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The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy

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Abstract

Over the past decade, public policies on prostitution and other types of sex work have been increasingly contested, both in academia and in popular debates. One perspective, the oppression paradigm, is increasingly reflected in media reporting on the sex industry and is steadily being articulated by government officials in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere. The proliferation of myths based on the oppression paradigm is responsible for the rise of a resurgent mythology of prostitution. This article examines the claims made by organizations, activists, and scholars who embrace the oppression paradigm, evaluates the reasoning and evidence used in support of their claims, and highlights some of the ways in which this perspective has influenced recent legislation and public policy in selected nations. The author presents an alternative perspective, the polymorphous paradigm, and suggests that public policy on prostitution would be better informed by this evidence-based perspective.

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Notes

  1. Prohibitionists also are sometimes referred to as abolitionists or radical feminists.

  2. One could argue that the term buy women objectifies women who work in prostitution by treating them as commodities rather than as people supplying a sexual service.

  3. In addition to the lack of documentation for this statement, it is problematic because the terms regularly and murderous (which sounds like an innate tendency) are opaque.

  4. Similarly objectifying is Farley's (2006) blanket assertion, “Her self and those qualities that define her as an individual are removed in prostitution and she acts the part of the thing he wants her to be” (p. 122).

  5. Indoor sex workers are those who do any type of sex work behind closed doors, rather than on the street.

  6. These include the two most prominent organizations—the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (headed by Janice Raymond) and Prostitution Research and Education (headed by Melissa Farley)—as well as lesser-known groups such as the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation and Standing Against Global Exploitation. For a study of the ideology of one prohibitionist organization (Council on Prostitution Alternatives in Portland, Oregon), see Davis (2000).

  7. One example is Yen's (2008) law review article on the customers of prostitutes, which is filled with unsubstantiated claims and relies almost exclusively on the prohibitionist literature. Yen has conflated prostitution and sex trafficking, has referred to the “ugly truth of the commercial sex industry” (p. 676), has written that prostitution is the “oppression of women” (p. 678), and has described nations where prostitution is legal as having “legitimized the oppression of women” (p. 680).

  8. For example, according to Farley (2004), violence is “the norm for women in all types of prostitution” (p. 1,094). A Chicago study (Raphael and Shapiro, 2004) has claimed that “violence was prevalent across both outdoor and indoor prostitution venues” (p. 133)—yet the authors collapsed figures on victimization at work and outside of work (by their domestic partners and others), thus artificially inflating victimization rates at work and allowing the authors to falsely claim that violence was prevalent in indoor prostitution venues. A high percentage of the violence was meted out by domestic partners.

  9. Hard copy in possession of the author.

  10. In the Scottish study (Macleod et al. 2008), interviewees were recruited with a newspaper ad asking, “Ever been a client of a prostitute? International research team would like to hear your views.” In the Chicago study (Durchslag and Goswami 2008), the ad read, “Chicago based research organization is looking to interview men who have paid for commercial sex.” The advertisement did not reveal that the research organization in question was the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, information that might have reduced the response rate.

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  1. Department of Sociology, George Washington University, 801 22nd Street NW, Suite 409, Washington, DC, 20052, USA

    Ronald Weitzer

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Weitzer, R. The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy. Sex Res Soc Policy 7, 15–29 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-010-0002-5

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