The meaning of the purchase: desire, demand, and the commerce of sex by Elizabeth Bernstein
Feminists and other scholars have debated theoretically what exactly is being purchased in the prostitution transaction and whether sex can be “a service like any other”, but they have scarcely tackled these questions empirically. This article draws upon field observations of and interviews with male clients of commercial sex-workers and state agents entrusted with regulating them to probe the meanings given to different types of commercial sexual exchange. Manifested by client...
Read MoreWhat’s Wrong with Prostitution? What’s Right with Sex Work? Comparing Markets in Female Sexual Labor by Elizabeth Bernstein
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...
Read MoreThe Transformation of Sexual Commerce and Urban Space in San Francisco by Elizabeth Bernstein
Despite the frequent equation of “prostitution” with “the oldest profession,” what many of us typically think of as prostitution has not existed for very long at all: large-scale, commercialized prostitution in the West is a recent phenomenon, emerging out of the dislocations of modern industrial capitalism in the mid 19th century. For social scientists, legal scholars, and feminists (not to mention state actors) who have been attentive to the issue of prostitution, a key question has...
Read MoreThe Sexual Politics of the “New Abolitionism” by Elizabeth Bernstein
On Sunday, February 18, 2007, 5,800 Protestant churches throughout the United States sang the song “Amazing Grace” during their services, commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England. As the congregants sang the lyrics of John Newton, the British ship captain turned abolitionist, they were simultaneously contributing to a growing political movement and to the promotion of a justreleasedfilm. The film, Amazing Grace, which focuses on the role played by...
Read MoreIntroduction to Special Issue: Sexual Commerce and the Global Flow of Bodies, Desires, and Social Policies by Elizabeth Bernstein
In anticipation of the 2006 World Cup games in Munich, a broad international coalition of feminist and faith-based activists joined together to protest Germany’s world-renowned system of legalized prostitution. Although Germany’s system of licensed, regulated, and taxed prostitution has been regarded by some commentators as a progressive exemplar of sex workers’ rights, a diverse spectrum of antiprostitution activists were able to ignite a fervor regarding an anticipated epidemic of sex...
Read More
