This is an examination, from a feminist historian's standpoint, of the background to the present system of regulating prostitution in Britain - which is generally admitted to be not only unjust and discriminatory, but ineffective even in achieving its stated aims. Concentrating on the 1950s, and especially on the Wolfenden Report and the 1959 Street Offences Act, it is a thorough exposure of the sexual double standard and general misogynist assumptions underlying legislation relating to prostitution. In addition to the detailed analysis of the 1950s legislation and the background to it, there is an exposition of the subsequent workings of the Act, and of attempts to amend or repeal it.

Providing a detailed international comparison of the laws, policies and interventions relating to prostitution in eight countries across Europe and Asia, this title includes case studies that are brought to life by giving voice to the experiences of prostitutes themselves.

For nineteen years, Olivia lived the shadowy life of stripper, streetwalker, and heroin addict on the fringes of society. Leaving a troubled home at age sixteen to land a seemingly glamorous job at a Chicago stripclub, she became trapped in a web of prostitution and drug addiction that eventually forced her onto the streets and into a world of hardship at the hands of abusive men. But Olivia, a resourceful, vibrant woman of color, ultimately escaped the prostitution lifestyle and is now director of addiction services at a community counseling program, working to support drug-dependent women. Listening to Olivia is the compelling account of her descent into poverty and abuse together with her hard fought recovery. By assimilating new research on the women and girls in prostitution - in addition to their male customers - Jody Raphael discovers that experiences like Olivia's are alarmingly common and argues that the sex trade as an institution promotes violence against women. Smashing both the common stereotype of the depraved streetwalker and abstract feminist arguments legitimizing prostitution as the sexual liberation of women, the author uncovers an emerging multimillion-dollar global trafficking industry that detains women in a violent cycle of exploitation and dependence. Olivia's own insights on her turbulent childhood, stripping in clubs, soliciting on the street, drug addiction, brutal pimps, her three pregnancies, and her extraordinary transformation highlight important new questions: who are the men who buy sex from such poor, strung out women; and why are so many of these men so violent? Olivia's story gives a human face to the overwhelmingly low-income, non-white, and unempowered young women in prostitution today. Combined with a wealth of new findings, this gripping and accessible study challenges the academy, the legal system, and society as a whole to wake up and listen to the women like Olivia.

The scholars who contribute to this issue utilize diverse research methods to examine the lived experiences of people engaged in prostitution and the people and institutions that process them.

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress offers the reader an analysis of prostitution and trafficking as organized interpersonal violence. Even in academia, law, and public health, prostitution is often misunderstood as sex work. The book’s 32 contributors offer clinical examples, analysis, and original research that cou

Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality brings together international research exploring the range of gendered harms to women involved in prostitution and the consequences of growth of the sex industry for global gender relations. While there is an increasing amount of research and academic output on prostitution, the current focus is often on discussion and critique of policy frameworks, and contemporary debates over harm are largely limited to sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Less attention is paid to questions of how the sex industry perpetuates notions of objectification and male entitlement with respect to sexual access to women's bodies, despite being key feminist concerns for several decades. This position has become effectively marginalized, but the global growth and industrialization of the sex industry requires a return to these questions. Through exploring gendered inequality and re-engaging with an understanding of prostitution as harmful with impacts on the self and body that are experienced as abusive but do not always constitute violence, this book introduces a range of research and thinking, while also drawing on existing literature to explore the consequences of prostitution for women in the sex industry and wider gender relations. These issues are discussed with regard to: coercion and recruitment, including trafficking; notions of male entitlement in accounts of men who buy sex; critical interrogations of agency and choice; legal and policy frameworks; and representations of prostitution in popular culture.

Sexual attitudes and behaviour have changed radically in Britain between the Victorian era and the twenty-first century. However, Lesley A. Hall reveals how slow and halting the processes of change have been, and how many continuities have persisted under a façade of modernity. Thoroughly revised, updated and expanded, the second edition of this established text: • explores a wide range of relevant topics including marriage, homosexuality, commercial sex, media representations, censorship, sexually transmitted diseases and sex education • features an entirely new last chapter which brings the narrative right up to the present day • provides fresh insights by bringing together further original research and recent scholarship in the area. Lively and authoritative, this is an essential volume for anyone studying the history of sexual culture in Britain during a period of rapid social change.