Read Online Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry by Ronald Weitzer - Free Book Online Page B

commercial sex services are legitimate or valuable occupations, that pornography is protected under the Constitution (the right to free speech), or that prohibition only drives the sex trade underground and exposes workers to greater harms. This side tends to favor legalization or decriminalization as policies best suited to harm reduction for prostitutes. These are fundamentally different paradigms, turning on different images of the workers involved: sex objects vs. sex workers , quintessential victims of male domination vs. agents who actively construct their work lives. These are not abstract debates. Quite the contrary. A sex war is raging in the public square in many nations around the world, reflected in growing media attention and political debates in Australia, Britain, South Africa, and the United States—to name just a few. Theoretical perspectives have real-world consequences insofar as they are used by policymakers as a basis for new laws or new enforcement tools. As indicated earlier, over the past decade, some nations, such as the United States, have embraced the oppression paradigm and increased penalties and enforcement against those involved in sex work. Some other nations have legalized prostitution and some of these states have explicitly embraced the polymorphous perspective by treating street and (all or certain types of) indoor prostitution quite differently.154
    C O N C L U S I O N
    This book contributes to our knowledge of several aspects of sex work and the sex industry, including dimensions that have rarely been studied in the past.
    The book breaks new ground, but we need even more research on telephone sex work, off-street prostitutes, the porn industry generally and gay and 32

    SEX WORK: PARADIGMS AND POLICIES
    lesbian pornography in particular, legal prostitution systems, the dynamics of law enforcement, and the social forces driving changes in law and public policy. We know little about contemporary brothels, massage parlors, escort agencies, transgender prostitutes, and call girls, and we need much more research on the men involved at all levels—customers, workers, managers, producers, owners. This world does not offer easy access to the outsider, which helps to account for the paucity of research in many key areas; but gaining access should be viewed as a challenge rather than an insuperable barrier.
    N OTE S
    1. Top Ten Reviews provides the following figures (in billions) for 2006: Video Sales/Rentals $3.62, Internet $2.84, Cable/PPV/In-Room/
    Mobile/Phone Sex $2.19, Exotic Dance Clubs $2.00, Novelties $1.73, Magazines $.95. http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/
    internet-pornography-statistics.html, accessed June 19, 2008. The site reports that worldwide pornography revenue in 2006 was $97.1 billion.
    2. Eric Schlosser, “The Business of Pornography,” U.S. News and World Report , February 10, 1997; 2006 figure from Top Ten Reviews.
    3. Top Ten Reviews.
    4. William Sherman, “The Naked Truth about Strip Clubs,” New York Daily News , July 8, 2007.
    5. James Davis and Tom Smith, General Social Survey: Cumulative Codebook , Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2002.
    6. Zogby International poll, 2000, N = 1031.
    7. Gallup Organization, Gallup Poll Monthly , no. 313, October, 1991.
    8. Davis and Smith, General Social Survey . Another major survey found that 16% of American men aged 18–59 reported that they had paid for sex at some time (Edward Laumann, John Gagnon, Robert Michael, and Stuart Michaels, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
    9. Chris Rissel, “Experiences of Commercial Sex in a Representative Sample of Adults,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 27 (2003): 191–197.
    10. Ipsos/MORI Poll, January 6–10, 2006, N = 1790, aged 16–64.
    11. Rissel, “Experiences of Commercial Sex”; Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale,
    “Context and Patterns of Men’s