Sex Work and the Capitalist Patriarchy

“To understand prostitution, its racist character must be acknowledged. Women who were and continue to be forced into prostitution are disproportionately women of color. In her book, sociology professor, Mimi Goldman, describes how prostitution in America is built on racist, sexist, and capitalist foundations. She discusses how, although enslaved black women were not technically prostitutes, they were “at their masters’ sexual disposition” (Goldman, 1974, 90). Therefore, enslaved woman had to face subjugation of not only their lives and their labor, but their bodies as well. Even after slavery was made illegal, the racialized character of prostitution remained. In order to become a part of American society, “South and Latin American women in the nineteenth century were not sold, but rather were indentured as prostitutes for several years to pay for their passage to the U.S.A. A disproportionate number of Third World women are currently prostitutes because of interacting sexual, racial and economic oppression” (Goldman, 1974, 91). The coercive exchange of one’s body and the right to American citizenship demonstrates how this country is founded on the exclusion of women, particularly women of color.

The South and Latin American women who were forced to sell their bodies in exchange for citizenship shows how the law views women of color’s bodies as commodities to be bought and sold. This exclusion of women of color from the legal system, based on race and gender, makes these women second-class citizens in the eyes of the United States. The legal system in the United States also subordinates women by criminalizing prostitution. Feminist sociologist, Kathleen Barry, summarizes this phenomenon in her book with her discussion of pimps. Since prostitution is criminalized, if a prostitute turns in their pimp to the police, they expose themselves as well. Barry states that “the criminal justice system, by treating women as criminals, closes them out of the legal system” (Barry, 1995, 226); if a woman turns in her pimp, the person who profits from her work, she herself can be punished. The structural subordination of women causes them not only to be treated as commodities, but to be excluded from all legal protections that supposedly exist to defend them. The criminalization of prostitution is yet another way to punish women for being women. In order to create a more just society, prostitution must not only be decriminalized; it must be made illegal for men to marketize and profit from women’s bodies.”