Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (8 page)

C O N C L U S I O N

This book contributes to our knowledge of several aspects of sex work and the sex industry, including dimensions that have rarely been studied in the past.

The book breaks new ground, but we need even more research on telephone sex work, off-street prostitutes, the porn industry generally and gay and
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SEX WORK: PARADIGMS AND POLICIES

lesbian pornography in particular, legal prostitution systems, the dynamics of law enforcement, and the social forces driving changes in law and public policy. We know little about contemporary brothels, massage parlors, escort agencies, transgender prostitutes, and call girls, and we need much more research on the men involved at all levels—customers, workers, managers, producers, owners. This world does not offer easy access to the outsider, which helps to account for the paucity of research in many key areas; but gaining access should be viewed as a challenge rather than an insuperable barrier.

N OTE S

1. Top Ten Reviews provides the following figures (in billions) for 2006: Video Sales/Rentals $3.62, Internet $2.84, Cable/PPV/In-Room/

Mobile/Phone Sex $2.19, Exotic Dance Clubs $2.00, Novelties $1.73, Magazines $.95. http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/

internet-pornography-statistics.html, accessed June 19, 2008. The site reports that worldwide pornography revenue in 2006 was $97.1 billion.

2. Eric Schlosser, “The Business of Pornography,”
U.S. News and World
Report
, February 10, 1997; 2006 figure from Top Ten Reviews.

3. Top Ten Reviews.

4. William Sherman, “The Naked Truth about Strip Clubs,”
New York
Daily News
, July 8, 2007.

5. James Davis and Tom Smith,
General Social Survey: Cumulative Codebook
, Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2002.

6. Zogby International poll, 2000, N = 1031.

7. Gallup Organization,
Gallup Poll Monthly
, no. 313, October, 1991.

8. Davis and Smith,
General Social Survey
. Another major survey found that 16% of American men aged 18–59 reported that they had paid for sex at some time (Edward Laumann, John Gagnon, Robert Michael, and Stuart Michaels,
The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the
United States
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

9. Chris Rissel, “Experiences of Commercial Sex in a Representative Sample of Adults,”
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
27 (2003): 191–197.

10. Ipsos/MORI Poll, January 6–10, 2006, N = 1790, aged 16–64.

11. Rissel, “Experiences of Commercial Sex”; Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale,

“Context and Patterns of Men’s Commercial Sexual Partnerships in Northeastern Thailand,”
Social Science and Medicine
44 (1997): 199–213.

12. Ipsos/MORI Poll, January 6–10, 2006, N = 1790, aged 16–64.

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RONALD WEITZER

13. Hillary Rhodes, “Prostitution Advances in a Wired World,”
Associated
Press
, March 11, 2008; Bruce Lambert, “As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice,”
New York Times
, September 4, 2007.

14. Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll, February 10, 2005, N = 1001.

15. Davis and Smith,
General Social Survey
, 1994.

16. Ellison Research poll, March 11, 2008, N = 1007. This was the view of 42% of men and 57% of women.

17. Harris Poll #76, September 20–26, 2004, N = 2555. This was the view of 38% of men and 57% of women.

18.
Time
magazine poll, conducted by Yankelovich/Skelly/White, July 26–31, 1977, N = 1044 registered voters.

19. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll, October 2006, N = 739.

20. ICM Research, Sex and Exploitation Survey, January 2008, N = 1023.

Women (68%) were slightly more likely to take this view than men (62%).

21. NBC News/
Wall Street Journal
poll, June 10–14, 1994, N = 1502.

22. Penn, Shoen, and Berland poll, sponsored by Democratic Leadership Council, July 23–27, 1997, N = 1009 registered voters.

23. General Social Survey, 2006 and 1984. The question asks respondents which policy is closest to their own view: “There should be laws against the distribution of pornography whatever the age.” “There should be laws against the distribution of pornography to persons under 18.” “There should be no laws against the distribution of pornography.” The figures presented here are for the first option, a universal ban on distribution.

24. General Social Survey, 2006.

25. Gallup,
Gallup Poll Monthly
, 1991: 46% thought female strippers and 45% thought male strippers “should be illegal at bars or clubs.”

26. Only 5% thought that stripping was less acceptable today than a decade ago. Institute for Social Research, University of Alabama, Capstone Poll, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2002, N = 484.

27. Danny Hakim and William Rashbaum, “No U.S. Charges against Spitzer for Prostitution,”
New York Times
, November 7, 2008, p. A1.

28. “Fresno Deputy District Attorney Busted for Soliciting a Prostitute,”

Channel 47 News online, Fresno, California, accessed August 27, 2008;

“Ex-Police Chief Charged in Pa. Prostitution Case,”
Evening Sun
(Hanover, PA), August 27, 2008.

29. Part of this section of the chapter draws on two articles: Ronald Weitzer,

“Prostitution: Facts and Fictions,”
Contexts
6 (Fall 2007): 28–33, and Ronald Weitzer, “Sociology of Sex Work,”
Annual Review of Sociology
35

(2009).

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SEX WORK: PARADIGMS AND POLICIES

30. Kathleen Barry,
The Prostitution of Sexuality
, New York: New York University Press, 1995; Andrea Dworkin,
Pornography: Men Possessing
Women
, New York: Putnam, 1981; Andrea Dworkin,
Life and Death
, New York: Free Press, 1997; Sheila Jeffreys,
The Idea of Prostitution
, North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex, 1997; Catherine MacKinnon,
Feminism Unmodified
, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987; Catherine MacKinnon,
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

31. Melissa Farley, “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart: Prostitution Harms Women Even if Legalized or Decriminalized,”
Violence Against Women
10

(2004): 1087–1125; Janice Raymond, “Prostitution as Violence against Women,”
Women’s Studies International Forum
21 (1998): 1–9.

32. Ine Vanwesenbeeck, “Another Decade of Social Scientific Work on Prostitution,”
Annual Review of Sex Research
12 (2001): 242–289; Ronald Weitzer, “Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution,”

Violence Against Women
11 (2005): 934–949, and Ronald Weitzer,

“Rehashing Tired Claims about Prostitution,”
Violence Against Women
11

(2005): 971–977.

33. Arlene Carmen and Howard Moody,
Working Women: The Subterranean
World of Street Prostitution
, New York: Harper & Row, 1985; Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds.,
Sex Work: Writings by Women in
the Sex Industry
, Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1987; Nadine Strossen,
Defending
Pornography
, New York: Anchor, 1995; Wendy McElroy,
XXX: A
Woman’s Right to Pornography
, New York: St. Martin’s, 1995; Wendy Chapkis,
Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor
, New York: Routledge, 1997.

34. Eileen McLeod,
Working Women: Prostitution Now
, London: Croom Helm, 1982, p. 28.

35. Noah Zatz, “Sex Work/Sex Act: Law, Labor, and Desire in Constructions of Prostitution,”
Signs
22 (1997): 277–308, at p. 291.

36. Julia O’Connell Davidson,
Power, Prostitution, and Freedom
, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998.

37. Barbara Heyl, “Prostitution: An Extreme Case of Sex Stratification,” in Freda Adler and Rita Simon, eds.,
The Criminology of Deviant Women
, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1979, p. 198.

38. Thomas Steinfatt,
Working at the Bar: Sex Work and Health Communication
in Thailand
, Westport, CT: Ablex, 2002, p. 19.

39. Stephanie Church, Marion Henderson, Marina Barnard, and Graham Hart, “Violence by Clients towards Female Prostitutes in Different Work Settings,”
British Medical Journal
322 (2001): 524–526.

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RONALD WEITZER

40. See the studies cited in Ronald Weitzer, “New Directions in Research on Prostitution,”
Crime, Law, and Social Change
43 (2005): 211–235.

41. See Patty Kelly,
Lydia’s Open Door: Inside Mexico’s Most Modern Brothel
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008; Prabha Kotiswaran,

“Born unto Brothels: Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area,”
Law and Social Inquiry
33 (2008): 579–629; Kemala Kempadoo,
Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor
, New York: Routledge, 2004; Kamala Kempadoo, ed.,
Sun, Sex, and
Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean
, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999; Denise Brennan,
What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

42. Libby Plumridge and Gillian Abel, “A Segmented Sex Industry in New Zealand: Sexual and Personal Safety of Female Sex Workers,”
Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
25 (2001): 78–83, at p. 83.

43. Quoted in Joanne Kimberlin, “Women for Hire: Behind Closed Doors in the Escort Industry,”
The Virginia-Pilot
, May 18, 2008, p. A11.

44. Dolores French,
Working: My Life as A Prostitute
, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988, pp. 152–153.

45. Roberta Perkins and Frances Lovejoy,
Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in
Australia
, Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2007, p. 51.

46. Quoted in Elizabeth Bernstein,
Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity,
and the Commerce of Sex
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 46.

47. Diana Prince,
A Psychological Study of Prostitutes in California and Nevada
, doctoral dissertation, San Diego: U.S. International University, 1986, p. 490.

48. Ann Lucas, “The Work of Sex Work: Elite Prostitutes’ Vocational Orientations and Experiences,”
Deviant Behavior
26 (2005): 513–546, at p. 531.

49. A similar phenomenon has been documented for bar workers who spend extended periods of time with their customers. A survey of Thailand’s bar prostitutes found that more than 80% of them “had a relationship with a customer in which they had developed strong feelings for him.”

Steinfatt,
Working at the Bar
, p. 251.

50. Charlotte Woodward, Jane Fischer, Jake Najman, and Michael Dunne,
Selling Sex in Queensland
, Brisbane, Australia: Prostitution Licensing Authority, 2004.

51. Lucas, “The Work of Sex Work,” p. 541.

52. Woodward, et al.,
Selling Sex in Queensland
, p. 39.

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SEX WORK: PARADIGMS AND POLICIES

53. Quoted in Mark Waite, “Prostitutes Dispute Trummell Charges,”

Pahrump Valley Times
, October 5, 2007.

54. See the studies cited in Weitzer, “Sociology of Sex Work.”

55. Prince,
A Psychological Study of Prostitutes
, p. 454.

56. John Decker,
Prostitution: Regulation and Control
, Littleton, CO: Rothman, 1979, pp. 166, 174.

57. Upscale work is featured in the CNBC documentary, “Dirty Money: The Business of High-End Prostitution,” which first aired in November 2008 (CNBC Television network). See also Adam Goldman, “Scandal Gives Peek Inside Call-Girl Ring,”
Associated Press
, March 12, 2008.

58. Bernstein,
Temporarily Yours
, p. 100.

59. Vanwesenbeeck, “Another Decade of Social Scientific Work on Prostitution.”

60. See the literature reviews by Katherine Frank, “Thinking Critically about Strip Club Research,”
Sexualities
10 (2007): 501–517, and Mindy Bradley,

“Stripping in the New Millennium,”
Sociology Compass
2 (2008): 503–518.

61. Mindy Bradley and Jeffrey Ulmer, “Social Worlds of Stripping,”

Sociological Quarterly
50 (2009): 29–60.

62. Bernadette Barton, “Dancing on the Mobius Strip: Challenging the Sex War Paradigm,”
Gender and Society
16 (2002): 585–602.

63. Katherine Frank,
G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male
Desire
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

64. Tina Deshotels and Craig Forsyth, “Strategic Flirting and the Emotional Tab of Exotic Dancing,”
Deviant Behavior
27 (2006): 223–241, at pp. 231–232.

65. William Thompson and Jackie Harred, “Topless Dancers: Managing Stigma in a Deviant Occupation,”
Deviant Behavior
13 (1992): 291–311; Marilyn Salutin, “Stripper Morality,”
Transaction
8 (1971): 12–22.

66. Beth Montemurro, “Strippers and Screamers,”
Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography
30 (2001): 275–304; David Peterson and Paula Dressel,

“Equal Time for Women: Notes on the Male Strip Show,”
Urban Life
11

(1982): 185–208.

67. Beth Montemurro, Colleen Bloom, and Kelly Madell, “Ladies Night Out: A Typology of Women Patrons of a Male Strip Club,”
Deviant
Behavior
24 (2003): 333–352.

68. Thompson and Harred, “Topless Dancers”; William Thompson, Jackie Harred, and Barbara Burks, “Managing the Stigma of Topless Dancing: A Decade Later,”
Deviant Behavior
24 (2003): 551–570.

69. Joseph DeMarco, “Power and Control in Gay Strip Clubs,”
Journal of
Homosexuality
53 (2007): 111–127.

70. Frank, “Thinking Critically”; DeMarco, “Power and Control.”