How Prostitution Works

• Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire
  

  This 20 minute film of a performance based on Sarah Katherine Lewis's 2006 book Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire was directed by documentary filmmaker Miguel Picker.

  It's an educational film that speaks the truth about massage prostitution. Not to be missed! If you want to understand how prostitution feels to those who perform it, check this out.
  

• X underrated
  

  Prostitution, pornography, and sex trafficking aren't separable in the real world. In this piece for the Times Educational Supplement in 2005, Catharine MacKinnon focuses on the experience of the woman who's being prostituted and photographed.

• Not For Sale - Video on Prostitution & Trafficking
  

  Not For Sale was produced by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and
  the European Women's Lobby (EWL) in 2006.

  This documentary by filmmaker Marie Vermeiren gives voice to five survivors of prostitution, and also the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking, Ministers of the European Parliament and representatives from CATW and EWL. Understanding that prostitution is violence against women, the film articulates the links between prostitution and trafficking. Survivors come out strongly against decriminalization or legalization of prostitution, and point out the necessity for challenging men's demand for prostitution.

  This short film (approx 25 minutes) is an excellent introduction to how prostitution works, as well as for those who want a deeper understanding of what prostitution is really like, from the perspective of survivors and advocates for alternatives to prostitution.

  Click to access video

• Is Paying for Sex Really Worth It? No, prostitution exploits many women's deep pain
  

  Brenda Myers-Powell 2008

  Myers-Powell writes about her personal experience with prostitution relating it to the exploitation and deep pain that prostitution causes.

• Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia:What We Must Not Know in Order To Keep the Business of Sexual Exploitation Running Smoothly
  

  Melissa Farley 2006

  This article discusses and analyzes empirical data on the harms of prostitution, pornography and trafficking. This information has to be culturally, psychologically, and legally denied because to know it would interfere with the business of sexual exploitation.

• Prostitution and Male Supremacy
  

  Andrea Dworkin 1992

  "Prostitution is in and of itself an abuse of a woman's body." "In prostitution, no woman stays whole." Discussion of the incest that precedes prostitution, her homelessness, her namelessness, and the dominance and cruelty of men toward women in prostitution.

• Unequal
  

  Melissa Farley 2005

  This article responds to Debbie Nathan’s ‘Oversexed’ (Nation, August 29, 2005). Nathan sympathizes with those on the Left who consider prostitution a form of labor rather than violence against women. Nathan criticizes abolitionist feminists who think that women in prostitution deserve more in life than a condom and a cup of coffee. We feminists think that women deserve the right NOT to prostitute. That’s what almost all women in prostitution tell us they want: to get out. We also think that HIV prevention funds should not be used to promote legalized prostitution.

• How Prostitution Works
  Joe Parker 1998 A description of customers, pimps, and the ways that young people get into prostitution.

• Prostitution As Violence Against Women
  

  Janice Raymond 1998

  This article discusses how prostitution is exempted from other kinds of violence and human rights violations, how prostitution is legitimized by distinctions between "forced" and "consenting" prostitution.