What's Wrong with Prostitution--What's Right with Sex Work--Comparing Markets in Female Sexual Labor
![handle is hein.journals/haswo10 and id is 97 raw text is: What's Wrong with Prostitution? What's Right
with Sex Work? Comparing Markets in Female
Sexual Labort
Elizabeth Bernstein*
I. INTRODUCTION
This article stems from an interest in some of the recent debates in
American feminist theory over sexuality and empowerment. By the late
eighties, participants in the already polarized sexuality debates had
formed two clearly demarcated camps around such policy issues as
pornography and prostitution, and around the underlying questions of
power, resistance and the possibility of female sexual agency under
patriarchy.' While the figure of the prostitute has served as a key trope in
the writings and arguments of both groups-as symbolic of either the
expropriation of female sexuality in general, or alternatively, of its socially
subversive reappropriation-there has been surprisingly little empirical
research done to investigate the lived conditions of contemporary
prostitution. Amongst feminists, prostitution has been abundantly
t The title for this article was inspired by Christine Overall's 1992 essay, What's Wrong
with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work, in SIGNS: J. WOMEN CULTURE & Soc'Y 4, 705-24
(1992).
* Doctoral candidate in Sociology, University of California at Berkeley; M.A., B.A.
University of California at Berkeley. I am indebted to countless people for assisting me
through the various stages of this project. I am especially grateful to the working women
and men who shared their stories with me. In addition to the editors of the Hastings
Women's Law Journal, I would like to thank Judy Appel, Allison Bernstein, Michael
Burawoy, Nancy Chodorow, Lawrence Cohen, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Carol Draizen,
Casey Green, Norma Hotaling, Stacy Lawrence, Carol Leigh, Kristin Luker, Jackie Orr,
Raka Ray, Will Rountree, Miryam Sas, Debra Satz, Laurie Schaffner, Victoria Schneider,
Jerome Skolnick, Margo St. James, Carol Stuart, Loic Wacquant, and Ron Weitzer for their
advice and commentary. The research described here was generously supported by a grant
from the National Science Foundation.
1. Key texts include LISA DUGGAN & NAN D. HUNTER, SEX WARS: SEXUAL DISSENT
AND POLmcAL CULTURE (1995), the anthologies POwERS OF DEsIE: THE POLmcS OF
SEXUALrrY (Ann Snitow et al. eds., 1983) and PLEASURE AND DANGER: EXPLORING FEMALE
SEXUALITY (C.S. Vance ed., 1992) [hereinafter PLEASURE AND DANGER].
2. See LYNN SHARON CHANCER, RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: CONFRONTING BEAUTY,
HASTINGS WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/haswo10&div=11&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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What's Wrong with Prostitution--What's Right with Sex Work--Comparing Markets in Female Sexual Labor
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