Abstract
The author, Ronald Weitzer, a professor of sociology at George Washington University, has written about prostitution policy for more than a decade. In this book, he turns his attention to legalization policies in Europe. He examines long-standing red-light districts (RLDs) in three cities—Antwerp (Belgium), Frankfurt (Germany), and Amsterdam (Netherlands). While he acknowledges that criminalization rather than legalization is the prevailing policy in most countries, including the United States, Weitzer—to his credit—remains above the ideological fray fueled by strict adherents to either the oppression paradigm, which underlies criminalization policies, or the empowerment paradigm, which underlies decriminalization and legalization approaches. At one extreme, oppression theorists declare that prostitution is violence that harms all women, sex workers and nonsex workers alike. In contrast, empowerment theorists portray sex workers as women who have decided to take charge of their bodies and their finances. Weitzer points out that to view prostitutes as either hapless victims or empowered entrepreneurs does not account for the complex social realities in a world characterized by stark economic inequalities and the growing sexualization of everyday life. The author offers an alternative conceptualization—called the “polymorphous paradigm”—which he thinks better explains prostitution as impacted by an amalgam of structural and power arrangements that determine participants’ experiences and perceptions. This point is easily illustrated by juxtaposing the work experience of an independent, Dutch-born window prostitute in Amsterdam’s RLD and an immigrant Bulgarian woman whose pimp forces her to work near abandoned warehouses at the outskirts of the city. What we see is that the combined variations in type of prostitution (window vs. street), power arrangements (independent vs. pimped), place (RLD vs. abandoned warehouses), and nationality (native vs. foreigner) create substantially different experiences for the two sex workers involved. By carefully documenting how different types of prostitution manifest themselves in different geographical settings, Weitzer makes a convincing case in support of his polymorphous paradigm. One wonders, though, whether the term polymorphous can compete with its paradigm cousins—oppression and empowerment—in attracting the kind of media attention that is needed to become part of the mainstream discourse on prostitution policy.
Two related factors account for a large part of the complexity Weitzer describes. The first is the form prostitution takes; the second is the location where it occurs. The existence of different forms of prostitution has been documented for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, we find evidence for a prostitution hierarchy that, in its essential elements, mirrors the stratification that exists today. Then as now, prostitutes’ experiences are strongly influenced by their class position such that prostitutes who occupy the lowest rungs of the ladder tend to have more negative work experiences than those higher up. Weitzer cites data from three separate studies which show that moving just one step up from street prostitution to an indoor location cuts victimization rates for robbery, assault, and rape by close to half or more. Other disadvantages are also concentrated disproportionately at the lower rungs. Street prostitutes, as compared with indoor prostitutes, are more likely to have experienced childhood abuse, entered prostitution at a young age, become drug or alcohol dependent, engaged in unprotected sex, and been exploited by third parties such as pimps or traffickers. Even stigma, which attaches to most if not all sex work, is stratified. The most visible forms of prostitution, those carried out in public locations, are most highly stigmatized. But even though indoor prostitution represents a step up in the hierarchy, there is nonetheless great variation among indoor locations. For immigrant women without local support networks, indoor prostitution often entails coercion and harsh working conditions whereas for independently working escorts, the downsides are comparatively minor.
Weitzer identifies additional sources of variation by documenting the effects of different physical and regulatory environments in three geographically distinct RLDs. Assuming a link between social ecological structures and human behavior, Weitzer hypothesizes that a given RLD’s social ecology affects the experiences and perceptions of visitors, residents, workers, and clients. He tests this idea by comparing the RLDs of the European cities mentioned earlier—Antwerp, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam. Each consists of a geographically contiguous area that accommodates indoor prostitution venues as well as sexually oriented and traditional businesses. It should be noted that prostitution in the form of street walking is not permitted in any of these three RLDs. Beyond these commonalities, the three chosen RLDs differ substantially in their regulatory and social ecological environments.
Antwerp’s RLD is restricted to window prostitution, which is available in a relatively small pedestrian area within walking distance of the city’s center. Women who work as window prostitutes are not allowed to live in the RLD in which they work. The district has no brothels and few sex-related businesses. It is patrolled day and night by officers assigned to the district’s own police station. A health clinic located in the heart of the zone offers sex workers anonymous and free treatment for physical and psychological problems. It also provides assistance to those who decide to leave the trade.
Frankfurt’s RLD is located near the main railroad station in a central part of the city. Because there is no window prostitution and street prostitution is against the law, sex workers are not on public display the way they are in Antwerp and Amsterdam. Most work in brothels, hotels, saunas, or their own apartments. Nonetheless, the atmosphere in the streets is raucous in comparison with Antwerp. Alcohol consumption on the street is legal and erotic shops, strip clubs, and casinos are plentiful. Police carry out periodic raids on the various establishments but otherwise exert much less control than their Belgian colleagues.
Amsterdam’s main RLD—the Wallen—is a tourist attraction in the center of town. While some visitors come to the district to buy sex, others seek out marijuana shops and gambling arcades. Still others come to absorb the atmosphere by strolling past the women in the windows and making purchases in stores with names like Red Light Souvenirs. As part of a multiuse district, the Wallen is more thoroughly integrated into the economic and cultural environment than either of the other two RLDs.
Weitzer highlights the connections between RLD structures and RLD workers with an impressive array of ethnographic material. He shows, for example, that on the whole, sex workers, their clients, and local residents feel safer in Antwerp’s RLD than they do in either Amsterdam or Frankfurt. The Antwerp district, a pedestrian zone, removed but in walking distance from city center, offers window prostitution in a clean and orderly environment. Workers appear to get along well with the authorities despite having to submit to regular passport checks to ensure they are of legal age and possess documents that allow them to work in Belgium. Still, the display of sex workers in windows provides little protection from stigmatization and even with around the clock patrols, the police have not been entirely successful in ridding the district of pimps, which means that at least some workers are subject to coercion. Even the most orderly and best regulated of the three RLDs is not without problems.
As Weitzer has discovered, systems of legalization, while preferable to criminalization as it is practiced in the United States, are not without flaws. Such flaws, Weitzer suggests, can be mitigated if certain standards are adopted and best practices derived from these standards are followed. At the core, Weitzer’s recommendation requires a shift away from viewing prostitutes as deviants and prostitution as immoral. Unless those who are wedded to criminalization are willing to acknowledge that prostitution is made up of a varied and complex group of participants only some of whom are vulnerable victims and deviants, prostitution policy in the United States will continue to be based on ideology. Weitzer’s book makes a strong case for a long overdue shift in that attitude.