Prostitution - Term Paper Example

?Prostitution Prostitution is the business of selling the body in exchange of gains, predominantly monetary. “Although the sex is traditionally traded for money, it can also be bartered for jewelry, clothing, vehicles, housing, food—anything that has market value” (Damewood, 2011). Prostitutes sell their body to a certain client for a certain amount of time according to the money paid by him/her. Prostitution has survived as a social taboo throughout the history. It has only grown with time. Today, prostitution is one of the legally approved professions in many countries around the world while there are also countries, where prostitution is still taken and dealt with as a crime. This paper discusses different aspects of the business of prostitution. Prostitution is conducted by people of all genders in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes. People of all genders i.e. men, women, transmen, transwomen and shemales find their representation in the business of prostitution. For a long time in history, prostitution was conventionally associated with women. With the passage of time, more and more men have drawn into this profession, thus making the female stereotypical image of prostitutes incomplete. Over the years, homosexuality has become more and more common and apparent. Today, the population of homosexual people is so large, that many countries have enforced separate rules for them. Gay bars are officially registered and opened in many countries today. In the conservative societies, men are far less in the business of prostitution as compared to the women, yet male prostitutes are never altogether nonexistent. Most of the shemales all around the world are prostitutes. In many societies, a shemale is taken for a prostitute irrespective of his/her involvement in this business. Transmen and transwomen generally have a sexual affair with both men and women whether or not they do it for money. Modernity and liberalism is the fundamental reason more genders have started to reflect in the business of prostitution. Over the decades, people have become more overt about their sexual interests both across and within the genders. Prostitution has become free of gender restrictions as the society has progressed towards modernity. Prostitution is conducted in two basic ways; outdoor prostitution and indoor prostitution. Outdoor prostitutes advertise themselves by standing in the corners of the streets, winking and waving to the passers-by whereas the indoor prostitutes use more sophisticated means of advertisement like social media web sites and Internet. Indoor prostitutes are much more expensive as compared to the outdoor prostitutes. In addition to being more expensive, indoor prostitutes are safer than the outdoor prostitutes. A research was conducted in the UK to assess the extent of safety of both kinds of prostitutes. It was found that “81% of women prostituting on the street experienced violence at the hands of johns, yet so did 48% of women prostituting indoors” (Farley, 2009). Indoor prostitutes tend to find rich men whom they like to be girlfriends or boyfriends with. They usually have only one client for some months or years who is not only their financial provider, but also their regular sexual partner. Outdoor prostitutes keep changing clients on the daily basis. Different people have different reasons for becoming a prostitute. A vast majority of the prostitutes have entered this profession because of extreme poverty. These women are not educated enough to be eligible for respectable jobs. Although they are skilled enough to earn a living by doing such works as weaving, knitting and house-keeping, yet many prefer to enter the profession of prostitution because it takes much lesser effort and pays much more than any alternative. A lot of prostitutes enter this profession because of the childhood abuse they experience in the past. “There are [thousands of] street children in the country, who are usually the victims of sexual abuse, as time progresses these children are so used to being exploited that they decide to use the exploitation to earn quick money” (Dharejo cited in Shah, 2009). Prostitution adds to the worries of these people by reopening the buried memories of the unfortunate past (Lowen, 2011). There is also a significant population of prostitutes who are quite well-off and enter the prostitution by choice rather than by chance. These prostitutes are moved by their desire for sex with members across the gender or within the gender or both. An example of prostitutes that belong to this category are the male strippers. Prostitution is not necessarily for money. By the traditional definition, prostitution is any act of sexual significance between two or more people that is prohibited by the religion. If this definition of prostitution is followed, at least two in every five people are prostitutes. Although the two are same in their activities, what fundamentally differentiates these people from the traditional prostitutes is the number of affairs. People that have affair with a girlfriend or a boyfriend are not normally considered as prostitutes because a prostitute is thought to make love with different people at different points in time, primarily for the sake of earning money. Hence, different people have different horizons of the area of the prostitution world depending upon their religious, ethical or cultural beliefs. Prostitutes are much more in number than they appear to be. People normally limit their knowledge of prostitutes to the ones that have either officially declared themselves as prostitutes or have the reputation for being the same. However, there is a significant population of the prostitutes that live in as modest and decent way as the non-prostitutes do. There are a lot of women who are married and yet are in a physical relationship with a neighbor, a friend or a cousin or all of them at the same time. Many people object to the definition of such women as prostitutes, but the fact is, that not every prostitute does it for money. If there is a category of prostitutes that do it for reasons other than earning money, that category is inclusive of these domestic prostitutes which are otherwise known as housewives. Prostitution is just more evident in the modernistic societies as compared to the conservative societies, but by no means is it less common in the conservative societies. One may not see any sign of the sex trade on the streets in the conservative societies unlike in the modernistic societies. In a conservative society, street corners which conventionally happen to be the most suitable marketing places for the prostitutes may be empty, but the clients know where to go anyway irrespective of indication or sign-boards. All the wheeling and dealing happens indoor. Advancement of technology and the development of mobile phones and Internet have played a fundamental role in the promotion and extension of the indoor prostitution. “The stench that hits those not used to it is a mix of sweat, feces, cooking oil, rotten food, the penetrating exhaust from rickshaws, and, at times, sex” (Orne, 2010). Most of the prostitutes dwell in areas that have dense networks of streets with all kinds of shops particularly the tea stalls and cheap restaurants. One reason for selecting such areas to live and work in is that most of the customers of these prostitutes are lower class and lower-middle class people belonging to such professions as truck driving, rickshaw driving, taxi driving, and clerking. These people remain out of their homes for most of the day till late in the night in search of more clients, so they are definite to visit those tea stalls and restaurants on the daily basis. These people are the prime customers of the prostitutes as a prostitute is very cheap in the more conservative societies. Owing to the fact that prostitution is illegal in the conservative societies, most prostitutes who can incur a cost of thousands of dollars a night to a client in the modernistic society are available to the clients for few cents or dollars in the conservative societies. Clients cash the fact that the business is illegal, and thus, the rate goes down in general. This is the reason why the lower class and the lower middle class people make a bulk of the consumer base of the business of prostitution in the conservative societies. The prostitutes do the business through men known as “dallals”. A dallal is a person who approaches individual clients to advertise the indoor prostitutes, make the deal and receive the money on behalf of the prostitute. Most of the dallals are quite aged and have spent the life raising these prostitutes from childhood to adulthood. They live upon the money earned by the prostitutes. The prostitutes give them a significant share of their money because they need them for food and shelter. The dallals provide the prostitutes with accommodation and other necessities of life. Thus, the interest is mutual. Once a client agrees to accept the offer of the dallal, the client is taken to the brothel house which is apparently a home. Inside the house, the client is shown different prostitutes that vary in age and beauty and accordingly rate. The younger and prettier a prostitute, the costlier she is! The client selects a prostitute and the dallal establishes a verbal contract with him. The contract specifies the length of time for which the client requires the prostitute, the extent of physical interaction he intends to make as well as the number of people allowed in the room with the prostitute. Some clients book a prostitute only for themselves while others take them for group sex. The more the number of people, the higher the rate goes. Prostitution is not necessarily limited to the physical intercourse. Although sex is often what a client needs a prostitute for, yet there are many clients who just need the prostitutes to perform in a function. In such cases, it is settled between the dallal and the client that the prostitute would not be made love to and would only be asked to perform. The prostitutes are taken to birthday parties, New Year night, weddings and such other events where they dance for a certain period of time. Hence, prostitution includes more than just sex. Concluding, prostitution is conducted by people of all genders in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons. With the modern revolution, prostitution has become more of a profession than a social taboo. Indoor prostitutes earn more and remain safer than the outdoor prostitutes. People end up becoming prostitutes mostly because they have been victims of physical abuse in the childhood or they are poor. Advertisement is made either through specific people or through technology. Prostitution is much more than just sex. References: Damewood, C. L. (2011). What Is Prostitution? Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-prostitution.htm. Farley, M. (2009, June 22). Indoor versus Outdoor Prostitution in Rhode Island. Retrieved from http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Indoor%20Prostitution%20Rhode%20Island%20June%2022%202009.pdf. Lowen, L. (2011). Prostitution Statistics and Rape - Physical Abuse of Prostitutes Common. Retrieved from http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm. Orne, K. (2010, June 11). Pakistan’s Sex Trade: May You Never Be Uncovered. Huff Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-orne/pakistans-sex-trade-may-y_b_605113.html. Shah, F. A. (2009, Jan. 13). Male prostitution, a hidden shame: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Daily Times. Retrieved from http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C01%5C13%5Cstory_13-1-2009_pg12_9. Read More