The Prostitution of Sexuality. Kathleen Barry
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The Prostitution of Sexuality
The Prostitution of Sexuality
Kathleen Barry
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
Copyright © 1995 by Kathleen Barry
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barry, Kathleen.
The prostitution of sexuality / Kathleen Barry.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8147-1217-7 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN 0-8147-1277-0 pbk.
1. Prostitution-Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Sex oriented
businesses. 3. Sex crimes. 4. Women—Crimes against. 5. Feminist
theory. I. Title.
HQ117.B37 1995
306.74—dc20 94-27897
CIP
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
3. Josephine Butler: The First Wave of Protest
6. Pimping: The Oldest Profession
7. The State: Patriarchal Laws and Prostitution
8. Patricia Hearst: Prototype of Female Sexual Slavery
9. Human Rights and Global Feminist Action
Appendix: Proposed Convention Against Sexual Exploitation, Draft of January 1994
PREFACE TO EBOOK EDITION
Following the publication of Female Sexual Slavery in 1979, I wrote The Prostitution of Sexuality in 1995 to expose the violent, degrading, exploitative sex that men buy in prostitution, a finding that has since been revealed in recent prostitution survivors' testimonies and the research of Dr. Melissa Farley on men who buy sex. That such sex, through pornography especially, has become normalized, finding its way into bedrooms, relationships, and developing teen sexuality, this book made clear.
With the 2012 release of ebook editions of The Prostitution of Sexuality, I can report that not much has changed about the normalization of prostitution sex. Certainly there has been a wider and more uncontrollable diffusion of pornography via the Internet. And many practices of female sexual slavery are no longer treated as criminal. Readers will find here a remembering of a time not too long ago, when it was considered egregious for white American and European men seeking docile, obedient wives to buy Asian, Russian, and Latin American women. While this was considered trafficking in human beings, it has become so accepted today that mail order bride buying seems to many to be just another version of on-line dating and match-making.
The most important change since I originally wrote this book is the vitality and global reach of the feminist movement to abolish prostitution. It challenges customer demand and is winning legal changes in prostitution laws that result in the arrest, jailing, and fining of customers. Initially prompted by this book, this abolitionist movement is likewise demanding support programs for prostituted women.
Feminist activism to abolish prostitution originated in Sweden under the leadership of lawyer Gunilla Ekberg, then a government minister, and has resulted in what is now a tried and tested law that prohibits the purchase of sexual services. Buying prostitution is considered violence against women under the law that took force in 1999 as part of the Swedish Violence Against Women Act. Within ten years of its enactment, due to arrests of customers, prostitution has been halved in Sweden. In November 2008, Norway criminalized sex purchasing, as did Iceland in April 2009. In 2012 the law has come before the Knesset in Israel, and in several more countries campaigns to abolish prostitution are under way. The French Minister of Women's Rights announced in early 2012 that she is launching a campaign to abolish prostitution not only in France but in all of Europe. With the French campaign the abolitionist movement is making the first moves beyond the state-by-state approach ending prostitution.
State campaigns, whether they involve states within the United States or nation states around the world, are necessary to begin the abolition of prostitution where it is located. But they will always remain only partial victories that leave many women in unaffected states vulnerable to prostitution-particularly the poor, and particularly those in the developing world. The abolitionist movement must be at once local and global, national and international. We have understood the necessity of this strategy since women in the U.S. found that they would not be able to get the right to vote for everyone one state at a time. We needed a constitutional amendment. Likewise, that is why the U.S. required the federal Civil Rights Act of 1965, to extend rights to minorities and women in those states that had refused equality for all.
The best place to start the international campaign for abolishing prostitution is with the Convention Against Sexual Exploitation (see Appendix here), which is a treaty that when signed and enacted by nation states, establishes a new human right-to live free of sexual exploitation in all of its forms. It requires penalties against those who sexually exploit