Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war.

Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women.

This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.

Prostitution thrived in pioneer Colorado. Mining was the principal occupation and men outnumbered women more than twenty to one. Jan MacKell provides a detailed overview of the business between 1860 and 1930, focusing her research on the mining towns of Cripple Creek, Salida, Colorado City, and similar boomtown communities. She used census data, Sanborn maps, city directories, property records, marriage records, and court records to document and trace the movements of the women over the course of their careers, uncovering work histories, medical problems, and numerous relocations from town to town. She traces many to their graves, through years filled with abuse, disease, narcotics, and violence.

MacKell has unearthed numerous colorful and often touching stories, like that of the boy raised in a brothel who was invited to play with a neighbor's children and replied, "No, my mother is a whore and says I am to stay at home."

"Delicacy, humor, respect, and compassion are among the merits of this book. Although other authors have flirted with Colorado's commercial sex, Jan MacKell provides a detailed overview. She has been researching these elusive women for the last fifteen years. Such persistence allows her to offer rich detail on shady ladies who rarely used their real names or even stuck with the same professional name for long."--Thomas J. Noel, from the Introduction

***Winner of the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems*** On the Game is an ethnographic account of prostitutes and prostitution. Sophie Day has followed the lives of individual women over fifteen years, and her book details their attempts to manage their lives against a backdrop of social disapproval. The period was one of substantial change within the sex industry. Through the lens of public health, economics, criminalisation and human rights, Day explores how individual sex workers live, in public and in private. This offers a unique perspective on contemporary capitalist society that will be of interest both to a broad range of social scientists. The author brings a unique perspective to her work -- as both an anthropologist and the founder of the renowned Praed Street Project, set up in 1986, as a referral and support centre for London prostitutes.

Selling Songs and Smiles explores female sexual entertainment ("songs and smiles") during Japan's Heian and Kamakura periods, examining the gradual construction of a transgressive identity ("prostitute") for women engaged in the sex trade. Over some four hundred years, the character and public image of sexual entertainment was shaped by growing restrictions on female sexual activity and increasingly negative views of the female body--themselves the result of socioeconomic change in society at large. Although it is possible to paint a picture of the general decline in the status of women in the sex trade, there were also ambiguities in how they were regarded by society in the very oldest extant references to them in historical sources. Using essays, diaries, legal documents, stories, and illustrated works, this original and distinctive study unravels social attitudes toward female sexual entertainers and examines changes in their trade and the treatment they received at the hands of the court, the bakufu, and religious institutions. Compellingly argued and stylishly written, Selling Songs and Smiles challenges several prevailing interpretations, most notably the organic connection posed by scholars between shamans and sexual entertainers. Based on her exhaustive research into multiple types of primary sources, Janet Goodwin views women involved in the sex trade neither as entirely social marginals nor artisans situated within normal societal bounds. What emerges from her study is the complex and often contradictory nature of the Heian and Kamakura discourse on sexual entertainment.

In this study of Bernard Mandeville's A Modest Defence of Publick Stews , Irwin Primer breaks new ground by arguing that in addition to being an advocation for the establishment of state-regulated houses of prostitution, Mandeville's writing is also a highly polished work of literature.

Human trafficking is now the third-biggest activity of organized crime in Europe, surpassed only by the trafficking of drugs and arms. For Sale: Women and Children - Trafficking and Forced Prostitution in Southeast Europe, details how the women and children of Southeast Europe are entrapped by the web of human trafficking and then bought and sold like chattel for enormous profits from prostitution and pornography. It is estimated that the buying and selling of human beings worldwide generates as much as seven billion US dollars in income per year. Of approximately 700,000 women and children around the world who become victims of some kind of human trafficking each year, as many as 200,000 of them pass through the Balkans. Southeast Europe has thus become a major center for trafficking in women and children for prostitution.
This book details the enormity of this phenomenon, how it happens, who is responsible, the role of organized crime, the plight of the victims, and what is being done and can be done to help the victims and prevent more women and children from ending up in the nightmare of trafficking. The book presents the victim's perspective with stories of how they were lured by traffickers, what they experienced on the streets and in brothels, and how they struggled to make their way out of sexual slavery only to find other difficulties as they returned to their home countries or tried to build new lives abroad.
For Sale: Women and Children - Trafficking and Forced Prostitution in Southeast Europe provides an opportunity to learn about the roots of trafficking in human beings; its complexity, how it affects the individual and region, and what can be done to eliminate it.International, state, local, and individual actions can be taken to prevent trafficking, to protect victims, and to effectively prosecute those involved. This book shows why it will take a firm commitment by all to end this modern day slavery.

"Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World" explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period. In ancient times, although they were socially marginal, prostitutes connected with almost every aspect of daily life. They sat in brothels and walked the streets; they paid taxes and set up dedications in religious sanctuaries; they appeared as characters--sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable--on the comic stage and in the law courts; they lived lavishly, consorting with famous poets and politicians; and they participated in otherwise all-male banquets and drinking parties, where they aroused jealousy among their anxious lovers.
The chapters in this volume examine a wide variety of genres and sources, from legal and religious tracts to the genres of lyric poetry, love elegy, and comic drama to the graffiti scrawled on the walls of ancient Pompeii. These essays reflect the variety and vitality of the debates engendered by the last three decades of research by confronting the ambiguous terms for prostitution in ancient languages, the difficulty of distinguishing the prostitute from the woman who is merely promiscuous or adulterous, the question of whether sacred or temple prostitution actually existed in the ancient Near East and Greece, and the political and social implications of literary representations of prostitutes and courtesans.

Through the words of sex workers and their clients, Jeremy Seabrook reconsiders the popular conception of sex tourism in Asia. Through its examination of the many paradoxes surrounding this controversial subject, Travels in the Skin Trade also sheds new light on the wider and problematic relationship between the North and the South. Press coverage of the sex trade routinely consists of ill-informed, moralising and sensationalist denunciations of the 'industry'. Through the words of sex workers and their clients, Seabrook reconsiders the popular conception of the sex industry and explores the complex relationship between sex and tourism. In so doing he presents an objective, sensitive view of the industry. Through its examination of the many paradoxes surrounding this controversial subject, Travels in the Skin Trade also sheds new light on the wider and problematic relationship between the North and the South.

Feminists have long differed in their view of prostitution. While some regard it as a classic form of exploitation and degradation, others offer a more sympathetic interpretation of women's involvement in the sex industry. In this important new book, Maggie O'Neill seeks to explore the theoretical debates on prostitution and the relevance of these to the everyday lived experiences of women working on the streets.

Based upon her own ethnographic research - defined as ethno-mimesis - the author seeks to undermine and demystify stereotypical images of prostitutes. She explores the narratives offered by prostitutes themselves, as well as other forms of their representation in film, art and photography, and shows how these various mediums may be used to shed light on the socio-economic processes and structures which lead women into prostitution. These personal accounts produce what O'Neill refers to as 'a politics of feeling', which, she argues, may be used to transform attitudes, policy and practice in relation to female prostitution. By relating these individual experiences to critical feminist theory, the book deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of prostitution in contemporary society.

The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender studies, feminist theory and sociology.

An analysis of the conditions in which women are sustained within prostitution in Britain at the end of the millennium. Based on a major empirical study, it is a glimpse into how some women, who live lives completely torn apart by poverty, violence and criminalization, are able to understand their lives in prostitution and make sense of the choices they make (including their involvement in prostitution) in their struggles to survive.

This book provides a compelling analysis of the conditions in which women are sustained within prostitution in Britain at the end of the millennium. Based on a major empirical study, it is a unique glimpse into how some women, who live lives completely torn apart by poverty, violence, and criminalization, are able to understand their lives in prostitution and make sense of the choices they make (including their involvement in prostitution) in their struggles to survive.

This book provides a compelling analysis of the conditions in which women are sustained within prostitution in Britain at the end of the millennium. Based on a major empirical study, it is a unique glimpse into how some women, who live lives completely torn apart by poverty, violence and criminalization, are able to understand their lives in prostitution and make sense of the choices they make in their struggle to survive.

Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE-200 CE challenges the often-romanticised view of the prostitute as an urbane and liberated courtesan by examining the social and economic realities of the sex industry in Greco-Roman culture. Departing from the conventional focus on elite society, these essays consider the Greek prostitute as displaced foreigner, slave, and member of an urban underclass. The contributors draw on a wide range of material and textual evidence to discuss portrayals of prostitutes on painted vases and in the literary tradition, their roles at symposia (Greek drinking parties), and their place in the everyday life of the polis. Reassessing many assumptions about the people who provided and purchased sexual services, this volume yields a new look at gender, sexuality, urbanism, and economy in the ancient Mediterranean world.

This annotated work represents the first bibliography since the AIDS epidemic began to unite scientific literature about prostitutes. The annotated entries cover works on prostitutes published in English in both major and obscure bio-medical journals between 1900 and 1990, and include literature concerning the relationship between prostitutes and AIDS. Some papers published in European and Asian languages are also included. The entries were compiled from published, original papers and other types of editorial material in scientific journals, abstracts, books and chapters, doctoral dissertations, and research reports from agencies and commissions. Significant literature on the relationship between prostitution and AIDS is covered. Of the 1,440 entries, 226 are from non-English language sources. This reference work will be valuable to professionals in the medical and social sciences, law enforcement, psychology, public health, anthropology, and women's studies.

Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex markets in India.

Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective.

In Erotic Exchanges, Nina Kushner reveals the complex world of elite prostitution in eighteenth-century Paris by focusing on the professional mistresses who dominated it. In this demimonde, these dames entretenues exchanged sex, company, and sometimes even love for being "kept." Most of these women entered the profession unwillingly, either because they were desperate and could find no other means of support or because they were sold by family members to brothels or to particular men. A small but significant percentage of kept women, however, came from a theater subculture that actively supported elite prostitution. Kushner shows that in its business conventions, its moral codes, and even its sexual practices, the demimonde was an integral part of contemporary Parisian culture.Kushner's primary sources include thousands of folio pages of dossiers and other documents generated by the Paris police as they tracked the lives and careers of professional mistresses, reporting in meticulous, often lascivious, detail what these women and their clients did. Rather than reduce the history of sex work to the history of its regulation, Kushner interprets these materials in a way that unlocks these women's own experiences. Kushner analyzes prostitution as a form of work, examines the contracts that governed relationships among patrons, mistresses, and madams, and explores the roles played by money, gifts, and, on occasion, love in making and breaking the bonds between women and men. This vivid and engaging book explores elite prostitution not only as a form of labor and as a kind of business but also as a chapter in the history of emotions, marriage, and the family.

Somaly Mam was abandoned as a baby and looked after by her grandmother until she disappeared. She was then taken into the care of a man she called 'grandfather', but was treated no better than an unpaid servant. sold. Raped at twelve, Somaly was forced to marry at fifteen and then sold to a brothel. She endured years of abuse before managing to escape. The Road of Lost Innocence is a moving account of a traumatic childhood and also the inspirational story of a determined and courageous woman devoted to helping other girls caught up in the illegal sex trade and violent underworld in Cambodia. In 1997 Somaly Mam co-founded AFESIP to combat trafficking in women and children for sexual slavery.

One of the most fascinating phenomena of 1960s film culture is the emergence of American sexploitation films-salacious indies made on the margins of Hollywood. Hundreds of such films were produced and shown on both urban and small-town screens over the course of the decade. Yet despite their vital importance to the film scene, and though they are now understood as a gateway to the emergence of publicly exhibited hardcore pornography in the early 1970s, these films have been largely overlooked by scholars. Defined by low budgets, quick production times, unknown actors, strategic uses of nudity, and a sensationalist obsession with unbridled female sexuality, sexploitation films provide a unique window into a tumultuous period in American culture and sexual politics. In Lewd Looks, Elena Gorfinkel examines the social and legal developments that made sexploitation films possible: their aesthetics, their regulation, and their audiences. Gorfinkel explores the ways sexploitation films changed how spectators encountered and made sense of the sexualized body and set the stage for the adult film industry of today. Lewd Looks recovers a lost chapter in the history of independent cinema and American culture-a subject that will engross readers interested in media, sexuality, gender, and the 1960s. Gorfinkel investigates the films and their contexts with scholarly depth and vivid storytelling, producing a new account of the obscene image, screen sex, and adult film and media.

Generations of social thinkers have assumed that access to legitimate paid employment and a decline in the 'double standard' would eliminate the reasons behind women's participation in prostitution. Yet in both the developing world and in postindustrial cities of the West, sexual commerce has continued to flourish, diversifying along technological, spatial, and social lines. In this deeply engaging and theoretically provocative study, Elizabeth Bernstein examines the social features that undergird the expansion and diversification of commercialized sex, demonstrating the ways that postindustrial economic and cultural formations have spawned rapid and unforeseen changes in the forms, meanings, and spatial organization of sexual labor.
Drawing upon dynamic and innovative research with sex workers, their clients, and state actors, Bernstein argues that in cities such as San Francisco, Stockholm, and Amstersdam, the nature of what is purchased in commercial sexual encounters is also new. Rather than the expedient exchange of cash for sexual relations, what sex workers are increasingly paid to offer their clients is an erotic experience premised upon the performance of authentic interpersonal connection. As such, contemporary sex markets are emblematic of a cultural moment in which the boundaries between intimacy and commerce--and between public life and private--have been radically redrawn. Not simply a compelling exploration of the changing landscape of sex-work, "Temporarily Yours" ultimately lays bare the intimate intersections of political economy, desire, and culture.

In Victorian London, the age of consent was just thirteen. Unwitting girls were regularly enticed, tricked and sold into prostitution. If not marked out for a gentleman in a city brothel, they were legally trafficked to Brussels, Paris and beyond. All the while, the Establishment turned a blind eye. That is, until one policeman wrote an incendiary report. Disgraced for testifying against a violent colleague, Irish inspector Jeremiah Minahan was transferred to the backwater of Chelsea as punishment. Here he met Mary Jeffries, a notorious trafficker and procuress who counted Cabinet members and royalty among her clientele. Within days of reporting Jeffries, Minahan was unceremoniously forced out of the Metropolitan Police. So he turned private detective, setting out to expose the peers and politicians more interested in shielding their own positions (and peccadilloes) than London's child prostitutes. The findings Minahan did reveal in 1885 sparked national outrage: riots, arrests, a tabloid war and a sensational trial...other secrets were so fearful he took them to his grave, where they remained - until now. This is the true tale of a man caught between a corrupt English Establishment and his own rebel heart: a very Victorian scandal, but also, a story for our times. Victorian London: slums and stucco, strict morals and dark secrets. The sex trade in vulnerable young English girls was booming, fuelled by lax laws and lucrative trafficking to the brothels of Paris and Brussels. Chelsea's most 'exclusive establishment' counted cabinet members and royalty amongst its clientele. In the searing summer of 1885, the situation hit the headlines. There were arrests, riots, a tabloid scandal and a sensational trial - and one man lit the touchpaper. He was Jeremiah Minahan, Irish ex-inspector, exposer of corruption, rebel with a cause. This is his extraordinary story, and that of the women he helped to protect. It is a very Victorian scandal, but also, a tale for our time.

Meet Leela: nineteen, charismatic and fearlessly outspoken. With her sharp wit and stubborn optimism, she is the best paid bar dancer on Bombay's notorious Mira Road. Leela has a 'husband' (who is already married), a few lovers whose names she can't remember, an insufferable mother camping out in her flat and an adored best friend, Priya - the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. But when the dance bars are banned, Leela's proud independence faces its greatest test. In a city where everyone is certain that someone, somewhere, is worse off than them, Leela fights to survive - and win.