Abstract
In the mid-1990s, changes to law enforcement strategies in New York City pushed many women working in the sex trade off of the streets and into the indoors. Increasing numbers of women began advertising sexual services in bars, over the Internet, and in print media, and conducting their work in their homes, hotels, and brothels. This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the impact of this change on the life and work of women working in New York’s indoor sex trade. A critical finding is that as women move their work indoors, they begin to conceive of sex work as a profession and a career, rather than just a short-term means of employment. This “professional and careerist orientation” may have significant implications for the length of women’s tenure in sex work and ultimately, for their ability to exit the trade completely.
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Notes
According to the literature, sex workers are those who engage in sexual acts for monetary gain. Such acts can include everything from stripping and dancing, to S&M, to sexual intercourse. The term prostitution specifically refers to the exchange of intercourse for some material good (Thukral et al., 2005). For our purposes, sex worker is the term used to denote anyone who exchanges sexual intercourse (including oral sex) for money or some other material good. Indoor sex workers are those women in our sample who engage in sex work indoors, versus outdoor workers who conduct their work on the street. In our consideration of the indoor sex trade, our sample of sex workers include a variety of “types” of indoor workers, including escorts, independents who work from their homes, or in bars or clubs, women who work in establishments, such as brothels, crack dens, dungeons, or massage parlors, and women who have been trafficked. Each of these types of indoor sex workers conduct the same act—sexual intercourse—but their working conditions, their client base, the specific place in which they conduct their work, their rate, etc… all differ, depending on the specific type of sex work in which they are engaged. So, while the term sex worker denotes women who exchange sex for material goods, the condition under which this exchange is conducted varies greatly.
Additionally, while we use the term “indoor sex worker” to identify the women in our sample, our respondents referred to themselves and their line of work in a variety of ways, depending upon the context in which they were talking about themselves and their work. For example, when women spoke about how their work was perceived by the public, when they spoke negatively about the work itself and their involvement in it, or when they were making fun of their involvement in the trade, they described themselves as “whores” and “prostitutes.” They would also use such terms as a vehicle of empowerment, when describing the pride that they have for their work. The usage of these terms in this spirit was most frequent among high-end sex workers in the study or among those women who have affiliations to sex work organizations, such as “Prostitutes of New York” (PONY). At other points of the interview, women spoke about themselves as being providers of emotional and psychological services. Throughout the course of any given interview, women shifted from speaking about themselves as service providers, to being sex workers with rights, to being whores. What this indicates is a complexity in how women in the trade see themselves and their work. They often times feel ambiguous about the trade and its merits and they frequently struggle with reconciling how they see themselves and their work with both the stigma and criminalization associated with the trade and with how they are perceived by others in the “straight” world. While we did not find any correlation between how women identify and whether or not they perceive their work in professional and careerist terms, one can see that the ambiguity with which women identify with the trade is the same ambiguity that can be found in the tension between women’s abstract desire to exit the industry and their simultaneous development of professional and careerist orientations to their sex work (all of which will be discussed later in the paper).
Research has documented sex workers’ difficulty establishing economic stability due to their patterns of quick spending and the challenges that they face in saving money and making investments (Phoenix, 1999). We extend this argument by suggesting that if the tenures of indoor workers are even longer than those of women on the streets, then this extended length of time that they are detached from forming relationships to people and institutions that may offer economic stability means greater long-term socio-economic instability.
It should be noted that although there are no formal channels of promotion or upward mobility in the sex trade, this does not mean that there is not movement among women between different types of sex work.
Sex work refers to the performance of a sexual act for exchange. Sexual acts include practices ranging from intercourse to stripping to dominatrix work (Thukral et al., 2005). For our purposes, the term sex work will include all sexual acts, but will be used to primarily discuss the sale of sexual intercourse.
Some researchers have drawn parallels between sex work and legitimate low-wage work alternatives. For example, there are many similarities between sex work and formal employment in regards to why women enter the sex trade, their means of entering, and the way in which they spend the money that they earn. Much of the literature on sex work has sought to understand the reasons for which women turn to sex work, and not other work, both legal and illegal, as an income generating strategy (Dalla, 2001; Sharpe, 1998; Phoenix, 1999).
In her study on sex workers, Sharpe (1998) argues that family and friends play two different roles in the process of encouraging someone to engage in the work. These contacts either encourage women to turn to sex work or they play a mentorship role by providing advice and moral and practical support as the women begin their work. According to Sharpe, friends often use peer pressure tactics to push women into sex work by convincing them that prostitution affords a relatively “easy” lifestyle and is therefore a desirable line of work to enter.
For those women in the trade who work for either an establishment or, a manager or pimp of some sort, a substantial amount of the money earned is given as a “cut” to these brokers, thereby undercutting the full potential earnings of the women and consequentially, their autonomy within the trade (Raphael & Shapiro, 2002).
Although outdoor women are arrested quite often, they are frequently released without being subject to fines or sentencing. This creates what researchers call “the revolving door” of arrests among prostitutes (Thukral & Ditmore, 2003).
Whelehan (2001) best describes this difference in her description of the “survival” versus the “career” prostitute, a typology that is based on the differential financial motivations of women entering the trade. The survival sex worker uses sex work for survival purposes, which may include securing food, clothing and shelter for the household, or to fund one’s education or entrepreneurial pursuits. Generally, the survival prostitute does not enter the trade through a formal venue or through contact with someone already engaged in the work. Often, she is conflicted about her involvement in the work. Her experience in the trade is for the short-term and is terminated either by her decision to become a career prostitute, when she has secured the finances originally sought, or when a more profitable alternative arises. In contrast, the career prostitute is engaged in sex work as a result of a well thought-out decision not only to participate in the trade, but to make the work a long-term profession. Career prostitutes tend to come from semi-skilled to white-collar professional backgrounds. They are attracted to sex work because of the freedom and independence that the work affords; many of these women use sex work to finance other pursuits such as small businesses or educational paths. Many of the women who intend to be career prostitutes see the work as a “calling.” As such, they aim to be good at what they do and take pride in their work.
Such movement indoors as a result of greater regulations and surveillance of sex workers stands in contrast to law enforcement tactics being employed in other countries where, in many cities, the state has come to embrace and regulate prostitution in an effort to profit from the trade as it has developed into an industry that largely caters to tourists. For example, in Amsterdam, state regulations have promoted and stabilized the trade, rather than make those involved subject to increased rates of arrest. In Amsterdam, one of the effects of this has been to deepen the stratification between those sex workers working indoors and for an establishment, and those who have recently migrated to the city or are working outdoors and addicted to drugs (Wonders & Michalowski, 2001). Interestingly then, though state approaches to the trade in cities like Amsterdam and New York City differ so greatly, the effect of such polices are similar in that they have heightened the bifurcation of the trade between those working indoors and those on the street.
In 1993 there were a total of 261,329 arrests in New York City. After the implementation of Giuliani’s “quality of life” campaign in 1994, arrest rates soared so greatly that by 1996 the total number of arrests in the city had reached 345,041 (Weidner, 2001).
The contribution of the Internet worked independently of Giuliani’s policies to shift prostitution indoors.
Prostitution is often thought of as a street-based phenomenon. We may attribute this belief to the fact that while street-based sex work accounts for only 15% of all prostitution, 85–90% of the women arrested for prostitution work on the street, and are therefore often the recipients of considerable public attention and the primary focus of social concern (Whelehan, 2001; Alexander, 1998).
For our purposes, the term “sex act” refers to sexual intercourse, including oral sex.
A brothel is an indoor location, often a house, in which women sell and commit the sexual act for sale within the house. Brothels are usually directed by either a house manager or madam. Women who work in brothels frequently have to give a cut of their earnings to the house. A dungeon is an indoor location in which dominatrix work takes place. Here too, there is a house manager who receives a cut from employees (Thukral et al., 2005).
Heyl (1979) argues that one can divide women who work indoors into two categories based upon prestige and economic conditions. The first is comprised of women who work in hotels, brothels, bars, or massage parlors and who charge middle-range prices. The second is comprised of women who charge high prices and work as call girls and escorts, primarily serving a business clientele. Women in the indoor trade may work in markedly different venues, with very different organizational structures, and may make varying amounts of money doing sex work. Nonetheless, researchers have found it useful to put these women into one category because despite their heterogeneity, their work is affected by its indoor nature and because the organization and characteristics of their work are markedly different from those who work on the street (Thukral et al., 2005; Weidner, 2001).
Women in the sample were found through various outreach activities in nightclubs notorious for prostitution, through a legal advocate of women in the trade, through a woman who works with “Prostitutes of New York” (PONY), a local sex work organization, through a number of Johns already known to the researchers, and through referrals by women in the sample.
There are several limitations to our dataset. The sample of sex workers is small and is based in only one city, so it is not possible to test claims about shifts in the urban vice industry across urban America. In addition, while many of the women in the sample have experience working both indoors and on the street, because we were not able to observe, firsthand, the outdoor experiences of these women, our findings are limited to the extent to which they are based on women’s reporting of their past perceptions of working on the street.
Sex-work related run-in with the police refers to anytime a woman working in the trade has been stopped, questioned, threatened, harassed, arrested, or falsely arrested by the police in connection to their work in the trade (Thukral et al., 2005).
Exceptions are those sex workers who work in an establishment or for some type of manager.
Whelehan (2001) argues that such sentiments are probably most common among those career indoor workers that work as escorts or call girls—although other types of indoor workers will also exhibit these sentiments. She posits that this distinction between indoor and outdoor girls is rooted in the different setting, time involved, and motivations of the client and sex worker that exist for these two types of women working in the trade. It has been argued that in an attempt to understand their work, rectify their feelings of guilt and shame, and legitimate their involvement in the trade, many women develop a discourse which they use to justify the merits of their work (see Phoenix, 1999). Ultimately, engaging in this emotional labor serves to legitimate their work and make it, in their eyes, an honorable professional. It is in this way that sex workers, both indoor and outdoor workers, often come to see themselves and their work as a contribution to society, rather than as a vice for which they should be ashamed.
Only 27% of the sample reported sex work as being the worst job they had ever had. In comparison, when asked what the best job they have ever had is, none of the outdoor workers interviewed for the report “Revolving Door” (Thukral & Ditmore, 2003) mentioned sex work.
There has not been systematic research on the strength or longevity of the networks that are formed. An exception is Sharpe’s (1998) study, in which it was found that these relationships tended to be temporary and superficial. The social ties women formed in the trade were based on convenience; specifically, the convenience of the location where individuals worked, but did not extend beyond these physical spaces. Thus, street based workers only associated with other street based workers, escorts of a particular agency only formed relationships with women working in the same agency, and so on. The experience of working in the trade was not salient enough to produce an “occupational solidarity” that could transcend these distinctions, Sharpe argues.
In the course of receiving treatment and other services, women do achieve greater stability in their personal lives, which seems to open up possibilities for exit from sex work. Rarely, however, are these services in direct response to their involvement in sex work. Instead, most of the services women receive, such as medical treatment or help with homelessness, are the types of services received by the general population. Such services, while helpful, do not directly address women’s work in the trade (Raphael & Shapiro, 2002).
One of the most surprising findings of the study was the great need among the women in our sample for psychological help. In our initial round of interviews, we did not ask women if they had received or if they needed this type of help. Instead, a number of women expressed the need for counseling on their own—so much so that we eventually included a question about the need for counseling in the survey protocol. The need for psychological services seemed to be largely related to women’s feelings of social isolation within the trade.
Mercedes, a service provider from a non-profit organization in New York City whose mission it is to help recently arrived immigrants, described some of the adjustments that her organization makes in order to deal with the relative inaccessibility of indoor workers. “We do a lot of outreach to agency-based groups. We provide training [to help people identify indoor sex workers and determine how to service them]. A lot of times we go on people’s midday lunch break or whatever. We go to a lot of defense attorneys and court-related intermediaries now, in hopes that they will come across women and make referrals to a program. And also, you know, small ethnic groups inside communities who are more likely to know what’s going on inside the communities and make referrals…. We do a lot of trainings with legal service providers, healthcare workers, and community-based organizations. We’ve also done outreach at homeless shelters, but most of the clients that have been referred to us have been referred through social service agencies, other attorneys and law enforcement, rather than from the outreach we have been doing.”
Sex Industry Survivor’s Anonymous is a national organization whose mission is to provide support groups for women and men who are currently working in the sex industry but who would like to get out, or for those who have already left the trade but need support during the recovery process. Paul and Lisa is a program based in New York that provides transitional living services to those exiting the trade. You Are Never Alone, based in Baltimore, provides peer support, group counseling, crisis intervention, referrals, legal housing, and employment services to outdoor workers seeking exit.
It should be noted that while no particular type of sex worker developed a careerist orientation more than another, because the development of this perspective is largely based on the perception of being able to profit, personally and financially, from sex work, those women who actually make more money in the industry, regardless of the type of work that they do, may be more likely to think about sex work as a profession and a career.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Nicole Marwell for reading previous drafts of this paper, as well as Juhu Thukral, Melissa Ditmore, Kim Mosolf, Zachary Levenson, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of Qualitative Sociology.
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Alexandra K. Murphy is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at Princeton University. In addition to her study of the indoor sex trade in New York City, past research includes a study of the transformation of public housing in Chicago and a study of informal economies in Chicago. She is currently working on an ethnographic project on “suburban ghettos” in the U.S. Recent publications include “Policing Ourselves: Law and Order in the American Ghetto,” co-authored with Sudhir Venkatesh, in the edited volume “Youth, Globalization, and the Law,” Stanford University Press (2006) and “Children and Work,” co-authored with Katherine S. Newman, in the edited volume “Chicago’s Companion to the Child,” Chicago University Press (2006).
Sudhir A. Venkatesh is Associate Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of “American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto.” He recently completed a documentary film entitled “DisLocation” (www.dislocationfilm.com).
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Murphy, A.K., Venkatesh, S.A. Vice Careers: The Changing Contours of Sex Work in New York City. Qual Sociol 29, 129–154 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-006-9012-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-006-9012-2