual commerce to red-light districts. Most Americans do not worry greatly about prostitution unless activity is nearby. Prosecution can be politically advantageous for local politicians, but it is usually inconsistently pursued. Raids are often little more than symbolic gestures. Critics of current law enforcement policies also argue that prosecution and incarceration expenses should be applied to drug treatment and job training. In the politics of the United States, however, legalization of prostitution in the 1990s was as remote a possibility as it was in the 1890s. Officers arrest an average of 62,000 women, but few of their customers, each year.

Female prostitution tends to be hierarchical and male dominated. At the top are call girls, available by appointment through a madam or a high-class male pimp. Fees may run into thousands of dollars. A similar system involves escort services, through which customers may hire someone for companionship or sex. Escort services operate superficially within the law and may even advertise in newspapers or telephone directories. Far below escort services are strip joints and massage parlors, which often function in tawdry, unsanitary conditions. A related activity is telephone sex, which insulates both parties from disease, particularly AIDS, while providing customers with verbal stimulation. At the bottom of the hierarchy are streetwalkers. Protected only by a pimp, streetwalkers charge little, accept nearly all customers, and perform their work in cars, alleys, or cheap hotels. New York City authorities estimate that one-third of street prostitutes carry the HIV virus, which causes AIDS. Streetwalkers comprise only 10 to 20 percent of all prostitutes, but account for 90 percent of arrests; a disproportionate number of those who are detained are women of color.

Prostitution superficially involves a mutually agreed-upon transaction. Many young men still regard visits as rites of passage; older men ostensibly work out marital and sexual difficulties. Customers include disabled, single men unable to find legitimate sex partners. Women enter prostitution for myriad reasons, the fundamental nature of which is controversial. Some argue that prostitutes seek financial gain otherwise unavailable, or that they are pushed into this life because of high unemployment, particularly among minority women. Few still believe prostitutes are oversensual females, but a link with childhood sexual abuse at home is accepted. Prostitution is recurrently connected to other criminal activities, including credit card forgery and extortion. Little joy seems attached to the work, and interviews emphasize ancillary entertainment over sexual pleasure.

Despite disagreements within the feminist movement over whether prostitution should be legalized (women controlled by the state) or decriminalized (permitting women to control this oldest of professions themselves), the institution has entered politics. In 1973 Margo St. James, a San Francisco prostitute, organized COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), urging decriminalization through the magazine COYOTE Howls. Priding itself as a union local, PONY (Prostitutes of New York) also favors decriminalization and works with United Nations groups to fight international trafficking in women and children. WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt) opposes prostitution, while other groups offer counseling to help young women quit the life. The political and legal impact of these organizations has been minimal. The most significant organization at the street level remains the exploitative control of the pimp.

The world of male prostitutes is more shadowy. They tend to be lone individuals, although many maintain connections with escort services. Arrests of male prostitutes and their male partners are on the rise, in part because law enforcement has become more gender-neutral as public acceptance of homosexuality has increased, giving homosexual prostitutes more visibility, and in part because male prostitution often has links to drug trafficking. Male prostitutes, like their female counterparts, work in a range of related areas, such as pornographic productions, strip houses, and phone sex.

The most notorious type of prostitution involves the child prostitute, who has left or been exiled from home, often fleeing sexual abuse or other mistreatment. The AIDS epidemic has made child prostitutes more desirable for customers who incorrectly believe that children are less likely to pass on the disease. Increasing numbers of streetwalkers are runaway children. In New York City in the early 1980s, the streets adjacent to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the arrival point for many runaway children, became known as the "Minnesota Strip" because so many runaways worked there as prostitutes. In contrast to its ambiguous treatment of adult pornography, the Supreme Court grants no constitutional protection to child pornography, and because many of these children also work in child pornography media, police are especially vigilant toward child prostitution.

Bibliography

Barry, Kathleen. Female Sexual Slavery. Revised ed. New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Burnham, John C. "Medical Inspection of Prostitutes in America in the Nineteenth Century." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971).

Davis, Nanette J., ed. Prostitution: An International Handbook on Trends, Problems, and Policies. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Ennew, Judith. The Sexual Exploitation of Children. New York: St.Martin's Press, 1986.

Miller, Eleanor M. Street Woman. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

Riegel, Robert E. "Changing American Attitudes Toward Prostitution." Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968).

Steward, Samuel M. Understanding the Male Hustler. New York: Haworth Press, 1991.

Until the mid-eighteenth century, Russian authorities treated prostitution as a crime against morality and public decorum, and enacted laws and decrees to keep prostitutes invisible and isolated. Nevertheless, contemporary observers often remarked the presence of prostitutes in Moscow and, by the early eighteenth century, in the new capital of St. Petersburg. In the late 1700s prostitutes became regarded more as sources of venereal disease, and policies changed accordingly. The first attempts to reduce the medical danger associated with prostitutes took place during the reign of Catherine the Great, with the designation of a hospital in St. Petersburg for their confinement.

The nineteenth century brought the rise of a system of medical and police regulation to control prostitutes in terms of both their public behavior and the threat they represented to public health. In 1843 Tsar Nicholas I's minister of internal affairs subjected prostitution to surveillance based on a European model of inscription, inspection, and incarceration. Ministry guidelines called for licensing brothels, registering streetwalkers, regular medical examinations for women identified as prostitutes, and compulsory hospitalization for those apparently suffering from venereal disease. Prostitution remained officially illegal, but the ministry's regulations superseded the law so long as prostitutes registered their trade and brothels were under police supervision. Thus, medical-police regulation was in place even before Russia's serfs had been emancipated and before Russia's cities grew in response to policies promoting industrialization in the late nineteenth century.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Russia's burgeoning civil society considered both prostitution and its regulation major social and political problems. Physicians, jurists, feminists, socialists, temperance advocates, philanthropists, and elected local authorities seized on this issue to advance their political agendas and to aid working-class women. Nonetheless, despite charges that regulation fostered police corruption, oppressed women from the lower classes, and made little sense in light the lack of an effective cure for venereal diseases and the lack of controls over prostitutes' clients, medical-police surveillance remained official policy until the Provisional Government that emerged in February 1917 declared its abolition. The Bolsheviks also rejected regulation, heeding its critics and, like other socialist theorists, considering prostitution a transient symptom of industrial capitalism.

Prostitution, however, did not disappear during the Soviet era; it remained a viable source of income and favors. During the Civil War of 1917 - 1922, authorities were known to treat prostitutes as "labor deserters," but a more laissez-faire attitude emerged during the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921 - 1928), with its toleration of private trade. Under the presumption that prostitutes could be rehabilitated through manual labor, the Soviet government dispatched former prostitutes to sanitariums and made a distinction between prostitutes, who were regarded as victims, and other individuals who profited from the sex trade. Yet authorities still associated prostitutes with disease and disorder; repression became the practice once NEP ended. Soviet officials claimed that prostitution disappeared, but it simply went underground, prosecuted under categories pertaining to labor desertion and illegal income.

Not until the 1980s, during the relative openness of Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure, was prostitution again acknowledged as a social problem. Economic instability, persistent gender inequality, and prostitution's attraction as a source of income all combined to increase the numbers of prostitutes in late- and post-Soviet Russia. Correspondingly, some municipal authorities resurrected regulation, presuming that it would prevent the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Laurie. (1995). Sonia's Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Engel, Barbara Alpern. (1989). "St. Petersburg Prostitutes in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Personal and Social Profile." Russian Review 48:21 - 44.

Engelstein, Laura. (1988). "Gender and the Juridical Subject: Prostitution and Rape in Nineteenth-Century Russian Criminal Codes." Journal of Modern History 60:458 - 495.

Healey, Dan. (2001). "Masculine Purity and 'Gentlemen's Mischief': Sexual Exchange and Prostitution between Russian Men, 1861 - 1941." Slavic Review 60:233 - 265.

Stites, Richard. (1983). "Prostitute and Society in Pre-Revolutionary Russia." Jahrbűcher fűr Geschichte Osteuropas 31:348 - 364.

—LAURIE BERNSTEIN

Between 1450 and 1789, prostitution underwent dramatic changes in organization and policing. Criminalization replaced medieval toleration; a genuine police force appeared in the seventeenth century; and a new attitude toward sex emerged in the late eighteenth century, which pathologized the prostitute and associated her with disease and the urban proletariat.

In the late Middle Ages, prostitution was tolerated. Urban elites in France, Spain, and Germany established municipally owned brothels that were meant to preserve the honor of honest women by satisfying the sexual appetites of the city youth. In the sixteenth century an abrupt change occurred: The municipal houses were closed in Augsburg (1532), Basel (1534), Frankfurt (1560), Seville (1620), and throughout France (1500–1525). The appearance of syphilis (1494) in Europe certainly contributed to this change in attitude. But other forces must have determined it, for between thirty and fifty years elapsed between the arrival of syphilis and the closings of the brothels. Larger, professional armies, the growth of social distinctions, and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations probably led to the demise of toleration. More soldiers made the municipal brothels dangerous, and the strict morality advocated by pastors and priests made whoring shameful. Protestants, like Martin Luther (1483–1546), condemned prostitutes, as did reforming Catholics like Pope Pius V. At the same time, the growth of social distinctions and the spread of better manners caused elite men to seek more refined and exclusive prostitutes or courtesans.

The term "courtesan" originated in the late 1400s at the papal court in Rome, where celibate clerks sought refined female company. In the sixteenth century, Italy had the most accomplished and celebrated courtesans. Venice was famous for its courtesans, and many visiting dignitaries, like the French king Henry III (ruled 1574–1589), sought an evening with one of these beauties. Some courtesans, like the Venetian Veronica Franco (1546–1591) and the Roman Tullia d'Aragona (1510–1556), frequented men of letters and published poetry in their own right. Others were simply decorative, but all promised a more intimate and socially superior experience to the new elites of Europe.

Paradoxically, at the same time that the courtesan appeared, prostitution was criminalized throughout western Europe. In France, the Orléans ordinance of 1560 made soliciting in Paris a crime. In Rome, Pius V (reigned 1566–1572) repeatedly banished prostitutes. In Spain, Philip IV (ruled 1621–1643) decreed prostitution illegal in 1624. But these new laws had little effect. Early modern monarchs had neither the means nor the desire to hunt down prostitutes. Consequently, prostitution flourished in early modern Europe.

Every European army had a host of camp followers, and each city unofficial "hot" streets where prostitutes plied their trade. The tavern was the most common site of prostitution, but soliciting also occurred on bridges, like the Pont-Neuf in Paris, in markets (like London's Covent Garden), and near theaters and opera houses. Both men and women ran brothels, but procuresses were probably more common than pimps. Prostitutes were generally native girls, born within the city walls, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine. Some family disruption—the death of a mother or the remarriage of a father—often preceded a girl's drift into prostitution, but the passage of an army was also a major factor. Many women's occupations—linen mender, washerwoman, and street vendor—served as a "cover" for prostitution, and some occupations, like orange sellers in London theaters or bouquet vendors in Paris, were practically synonymous with prostitution. How many prostitutes lived in most early modern cities? It is impossible to say because no police force existed to count or monitor prostitutes.

In 1670, the king of France appointed the first Parisian police chief and gave him broad powers. Small at first, the Parisian police force grew, and by 1700 it was sufficiently large to have an impact on prostitution. Brigades of mounted policemen crisscrossed the city arresting as many as eight hundred women a year. With the Watch Acts of 1751, London too acquired roving watchmen who bound over for trial as many as fifty prostitutes in a night. The most visible form of prostitution, streetwalking, was the target, but the police also monitored brothels and taverns.

The years between 1680 and 1740 were a period of intense repression in cities like Amsterdam and Paris. Prevailing attitudes toward prostitutes remained highly negative: Hogarth's six prints entitled The Harlot's Progress (1732) shows the rise of Moll Hackabout, a girl on the town, who is imprisoned and then dies a lonely death of syphilis. The Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles's novel Manon Lescaut (1731) painted an equally bleak picture of a prostitute's imprisonment and decline, but Manon differed from Moll in that she was the object of the hero's love. Especially after Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Julie; or, the New Héloise (1761), Europeans came to view romantic love and sexuality as the very core of the personality, the greatest self-fulfillment. These new attitudes worked against prostitutes, who now appeared to be selling something much more precious than a few moments' pleasure.

While the old religious strictures against prostitution waned, new objections to venal sex emerged. A few authors, including Bernard de Mandeville and Restif de la Bretonne, argued for the legalization and regulation of prostitution, but most thinkers worried about its health consequences. Syphilis and prostitutes were increasingly equated, and physicians began to shape public policy. In 1803, the first dispensary—run by the Paris police—opened in Paris. Here, prostitutes had to register and endure compulsory pelvic examinations. The dispensary evolved into an elaborate and invasive regulatory system that allowed the police to monitor working-class women and incarcerate those, the "rebels," who refused to be registered. In England, the authorities imported the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, 1866, and 1869) from the colonies, subjecting working-class women in army garrisons and port cities to unprecedented surveillance and punishment. Similar sanitary measures appeared in Italy, Germany, and Russia. Prostitution was now regarded as "the" social evil, and prostitutes were subjected to arbitrary arrest and incarceration. By comparison, the episodic and unsystematic persecution of prostitutes in the early modern period looked benign.

Bibliography

Bénabou, Erica-Marie. La prostitution et la police des moeurs au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 1987.

Henderson, Tony. Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830. London, 1999.

Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton, 1990.

Roper, Lyndal. "Discipline and Respectability: Prostitution and the Reformation in Augsburg," History Workshop Journal 19 (1985): 3–28.

Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Chicago, 1992.

Rossiaud, Jacques. Medieval Prostitution. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. New York, 1988.

—KATHRYN NORBERG

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The act of offering one's self for hire to engage in sexual relations.

Prostitution is illegal in all states except Nevada, where it is strictly regulated. Some state statutes punish the act of prostitution, and other state statutes criminalize the acts of soliciting prostitution, arranging for prostitution, and operating a house of prostitution. On the federal level, the Mann Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 2421 [as amended 1986] makes it a crime to transport a person in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose.

Prostitution, historically and currently a trade largely practiced by women, was not a distinct offense in colonial America. A prostitute could be arrested for vagrancy if she were loitering on the streets, but generally, the act of engaging in sex for money was not itself a crime.

The first prostitution statutes were enacted during the so-called Progressive political movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Urban areas experienced unprecedented growth during this period. Cities became the centers of industrial manufacturing and production, and they were quickly ravaged by disease and poverty. The Progressive movement emphasized education and instituted new government controls over the activities of the general population. The movement introduced the prohibition of alcohol, which was banned from 1919 to 1933, vested government with increased power over the lives of poor persons, and created a host of new criminal laws, including laws on prostitution. Prostitution increased during this period, and it was seen as one of the biggest threats to public health because of its potential to spread debilitating venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea. Prostitutes were viewed as moral failures. The male customers of prostitutes were not held up to scorn, but the women who practiced prostitution were seen as responsible for increases in crime and the general decay of social morals.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states began to encourage the arrest of prostitutes for such crimes as vagrancy and loitering. Congress passed the Mann Act in 1910, which criminalized interstate prostitution, and state legislatures made prostitution a distinct criminal offense. The prostitute, not the customer, was the first to be penalized on the state and local levels; statutes that criminalized the solicitation of prostitution were passed later.

Historically, the enforcement of prostitution laws focused on apprehension of the prostitute. In the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps as a result of heightened social discourse on the issue of prostitution, police departments became more vigilant in their pursuit of customers. Local police in urban areas now regularly conduct "sting" operations designed to catch solicitors through the use of undercover agents posing as prostitutes. Many states have forfeiture statutes that give law enforcement agencies the power to seize and gain ownership of vehicles used by customers of prostitutes, and alleged customers may find their pictures published in the local newspaper.

All jurisdictions have made their prostitution statutes gender-neutral, but the prostitution relationship still usually consists of a man paying a woman for sex. There are occasional variations of the sexual identities of the participants in contemporary society, but, by and large, a prostitute is still more likely to be a woman or a girl. An increasing amount of prostitution occurs off the street by organized escort services, and prostitutes from these services have some measure of control over their lives. However, many prostitutes still work on the street, living a desperate, brutal, dangerous life at the mercy of a promoter, or pimp. Because the prostitute usually is a woman or a girl, and because prostitution can wreak havoc on the life of the prostitute, the issue of prostitution has become a matter of concern for women's rights advocates.

See: pander; sex offenses; vice crimes.

Quotes:

"The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid -- these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth." - Polly Adler

"What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician -- these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin." - Polly Adler

"The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing." - William Booth

"Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism. Worst of all, prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clich?s about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground." - Julie Burchill

"The whore is despised by the hypocritical world because she has made a realistic assessment of her assets and does not have to rely on fraud to make a living. In an area of human relations where fraud is regular practice between the sexes, her honesty is regarded with a mocking wonder." - Angela Carter

"Actually, if my business was legitimate, I would deduct a substantial percentage for depreciation of my body." - Xaviera Hollander

See more famous quotes about Prostitution

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - prostitution, misbrug

Nederlands (Dutch)
prostitutie

Français (French)
n. - prostitution

Deutsch (German)
n. - Prostitution

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πορνεία

Italiano (Italian)
prostituzione

Português (Portuguese)
n. - prostituição (f), corrupção (f)

Русский (Russian)
проституция

Español (Spanish)
n. - prostitución

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - prostitution, prisgivande

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
卖淫, 滥用, 糟蹋

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 賣淫, 濫用, 糟蹋

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 매춘, 매음

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 売春, 変節

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) دعارة, متاجرة بالموهبه, متاجرة بالشرف‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮זנות‬

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