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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > Prostitution
This book considers a burgeoning social phenomenon, compensated
dating in Hong Kong, that facilitates direct commercial sex
exchange between consenting females from their mid-teens through
the late 20s and males from their early 20s to mid-adulthood.
Informed by the transformation of intimacy, the breakdown of
institutional constraints, the emergence of a new female sexual
autonomy and the advancement of information technology, this book
moves beyond stereotypes of sex work to look at the complexities of
compensated dating. The phenomenon of compensated dating is
distinctive from most other sex trades in that it involves intense
emotional interactions and often extends beyond the commercial
boundary. Given the dynamic, flexible and ambiguous nature of
compensated dating, it has become more of a space for sexual
explorations and less of a rigid model of commercial sex, at least
in the eye of the participants. This book walks through how men
become involved in compensated dating and also sheds lights on how
gender relations are negotiated, with important implications on
what it means to be a man and a woman in contemporary Hong Kong
society. It also speaks to the broader transformations of some of
the key social structures and elements, particularly gender and
sexualities, in the era of late modernity.
When Harvard medical student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study as the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the union where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the brothel could have predicted the end result. Having worked with homeless prostitutes in Times Square, Albert was intimate with human devastation cause by the sex trade, and curious to see if Nevada’s brothels offered a less harmful model for a business that will always be with us. The Mustang Ranch has never before given an outsider such access, but fear of AIDS was hurting the business, and the Ranch was eager to get publicity for its rigorous standards of sexual hygiene. Albert was drawn into the lives of the women of the Mustang Ranch, and what began as a public-health project evolved into something more intimate and ambitious, a six-year study of the brothel ecosystem, its lessons and significance.
The women of the Mustang Ranch poured their stories out to Albert: how they came to be there, their surprisingly deep sense of craft and vocation, how they reconciled their profession with life on the outside. Dr. Albert went as far into this world as it is possible to go — some will say too far — including sitting in on sessions with customers, and the result is a book that puts an unforgettable face on America’s maligned and caricatured subculture.
Sex, Love, and Migration goes beyond a common narrative of women's
exploitation as a feature of migration in the early twenty-first
century, a story that features young women from poor countries who
cross borders to work in low paid and often intimate labor. Alexia
Bloch argues that the mobility of women is marked not only by risks
but also by personal and social transformation as migration
fundamentally reshapes women's emotional worlds and aspirations.
Bloch documents how, as women have crossed borders between the
former Soviet Union and Turkey since the early 1990s, they have
forged new forms of intimacy in their households in Moldova,
Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, but also in Istanbul, where they
often work for years on end. Sex, Love, and Migration takes as its
subject the lives of post-Soviet migrant women employed in three
distinct spheres-sex work, the garment trade, and domestic work.
Bloch challenges us to decouple images of women on the move from
simple assumptions about danger, victimization, and trafficking.
She redirects our attention to the aspirations and lives of women
who, despite myriad impediments, move between global capitalist
centers and their home communities.
Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and
acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The
state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other
trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been
truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women,
who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men
of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed
the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for
self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us.
Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of
gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control,
and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount
importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and
institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new
light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of
our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The
main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical
study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from
the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution
in Greek literary sources.
We are living in a time of great panic about "sex trafficking"-an
idea whose meaning has been expanded beyond any real usefulness by
evangelicals, conspiracy theorists, anti-prostitution feminists,
and politicians with their own agendas. This is especially visible
during events like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, when
claims circulate that as many as 40,000 women and girls will be sex
trafficked. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil as well as
interviews with sex workers, policymakers, missionaries, and
activists in Russia, Qatar, Japan, the UK, and South Africa,
Gregory Mitchell shows that despite baseless statistical claims to
the contrary, sex trafficking never increases as a result of these
global mega-events-but police violence against sex workers always
does. While advocates have long decried this myth, Mitchell follows
the discourse across host countries to ask why this panic so easily
embeds during these mega-events. What fears animate it? Who
profits? He charts the move of sex trafficking into the realm of
the spectacular-street protests, awareness-raising campaigns,
telenovelas, social media, and celebrity spokespeople-where it then
spreads across borders. This trend is dangerous because these
events happen in moments of nationalist fervor during which fears
of foreigners and migrants are heightened and easily exploited to
frightening ends.
This volume is a compilation of new original qualitative and
ethnographic research on pimps and other third party facilitators
of commercial sex from the developed and developing world. From
African-American pimps in the United States and Eastern European
migrants in Germany to Brazilian cafetaos and cafetinas this volume
features the lives and voices of the men and women who enable
diverse and culturally distinct sex markets around the world. In
scholarly, popular, and policy-making discourses, such individuals
are typically viewed as larger-than-life hustlers, violent
predators, and brutal exploiters. However, there is actually very
little empirical research-based knowledge about how pimps and third
party facilitators actually live, labor, and make meaning in their
everyday lives. Nearly all previous knowledge derives from hearsay
and post-hoc reporting from ex-sex-workers, customers, police and
government agents, neighbors, and self-aggrandizing fictionalized
memoirs. This volume is the first published compilation of
empirically researched data and analysis about pimps and third
parties working in the sex trade across the globe. Situated in an
age of highly punitive and ubiquitous global anti-trafficking law,
it challenges highly charged public policy stereotypes that
conflate pimping and sex trafficking, in order to understand the
lived experience of pimps and the men and women whose work they
facilitate.
Sex Worker Unionisation examines the challenges and opportunities
offered by unionisation for Sex Workers. Exploring unionisation
projects undertaken by Sex Workers in most major economies, this
ground-breaking study shows how sex-workers have collectively
sought to control and organise their work and working lives by
co-determining the wage-effort with their de facto employers. It
highlights the range of significant obstacles that have impeded
their progress, including owner hostility, state regulation and the
sway of radical feminism that is present in many unions. Outlining
a more efficacious model for sex worker unionisation based upon
combining occupation unionism and social movement unionism, this
pioneering and controversial new book offers an important study of
business organization in a unique industry.
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