How Prostitution Works

• Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia
  

  Farley, Melissa (2006) Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia: What We Must Not Know in Order To Keep the Business of Sexual Exploitation Running Smoothly. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 18:109-144.

  This article discusses and analyzes empirical data on the harms of prostitution, pornography and trafficking. This information has to be culturally, psychologically, and legally denied because to know it would interfere with the business of sexual exploitation.

• Prostitution and Male Supremacy
  

  (Andrea Dworkin)
  "Prostitution is in and of itself an abuse of a woman's body." "In prostitution, no woman stays whole." Discussion of the incest that precedes prostitution, her homelessness, her namelessness, and the dominance and cruelty of men toward women in prostitution.

  Read the full article here.

• Unequal
  

  (Melissa Farley)
  This article responds to Debbie Nathan’s ‘Oversexed’ (Nation, August 29, 2005). Nathan
  sympathizes with those on the Left who consider prostitution a form of labor rather than
  violence against women. Nathan criticizes abolitionist feminists who think that women in
  prostitution deserve more in life than a condom and a cup of coffee. We feminists think
  that women deserve the right NOT to prostitute. That’s what almost all women in
  prostitution tell us they want: to get out. We also think that HIV prevention funds should
  not be used to promote legalized prostitution.

• How Prostitution Works
  (Joe Parker)
  A description of customers, pimps, and the ways that young people get into prostitution.

• Prostitution As Violence Against Women
  

  (Janice Raymond)
  This article discusses how prostitution is exempted from other kinds of violence and human rights violations, how prostitution is legitimized by distinctions between "forced" and "consenting" prostitution.

  Read the article here.