In the latest issue of Society (March/April 2006), sociologist Ronald Weitzer writes about the current moral crusade against prostitution that has joined conservative Christians and radical feminists in common cause. In April, The Notorious Bettie Page will be released in theaters, a film about the famous 1950s sexy pin-up model who disappeared at the height of her fame in 1957, became religious, went insane, and stabbed a married couple who lived next door to her trailer in 1979, and, after being released from a mental institution, stabbed an elderly woman for whom she was working as a housekeeper. The second attack kept in her in a mental institution until the early 1990s. It is theorized that these attacks, clearly the work of a paranoid schizophrenic, was generated by repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father. The current crusade against “sex slavery,” as the reformers call it, and the Page biopic represent the Janusfaced attitude our society has about commercial sex. This is true even if the Page movie is a cautionary tale of some sort. After all, like all exploitation movies, both high brow and low class, sensationalism precedes the lesson; indeed, sensationalism is necessary to get an audience for the lesson.
Weitzer has his doubts about the global crusade, spearheaded by American reformers and a conservative, Republican-dominated U.S. government. He feels that attempts to stamp out prostitution, Prohibition-style, is wrong-headed because it disregards the fact that many women volunteer for this sort of work (the radical feminists insist that volunteering for this work is not cognitively or psychologically possible), actually prefer it to other forms of work that may be available to them, and can be safeguarded in this profession through legalization. He cites the examples of the Netherlands, Nevada, Australia, and New Zealand as places where legalization seems to safeguard the women and, in fact, discourages trafficking. He also writes that the alarming statistics used by the reformers are largely unsubstantiated and probably fictitious, made to create public outrage in order to raise funds: “The reality is that there are no reliable statistics on the scope of the problem. Even ballpark estimates are problematic, given the hidden nature of the illegal sex trade” (italics original).
I have no idea if Weitzer is right about dealing with the problem of prostitution; although, after having spent a year working in the municipal court system in Philadelphia about thirty years ago and meeting a number of prostitutes as well as reading a ton of vice cop reports, I became convinced that legalization was the only sensible alternative. Catching people in sex crimes requires virtually that vice cops must entice the person to do it.
Moreover, most of the women who were prostitutes who were arrested worked the streets. They were mostly drug addicts, diseased, and did not constitute the majority of women who did this for a living, most of whom worked in houses, massage parlors, and the like. Prostitution is a crime that can only be, at best, poorly policed, and usually at a disadvantage to the women themselves. If one were to have a rigidly enforced Prohibition
of prostitution, it would involve not only great expense in augmenting police forces but a huge government intervention in the private lives of citizens.
Full article link to PDF file:
http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/assets/bl/Blogs/Betty Page, And the Rage of All Flesh.pdf
Weitzer has his doubts about the global crusade, spearheaded by American reformers and a conservative, Republican-dominated U.S. government. He feels that attempts to stamp out prostitution, Prohibition-style, is wrong-headed because it disregards the fact that many women volunteer for this sort of work (the radical feminists insist that volunteering for this work is not cognitively or psychologically possible), actually prefer it to other forms of work that may be available to them, and can be safeguarded in this profession through legalization. He cites the examples of the Netherlands, Nevada, Australia, and New Zealand as places where legalization seems to safeguard the women and, in fact, discourages trafficking. He also writes that the alarming statistics used by the reformers are largely unsubstantiated and probably fictitious, made to create public outrage in order to raise funds: “The reality is that there are no reliable statistics on the scope of the problem. Even ballpark estimates are problematic, given the hidden nature of the illegal sex trade” (italics original).
I have no idea if Weitzer is right about dealing with the problem of prostitution; although, after having spent a year working in the municipal court system in Philadelphia about thirty years ago and meeting a number of prostitutes as well as reading a ton of vice cop reports, I became convinced that legalization was the only sensible alternative. Catching people in sex crimes requires virtually that vice cops must entice the person to do it.
Moreover, most of the women who were prostitutes who were arrested worked the streets. They were mostly drug addicts, diseased, and did not constitute the majority of women who did this for a living, most of whom worked in houses, massage parlors, and the like. Prostitution is a crime that can only be, at best, poorly policed, and usually at a disadvantage to the women themselves. If one were to have a rigidly enforced Prohibition
of prostitution, it would involve not only great expense in augmenting police forces but a huge government intervention in the private lives of citizens.
Full article link to PDF file:
http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/assets/bl/Blogs/Betty Page, And the Rage of All Flesh.pdf
