Menu
What's new
Troll Kingdom

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

I feel like a whore

Street
Main article: Street prostitution

In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners, sometimes called "the track" by pimps and prostitutes alike. They usually dress in skimpy, provocative clothing, regardless of the weather. Street prostitutes are often called "streetwalkers" while their customers are referred to as "tricks" or "johns." Servicing the customers is described as "turning tricks." The sex is performed in the customer's car, in a nearby alley, or in a rented room. Motels and hotels which accommodate prostitutes commonly rent rooms by the half or full hour.

Street prostitutes are often motivated by drug addiction (though the statistics are disputed),[25] and are sometimes referred to by slang terms such as "crack whores" or "junkie whores." Sociologists refer to those who trade sex for drugs as "skeezers," and with economists have established a direct correlation between the price of street prostitution and the price of cocaine.
 
Escort/Out-call

Escort agencies typically advertise in regional publications and even telephone listings like the Yellow Pages. Many maintain websites with photo galleries of the employees. An interested client contacts an agency by telephone and offers a description of what kind of escort they are looking for. The agency will then suggest an employee who might fit that client's need.

The agency collects the client's contact information and calls the escort. Usually, to protect the identity of the escort and ensure effective communication with the client, the agency arranges the appointment. Sometimes it may be up to the escort to contact the client directly to make arrangements for location and time of an appointment. If the agency does not supply transport to and from the client, the escort is also expected to call the agency upon arrival at the location and again upon leaving to assure his or her safe completion of the booking.

The purpose of discretion is to attempt to protect the escort agency (to some degree) from prosecution for breaking the law. If the employee is solely responsible for arranging any illegal aspects of their professional encounter the agency could try to maintain plausible deniability should an arrest be made. However in practice, the use of undercover police evidence or the use of links to reviews of the agencies escorts usually results in this failing.

Typically, an agency will charge their escorts either a flat fee for each client connection or a percentage of the prearranged rate. In San Francisco, it is usual for typical heterosexual-market agencies to negotiate for as little as $100, up to a full 50 percent of an escort's reported earnings (not counting any gratuity received). If they work independently doing either incalls or outcalls, prices can range from $200 to over $5,000 for more exclusive services. Most transactions occur in cash, and optional tipping of escorts by clients in most major US cities is customary but not compulsory. Credit card processing offered by larger scale agencies is often available for a service charge.

Independent escorts, also known as providers, have differing fees depending on many factors. For example; different seasons bring about different costs (and differing levels of demand), as do regular and semi-regular customers. Some may charge by the hour, half hour or even in 15 minute blocks. Time extensions (if offered or requested) are usually priced at the same rate as the original booking. Some escorts pay another individual to act as their personal security, thus providing a level of protection to themselves from violent or abusive clients.

An escort who works less often may be able to command a premium for his or her exclusivity. One who sees several clients each day may charge less, but earn more in the end. Independent escorts might see clients for extended meetings involving dinner or social activities, whereas escorts who work through agencies generally provide only sexual services.

Whilst the vast majority of escort agencies are sex related, there are some non-sexual escort agencies, where escorts provide companionship for business and social occasions.
 
Sex tourism
Main article: Sex tourism

See also: Cuban Jineteras and Female sex tourism

Sex tourism is travelling for sexual intercourse with prostitutes or to engage in other sexual activity. The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary purpose of effecting a commercial sexual relationship by the tourist with residents at the destination".[28]

Often the term "sex tourism" is mistakenly interchanged with the term "child sex tourism". As opposed to regular sex tourism, a tourist who has sex with a child prostitute possibly commits a crime against international law, in addition to the host country, and the country that the tourist is a citizen of. The term "child" is often used as defined by international law and refers to any person below the age of consent.
 
Prostitution and the Internet

Some prostitutes use the Internet to find customers.[29] A prostitute may use adult boards or create a website of their own with contact details, such as email addresses.

Adult contact sites, chats and on-line communities are also used.
 
Occurrence


According to the paper "Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women" (Potterat et al., 1990), the number of full-time equivalent prostitutes in a typical area in the United States (Colorado Springs, CO, during 1970–1988) is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population (0.023%), of which fraction some 4% were under 18. The length of these prostitutes' working careers was estimated at a mean of 5 years. A follow-up paper entitled "Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners" (Brewer et al., 2000) goes on to estimate a mean number of 868 male sexual partners per prostitute per year of active sex work, and offers the conclusion that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners is seriously under-reported.

In 2003 it was estimated that in Amsterdam, one woman in 35 was working as prostitute, compared to one in 300 in London.[30]

In the United States, a 2004 TNS poll reported 15 percent of all men have paid for sex at least once in their life.[31]

A number of reports over the last few decades have suggested that prostitution levels have fallen in sexually liberal countries, most likely because of the increased availability of non-commercial, non-marital sex.
 
Medical situation

Prostitution is associated with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV: "One of the main reasons for the rapid spread of HIV in Asian countries is the massive transmission among sex workers and clients".[33]

HIV is tied to prostitution in Africa, with one study finding that encounters with prostitutes produced 84% of new HIV infections in adult males in Accra, Ghana.[34] The spread of HIV from urban settings to rural areas in Africa has been attributed to the mobility of farmers who visit sex workers in cities, for example in Ethiopia.[35] Studies in urban settings of prostitution in developing countries have shown a striking burden of STDs, which acts as a reservoir of STDs within the general population.[36]

Typical responses to the problem are:

* banning prostitution completely.
* educating prostitutes and their clients to encourage the use of barrier contraception and greater interaction with health care.
* introducing a system of registration for prostitutes that mandates health checks and other public health measures.

Some think that the first two measures are counter-productive. Banning prostitution tends to drive it underground, making treatment and monitoring more difficult. Registering prostitutes makes the state complicit in prostitution and does not address the health risks of unregistered prostitutes. Both of the last two measures can be viewed as harm reduction policies.

In Australia, where sex-work is largely legal, and registration of sex-work is not practiced, education campaigns have been extremely successful and the non-intravenous drug user (non-IDU) sex workers are among the lower HIV-risk communities in the nation. In part, this is probably due both to the legality of sex-work, and to the heavy general emphasis on education in regard to Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Safer sex is heavily promoted as the major means of STI reduction in Australia, and sex education generally is at a high level. Sex-worker organisations regularly visit brothels and home workers, providing free condoms and lubricant, health information, and other forms of support.

In countries and areas where safer sex precautions are either unavailable or not practiced for cultural reasons, prostitution is an active disease vector for all STDs, including HIV/AIDS, but the encouragement of safer sex practices, combined with regular testing for sexually transmitted diseases, has been very successful when applied consistently. As an example, Thailand's condom program has been largely responsible for the country's progress against the HIV epidemic.[33] It has been estimated that successful implementation of safe sex practices in India "would drive the [HIV] epidemic to extinction" while similar measures could achieve a 50% reduction in Botswana.
 
Attitudes and legal issues

Roughly speaking, the possible attitudes are:

* "Prostitution should be made to dissapear":
o prohibitionism (both prostitutes and clients are criminalized and are seen as immoral, they are considered criminals): the prevailing attitude nearly everywhere in the United States, with a few exceptions in some rural Nevada counties (see Prostitution in Nevada).
o abolitionism (prostitution itself is not prohibited, but most associated activities are illegal, in an attempt to make it more difficult to engage in prostitution, prostitution is heavily discouraged and seen as a social problem): prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal, but the surrounding activities such as public solicitation, operating a brothel and other forms of pimping are prohibited, the current situation in the United Kingdom, France and Canada among others;
o neo-abolitionism ("prostitution is a form of violence against women, it is a violation of human rights, the clients of the prostitutes exploit the prostitutes"): prostitutes are not prosecuted, but their clients and pimps are, which is the current situation in Sweden, Norway and Iceland (in Norway the law is even more strict, forbidding also having sex with a prostitute abroad).[38]

* "Prostitution should be tolerated by society":
o regulation: prostitution may be considered a legitimate business; prostitution and the employment of prostitutes are legal, but regulated; the current situation in the Netherlands, Germany and parts of Nevada (see Prostitution in Nevada). The degree of regulation varies very much, for example in Netherlands prostitutes are not required to undergo mandatory health checks (see Prostitution in the Netherlands) while in Nevada the regulations are very strict (see Prostitution in Nevada).
o decriminalization: "prostitution is labor like any other. Sex industry premises should not be subject to any special regulation or laws", the current situation in New Zealand; the laws against operationg a brothel, pimping and street prostitution are struck down, but prostitution is not regulated nearly at all. Proponents of this view often cite instances of government regulation under legalization that they consider intrusive, demeaning, or violent, but feel that criminalization adversely affects sex workers.

In some countries, there is controversy regarding the laws applicable to sex work. For instance, the legal stance of punishing pimping while keeping sex work legal but "underground" and risky is often denounced as hypocritical; opponents suggest either going the full abolition route and criminalize clients or making sex work a regulated business.
Prostitution Information Centre, in Amsterdam.

Many countries have sex worker advocacy groups which lobby against criminalization and discrimination of prostitutes. These groups generally oppose Nevada-style regulation and oversight, stating that prostitution should be treated like other professions. In the United States of America, one such group is COYOTE (an abbreviation for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics") and another is the North American Task Force on Prostitution.[39] In Australia the lead sex worker rights organisation is Scarlet Alliance.[40] International prostitutes' rights organizations include the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights and the Network of Sex Work Projects.[41]

Other groups, often with religious backgrounds, focus on offering women a way out of the world of prostitution while not taking a position on the legal question.
 
United Nations

In 1949, the UN General Assembly adopted a convention[42] stating that trafficking persons for the purposes of prostitution is incompatible with human dignity, requiring all signing parties to punish pimps and brothel owners and operators and to abolish all special treatment or registration of prostitutes. The convention was up until today (January 2009) ratified[43] by 95 member nations including France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and not ratified by another 97 member nations including Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
 
Prostitution among animals

Behavior that seems to fit the definition to prostitution has been observed in nonhuman animal species, most notably in Adelie penguins. These animals have been observed to initiate mating behaviors with the direct benefit of receiving goods, which is most likely to have evolved as a mechanism to promote genetic diversity, as is seen in many monogamous species that engage in extra-pair copulations.
 
Other meanings

In colloquial usage, the word "prostitute" is sometimes generalized to mean the selling of one's services for a cause thought to be unworthy, in the sense of "prostituting oneself" or "whoring oneself". In this sense, the services or acts performed are typically not sexual. For instance, in the book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield says of his brother ("D.B."): "Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me." In fact, D.B. is writing screenplays for movies that do badly at the box office.

The word "prostitute", or more frequently "whore", is also used as an insult towards a person (typically a woman or girl) who is perceived as being sexually promiscuous.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top