Chapter 9 – Heterosexual Deviance

Teen Sex

• Risman and Schwartz (2002)
  • The concept of Premarital sex has changed, and attitudes towards premarital sex have become more acceptable in today’s society.
  • These attitudes are different for teens. Teenagers are seen as deviant for engaging in premarital sex.
  • As a result, sex education emphasizes abstinence in fear that teens will create “illegitimate” babies by engaging in premarital sex.
• Bearman, Moody, and Stovel (2004), Mosher (2005), and Sharon (2008)
  • Teens today are much more sexually active.
  • “More than half of teens (aged 15-19) are sexually active”
  • As a result of larger numbers of teens being sexually active, more teens are prone to sexually transmitted diseases.
  • Sex education has helped, but teens usually maintain abstinence for about 18 months.
  • Also due to societal pressure, teens try maintaining this idea of a “technical virgin” by only having oral sex with one partner.

Sex Education:

• Conservative Christians prefer not to give their children sex education, and to just teach their children about abstinence.
• Liberals are more supportive of sexual education and the use of contraceptives.
• Sex education varies from school to school and the various resources some schools have.

The Porn Industry

• 97 Billion dollar income in 2011 alone, bigger than hollywood box office returns and rock and country music spending.
• Offers a wide variety of themes and categories that cater to a wide audience, which in turn allows for more users and income.
• Lucrative enough to become a corporate commodity that is offered in many large chain hotels such as Hyatt, Holiday Inn, and Marriott. The hotels in question report earning millions for offering porn to guests.

The Effects of Pornography

• There are two sides of the debate, one that believes porn is harmful and the other that identifies that there is not enough evidence to support that claim
• Those who do believe porn is harmful come in the form of a couple distinct groups. The two most prominent being Antiporn Feminists, who believe that certain porn endorses violence against women, and the other group being religious conservatives who believe porn degrades family values.
• The other side of the argument, those who believe pornography is not harmful often hold more liberal views. Many believe that pornography is important due to the freedom of expression. Those who see porn as harmless also identify that in the real world there is no quantifiable data supports the theory that pornography endorses violence.

Phone Sex

• Phone sex consists of an adult worker who operates a hotline that allows customers to call in and verbalize their sexual fantasies. Many times the worker will act out the fantasies over the phone line in order to keep the customer on and therefore increase the money they spend on the call.
• Operators almost never meet the callers for fear of rape or abuse, however other than the occasional verbally abusive caller, this line of sex work is fundamentally the safest.
• According to sociologist Amy Flowers there are 5 categories in which callers fit into.
• Quick Sex-Callers; are customers who are to the point and try not to spend too much time on the line
• Psychos; Customers who call in to act out violent fantasies or perhaps berate the operator, these are the most aggressive out of the caller types
• Lonely Callers; customers who will often times call the same operator and express love and deep feelings for that worker in order to feel some type of companionship
• Sexually Possessive; these customers are similar to the lonely however they are very aggressive and territorial with the operator, often times questioning who they are sleeping with and asserting control
• Likeable Callers; These callers are the charismatic and often times high paying callers. Many hold positions of power or have some status within society.

Nude Dancing

• Strip Clubs bring in more money than all opera, jazz, classical and ballet performances combined.
• Dancing can be a very lucrative job, in fact according to the book a dancer can make $75,000 a year. This statistic was taken in 1999 and many dancers in high class clubs can make upwards of six figures a year. Very promising considering that no form of higher education is necessary to become a dancer.
• Though nude dancing is often seen as a degrading job, many dancers see it as a form of empowerment or simply a source of income while they work on obtaining higher education.

 Definition of Harassment

• Sexual harassment can be simply defined as any unwelcome act of a sexual nature. Examples of such inappropriate behavior include but are not limited to, the use of vulgar language, suggestive body language, unwelcome touching or closeness, and sexual advancements.
• According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the legal definition of sexual harassment is any sexual conduct that makes the workplace environment so hostile or abusive to the victims that they find it hard to perform their job..

 Women and Harassment

• Sexual harassment is an expression of power, involving  a more powerful person victimizing the less powerful. As such, men are more likely to harass women than the other way around. However, men can be harassed as well.
• In 1987, a case brought to the Supreme Court by a woman named Teresa Harris, ruled that sexual harassment does not have to “inflict severe psychological injury”.
• In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled companies can only protect themselves against lawsuits if preventative measures be taken.
• Harassment is more prevalent in male dominated occupations.
• 40 percent  of college women have been sexually harassed, while 50 percent of working women have been sexually harassed.
• While among high school and junior high students, close to 70 percent of girls have been harassed in some way.
• One third of the women that serve in the military have experienced harassment, including rape and attempted rape.

Definition of Prostitution

• Simply put, prostitution is the exchange of money for sex. Prostitution is illegal in the United States, with the exception of a few counties in Nevada. It is estimated that there are 34,000-336,000 illegal prostitutes currently in the U.S., which accounts for billions of dollars of untaxed dollars.

Myths of Prostitution

• Prostitutes are nymphomaniacs
  • driven by an uncontrollable desire for sexual intercourse.  This is a male fantasy not backed up by facts.
• Prostitutes are sexually frigid or prude.
  • This is also false. Prostitutes can actually be more responsive when with an intimate partner.
• Prostitutes are either cold and have no feelings towards their clients, or are warm hearted and romanticize scenarios.
  • In reality, prostitutes are like any other service. Some clients are both liked and disliked.
• Prostitutes are drug addicts and need to support their habit.
  • This mainly only applies to street walkers and not other types of prostitution such as, call girls, escorts or prostitutes off the streets.

Types of Prostitution

• Street Walkers– solicit clients from usually a sidewalk and can perform such services out of a car.
• Child and Adolescent Prostitutes– Ranging from 8-12 or 13-17 years old and come from broken homes and suffered physical and mental abuse.
• House Prostitutes-may live in a brothel and perform such services. Brothels are common in Nevada because it is legal in certain parts.
• Call Girls-highest demand of prostitution, call girls are very expensive and tend to be more educated than other types of prostitutes.

Roberta Perkins (1991)

• “many studies give a distorted picture of prostitutes ”
• these studies are biased and focus on adolescent streetwalkers or prostitutes who have been arrested by police or helped by social agencies
• Such prostitutes represent only 10-30% of all prostitutes

Breakdown of Perkins’s Study: –

• Reasonably representative sample of the women in the sex business
• Most prostitutes do not differ significantly from conventional women in their social and sexual backgrounds. For example:
• Same desire as conventional women to be married and have a traditional family.
• Prostitutes have about the same level of education as the general population.

“Reasons for Becoming Prostitutes”

• According to public opinion, common reasons for entering prostitution are drug addiction, severe poverty, low self-esteem, and emotional problems
• Money is the most important reason for going into the sex business

“The Subculture of Prostitution”

Prostitutes hold certain beliefs about themselves and their work such as:

• Prostitutes are morally superior to conventional people.
• View their so-called customers as “hypocrites.”
• View that prostitution is good for society because it performs many important services.
• Prostitutes have formed unions to decriminalize prostitution.
  • For example, COYOTE (Call Off Your Tired Ethics) Union fights for full decriminalization and elimination of all legal restrictions on prostitution.
  • COYOTE asserts that arresting or jailing prostitutes violates their civil rights.
  • Feminist view on COYOTE: reject this union because prostitution is a form of sexual slavery.

“Other Participants in Prostitution”

• This includes the madam, the pimp, and the customer.

The Madam

• Refers to the owner or manager of a brothel; brothel owners call one another “landlady.”
• Establishments are ran just as any other business, except they run into problems from the nature of illegal trade.
• The Madam “recruits prostitutes from her current employees, trains the new employee, supervises their work, keeps them happy, and enforces rules governing their behavior”
• The Madam keeps a “john book” that contains the customers’ names and telephone numbers
• A “call house” is referred in the sex business as an “escort agency” ran by the Madams.

The Pimp

• Lives off the entire proceeds of one or more prostitutes.
• In this subculture, men are dominant and women are extremely submissive.
• Ideal union between a black man and several white woman.
• Pimps are obsessed with their appearance.
• The Pimp often resorts to violence to control his women.
• According to a study, over 50 percent of the prostitutes who have been beaten by their pimps accepted it “as a way of life, felt they deserved it, or were flatter by it as a sign of caring.”
• Pimps are worshipped as a god, according to another study.

The Client

• In the sex trade, the prostitute’s customer is called “john” or “trick.”
• Research has shown that men who have slept with different women are more likely than monogamous men to become a john.
• Johns are basically the prostitutes’ oppressors and victimizers.
• Clients buy sex because….
• it is easy and rests in no commitment.
• A desire to get untangles sex.
• A desire to get a variety of sexual experiences.
• The majority of the men who buy sex are occasional johns and few are habitual and compulsive johns.
• Occasional johns = psychologically normal
• Habitual johns = want to get emotionally attached  to one special prostitute
•  Compulsive johns = cannot keep away from prostitutes

“Societal Reaction to Prostitution – Theories of Prostitution” pg. 238-242 

• Prostitution was seen as a necessity in earlier civilization but is now deemed inappropriate which led to two situation for prostitution.
  • Legal but not for public solicitation
  • Illegal but law not strictly enforced
• Reason for enforcement of anti prostitution
  • Often causes mugging, robbery, or assault
  • Breeding ground for organized crime
  • Helps spread AIDS and other STDs
  • Leads to innocent citizens to offensive public solicitation
  • Destruction to public morals
  • Feminist also claim it is degrading to women
• Scholars disagree with the claims for enforcing anti prostitution. They believe that the issues are happening due to largely the anti prostitution laws.

A global Perspective on Prostitution

• Increase in Russian prostitutes after fall of the Soviet Union
• Many prostitutes also come from Latin America. They have been coerced into prostitution.
• Prostitution has become an integral part of the economy in Asian countries. Poverty are usually high in these country and it is one way for women to make a living.

Theories of prostitution

• Functionalist Theory – Which explains why prostitution exist even with the efforts to eradicate it
• Social-psychological theory – Explains why some individual women are more likely than others to become prostitutes
• Oppression, Empowerment, Polymorphous Theories – explaining the characteristics of prostitution

Functionalist Theory

• Prostitution exist because of sexual morality
  • Sexual morality being rules to sex. Separates sex to two types. Meaningful (girlfriend and spouse) and meaningless (prostitutes) sex.
  • Defining certain sex act as immoral which encourages men to look for it elsewhere.When it is wrong for a meaningful relationship to be created.
• Prostitution strengthening sexual morality
  • Keeping wives and girlfriends pure
• Moral system in a way encourages prostitution.

Social- Psychological Theory

• A combination of factors cause some women to become prostitutes
  • Predisposing factors- unpleasant experiences in a younger age such as child abuse and neglect
  • Attracting factors – Belief that women can have money and easy life as a prostitutes
  • Precipitating factors- Social situations of being unemployed.
•  
• Predisposing factors seems to be the key to entering prostitution because they feel unwanted and able to detach themselves emotionally. This is the key to entering but the other factors may cause women to stay and keep selling sex.

Oppression, Empowerment, Polymorphous Theories

• Oppression theory – Negative Social phenomenon that men should dominate women.
  • This theory claims almost all prostitutes have gone to abuse as a child or was tricked into prostitution
• Empowerment theory – A positive social phenomenon that consider prostitution a great job. Sex trade can be lucrative.
• Polymorphous Theory – Looks at both aspect of Empowerment and Oppression theory as they only look at one side of prostitution.
  • Looks at the complexity of prostitution