Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business (5 page)

Customers patronize prostitutes for diverse reasons. One popular reason is the notion of physical “needs.” The director of a clients’ organization in the Netherlands expressed this view: “I think the value of prostitution has to be made clear. The value of prostitution is that men who are in need, or even
very urgent
need, can find relief. It’s as simple as that. People are justified to seek outlets for, in many cases, a very burdensome frustration.”
¹⁰⁰
These needs are socially constructed rather than biological—an “ideology of male sexual needs,” according to Mary McIntosh—but they are nevertheless part of the vocabulary of motives for buying sex.
¹⁰¹
There are plenty of other factors involved. Some individuals buy sex opportunistically when they encounter a sex worker in a bar or on the street, whereas others plan a liaison ahead of time based on one or more of the following motives:

• Some seek to exert physical or emotional control over another person: they target sex workers because they are more accessible and vulnerable than ordinary individuals and less likely to report victimization to the police.

• Some have difficulty finding a partner for a conventional relationship.

• If they currently have a partner, some are unsatisfied with the partner’s sexual behavior.

• Some are looking to fulfill a fantasy by having sex with a person with a desired physical appearance (e.g., physique, ethnicity), someone who will engage in desired activities (such as role playing or sadomasochism), someone who will teach them new sexual techniques, or someone of a different sexual orientation (e.g., heterosexual men who wish to experiment with a gay male or transgender provider, or heterosexual women seeking a lesbian experience).

• Some find this transgressive conduct risky, thrilling, or sporting (clients in online chat rooms refer to themselves as “hobbyists” or “mongers”).

• Some wish to avoid the long-term obligations or emotional attachment involved in a conventional relationship.

• Some seek a limited, quasi-romantic emotional connection in addition to or instead of sex.
¹⁰²

Comparing the last two motives, we can see that some men pay for sex to
avoid
intimacy, whereas others are consciously
seeking
intimacy and companionship. What do clients consider when making a decision to buy sex? One study reported that they place a premium on avoiding arrest (79 percent), personal safety (77 percent), and privacy (77 percent) and want the provider to be sexually healthy (90 percent); less than half (43 percent) said that cost was an important factor.
¹⁰³
These considerations influence, but do not dictate, the decision to buy sex in one venue as opposed to in others. Streetwalkers may be attractive because of easy access, low prices, or the excitement of cruising for sex. Other clients avoid the streets because they view them as dangerous places (risks to health, safety, and arrest) or because they view street workers as more vulnerable, desperate, or exploited by pimps.
¹⁰⁴
They prefer indoor establishments because they are viewed as being safer, less sordid, more discreet, and more relaxing.

In sum, along several key axes, clients vary as much as sex workers do. Research on both populations overwhelmingly supports the polymorphous paradigm.

The polymorphous perspective stands in stark contrast to the other two paradigms discussed in this chapter—oppression and empowerment—both of which are simplistic and monolithic. By recognizing and sociologically accounting for diversity in the world of prostitution—a diversity that includes empowerment of some workers, oppression of others, and shades of gray in between—polymorphism offers a rich and more sophisticated template than do the other two frameworks.
Chapter 2
extends the analysis with a more detailed account of indoor prostitution, as a prelude to the examination of legal prostitution systems in
chapters 4
–
6
in places where the legal sector is usually restricted to indoor work.

What Makes It Special?

Many writers who generalize about prostitution base their ideas on images of street prostitution, which accounts for most of what we “know” about this world. Yet there is another type—indoor prostitution—that deserves much more attention, for several reasons: (1) in many countries, paid sexual transactions are far more common indoors than on the streets. In Thailand, for example, almost all prostitutes work indoors, while in the United States and Britain about four-fifths do so;
¹
(2) the street and indoor markets differ substantively, with indoor work presenting the clearest evidence challenging popular images of degradation and oppression; and (3) most of the nations that have legalized prostitution have done so only with regard to indoor settings. Thus, it is crucial to explore the dimensions of indoor sex work before proceeding to my examination of legal prostitution later in the book.

Indoor prostitution takes place in brothels, massage parlors, bars, hotels, saunas, private premises, dance halls, and on boats docked in harbors. It can be found in back rooms of tanning salons, beauty shops, barbershops, cafes, and other conventional businesses. Insofar as
indoor prostitution
is an omnibus concept covering such a large variety of settings, we must be careful not to reify it as a monolithic category. There is plenty of variety within the indoor sector, but at the same time it is important to make some general distinctions between indoor and street work. It is not the mere fact of being indoors that distinguishes indoor from street prostitution but rather that
certain characteristics of indoor settings are preconditions for a work environment that can be superior to the streets
. These characteristics include the following:

• Indoor workers are less accessible and hence less vulnerable to street predators.

• Meeting a client indoors allows for more thorough screening than what is usually possible on the street.

• If one works indoors with a manager, receptionist, or other providers, they are available to intervene in the event that a client becomes abusive.

• Working indoors shields one from the elements, which can pay dividends for one’s comfort and health.

• If conducted discreetly, indoor work does not present a public nuisance, whereas street commerce is often associated with public disturbance and generates complaints from nearby residents and merchants.

These features mean that indoor prostitution offers some important
potential
advantages over street prostitution. But other structural conditions are also crucial. These factors include one’s economic situation prior to entering sex work, drug dependency, immigration status, adequacy of procedures for screening clients, relationships with third parties, whether workers are employees or independent operators, and whether selling sex is legal or illegal. Regarding the first variable, prostitutes who work indoors generally come from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds than do those who work on the streets.

Societal context is crucial, with indoor work in developing countries more likely to exist under harsher conditions than in developed countries.
²
Developing countries may have quite a few rudimentary brothels where the work is low paying and hazardous. At the same time, a developing nation may also have an elite sector. In Pakistan, for example, wealthy men have sexual liaisons with high-class courtesans, who “are able to enjoy a degree of economic independence and exercise an agency that is unknown to all but the most highly educated women in mainstream society.”
³
They accompany men to parties and other events and provide men with a fantasy relationship, much like elite escorts in Western countries, except that the Pakistanis also perform traditional
kathak
dances in private for their clients. Vietnam has plenty of low-tier commercial sex but also a distinct upscale market for rich men who “are paying for beautiful and desirable women who spend more time talking with them in restaurants and cafes than engaging in the performance of sex.”
⁴
The women receive expensive gifts rather than money; spend a great deal of time engaging in “romantic” emotional labor; and are very selective in their choice of clients, which only increases their desirability. And some developing nations have an
even wider array of sex for sale. A recent survey of 815 sex workers in Thailand found significant differences between those who worked in brothels, karaoke clubs, go-go bars, massage parlors, or beer bars, or as freelancers.
⁵
Cleo Odzer’s ethnography describes the hierarchy in sexually oriented bars in Bangkok and Pattaya:

TABLE 2.1
Victimization Rates, Street and Indoor Prostitutes Robbed Street

Working in a blow job bar or performing in Fucking Shows was at the bottom. Next came dancing nude and performing trick shows. … Bikini dancing in ground-floor establishments was high status, but working in evening clothes without having to dance, like Hoi, was higher. … At the top of the status hierarchy were the beauties who didn’t work for a bar at all but came and went on their own time. Some of the larger establishments allowed these women to mix with their clientele.
⁶

Societal context is an important variable, with the harshest working conditions more prevalent in poor and developing nations, but even there sex work may be highly stratified and include an elite echelon. It is important to recognize both cross-national and intrasocietal differences.

Much depends on the balance of power between sex workers and third parties. Many workers operate independently; others employ another person to serve as a middleman or a receptionist/gatekeeper, while others work for a manager who exercises at least some control and extracts some or all of the profit. Third parties play various roles—recruiting workers, screening clients, mediating disputes, dictating and enforcing conduct norms, and providing security. As in most other kinds of work, managers generally treat sex workers as subordinates and seek to limit their job autonomy.
⁷
What varies is whether they engage in unfair managerial practices or otherwise abuse their workers. On the streets, pimps range from the stereotypical parasite who exercises total and highly abusive control to pimps who behave less oppressively and treat their workers more as business partners than as exploitees.
⁸
The managers and owners of indoor establishments also differ. Some provide the bare minimum of amenities, are lax about health and safety, favor certain employees over others, or treat all of their workers poorly; others have collegial relations with their employees, rigorously screen customers, and provide safe and healthy working conditions.
⁹
Another third party is the middleman who connects sex workers with clients. The middleman’s services can be crucial to transactions in which direct client access to workers is hampered, such as for long-distance truck drivers unfamiliar with a particular town on their route.
¹⁰
And finally, some sex workers employ receptionists or maids who screen clients and otherwise assist the provider; those who remain on-site during transactions are available to intervene in the event of problems with a customer. Research shows that the presence of such gatekeepers reduces the risks associated with working alone.
¹¹

When prostitution is legal and regulated by the authorities, much of the regulation is designed to control third parties who run brothels and other indoor businesses, forcing them to improve working conditions and, more generally, empowering workers vis-à-vis managers and owners.

In general, indoor sex workers in developed countries are much less likely than street workers to have a background of childhood abuse (neglect, violence, incest), to enter sex work at a young age, to engage in risky behavior (e.g., use of addictive drugs, engaging in unprotected sex), or to be victimized. Off-street workers who have not been coerced into prostitution are
much less likely to experience assault, robbery, rape, threats of violence, or murder. In addition to differences in
ever
having been victimized, street workers are more likely to experience
more frequent
and
more severe
victimization over time. Some studies report high percentages of indoor providers who have
never
experienced violence on the job. This was the case for 78 percent of indoor workers in a British study and 77 percent in Belgium.
¹²
And research in the Netherlands in the early 1990s reported that two-thirds of a sample of 127 prostitutes had never experienced physical violence and 61 percent had never experienced sexual violence on the job (most of the remainder had experienced violence infrequently).
¹³
This sample included both street and indoor workers (in brothels, clubs, and windows) and presented figures for all types combined, so it is likely that the number experiencing violence would be even lower if the sample was restricted to the indoor workers.