February 18, 2011

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.

Read entire article (PDF format)

June 22, 2009
Melissa Farley
Excerpt from Indoor Versus Outdoor Prostitution

“Nobody really wants to be sold,” a woman in a Nevada legal brothel explained to me. Even if you know that simple fact -- that prostitution is an abusive institution for any human -- maybe you still think it can be made not so bad. Maybe you think that if prostitution happens under a roof, it is better than outside on the street.

Read entire editorial

February 8, 2008

Dennis Hof is a legal pimp in a Nevada brothel. He advertises his brothel on an HBO pseudo-documentary series with the full support and collaboration of HBO. Cathouse serves as propaganda for the sex industry while denying and concealing the harms to both prostituted women and society at large. Download excerpts of a Howard Stern wannabe radio show where Hof and a woman he pimps are interviewed. Highlights include recruiting for prostitution in high schools, smarmy contempt toward women in general and prostitutes in particular.

Download highlights from the radio show of February 8, 2008. (in PDF format)

Listen to the radio podcast of February 8, 2008.

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.

Access the video

Brenda Myers-Powell 2008

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

View article

Melissa Farley 2005

This article describes the social invisibility of indoor prostitution, the lack of evidence suggesting that indoor prostitution is “safe,” and summarizes testimony of women who reported violence in strip club prostitution and warnings about violence from groups promoting indoor prostitution.

Read entire article (PDF format)

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.

Read entire article (PDF format)

Melissa Farley 2004

With examples from a 2003 New Zealand prostitution law, this article discusses the logical inconsistencies in laws sponsoring prostitution and includes evidence for the physical, emotional, and social harms of prostitution. These harms are not decreased by legalization or decriminalization. The article addresses the confusion caused by organizations that oppose trafficking but at the same time promote prostitution as a justifiable form of labor for poor women. The failure of condom distribution/harm reduction programs to protect women in prostitution from rape, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and HIV is discussed. The success of such programs in obtaining funding and in promoting prostitution as sex work is also discussed.

Read entire report (PDF format)

Melissa Farley 2003

The harm of prostitution is socially invisible, and it is also invisible in the law, in public health, and in psychology. This article addresses origins of this invisibility, how words in current usage promote the invisibility of prostitution’s harm, and how public health perspectives and psychological theory tend to ignore the harm done by men to women in prostitution. Literature which documents the overwhelming physical and psychological harm to those in prostitution is summarized here. The interconnectedness of racism, colonialism, and child sexual assault with prostitution are discussed.

Read entire report (PDF format)

Marisa B. Ugarte, Laura Zarate, and Melissa Farley 2003

In this article, researchers describe the historical background of sex trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Researchers summarize two case examples that illustrate the complexity of providing physical and emotional safety, as well as immigration protection to victims of trafficking into prostitution. Researchers emphasize the importance of understanding the varied cultural contexts in which sexual exploitation, rape, prostitution and trafficking occur.

Read entire report (PDF format)

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.

Read entire article

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.

Read entire article (PDF format)

Joe Parker 1998

A description of customers, pimps, and the ways that young people get into prostitution. Prostitution, pornography, and other forms of commercial sex are a multi-billion dollar industry. They enrich a small minority of predators, while the larger community is left to pay for the damage.

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.

Read the article