implemented elsewhere in America, had utterly failed to eradicate the sale of sex. It had succeeded, however, in driving the industry underground, forcing prostitutes to operate on the sly with little recourse against abuse or injury. Criminalization also unjustly targeted prostitutes. Almost always it was prostitutes who were arrested and jailed, not the men who exploited or abused them. (For example, in New York State in 1993, 83 percent of prostitution-related arrests were for soliciting, 11 percent for patronizing a prostitute, and 6 percent for pimping or promoting prostitution.)
But critics argued that regulated, controlled prostitution was merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that it sanctioned pimping by brothel owners and governments. I had to wonder if there wasn’t some truth to that. I had already heard about a few brothel owners who were notorious for exploiting theirlicensed prostitutes. For example, the owner of a brothel in southern Nevada allegedly confiscated women’s personal supplies (condoms, lubricants, nylons) and required them to repurchase everything directly from the brothel at inflated prices, like sharecroppers or miners buying from the company store. And “his” working girls had to buy their meals à la carte from the brothel kitchen, where slabs of tomato cost $2, a box of frozen vegetables $5, and a hamburger $7 (in contrast to Mustang Ranch’s flat $10 a day for all you could eat). “The owner took advantage of us, took advantage of the fact we were confined to his brothel,” one prostitute divulged to me. “Nothing was free. Everything was overpriced. You couldn’t split anything with anybody.”
Opponents of the brothels often preferred the abolition of all criminal laws regarding prostitution between consenting adults, including voluntary contractual relationships between prostitutes and their “managers” or pimps. (The mainstream feminist view of prostitution has evolved over time; once most feminists maintained that prostitution was exploitative of women, period, but now a movement has emerged that holds that it’s all right for women to do what they want to do.) Decriminalization would also mean the abolition of any statutory regulation of prostitutes, including the requirement of medical examinations and STD workups.
While decriminalization appealed more and more to me as I heard stories about exploitative brothel owners, I was troubled by the idea of eliminating all testing. Mandatory testing violated my sense of a patient’s right to privacy, but didn’t the public have a right to be protected from potentially transmissiblediseases if prostitution was to be legalized? And yet why should a prostitute be singled out among all the other service professionals in contact with the public? Surgeons and dentists, for example, weren’t routinely screened for HIV and hepatitis.
For some time, I debated inwardly the question of which model of prostitution seemed most palatable. I still had a lot to learn, especially about what drove women into this profession in the first place.
* Cited in The Mythical West: An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture, edited by Richard W. Slatta, ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2001.
3 .. BREADWINNERS
M ost of the women seemed reluctant to discuss how they got into the business, so I was caught off guard when Donna opened up to me one night at Mustang #1. Donna was a young redhead with a shy smile and thick bangs cut blunt across her forehead, like a toddler’s first haircut; I had first noticed her showing her colleagues a book of sexual cartoons. She had put the book together herself, clipping cartoons from magazines like
Playboy
, to entertain her clients while they waited for her to return from booking money with the cashier. It cut down on the number of customers who snooped through her room and stole mementos like underwear and bras, she said.
Donna saw me watching her and invited me over to look at her book. Her customers’ favorite,
But critics argued that regulated, controlled prostitution was merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that it sanctioned pimping by brothel owners and governments. I had to wonder if there wasn’t some truth to that. I had already heard about a few brothel owners who were notorious for exploiting theirlicensed prostitutes. For example, the owner of a brothel in southern Nevada allegedly confiscated women’s personal supplies (condoms, lubricants, nylons) and required them to repurchase everything directly from the brothel at inflated prices, like sharecroppers or miners buying from the company store. And “his” working girls had to buy their meals à la carte from the brothel kitchen, where slabs of tomato cost $2, a box of frozen vegetables $5, and a hamburger $7 (in contrast to Mustang Ranch’s flat $10 a day for all you could eat). “The owner took advantage of us, took advantage of the fact we were confined to his brothel,” one prostitute divulged to me. “Nothing was free. Everything was overpriced. You couldn’t split anything with anybody.”
Opponents of the brothels often preferred the abolition of all criminal laws regarding prostitution between consenting adults, including voluntary contractual relationships between prostitutes and their “managers” or pimps. (The mainstream feminist view of prostitution has evolved over time; once most feminists maintained that prostitution was exploitative of women, period, but now a movement has emerged that holds that it’s all right for women to do what they want to do.) Decriminalization would also mean the abolition of any statutory regulation of prostitutes, including the requirement of medical examinations and STD workups.
While decriminalization appealed more and more to me as I heard stories about exploitative brothel owners, I was troubled by the idea of eliminating all testing. Mandatory testing violated my sense of a patient’s right to privacy, but didn’t the public have a right to be protected from potentially transmissiblediseases if prostitution was to be legalized? And yet why should a prostitute be singled out among all the other service professionals in contact with the public? Surgeons and dentists, for example, weren’t routinely screened for HIV and hepatitis.
For some time, I debated inwardly the question of which model of prostitution seemed most palatable. I still had a lot to learn, especially about what drove women into this profession in the first place.
* Cited in The Mythical West: An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture, edited by Richard W. Slatta, ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2001.
3 .. BREADWINNERS
M ost of the women seemed reluctant to discuss how they got into the business, so I was caught off guard when Donna opened up to me one night at Mustang #1. Donna was a young redhead with a shy smile and thick bangs cut blunt across her forehead, like a toddler’s first haircut; I had first noticed her showing her colleagues a book of sexual cartoons. She had put the book together herself, clipping cartoons from magazines like
Playboy
, to entertain her clients while they waited for her to return from booking money with the cashier. It cut down on the number of customers who snooped through her room and stole mementos like underwear and bras, she said.
Donna saw me watching her and invited me over to look at her book. Her customers’ favorite,
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