Prostitution And Feminism

The discussion of prostitution has been a hot topic debate for as long as the practice has been established. The ethical debate as to if it should or should not be legal has been going on just as long. People say that in our Christian heritage it is a life of both antisexual and antidomestic life that we live , and that the act of prostitution is “the art of sin” . This paper will look at some of the paternalistic views of prostitution and develop a public policy09o9asssqaq position based on prostitution using Lars Ericssons “Charges Against Prostitution: An Attempt at a Philosophical Assessment.”

The number of women incarcerated is growing at a rapid pace. This calls for a reevaluation of our correction institutions to deal with women’s involvement in crime. Increasing numbers of arrests for property crime and public order offenses are outpacing that of men. The “War on Drugs” has a big influence on why our prisons have become overcrowded in the last 25 years. Women are impacted more than ever because they are being convicted equally for drug and other offenses. Female criminal behavior has always been identified as minor compared to Male’s criminal behavior. Over the years women have made up only small part of the offender populations. There is still only a small

Prostitution, also referred to as “the oldest profession,” has always been a controversial and challenging social issue. It is practiced in many different forms including: call girls, convention prostitutes, apartment prostitutes, hotel prostitutes, house prostitutes, bar girls, streetwalkers, and parking lot lizards (). Civilizations such as the Samarians, and countries including Morocco and parts of India engaged in a form of prostitution known as temple prostitution. Temple prostitution is based on the belief that “generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of nature” (Clarkson). In other civilizations, such as the Roman and Byzantine Empires, prostitution was looked upon as less of a religious ceremony, and more of a sin practiced by “women of evil life” (ProCon.org). Today those differentiating view are still present in modern society, but there are also new ideologies surrounding the everlasting presence of prostitution. This Essay will use the Symbolic Interactionism Theory to identify those new ideologies, and evaluate the meaning of prostitution within three relationship: the husband and wife, the Call girl and client, and the Pimp and the sex trafficking victim.

In many countries, the female prison population has increased dramatically over the last years. This has generated widespread awareness in our society, leading people to question why the percentage multiplied exponentially. In the past, female offenders have not only been compared to their male counterparts, but to society’s view of the role of women; this role categorized them as housewives and mothers. But how did these housewives and mothers go from the home to the prisons? In most countries, women represent a minority of the prison population: normally between 2% and 8%. There are now more than 600,000 women behind bars and more than one million on probation and parole, (Bastick and Townhead 2008) most of these women are sentenced to prison for non-violent crimes. Many of these women in prison struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, and histories of physical and sexual abuse. According to the researchers Bastick and Townhead, all over the world women in prison suffer from intersecting

Female Criminality consists of several outdated statistics regarding the rise of female offending. However, in viewing the current research on the subject, it appears that the overall theme of this dissertation's discussion is still relevant despite changes in the accompanying statistics as seen in viewing the following topics: the rise in female offending; the continual rise that females are committing more crimes than men; and the types of crimes that women are committing. In viewing Bruce Gross's 2009 article, "Battle of the Sexes: The Nature of Female Delinquency," as well as Elizabeth Cauffman's 2008 article, "Understanding the Female Offender," one can begin to see where current statistics regarding the female criminal lie.

“The demand is the result of a simple biological appetite. When all other sources of gratification fail, due to defects of person or circumstance, prostitution can be relied upon to furnish relief” (Davis, 753). Prostitution in a latent sense saves marriages and allows men to fulfill their sexual desires. “Prostitution embraces an economic relation, and is naturally connected with the entire system of economic forces” (Davis, 749). One societal function that prostitution fills is a release for those who desire the prostitute (latent) and a source of income for the prostitute (manifest).

Meda Chesney-Lind’s feminist Theory of Female Delinquency (1986) Address is how females in the rights of females are mostly ignored in the field criminology as well as how women were afterthoughts in a criminal justice system designed for men. Using the feminist method Chesney-Lind’s "Women and Crime": The Female Offender (1986) addresses women’s background experiences through qualitative research and interviews, gaining context and obtaining a female perspective on crime a females. She explores the historical development of the feminist theory and how women were prosecuted based on the society's perception of women (Chesney-Lind, p. 76-78) She make a familiar connection between victimization and offending experienced by women through their life histories strong connections between previous victimization and offending.

On the other hand, some cities have wised up and are beginning to implement these kinds of rehabilitation programs. For instance, the aforementioned Yvette Brooks-Godley was a college graduate before she became a prostitute. Drugs sent her life into a downward spiral and she didn’t reform her ways until the court system tried something different. She benefitted from a fairly new prostitution diversion program in Chicago, WINGS Court, which manifested from a grassroots campaign by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Consequently, Brooks-Godley received the rehabilitation services that she desperately needed and now she is drug-free, financially independent, and owns a small food company. “Sometimes all we need is somebody to believe in us when we don’t believe in ourselves,” says Brooks-Godley. In short, the prostitution debate, like so many other issues, tends to be discussed in abstract terms, but her message shows that we need to remember how these policies directly affect real people’s lives.

In our society, our views on prostitution is low. We see it as a derogatory remark as it is against our moral standards. As a priority, we need to understand better on different aspects of prostitution. From behavioral point of view, a prostitution can be defined as someone who involves in a sexual relation for some kinds of reward. The person involved could be male or female. However, in reality a prostitution implies women providing sexual pleasure to men in exchange for compensation, such as cash or kind. It is commonly known as selling sex (Flowers, 2005). There is may be motivations for female to seek prostitution such as money, considered as one of the big factor, but it is not always that way. In this paper, I will be viewing prostitution from the sociological, economical, and anthropological disciplines in relation to our society.

This research paper discusses social issues related to prostitution in Chicago, a city along route 66 and is divided into four sections. In the first section, definition of prostitution is discussed. Also different forms of prostitution are listed. It should be clearly stated there 's no one accepted definition of prostitution. The term "prostitution" is controversial. Sociologists are still debating on how prostitution should be defined. Moreover, prostitution has different meaning in different time and location.

Prostitution, as many of you may know is an exchange of sex for payment. It should be illegal everywhere in the world because of the extreme lifestyle women are forced to live and because of the increase in crime rates. There are three different types of prostitution. The first and most known- street prostitution, the second being escort prostitution and last but not least-sex-trafficking. Prostitution in general is often looked at as shameful in society, however for many women/ young females around the world, this decision was not made by them. What most people don’t know is that many of them have been forced or lured into prostitution by traffickers or pimps. For others, they depend on this exchange because

The purpose of this final paper is to have a full sociological analysis of my topic; which is prostitution. We are also critiquing and summarizing our topic from paper 1 and paper 2 that we have written. I will be viewing the sociology of prostitution and analyzing prostitution by calling into question many things such as its theoretical premise and the concept of prostitution. Sociologically have defined prostitution as “an occupation in which an individual sells sex in a promiscuous and emotionally indifferent manner” (Clinard, M. B., & Meier, R. F. 2011). This definition views prostitution in various parts and divides the definition into four sections. The sections are prostitution is an occupation; prostitution is a type of act of selling; prostitution as a sexual exchange; and prostitution is an emotionally and promiscuous activity. Analysis of each aspect reveals that the differences between prostitution and conventional behavior are provisional and that the distinction itself must be dissolved. Because it involves an array of ambiguous elements and paradoxical dimensions, the concept of prostitution fails to organize and to interpret data of direct observation in a coherent and comprehensive fashion.

Prostitution is seen as a problematic situation in most countries around the world. In 1999, the Netherlands was one of the first countries to legalize prostitution; it lifted the ban on brothels, recognized prostitution as sex work and delegated the regulation of the sex industry to local authority (Outshoorn 2004a). The sex purpose act was introduced by feminist policy makers as they argued that prostitution is a form of male violence against women even if women are choosing to work in this industry themselves. They said if people want a gender equal society then prostitution has to no longer exist. This act is also known as the ‘Swedish model’ it’ is the criminalization of the purchase of sex. The aim of this model is to try and abolish prostitution through targeting the demand and decriminalizing those who are selling sex. This model specifically aims to protect sex workers. Its important that this legislation only targets the buyers of prostitution, as the women who are involved should not have legal repercussions, because if they do it can make their life much more difficult. Worldwide feminists agreed that prostitution was a patriarchal tool of oppression against women. Many believe that prostitution undermines women’s agency. Since the beginning of the 1980s, Swedish feminists have consistently argued that men who buy prostituted women should be criminalized (Sachs, 1912; Welborn, 1990). They also argued that women who are in prostitution should have help to save them from prostitution and let them escape. In Sweden, prostitution is seen in political discourse to be a form of men’s violence against women (MIEC, 2005). Therefore they aim to abolish prostitution to ensure a ‘gender equality’ society. By preventing prostitutes from selling their services and earning money, this will make them want to abandon working within that trade. Those is sex work are seen as unstable, passive and exploited. In criminalizing the purchase of sex, a primary ambition was to decrease levels of sex work. However, since it can only be demonstrated that levels of street sex work declined when the law was introduced, it seems that street sex work figures have been assumed to be indicative of overall levels of sex work

This section reviews several literatures considering prostitution and prostitutes as social and legal issues. It firstly examines concisely the historical and traditional prostitution discourses in course of developing law on prostitution in the United Kingdom, their (these discourses) influences contributed to contemporary approaches socially and legally. Regarding the discriminating facts on prostitution and its legalization from media representations, the final part will investigate how does contemporary media interpret the prevalent negative discourses (victim or offenders grounded) of prostitution as a legal and social issue.

The practice of prostitution has been around ever since humanity existed. Being considered “world’s oldest profession”, it has always occurred in human societies whether it be alongside markets, temples, brothels, or streets. The prostitution of women has been accepted in many societies in early humanity, one of the main ones being the Sumerian world. Were female prostitutes were available in temples and men of all rank could receive their services if they made an offering to the goddess Ishtar. In this society prostitution in the temples were seen as sacred sex rituals, a way to connect with gods, and it existed without restrictions or taboo. In today’s modern world the act of prostitutions is usually viewed as immoral and taboo, and even illegal in many countries. The practice of prostitution should not be accepted as a moral or ethical job in society, as it is a subtle oppression that leads to the degrading, objectification, and abuse of the individuals that are involved of selling themselves for money.