Prostitution, power and freedom Book

This text offers perspectives on prostitution based on wide-ranging research in nine countries and extensive work with prostitute users. It contains original research, including interviews with male and female sex tourists, adult and child prostitutes, procurers, and clients. The author demonstrates the complexity of prostitution, arguing that it is not simply an expression of male oppression and violence or insatiable sexual needs, nor is it an unproblematic economic encounter. Using a range of theoretical analyses, she shows it to be a complex relationship where economics, gender, age, race, class, power and choice intersect. The result is a more sophisticated understanding that uncovers the economic and political inequalities underlying prostitution, but also shows that while prostitution necessarily implies certain freedoms for the client, the unfreedoms experienced by individual prostitutes vary greatly.