The prostitute and the client : challenging the dualisms

Certain ways of knowing the prostitute and the client predominate. He is understood through the discourse of sexology, she is understood through the discourses of psychology, psychoanalysis, economics and feminism. However, while the prostitute and the client appear to be known through unrelated and diverse discourses, such ways of knowing are organised through the dualisms of sex and gender, victim and agent, mind and body. Moreover, these ways of knowing are directly related to popular discourse, policy and legislation on the topic. This paper examines the relationship between ways of knowing the prostitute and the client, and political action in Australia. it argues that inadequate theoretical conceptualisations are often at the heart of poorly conceived praxis - in this case Australian policy and legislation. This paper will demonstrate that re-thinking the theory can lead to new ways of acting.

A prostitute's progress : male prostitution in scientific discourse

This paper examines discourses of male prostitution through an analysis of scientific texts. A contrast is drawn between nineteenth-century understandings of male prostitution and twentieth-century accounts of male prostitution. In contrast to female prostitution, male prostitution was not regarded as a significant social problem throughout the nineteenth century, despite its close association with gender deviation and social disorder. Changing conceptions of sexuality, linked with the emergence of the ‘adolescent’, drew scientific attention to male prostitution during the 1940s and 1950s. Research suggested that male prostitution was a problem associated with the development of sexual identity. Through the application of scientific techniques, which tagged and differentiated male prostitute populations, a language developed about male prostitution that allowed for normative assessments and judgements to be made concerning particular classes of male prostitute. The paper highlights how a broad distinction emerged between public prostitutes, regarded as heterosexual/masculine, and private prostitutes, regarded as homosexual/effeminate. This distinction altered the way in which male prostitution was understood and governed, allowing for male prostitution to be constituted as a public health concern.

How Modern Governments Made Prostitution a Social Problem: Creating a Responsible Prostitute Population

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface by Dr. Pat Carlen Introduction 1. Political Languages of Prostitution 2. Genealogical Analysis: Documenting The Disorder of Things 3. From Death Rituals to Health Practices 4. Policing Female Prostitutes 5. Private Remedies for Public Concerns 6. The Emergence of the Male Prostitute 7. From Procreation to Pleasure 8. HIV/AIDS and Prostitution Conclusion Bibliography Index

Margo St. James, President of the San Francisco Prostitute Union, at the Battered Women's conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Judge Schwalb sentences high bail for prostitute in Court

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Margo St. James, President of the San Francisco Prostitute Union, and Nancy Borman of the Majority Report

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Margo St. James, President of the San Francisco Prostitute Union

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Rethinking Prostitution : feminism, sex and the self

Prostitution is a difficult issue, particularly for feminists. Are prostitutes victims of exploitation or the most honest of women? Are clients perverts or just acting instinctively? Should prostitution be eliminated or supported? This book examines these contemporary questions and offers a way of thinking about the issues, which does not rely on these inappropriate and often ineffectual options. Repositioning the institution and its main players outside the confines of the prostitution debate offers new and exciting ways of thinking and acting for all those interested in moving this discussion into the twenty-first century.

Regulating Prostitution: Controlling Women's Lives'

The chapter argues that the women who compose the majority of street prostitutes in Great Britain are currently subject to an interlocking system of regulation that variously defines them as criminal offenders, threats to public health, victims of child abuse, and vulnerable women who must be compelled under the threat of punishment to seek welfare help. Each label or approach to the street prostitute involves a set of interventions aimed at changing or working with different aspects of the women's lives. This produces an interlocking system of regulation, because the interventions are not mutually exclusive. A street prostitute can be defined as both a victim and an offender and as both a patient in need of medical help and a threat to public health. This comprehensive system of regulation means that a street prostitute faces not only a wide range of criminal justice dispositions, but also mandatory participation in programs in which her relationships and the choices she makes in her life outside of prostitution are subject to scrutiny and intervention. Given that street prostitutes are mostly poor women seeking economic survival in a profession that makes them vulnerable to victimization, the current regulatory system is an attempt to control a small group of poor women regarding their choices and relationships as they struggle to survive poverty. Whereas in the 1980s in Great Britain, a woman involved in street prostitution may have faced only a fine, now she is subject to a more extensive range of criminal justice actions accompanied by various government interventions designed to remake her life.

Governing prostitution: Differentiating the bad from the bad

Accounts of the governance of prostitution have typically argued that prostitutes are, in one way or another, stigmatised social outcasts. There is a persistent claim that power has operated to dislocate or banish the prostitute from the community in order to silence, isolate, hide, restrict, or punish. I argue that another position may be tenable; that is, power has operated to locate prostitution within the social. Power does not operate to 'desocialise' prostitution, but has in recent times operated increasingly to normalise it. Power does not demarcate prostitutes from the social according to some binary mechanics of difference, but works instead according to a principle of differentiation which seeks to connect, include, circulate and enable specific prostitute populations within the social. In this paper I examine how prostitution has been singled out for public attention as a sociopolitical problem and governed accordingly. The concept of governmentality is used to think through such issues, providing, as it does, a non-totalising and non-reductionist account of rule. It is argued that a combination of self-regulatory and punitive practices developed during modernity to manage socially problematic prostitute populations.

Institutionalization

During the 18th and 19th centuries, prostitution came to be understood as a potentially disruptive element in the management of society. New forms of social control developed that sought to transform the souls of prostitutes to better control their bodies. Institutions for managing prostitutes, such as Magdalen Homes and lock hospitals, were introduced or increased in number throughout the British Empire, North America, and Western Europe. Often these institutions had as their stated objective the physical purification and moral reform of prostitutes, appearing to make a dramatic break with earlier methods of social control that had relied on practices of physical punishment and spatial segregation. Emergent institutions for the social control of prostitutes used a regimen of religious training, hard labor, and medical expertise. The objective of the Magdalen Home was not to punish sin but to absolve it, while the function of the lock hospital was not simply to confine the ill, but to confine the ill to "cure" them. The role of these institutions was not only symbolic, mirroring in some way the operation of earlier forms of social control, but was also practical and transformative. The mass institutionalization of prostitutes that occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries produced and emphasized sexual, class, and gender boundaries, grounded in the broad distinction between "pure" and "impure" women. Because of its association with sin, prostitution before the 18th century had been constructed as a religious problem relating to salvation and penitence. Throughout Western Europe during the Middle Ages, prostitutes, like the medieval leper and the Jew, were subject to restrictions designed to distinguish and isolate them from other members of their communities. The repression of prostitution during the Middle Ages was neither systematic nor highly organized, although it reinforced the image of the prostitute as sinful "other".

Competition paper. Prostitution and public health in New South Wales

Using historical and contemporary resources, this paper provides a critical account of the contemporary governance of prostitution in New South Wales. A Foucauldian approach is used to analyse the ways in which prostitution has been problematized as a health issue and managed as a public health problem. The analysis differs from other critical studies of prostitution in that it examines specific techniques of power, the operations of which have not been confined to the workings of a repressive criminal justice system. It is shown that there currently co-exists two broad understandings of prostitution in New South Wales, Australia, which have informed current initiatives to manage prostitution. Prostitutes working in public spaces have been presented as sexual agents wilfully engaged in criminal conduct and the spread of contagion. They have been subject to intense official scrutiny and regulated through criminal sanctions. In contrast, prostitutes working in private spaces have been presented as victims of adverse circumstance, deserving of protection and compassion. They have been made subject to strategic interventions that have attempted to normalize prostitution and render the prostitute a hygienic subject.

Casta meretrix. Acerca de la traducción y aplicación eclesiológica frecuente de una expresión patrística

Resumen: Muy a menudo se escucha hablar de la Iglesia como santa y prostituta o como santa y pecadora, invocando como argumento decisivo que los Santos Padres decían que la Iglesia es una casta meretrix. Algún que otro teólogo lo pone por escrito sin citar la fuente; lo mismo dice algún predicador. Según parece, este testimonio patrístico cuadraría para poder hablar de los pecados de la Iglesia. Ahora bien, respecto a esta fórmula lo primero que hay que señalar es que se trata de un hapax de la literatura patrística, sólo se encuentra una vez en San Ambrosio. La figura retórica utilizada indica algo insólito que el lector moderno debe tratar de entender. Sobre todo, porque para quien acuñó la frase, lejos de aludir a algo pecaminoso, quiere indicar la santidad de la Iglesia. El artículo presenta la reflexión eclesiológica de este padre de la Iglesia que lo lleva a expresarse de esa manera y, a la vez, invita a situar en su contexto y en sus perspectivas concretas las afirmaciones patrísticas para traducirlas, interpretarlas y relacionarlas con nuestro modo de plantear los problemas.

A voz e a vez de Eva: a nova heroína contemporânea em obras de José Saramago

A proposta deste trabalho é realizar uma análise da figura feminina nos romances Jangada de pedra, História do cerco de Lisboa e Ensaio sobre a cegueira, de José Saramago. Iniciando por uma breve pesquisa da história da mulher como forma de traçar a longa trajetória por que passou até a sua emancipação, o estudo revela, através da análise de diferentes identidades femininas, a abertura de uma nova concepção de mulher na literatura portuguesa.O escritor propõe em sua obra uma reflexão sobre a situação do mundo através do indivíduo e suas atitudes, responsabilidades e anseios. Os ensinamentos que seus romances costumam transmitir aos leitores, na maioria das vezes, partem de personagens femininas. A mulher se completa realizando o papel de mãe, protetora e companheira e, ao mesmo tempo, de amante e guerreira. Considerada pelo presente trabalho uma heroína contemporânea, ela engloba estas duas vertentes que a sociedade por muito tempo insistiu em separar, cuidando da casa e da família ao mesmo tempo em que trabalha e busca seu sustento fora de casa Também é a mulher que, nesta obra, tem o poder da sensibilidade e da compaixão ajudando àqueles que precisam, mesmo quando mal os conhece. E também é ela quem consegue, encantadoramente, metamorfosear-se de menina a mulher, intercalando as imagens de santa e prostituta, sedutora externamente e pura em sua essência.Entretanto, a escrita saramagueana não trata apenas de inibir a matriz patriarcal, ignorando com isso o papel do homem. O que há é o resgate das culturas primitivas matriarcais, com a mulher e o homem governando em igualdade e harmonia. Por este motivo, o homem também é muito importante em seus romances já que, em união com a mulher, incentivado e guiado por ela, partem juntos, através do amor, para uma travessia (humana) existencial, na busca do conhecimento

A prostituição no Brasil no século XXI: razões para sua regulamentação

A sociedade demanda a prostituição e a explora desde os tempos mais remotos. Apesar do uso imemorial e intensivo dos serviços sexuais prestados por essas mulheres, o fenômeno social continua sendo tratado como um tabu em pleno século XXI. O mundo se divide entre os países que não toleram a prostituição, e criminalizam as condutas da prostituta, do cliente e de quem explora economicamente a atividade (proibicionismo), os que consideram a atividade degradante para a mulher e querem aboli-la, porém criminalizam apenas a conduta daquele que explora a atividade econômica e/ou a dos clientes, mas não a da prostituta, (abolicionismo) e os que a encaram como uma atividade legítima, com ou sem questionamentos morais, e a regulamentam (regulamentarismo). A presente dissertação envereda-se nas tarefas de diagnosticar o tratamento conferido pelo Estado brasileiro à prostituição, traçar um perfil contemporâneo da atividade, pesquisar os regimes legais existentes na atualidade em diversos países, analisar os resultados práticos decorrentes de cada um desses regimes, comentar a jurisprudência internacional relevante e, finalmente, debater os fundamentos envolvidos na intensa controvérsia que ronda a prostituição, com o objetivo de encontrar respostas para as seguintes perguntas: 1) é possível, numa perspectiva filosófica e constitucional, impedir-se que pessoas adultas e livremente orientadas prostituam-se, demandem prostituição ou desenvolvam atividades econômicas baseadas nos serviços sexuais? 2) é exigível do Estado alguma conduta relativamente à prostituição? Apurou-se neste estudo que, salvo nos países em que a profissão é regulamentada, as prostitutas são tratadas como cidadãs de 2 classe, privadas dos direitos mais elementares, carentes de reconhecimento, empurradas para o submundo social e estigmatizadas. A inexistência de legislação que garanta seus direitos expõe-nas à criminalidade, a riscos de saúde, a ambientes insalubres e, ainda por cima, aumenta o estigma que pesa sobre elas. Os fatores empíricos analisados ― criminalidade, saúde, trabalho e tributação ― apontam todos no sentido da necessidade de regulamentação da atividade, alguns deles, inclusive, por recomendação de organismos internacionais ligados à ONU, como a Organização Internacional do Trabalho OIT e a Comissão Global sobre HIV e o Direito. Por outro lado, no contexto da filosofia política defendida nesta dissertação, o liberalismo igualitário, a intromissão do Estado na opção da mulher de se prostituir e no desempenho dessa atividade é absolutamente vedada, pois implica tratar a prostituta como menos do que um sujeito moral igual. Finalmente, na perspectiva constitucional, apurou-se que a intervenção e a omissão praticadas pelo Estado abolicionista ferem os direitos fundamentais das prostitutas à autonomia pessoal, à igualdade e à dignidade da pessoa humana, bem como, constituindo a opção de se prostituir uma questão moral autorreferente, ela deve ser retirada do jogo político majoritário, sob pena de violar-se o princípio fundamental da democracia. No desenvolvimento do tema, com base nas respostas encontradas para as perguntas acima e nas razões que conduzirem a elas, serão apresentados os fundamentos que sustentam a defesa da regulamentação da prostituição no Brasil.