While details of the Eliot Spitzer scandal were splashed across the news, prostitution was the talk of the nation. What’s up with that? I don’t mean the fact that people were talking about it. I mean what are some of the facts about the “world’s oldest profession?”
If you took a time machine back to 19th century America, you would probably have a a devil of a time recognizing it. In the book Sexual Health, sexologist Paul Joannides says that in the Northern big cities, between one in 10 and one in 20 women at some time in their lives worked as prostitutes. Mostly, it was an occasional job the women turned to whenever the need for money arose.
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“Brothels were plentiful, and prostitutes could be found in almost every neighborhood of every city,” Joannides writes. “Prostitutes also worked out of restaurants called lobster houses, concert saloons, and dance halls where they might take a trick to an upstairs room for a quick drop of the drawers. Big-city hotels were hubs of whoring, and the finer hotels had separate entrances for ‘respectable’ women so there was no risk they would be confused with the prostitutes.”
All this changed around the beginning of the 20th century. The “social purity” movement made it their mission to throw a wrench in the sexual practices of American society (abolition of prostitution, censorship of pornography, reformation of prostitutes, and prosecution of prostitutes’ customers). We all know what happened after that. Most states outlawed prostitution. Today, only Nevada allows brothels in some of its counties, and in Rhode Island, paying money for sex is not illegal, but street solicitation and brothels are.
Take a look outside our own borders, and you see a wildly different picture. Trading sex for money is commonplace in Singapore, and it is legal in Canada, Mexico, France, England, Germany, Israel, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, among others. While growing up in Denmark, I often heard the argument that keeping prostitution legal allows prostitutes to come in for regular health exams without fear of prosecution. The thinking is that if prostitution were made illegal, it would simply continue to exist underground and the opportunities to provide health care to prostitutes would disappear.
Sweden recently altered its law. Prostitution is still legal in that country, but it’s now illegal to trade sex for money. This way, the arm of the law goes after the users and the pimps, but not the prostitutes. And in the Netherlands, there have been some recent changes as well. The current mayor of Amsterdam has introduced regulations requiring people selling sexual services to get a permanent place of business (telephone land line and office) and register with the city. The aim is to try to reduce the amount of illegal money laundering and sex trafficking happening there.
As governor of New York, Spitzer tried to crack down on prostitution, but as “client number 9” he surely has catapulted it out of obscurity into broad daylight. Prostitution in America may not be as rampant as it was in the 1800s, but no laws can hide the fact that the world’s oldest profession is still alive in our fair country. Now is a good time to take an honest look at the reality. And while we’re at it, why not take into consideration how other countries handle the challenges of prostitution?
Annette Owens, MD, Ph.D., is certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. She sees clients in her Charlottesville office (cvillewellness.com) and answers questions online at LoveandHealth.info and Sexual Health.com. She has co-edited the new four-volume book, Sexual Health (Praeger).
