Demand For Prostitution Research Articles

Demand

Abstract This article traces how social reformers, state actors, physicians, feminists, and people who sell sex have described the demand for prostitution, a term that has provided ideological support for policy approaches both supporting and opposing commercial sex over the last two centuries. In Europe, the United States, and more globally, critics have employed demand in an ostensibly neutral sense to suggest that sex functions like a commodity. For some it is the inevitable result of an inherent male sexual drive, while for others it is the mutable product of social, economic, and cultural forces. The article shows how the market abstraction of “supply and demand” obscures the complex web of causal factors that shape the sex industry in particular contexts. It begins with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates on the regulation of prostitution, along with calls for its abolition, and then turns to transnational discussions of prostitution demand in multistate organizations like the League of Nations and the United Nations. The article closes with an analysis of postwar feminists debates on the purported links between demand and violence against women, and the recent ascendance of the “End Demand” model, which criminalizes the sex buyer.

The consumption of pornography in adolescents and young people: a gender perspective analysis of the characteristics and profiles of consumers

The concept of new pornography refers to those pornographic contents easily available on the Internet, free and unlimited. The general objective of this article is to analyze the consumption of new pornography by young people and adolescents, determining the profile and analyzing the characteristics of the people who consume it. For this, it is based on a study carried out during the year 2020 in Tenerife (Spain) to a total of 2,432 young people and adolescents, of which 49.6% were women and 50.4% were men aged between 15 and 30 years. The methodology used replicated that of the research carried out by Dr. Ballester, professor of the University of the Balearic Islands, based on a questionnaire that collected sociodemographic data, the affective sexual education received and the consumption of pornography in the last month. The results show, on the one hand, that consumption is carried out mainly by young men (70.3% compared to 24.7% of women) who solve their sexual doubts through the Internet and share it with their friends. On the other hand, regarding the characteristics of the consumers, it is mostly a weekly or daily consumption and that they share it with friends. Both in Dr. Ballester's work and in this one, as well as in other national and international studies, there are coincidences in the results. The consumption of pornography by young people has consequences that must be analyzed in depth, although studies already point out the repercussion it has on the increase in sexual violence and the demand for prostitution. So, pornography is a school of inequality where young men and adolescents are socialized into violent attitudes towards women.

Tensions between feminist principles and the demand for prostitution in the neoliberal age: a critical analysis of sex buyer’s discourse

In the age of neoliberalism, feminists strongly disagree on the ideal legal status of prostitution while the pro-prostitution lobby endeavours to keep their male-dominated business running smoothly. Feminist debates should be concerned with the sex buyers' belief system about women, which is likely to have practical consequences in the way they behave with women (prostituted and non-prostituted) in terms of sexuality and, therefore, for feminist purposes of equality, on a broader scale. A Critical Discourse Analysis of buyer-authored online reviews of prostituted women provides the opportunity to verify whether the relationship they establish with them is based on democratic mutual equality or gendered power relations driven by domination and subordination.En la era del neoliberalismo, no hay consenso entre las feministas acerca del estatus legal que debería tener la prostitución; mientras, el lobby pro-prostitución intenta proteger tan lucrativo negocio. Los debates feministas deben abordar críticamente el sistema de creencias de los sujetos prostituyentes, en tanto que afecta a cómo actúan con las mujeres (prostituidas y no prostituidas) dentro del marco de la sexualidad y, por tanto, al potencial logro de la igualdad fáctica a nivel social. El análisis crítico del discurso online de los sujetos prostituyentes sobre las mujeres prostituidas permite comprobar si las relaciones que establecen con ellas están basadas en términos igualitarios o en la dicotomía dominación-subordinación característica de las relaciones de poder de género.

Prostitution in comparative law and the law of the Republic of Serbia

In the year 2016 Law on Public Order and Peace came into effect which brought innovations when it comes to the regulation of the prostitution in the Republic of Serbia. Specifically, in addition to the people who indulge in prostitution, which are mostly women, this Law prescribes punishment of misdemeanor for prostitution service users. The subject of the analysis in this paper is the legal regulation of the prostitution in the Republic of Serbia. It will analyze the provisions of the Law on Public Order and Peace which regulate prostitution, as well as provisions of international documents that are relevant when it comes to the regulation of the prostitution, by applying the normative methods. Given the fact that the international documents designate the demand for commercial sex acts as the main factor which has influence on the growth of the prostitution, comparative analysis will provide an insight into whether the Republic of Serbia has legally effective solution in the field of the prostitution which has effect on the decreasing the demand. The main goal of this research is to determine whether the Republic of Serbia has regulated prostitution in accordance with international documents and current models of legal regulation of prostitution in member states of the EU that have results in the suppression of the prostitution. The results of the research showed that the Republic of Serbia still has prohibition model of regulation which is almost completely abandoned because of the inefficiency in the field of the suppression of the prostitution, and which repressive measures mostly affect women in prostitution. Effective results in the field of the suppression of the prostitution can only be achieved by modifying existing models in such a manner so that the measures against the prostitution will be directed towards the users who form the demand for prostitution.

Transitional Road for Traffic: Analysing Trafficking in Women From and Through Central and Eastern Europe

THIS ARTICLE ANALYSES ASPECTS of the changing rhetoric and realities since 1989 of the traffic in women from and through Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 1 (CEE). The overt and shocking human rights abuses apparent in the traffic in women stem to a large extent from the degraded status of women within these societies. 2 This essential inequality is thrown into sharp relief by both economic problems and war. Compounding variables are that certain criminals, military personnel and ‘business’ people view women (and children) as valuable commodities to exploit in terms of prostitution. 3 Discourses on economic transition and militarisation in CEE are related to debates on trafficking in women with focus on poverty, human rights, prostitution and migration. The rapid marketisation of these countries had a disproportionately heavy impact on women’s economic opportunities and family responsibilities. 4 The growth of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation across CEE from the 1990s to date highlights how considerations of migration and prostitution, when politically framed, can be decisive in the formulation of adopted policy strategies. The demand for prostitution in the wealthier Western European countries links with confused and contradictory attitudes towards prostitution and its regulation to generate and support thriving ‘markets in women’. Military and peacekeeping personnel link with local profiteers in creating further markets. Both the feminisation of poverty and the secondary positioning of women in countries within the region are key factors encouraging migration to the West. 5 There are competing causal factors and motives underpinning much of the trafficking trades, 6 particularly that of traffic in women. Key impacts of poverty and war have interlinked across CEE to oppress impoverished women with apparent complexities between migration, human trafficking and smuggling. 7 Contradictory dialogues speak to the current political interest in legislating against the traffic in women in CEE, specifically from alternating focal points of women’s human rights, immigration controls and the feminisation of poverty. In this article attempts are made to draw out some causal factors against the background of dramatic political and economic change, particularly the rapid globalisation of the now marketised economies in the region and to assess some of the ways in which legislative change

Sex Work: Current Research Agendas

Though prostitution represents a form of economic exchange, it is not a mainstream economic institution and, in general, governments and other funding agencies have been interested in prostitution only as a problem of social control and/or public health. It follows, then, that street prostitution (the most visible and seemingly 'uncontrollable' form of prostitution) has received the lion's share of research attention, and within this, the research agenda has been largely set by a model of prostitution as female sexual deviance, not rational economic action. As a result, the available body of empirical evidence on prostitution reflects a concern with the characteristics and practices of individual prostitutes (their health, psychobiography, sexual history, drug use, etc.), and a neglect of the social and organisational features of prostitution, power relations within prostitute-client transactions and, above all, a neglect of questions about the demand for prosti tution. This represents a very real problem for all those who are engaged in theoretical, political or policy debate on prostitution, and it is a problem with which both of the books under review here grapple. The research upon which McKeganey and Barnard's Sex Work on the Streets is based began from a concern to identify the extent of HIV infection amongst street based prostitutes in Glasgow. As the authors note, 'Public anxieties and uncertain ties over HIV infection were in large part the makings of this book. Were it not for public health concern over the potential role that prostitution might play in the spread of HIV, it is unlikely that our research would have attracted funding' (99). Rather than simply interviewing a sample of prostitute women already attending genito-urinary clinics (as a number of previous researchers concerned with possible links between HIV and prostitution had done), McKeganey and Barnard determined to use a variety of ethnographic techniques in red light areas. Over a three-year period they conducted more than 800 hours of field research on the streets and one consequence of this was that by the end of the study, 'the focus on HIV infection was much less pronounced' (99). The immersion into the research subject's world implied by ethnography focused McKeganey and Barnard's atten tion on the many and considerable other risks that street prostitutes face in the course of their work, as well as or more than on 'the risks that they are presumed to represent to others' (99) as a potential conduit of HIV infection. Thus the authors moved well beyond the initial remit of assessing the risk of HIV infection associated with street prostitution to address questions about the lived experience of street prostitution in Glasgow. This is, indeed, the main strength of the book, which describes, among other things, the reasons for women's movement in and out of prostitution, street