Prostitution Quotes (0-)

“[in India] Any sexual intercourse outside socially acceptable unions is likely to be regarded as prostitution.”

“Prostitutes are the inevitable product of a society that places ultimate importance on money, possessions, and competition.”

“[in Kenya]...any woman who is single and has multiple male sex partners is considered to be a prostitute, whether or not money changes hands.”

“Egyptian law states that a man who is caught with a prostitute is not imprisoned; instead, his testimony is used to convict and imprison the prostitute.”

“Prostitution is not a monolith. The newspapers use the plight of the most vulnerable women to symbolize the entire field, ignoring the diversity of the sex-worker community.”

“No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute.
You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both.”

“Criminalising the prostitute is rooted in disgust and hatred - entangled with misogyny, racism, and fear of the visibly queer or diseased body. These coalesce into the belief that the prostitute is a threat who must be warded off through punishment.”

“A prostitute was forgiven by Allah, because, passing by a panting dog near a well and seeing that the dog was about to die of thirst, she took off her shoe, and tying it with her head-cover she drew out some water for it. So, Allah forgave her because of that.”

“What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician – these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin.”

“Criminalising sex work isn't working. At its core, exchanging sex for money - like migrancy, drug use, and abortion - is a legitimate and pragmatic human response to specific needs. Prohibiting it produces evasiveness and risk-taking among sex workers, driving them into the margins and exposing them to even more harm.”

“I think it proves that if my business could be made legal, the way off-track betting is in New York, I and women like me could make a big contribution to what Mayor John Lindsay calls Fun City, and the city and state could derive the money in taxes and licensing fees that I pay off to crooked cops and political figures.”

“I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.”

“Who are prostitutes? Ideas seem to lurch between contradictory stereotypes, perhaps unsurprisingly for a group more often spoken about than to. Much as immigrants are seen as lazy scroungers while somehow also stealing the jobs of "decent people", sex workers are simultaneously victim and accomplice, sexually voracious yet helpless maidens.”

“What I am saying is that truth is usually more complicated than any one perspective can capture. Prostitution is not a monolith. Each woman experiences the profession in a different manner. And nothing can be gained by having different groups of feminists or prostitutes — all of whom are probably telling the truth of their own experiences — attempting to discredit each other.”

“And all married women except those whom your right hands possess. It is a decree of Allah for you. Lawful to you are all beyond those mentioned, so that you may seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock, not debauchery. And those whom you enjoy, give them their shares as a duty. And there is no sin for you in what you do by mutual agreement after the duty. Indeed, Allah is ever-knower, wise.”

“Sex workers - not journalists, politicians, or the police - are the experts on sex work. We bring our experiences of criminalisation, rape, assault, intimate partner abuse, abortion, mental illness, drug use and epistemic violence with us in our organising and our writing. We bring the knowledge we have developed through our deep immersion in sex worker organising spaces - spaces of mutual aid, spaces that are working towards collective liberation.”

“The Iceberg Slim story revolves around a sex worker at the natural end of her career, and her pimp, who goes to great lengths to force her, his best earner, into further years of indentured servitude. He stages a death and pins the blame on her, the guilt and shame breaking her spirit. Only her pimp can offer her salvation, and the only way to repay that debt is to keep working.”

“Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism. It is its most cherished child, all hypocritical sanctimoniousness notwithstanding. The prostitute is the fury of our century, sweeping across the "civilized" countries like a hurricane, and leaving a trail of disease and disaster. The only remedy Puritanism offers for this ill-begotten child is greater repression and more merciless persecution.”

“Because “marriageable” women had to be virgins, American men at the end of the 19th century commonly turned to brothels and “red light districts” for sexual pleasure with “unmarriageable” women. So many new husbands unknowingly brought sexually transmitted infections to their brides on their wedding nights that the birthrate plummeted, especially among the middle class.”

“Police abuse against sex workers is common, but police rarely face consequences for it. That’s partly because sex workers fear being arrested if they come forward to report abuse. Police also take advantage of criminalization by extorting sex workers or coercing them into sexual acts, threatening arrest if they don’t comply. Criminalizing sex work only helps police abuse their power — and get away with it.
Decriminalizing sex work would remove the fear of arrest that too often prevents sex workers from seeking justice.”