Adolescent prostitution - Term Paper Example

?Running Head: Psychology Why adolescents engage in the prostitution and how their risky sexual behavior connects to their family and peers? A Position Paper Name Course Title Name of Professor Date of Submission Position 1: Incest Encourages Adolescent Prostitution One of the most compelling arguments explaining why adolescents engage in prostitution is sexual abuse by family, peers, or strangers. Specifically, sexually abused teenage girls are more prone to engage in prostitution and other risky sexual behaviors than teenage boys who are sexually abused, or girls who did not experience any sexual violence (Tattersall, 1999). The connection between sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution is empirically proven in the literature. Sexually abused teenagers are at heightened risk to escape from home and live on the streets; consequently, majority of permanent escapees will become enmeshed into prostitution (Flowers, 2001). The organizer of the Mary Magdalene Project in Lost Angeles, Ann Hayman, proclaimed that most runaway sex workers were victims of incest and sexual abuse (Flowers, 2001). Adolescent prostitution is most directly related with incest or intrafamilial sexual abuse, commonly identified as “sexual intercourse between relatives within the prohibited degrees of relationship defined by the law” (Flowers, 2006, 75). Studies reveal that intrafamilial sexual abuse victims are more prone to successive sexual abuse than adolescents sexually violated by a person outside the family (Dean & Thomson, 1997). A number of studies have reported that older female victims of incest habitually may instinctively “seek abusive environments in which they are subsequently victimized (through rape or spousal [rape]) and are frequently unable to protect their own children from being abused” (Flowers, 1994, 57). Child sexual abuse nowadays normally denotes any sexual activities, such as masturbation, oral sex, petting, and sodomy between an adolescent and a family member (Jeffreys, 1997). The usual active perpetrator in an intrafamilial sexual abuse is an adult male, whereas the meek victim is likely to be an adolescent female (Flowers, 2001). According to Flowers (2001, 148), an approximated 85% of intrafamilial sexual abuse victims are female, whereas at least 90% of all cases of incest are perpetrated by male aggressors. Roughly 78% of all recently documented incest cases are between father and daughter, 1% between mother and son, 8% between siblings (Flowers, 2001. 148). Even though biological fathers make up the vast majority of perpetrators in intrafamilial sexual abuse, a significant part of these cases is between stepdaughter and stepfather (Hunter, 2004). The fraction of male to female incest victims has been approximated to be one to ten (Flowers, 2001). Female victims of incest are often the only or eldest daughter, and usually close to adolescence (Ferranti, 2007). The evident relationship between prostitution, running away, and intrafamilial sexual abuse victimization can be glimpsed in this dreadful story of an AIDS-infected female teen prostitute (Flowers, 2001, 149): A victim of childhood incest, Wendy ran away at age fifteen. Miamu police have arrested her seventeen times for prostitution [and] now ise a known AIDS carrier… The authorities cannot hold her longer than the maximum amount of time for prostituting, so soon as her time is up, Wendy once again returns to hustling… Wendy averages five johns a day. “Ten,” she says, “if things are hopping.” According to Flowers (2010), majority of incest victims encounter perplexity and uncertainty about their responses to the experience. It is this breach of purity and consequent bewilderment, alongside loss of control over their own actions, that result in the psychological and emotional effect on the victim. Position 2: Teenagers engage in Prostitution not only for Sexual Gratification According to some scholars, like Sigmund Freud, prostitution is a biological manifestation of sexuality and need for poor sexual liaisons (Hunter, 2004). This theory substantiates a sexual belief that males have out-of-control sexual desires that should be gratified. This belief has been commonly used as an explanation for adolescent prostitution. The teenage prostitute is debased by the assumption that sex workers play a valuable role as an object for sexual indulgence (Goodwin, 1998). The fact, according to Carroll (2009), is that adolescent prostitutes are more often than not disgusted at and ruined by the actions required of them. Their involvement is usually a danger to their emotional, physical, and psychological health. More unkindly, researchers and journalists continue in their unhealthy routine of piecing together teenagers who have been victims of prostitution, forced sex, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment with those whose sexual relationships were entirely deliberate (Moore & Rosenthal, 2006). The younger an adolescent admitted engaging in sexual activities, the more likely the ‘sexual act’ was an assault. As emphasized, a study of Guttmacher Institute discovered that 43% of teenage girls who engaged in sexual activities before age 15 admitted that their sole experience comprised of being sexually harassed, and another 17% reported they both had deliberate sex and forced sex (Carroll, 2009, 208). It could be expected that adolescents whose ‘sexual experience’ had been forced or if not violent would find that incident demoralizing and deplorable (Sprinthall & Collins, 1994). The insensitivity of influential critics who gain from the comfort of taking for granted adolescents’ histories of sexual abuse does not imply adolescents can take these realities for granted. The anti-adolescent-prostitution climate of today is quite persistent that seldom are the scholars eager to find out why adolescents engage in sexual acts rather than why researchers and authorities claim they do. The accepted theory is that adolescents engage in prostitution only for dire reasons: inadequate education, hormonal imbalance, peer pressure, beguiling media images, sexual gratification, and other wrong urges (Carroll, 2009). In this climate, according to Flowers (2010), scholars who find adolescents manifesting positive outlooks about sexual acts and their sexual experiences usually feel obliged to distort their findings in an adverse way, and if they fail to do so, journalists will. An investigation of sexual behavior among ninth graders by the University of California and Indiana University researchers discovered that adolescents gave importance to intimacy or close relationship the most, then by social standing and sexual gratification (Carroll, 2009, xxix). Predictably, girls gave more importance to intimacy, and sexually active teenagers admitted prizing the intimacy and gratification sexual acts gave them more than sexually inactive teenagers predicted (Carroll, 2009). According to Hunter (2004), another investigation of California adolescents reported those who either had sexual engagements in the past or planned to in the near future were far more probable to have encountered encouraging outcomes from sexual acts such as enhanced relationships, better self-confidence, and gratification than did teenagers who were sexually inexperienced and probable to stay so. The most valid conclusion is that adolescents are ‘individuals’. Abundant works on this subject show the broad range of adolescents’ behaviors, expectations, and outlooks concerning prostitution. Of teenagers who engage in prostitution, according to Moore and Rosenthal (2006), it seems that a vast majority of adolescents whose sexual encounters did not comprise of sexual violent found them pleasurable, though having several disadvantages. Only a handful viewed consensual sex completely adverse. References Carroll, J. (2009). Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Dean, R. & Thomson, M. (1997). Teen Prostitution. New York: Lucent Books. Ferranti, C. (2007). Sexual Exploitation: A Forensic Evaluation of Juvenile Prostitution. New York: John Ferranti. Flowers, R.B. (1994). The Victimization and Exploitation of Women and Children: A Study of Physical, Mental, and Sexual Maltreatment in the United States. New York: McFarland & Company. Flowers, R.B. (2001). Runaway Kids and Teenage Prostitution: America’s Lost, Abandoned, and Sexually Exploited Children. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Flowers, R.B. (2006). Sex Crimes Perpetrators, Predators, Prostitutes, And Victims. Illinois: Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd. Flowers, R.B. (2010). Street Kids: The Lives of Runaway and Thrownaway Teens. New York: McFarland. Goodwin, W. (1998). Teen Violence. New York: Lucent Books. Hunter, W.S. (2004). “Psychological abstracts” American Psychological Association, 91(9). Jeffreys, S. (1997). The Idea of Prostitution. North Melbourne, Vic: Spinifex. Moore, S. & Rosenthal, D. (2006). Sexuality in Adolescence. London: Routledge. Sprinthall, N. & Collins, W.A. (1994). Adolescent psychology: a developmental view. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tattersall, C. (1999). Drugs, Runaways, and Teen Prostitution. New York: Rosen Pub Group. Read More