Prostitution

Prostitution is the sale of sexual services. A person selling sexual services is a prostitute.

Sourced

• Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this—that there is no horror!
  • Aleksandr Kuprin, The Pit, translation by Bernard G. Guerney.

• I can enjoy her while she's kind;
  But when she dances in the wind,
  And shakes the wings and will not stay,
  I puff the prostitute away:
  The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd:
  Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
  And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
  • John Dryden, Imitation of Horace (1685), "On Fortune", Book III, Ode 29, l. 81 - 87.

• I think it proves that if my business could be made legal, the way off-track betting is in New York, I and women like me could make a big contribution to what Mayor John Lindsay calls Fun City, and the city and state could derive the money in taxes and licensing fees that I pay off to crooked cops and political figures.
  • Xaviera Hollander, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story (2002), 253.

• [in Kenya]...any woman who is single and has multiple male sex partners is considered to be a prostitute, whether or not money changes hands.
  • New Internationalist, Issue 252 - February 1994.

• [in India] Any sexual intercourse outside socially acceptable unions is likely to be regarded as prostitution.
  • New Internationalist, Issue 252 - February 1994.

• [In Iran] Under mut'a, it is possible to be 'married' for as little as half an hour.
  • New Internationalist, Issue 252 - February 1994.

• Egyptian law states that a man who is caught with a prostitute is not imprisoned; instead, his testimony is used to convict and imprison the prostitute.
  • New Internationalist, Issue 252 - February 1994.

• Prostitutes are the inevitable product of a society that places ultimate importance on money, possessions, and competition.
  • Jane Fonda, in Thomas Kiernan, Jane: An Intimate Biography of Jane Fonda (1970).

• Prostitution is not a monolith. The newspapers use the plight of the most vulnerable women to symbolize the entire field, ignoring the diversity of the sex-worker community.
  • Carol Leigh, quoted in: "Slick S.F. posters advocate decriminalizing prostitution" by Kevin Foley, San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 1995.

• What I am saying is that truth is usually more complicated than any one perspective can capture. Prostitution is not a monolith. Each woman experiences the profession in a different manner. And nothing can be gained by having different groups of feminists or prostitutes — all of whom are probably telling the truth of their own experiences — attempting to discredit each other.
  • Wendy McElroy, "Prostitutes, Anti-Pro Feminists and the Economic Associates of Whores", in: Prostitution: on whores, hustlers, and johns (1999), ed by James Elias.

External links

• Prostitution & The Law - The Facts, New Internationalist Magazine (February 1994), No. 252.