Can Legislation Alone Protect Devadasi Girls from Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation?

Girls in India continue to be sexually abused/exploited under the veil of traditional practices such as Devadasi dedication despite the existence of legislation meant to protect them from child sexual abuse. This study recounts the experiences of 30 Devadasi girls who were dedicated, initiated into sexual activity, and involved in commercial sexual activity as children. It underscores the need to address this practice as a criminal offense to be prosecuted under the legislation. Efforts must be made to explicitly connect Devadasi dedication and child sexual abuse in the minds of the public, law enforcement agencies and government officials.

Assessment of commercially sexually exploited girls upon entry to treatment: Confirmed vs. at risk victims

BACKGROUND

Research has documented many risk factors for commercial sexual exploitation of children as well as serious emotional and behavioral consequences for such victims.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to provide an understanding of risk factors and symptom presentation of girls who are victims or at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

Ninety-six girls (12-18 years) who were referred to a child advocacy center's specialized treatment program for commercially sexually abused girls served as participants (56 confirmed victims, 40 at risk of commercial sexual exploitation).

METHODS

At intake participants were administered the Youth Self-Report, the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, and the UCLA Post-Traumatic Stress (PTSD) Reaction Index for DSM -5. Parents or guardians were asked to complete the Child Behavior Checklist and the UCLA PTSD Reaction Index for DSM - 5(Parent/Caregiver).

RESULTS

Intake information revealed significant differences between groups with confirmed victims reporting higher levels of sex work, kidnapping, physical abuse, physical assault and sexual abuse by a non-family member (p < .05) than at risk victims. All participants were exposed to traumas, were racially and ethnically diverse and lived primarily with their families. At risk girls were significantly more likely to be in school than the confirmed victims. The UCLA PTSD Index revealed that the confirmed victims had experienced significantly more physical abuse than the at-risk group and 26.7% of confirmed victims and 7.7% of the at risk victims met the DSM criteria for PTSD. Twenty percent of the confirmed victims met criteria for Dissociative subtype, while only 7.7% of at risk victims did. On the CBCL, victims from both groups scored in the clinical range on Externalizing Problems and Total Problems and the at risk group scored significantly higher on the School subscale than the confirmed victims group.

CONCLUSION

Commercially sexually exploited girls have experienced multiple traumas in their lives and display emotional and behavioral difficulties. Early detection of girls who may be at risk for sexual exploitation may allow for prevention and intervention as these girls also have traumatic backgrounds and display similar symptoms.

Indigenous Australian women's colonial sexual intimacies: positioning indigenous women's agency

Colonialist views of Indigenous bodies and sexualities continue to affect Indigenous peoples worldwide. For Indigenous Australians, this burden has resulted in repression and oppression of power, sex and desire. Focusing on the sexual intimacies of Indigenous Australian women, this paper provides an account of the dominant Australian historical discourses, finding that Indigenous women were viewed as exotic, erotic, something to be desired, yet simultaneously something to be feared. Our sexualities were described as savage, promiscuous and primitive and we were often viewed as prostitutes with our voices and views constrained by patriarchal and imperial regimes of power. But within this context, Indigenous women fought back through both individual and collective acts of agency. This paper demonstrates how Indigenous Australian women's agency not as a new phenomenon but rather as a position that disrupts the popular discourses of exploitation and victimhood that have been persistently perpetrated against Indigenous women.

Exploring the Occupational Context of Independent Male Escorts Who Seek Male Clients: The Case of Job Success

Male sex work (MSW) research has been generally limited to the examination of "social problems." Although there have been studies on occupational aspects, pointed examinations of the occupational environment, detailing the contemporary nature of the field, are rare. Research on nuances of the occupational context of MSW, providing insight on the rapidly changing face of the field, is wanting. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 escorts in Brisbane, Australia. This study explored job success, indicating that success in the field was well articulated, possibly highlighting that male independent escorting is becoming a professionalized occupation, with a shift away from current stigmatized understandings.

Ethnicity, Sex Work, and Incident HIV/STI Among Transgender Women in New York City: A Three Year Prospective Study

In conjunction with a 3-year prospective study of 199 transgender women from the New York City Area, we attempted to better understand why non-Whites are much more likely than Whites to become HIV infected. We first assessed associations of ethnicity with sex work, sexual risk behavior for HIV, and biologically-determined HIV/STI, and then assessed the extent to which these ethnic differences are explained by socioeconomic factors, immigration status, and sexual orientation. Statistical techniques included generalized estimating equations and Cox proportional hazards. As expected, compared to Whites, Blacks and Hispanics were more involved in the sex trade, more likely to report unprotected receptive anal intercourse, and as a result, more likely to become HIV/STI infected. All of these associations were mediated by androphilia, and to a lesser extent androphilia/gynephilia. Sexual orientation is a significant but little recognized factors associated with new cases of HIV/STI among transgender women of color.

Consistent Condom Use by Female Sex Workers in Kolkata, India: Testing Theories of Economic Insecurity, Behavior Change, Life Course Vulnerability and Empowerment

Consistent condom use (CCU) is the primary HIV/STI prevention option available to sex workers globally but may be undermined by economic insecurity, life-course vulnerabilities, behavioral factors, disempowerment, or lack of effective interventions. This study examines predictors of CCU in a random household survey of brothel-based female sex workers (n = 200) in two neighborhoods served by Durbar (the Sonagachi Project) in Kolkata, India. Multivariate logistic regression analyses indicated that CCU was significantly associated with perceived HIV risk, community mobilization participation, working more days in sex work, and higher proportion of occasional clients to regular clients. Exploratory analyses stratifying by economic insecurity indicators (i.e., debt, savings, income, housing security) indicate that perceived HIV risk and community mobilization were only associated with CCU for economically secure FSW. Interventions with FSW must prioritize economic security and access to social protections as economic insecurity may undermine the efficacy of more direct condom use intervention strategies.

Korean Survivors of the Japanese "Comfort Women" System: Understanding the Lifelong Consequences of Early Life Trauma

Prior to and during World War II, thousands of girls and young women were abducted from Korea and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government. Termed comfort women, these girls and young women suffered extreme sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and trauma. Research on this group is not well-developed and people know little of the impact of this early life trauma on the lives of these women who are now in later life. Using snowball sampling, 16 older adult survivors of the comfort women system participated in semistructured qualitative interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted to gain an understanding of the trauma that these women suffered and how it impacted their lives. Results revealed the depths of the abuse these women suffered, including repeated rapes, physical beatings, humiliation, forced surgery and sterilization, and social exclusion. These early traumatic experiences appeared to reverberate throughout their lives in their family relations, their inability to marry and to conceive children, and their emotional and physical well-being throughout the life course and into later life. The experiences of these survivors illustrate the lasting impact of early-life trauma and can guide interventions with current survivors of sexual abuse or trafficking.

The prostitution and trafficking of American Indian/Alaska Native women in Minnesota

We examined social and physical violence experienced by American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women in prostitution and their impacts on the mental and physical health of 105 women (81% Anishinaabe, mean age = 35 years) recruited through service agencies in three Minnesota cities. In childhood, abuse, foster care, arrests, and prostitution were typical. Homelessness, rape, assault, racism, and pimping were common. The women's most prevalent physical symptoms included muscle pain, impaired memory or concentration, and headaches. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation were common, with more severe psychological symptoms associated with worse health. Most of the women wanted to leave prostitution and they most often identified counseling and peer support as necessary to accomplish this. Most saw colonization and prostitution of AI/AN women as connected.

'They have embraced a different behaviour': transactional sex and family dynamics in eastern Congo's conflict

The decades-long conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has resulted in major changes to local economies, strained social networks and insecurity. This environment forces many to pursue unconventional and, at times, socially stigmatised avenues for income. This paper explores the ways in which individuals in eastern DRC engage in, and are affected by, the commoditisation of sex within the context of decades of violent conflict. Focus group discussions conducted with men and women in 2009-2010 highlight how the war in the region has placed individuals, particularly women, in dire economic circumstances, while also changing their roles within families. In the face of severe poverty, women and girls may choose to engage in transactional sex in order to support themselves and their families. Discussants detailed how engaging in transactional sex due to an economic imperative has nonetheless damaged women's relationships with family members between spouses as well as parents and their children through breach of trust and failure to provide. These focus group discussions elucidate how transactional sex is both a symptom of, and a catalyst for, changes within family dynamics in eastern DRC.

[Mobile health initiative for foreign prostitutes in the Region of Central Jutland and the Region of North Jutland]

Some foreign prostitutes are victims of traffiquing, do not speak Danish and are not familiar with the services offered in the Danish Health Service. The mobile health initiative localises foreign prostitutes and offers health checks and help in case of illness or pregnancy. The article reports method and findings from the first two-year period with this initiative.

The organization of sex work in low- and high-priced venues with a focus on the experiences of ethnic minority women working in these venues

Prior research on female sex workers (FSW) in China, and their risk for HIV and STI, neglects the nuanced experiences of ethnic minority FSW. We conducted participant observations and in-depth interviews with 33 FSW and six venue bosses to describe the experiences of FSW and management structures in low and high-priced sex work venues in Liuzhou, China. In low-priced venues, FSW had more autonomy and stronger relationships with their ethnic minority peers. Mid- and high-priced venues had more formal management structures. Ethnic minority FSW working in higher priced venues experienced less support and kinship with their peers. HIV/STI prevention outreach activities occurred in all of the venues, but they were not tailored for different venue types or for ethnic minority FSW. Our findings provide guidance for tailoring public health programs that meet the needs of ethnic minority women working in different types of sex work venues.

Structural factors that increase HIV/STI vulnerability among indigenous people in the Peruvian amazon

We examined structural factors-social, political, economic, and environmental-that increase vulnerability to HIV among indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon. Indigenous adults belonging to 12 different ethnic groups were purposively recruited in four Amazonian river ports and 16 indigenous villages. Qualitative data revealed a complex set of structural factors that give rise to environments of risk where health is constantly challenged. Ferryboats that cross Amazonian rivers are settings where unprotected sex-including transactional sex between passengers and boat crew and commercial sex work-often take place. Population mobility and mixing also occurs in settings like the river docks, mining sites, and other resource extraction camps, where heavy drinking and unprotected sex work are common. Multilevel, combination prevention strategies that integrate empirically based interventions with indigenous knowledge are urgently needed, not only to reduce vulnerability to HIV transmission, but also to eliminate the structural determinants of indigenous people's health.

'In different situations, in different ways': male sex work in St. Petersburg, Russia

We conducted a qualitative study of male sex work in St. Petersburg Russia with a focus on social vulnerabilities, HIV-risk perception and HIV-related behaviours. In-depth interviews were conducted with individuals knowledgeable about male sex work through their profession and with male sex workers themselves. Male sex work involves a variety of exchanges, including expensive vacations, negotiated monetary amounts or simply access to food. Methods of finding clients included the Internet, social venues (e.g. gay clubs and bars) and public places (e.g. parks). Use of the Internet greatly facilitated male sex work in a variety of ways. It was used by both individuals and agencies to find clients, and appeared to be increasing. Men often reported not being professionally connected to other male sex workers and limited disclosure about their work. Many were aware of the work-related risks to personal safety, including violence and robbery by clients. Perceived risk for HIV was mostly abstract and several exceptions to condom use with clients were noted. Alcohol use was reported as moderate but alcohol was consumed frequently in association with work. These data suggest that the most salient risks for male sex workers include professional isolation, threats to personal safety, limited perceived HIV risk and sub-optimal levels of condom use.

Policing native pleasures: a colonial history

The moral modality of colonial power is still with us when it comes to the recreation of sexual norms of traditional or feudal society. We can examine the emergent properties of colonial knowledge anew by exploring how the colonial regime's strategic attention of regulating brothels in India differed from the analytic of power Foucault described for sexuality in European society. It turns out that amongst other things, public anxieties about the failure of adaptation by South Asians are incapable of leaving sexuality aside as a key interpretive device for their culture. The British preoccupation with reproducing the dynamics of the bourgeois matrimonial market on foreign soil in the mid-nineteenth century similarly necessitated a sociological pretext for racial purity. However, the kind of knowledge a typical traveller and employee of the East India Company brought to the Victorian public from his own researches in the brothels and streets of colonial India, which revealed how popular prostitution was as a vice amongst the officer class, was also more than a welcome imaginary relief from Christian morality; it was an alternative vision of modernity.

American Indian adolescent girls: vulnerability to sex trafficking, intervention strategies

The Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center offers harm reduction programming to at-risk adolescent American Indian girls, including outreach, case management, advocacy, healthy sexuality education, and support groups. To evaluate program impact, participants are assessed at intake and every 6 months afterward for current vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation, violence, and addiction. Evaluation results indicate frequent exposure to sex traffickers and suggest that harm reduction methods can help girls reduce risk of commercial sexual exploitation.

Sex, price and preferences: accounting for unsafe sexual practices in prostitution markets

Unsafe sexual practices are persistent in prostitution interactions: one in four contacts can be called unsafe. The determinants of this are still matter for debate. We account for the roles played by clients' preferences and the hypothetical price premium of unsafe sexual practices with the help of a large dataset of clients' self-reported commercial sexual transactions in Belgium and The Netherlands. Almost 25,000 reports were collected, representing the whole gamut of prostitution market segments. The first set of explanations consists of an analysis of the price-fixing elements of paid sex. With the help of the so-called hedonic pricing method we test for the existence of a price incentive for unsafe sex. In accordance with the results from studies in some prostitution markets in the developing world, the study replicates a significant wage penalty for condom use of an estimated 7.2 per cent, confirmed in both multilevel and fixed-effects regressions. The second part of the analysis reconstructs the demand side basis of this wage penalty: the consistent preference of clients of prostitution for unsafe sex. This study is the first to document empirically clients' preference for intercourse without a condom, with the help of a multilevel ordinal regression.

Women performers and prostitutes in Medieval India

Music and dance, the esoteric performing arts, were markers of culture in medieval India. A number of these differing forms developed into well-recognized and reputed arts over time. The practitioners were, accordingly, regarded as agents of refinement and culture. At the same time, music and dance were also among the most popular forms of entertainment and physical pleasure. This aspect remained crucial in classifying musicians, singers and dancers as entertainers, alongside prostitutes. While the labelling together might have reduced the status of performers at times, the labelling hardly remained fixed. Certain practitioners, even if involved in practices otherwise considered immoral, could remain within the elite circle, while for others the ‘evil’ characteristics got emphasized. There were, within the class of women who prostituted themselves, courtesans trained in the skills of music and dancing and educated in the fine arts, who were treated more as embodiments of culture. These categories—artists, skilled entertainers, courtesans—were quite fluid, with the boundaries seemingly fused together. Still, there were certainly some distinctions among the categories and those did not totally disappear, affording sanctity and purity to certain kinds of performers and allowing them to claim distinctiveness. Notably, the class of courtesans clearly stood apart from the common prostitutes. The attempt in this article is to look at different categories of women performers and prostitutes, their apparent coalescing boundaries and specialities as a separate group, their societal position, their shifting roles and the changes that affected their status. In this, it is worthwhile to consider the state’s attitude towards them, besides societal views that remained quite diverse.

Sex in an Imperial war zone: transnational encounters in Second World War India

This article suggests how the waging of war in an imperial setting may have reshaped military and civilian relations in India from 1939-45. The number of troops stationed in India had repercussions for society and local politics. The article investigates widespread prostitution as one aspect of the gendered wartime economy. Indian prostitution was closely linked to militarization and to the effects of the 1943 Bengal famine. The article also argues this was symptomatic of a more far-reaching renegotiation of the interactions between men and women in the Indian Empire of the 1940s. Other Indian, European, North American and Anglo-Indian women worked as nurses, with the Red Cross and in a variety of roles towards the war effort. Women were subject to new social and sexual demands due to the increased numbers of troops stationed in India in the 1940s.

Outdoor brothel culture: the un/making of a transsexual stroll in Vancouver's West End, 1975–1984

In the mid-1970s, following a series of police raids on prostitution inside downtown nightclubs, a community of approximately 200 sex workers moved into Vancouver's West End neighborhood, where a small stroll had operated since the early 1970s. This paper examines the contributions made by three male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals of color to the culture of on-street prostitution in the West End. The trans women's stories address themes of fashion, working conditions, money, community formation, violence, and resistance to well-organized anti-prostitution forces. These recollections enable me to bridge and enrich trans history and prostitution history – two fields of inquiry that have under-represented the participation of trans women in the sex industry across the urban West. Acutely familiar with the hazards inherent in a criminalized, stigmatized trade, trans sex workers in the West End manufactured efficacious strategies of harm reduction, income generation, safety planning, and community building. Eschewing the label of “victim”, they leveraged their physical size and style, charisma, contempt towards pimps, earning capacity, and seniority as the first workers on the stroll to assume leadership within the broader constituency of “hookers on Davie Street”. I discover that their short-lived outdoor brothel culture offered only a temporary bulwark against the inevitability of eviction via legal injunction in July 1984, and the subsequent rise in lethal violence against all prostitutes in Vancouver, including MTF transsexuals.

Trade circles: aspirations and ethnicity in commercial sex in Laos

The contours of commercial sex in Lao PDR are significantly shaped by forces facilitating the entry of women from one ethnic group, the Khmu, into this service industry niche. Agricultural transitions, development policies, changing gender roles, ethnic hierarchies, snowballing recruitment networks and growing capitalist sensibilities collectively prompt poor Khmu women to aspire to material gain via selling beer and sex. Their predominance in lower echelons of the sex industry demonstrates how forces of neoliberal expansion build on both opportunity and enduring marginalisation and that material economies are closely intertwined with intimate economies as trajectories of modernisation evolve in contemporary Laos.

Methamphetamine use and high-risk sexual behaviors among incarcerated female adolescents with a diagnosed STD

Juvenile detention settings provide an important venue for addressing the health-related needs of adolescent populations, who often have high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and concomitant drug use. This study examines factors associated with methamphetamine use and risky sexual behaviors among 539 incarcerated female adolescents between ages 12-18 years with an STD diagnosis. Data were obtained from interviews with detainees receiving STD case management services within a California juvenile detention facility in January 2006-June 2007. High-risk behaviors characterized the sample, such as low use of condoms consistently (43.3%), prior STD infection (25%), pregnancy history (26%), arrest charge for prostitution or drug use (23%), and a history of prostitution (18%). Half of the sample reported weekly alcohol or drug use; most commonly used drugs were marijuana (37%), alcohol (21%), and methamphetamine (16%). In multivariate analysis, African Americans had a lower odds of methamphetamine use (odds ratio [OR] = .163) compared with whites. Detainees who reported inconsistent condom use had over twice the odds of methamphetamine use (OR = 2.7) compared with consistent condom users. In addition, those who reported alcohol use had twice the odds of methamphetamine use (2.0). There was a significant interaction between Latina ethnicity and having an arrest charge for drugs or prostitution; Latinas who had this charge had over 11 times the odds of using methamphetamine compared with those with other arrest charges (OR = 11.28). A better understanding of the relationship between drug use and sexual risk behaviors of STD-positive incarcerated female adolescents can inform the development of appropriate corrections and community-based interventions serving this segment of high-risk adolescents.

"Women's bodies are shops": beliefs about transactional sex and implications for understanding gender power and HIV prevention in Tanzania

Although transactional sex has been linked to undesirable sexual health outcomes, there is a lack of clarity as to the meaning of the practice, which appears to extend beyond behaviors related to women's economic circumstances. This article explored the perspectives of parents and unmarried young people on motivations for, and beliefs about, transactional sex in rural Tanzania using an ethnographic research design. Data collection involved 17 focus groups and 46 in-depth interviews with young people aged 14-24 years and parents/caregivers. Transactional sex was widely accepted by both parents and young people. Male parents equated sexual exchange to buying meat from a butcher and interpreted women's demand for exchange before sex with personal power. Young men referred to transactional sex as the easiest way to get a woman to satisfy their sexual desires while also proving their masculinity. Young women perceived themselves as lucky to be created women as they could exploit their sexuality for pleasure and material gain. They felt men were stupid for paying for "goods" (vagina) they could not take away. Mothers were in agreement with their daughters. Although young women saw exploitation of the female body in positive terms, they were also aware of the health risks but ascribed these to bad luck. Interventions aimed at tackling transactional sex in the interests of women's empowerment and as a strategy for HIV prevention need to understand the cultural beliefs associated with the practice that may make it thrive despite the known risks.

Governing sex workers in Timor Leste

This paper argues that international security forces in Timor Leste depend upon civilian partners in HIV/AIDs "knowledge networks" to monitor prostitutes' disease status. These networks produce mobile expertise, techniques of government and forms of personhood that facilitate international government of distant populations without overt coercion. HIV/AIDs experts promote techniques of peer education, empowerment and community mobilisation to construct women who sell sex as health conscious sex workers. Such techniques make impoverished women responsible for their disease status, obscuring the political and economic contexts that produced that status. In the militarised context of Timor Leste, knowledge of the sexual conduct of sub-populations labelled high risk circulates among global HIV/AIDs knowledge networks, confirming their expert status while obscuring the sexual harm produced by military intervention. HIV/AIDs knowledge networks have recently begun to build Timorese sex worker organisations by contracting an Australian sex worker NGO to train a Timorese NGO tasked with building sex worker identity and community. Such efforts fail to address the needs and priorities of the women supposedly empowered. The paper engages theories of global knowledge networks, mobile technologies of government, and governmentality to analyse policy documents, reports, programmes, official statements, speeches, and journalistic accounts regarding prostitution in Timor Leste.

It’s not only for the money: an analysis of adolescent versus adult entry into street prostitution

Numerous studies examine the causal factors of entrance into prostitution and find economic marginalization, substance addiction, and interpersonal networks are common reasons women enter the trade. However, we know less about the role that age of onset plays in shaping female pathways into prostitution. Here, we build from insights into previous research by analyzing not only entry pathways but also how age categories are linked to time spent in the trade and whether the length of time in prostitution exacts a greater “toll” on women. Drawing from the feminist and age of onset literatures, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with female street prostitutes from five U.S. cities. Our results underscore the importance of age as an organizing feature of women’s pathways into prostitution and the potential associated consequences of working in this trade.

Rewriting the history of Chinese families in nineteenth-century Australia

The nineteenth-century Chinese population in Australia was made up mostly of men, drawing many commentators to the conclusion these men faced an absence of family life, resulting in prostitution, gambling, opium use and other so-called vices. Recent research has, however, expanded and complicated our knowledge of Chinese families in New South Wales and Victoria, particularly concerning the extent to which Chinese men and white Australian women formed intimate relationships. This article traces the origins of the misconceptions about Chinese families in nineteenth-century Australia, and considers how new directions in scholarship over the past decade are providing methods for enlarging our knowledge. It argues that instead of being oddities or exceptions, Chinese-European families were integral to the story of Australia's early Chinese communities.

Clerical "concubines" in northern Italy during the fourteenth century

This essay reconstructs the lives of a neglected group of women in the Christian church during the later Middle Ages. So-called clerical “concubines” were well-known in their communities, but their lived experience has been largely ignored by modern historians. Yet studying clerical concubines sheds light not only on the women themselves, but also on the social organization of the medieval Christian church. Drawing on information gathered from notarial acts across the northern Italian peninsula, I argue that concubines were not a unitary group. Their experiences varied instead according to their status and the regions they inhabited. For instance, while laywomen who became priests’ concubines moved into their lovers’ homes, nuns retained cells in their religious houses during these relationships. Furthermore, concubines in cities such as Treviso could openly live with their lovers and share their property, while in other places, such as Bergamo, severe legal restrictions on concubines made them a particularly vulnerable group.

Heterogeneous and vulnerable: the health risks facing transnational female sex workers

Representations of transnational sex workers have been dominated by the trafficked victim discourse that often overlooks the heterogeneity of this population and variations in the health risks that different sub-groups face. This paper addresses this deficiency by examining differences in the socio-economic backgrounds, working conditions, HIV/AIDS knowledge, and vulnerability to health risks of female sex workers from Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Mainland China currently working in the Chinese city of Macau. It also examines the correlates of three health risks: client-perpetrated violence, non-condom use and condom failure. The results show major differences in the socio-economic profiles, working conditions and exposure to health risks of the four groups of workers studied. They also suggest that age, ethnicity, education, economic pressure, AIDS and STI knowledge, and workplace condom-use norm are significant correlates of the three health risks examined. The findings shed light on the importance of locating the social and cultural contexts that constrain the response of different groups of transnational sex workers to health risks, and the need to tailor intervention measures to meet the specific conditions of individual groups. They also point out the urgency of tackling the interpersonal and structural obstacles to safe sex practices among marginalised populations.

Between Egyptian "national purity" and "local flexibility": prostitution in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the first half of the 20th century

This article traces prostitution in al-Mahalla in the first half of the 20th century as a regulated urban practice until the trade was outlawed in Egypt in 1949. Studying prostitution during this period of exceptionally rapid growth and transformation not only provides a window on a particular type of illicit sexuality and public morality in a colonial context, it also gives us a hint as to gender relations and inter-communal relations on the invisible marginalized part of a provincial local community, and how it was socially transformed. I argue that the regulation of prostitution in Egypt in 1882 and 1905 created a sphere for a power contest between the colonial state and the local community, between nationalist discourse and the local way of life, and between public morality and private space. While nationalist discourse constructed one virtuous nation, the local community accepted the licensed prostitution quarter, and resisted secret prostitution. The people of the town actively and continually shifted boundaries on what was public and what was private, what was the state's responsibility and what was communal liability.

Race, space, place: notes on the racialisation and spatialisation of commercial sex work in Dubai, UAE

This paper focuses on the perceived racialisation and resultant spatialisation of commercial sex in Dubai. In recent years, the sex industry in Dubai has grown to include women from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa. With the increase in sex workers of different nationalities has come a form of localised racism that is embedded in structures and desires seen within specific locations. The physical spatialisation of sex work hinges on perceived race and produces distinct income generating potential for women engaged in the sex industry in Dubai. The social and physical topography of Dubai is important in marginalising or privileging these various groups of sex workers, which correlates race, space and place with rights and assistance. I begin with a description of the multidirectional flows of causality between race, space, place and demand. I then discuss how these various groups are inversely spatialised within the discourse on assistance, protection and rights. The findings presented here are based on ethnographic research conducted with transnational migrants in the UAE in 2004, 2008 and 2009.

"You still need to give her a token of appreciation": the meaning of the exchange of money in the sexual relationships of out-of-school adolescents in rural southwest Uganda

This article challenges the pervasive assumption that exchanging gifts and money in adolescent sexual relationships is transactional. Data were derived from a multi-method, qualitative sexual health needs assessment of 31 out-of-school adolescents in rural southwest Uganda. Grounded theory analysis allows contextual meanings of exchange to emerge. Adolescents have developed gendered courting and exchange models that parallel marital relationships in this cultural context. Whereas exchange is considered transactional and immoral in some types of relationships, in adolescent relationships, it is not. Young women are not ashamed of, or stigmatized by, the exchange; they are proud of it. The exchange signifies several things: self-respect and a partner's willingness to wait for the relationships to become sexual and, therefore, that they are valued and respected by their partners. This demonstrates commitment from a partner, whose role is as a provider. To expect no gift or to have sex for pleasure are the hallmarks of the worst kind of woman-a malaya. "Need" is the only acceptable rationale for extramartial sex for any woman in this sexual value system. Interventions promoting longer courting and sustained support for one partner would encourage a delay in debut for young women and encourage greater monogamy in young men.

Meanings of sex, concepts of risk and sexual practices among migrant coal miners in Quang Ninh, Vietnam

The study explores the meanings of sex among migrant coal miners in Vietnam and identifies contextual factors influencing engagement in unsafe sexual practices. Findings reveal that sex carries a number of social meanings in the lives of migrant miners: sex is relaxation and reward for their risk and hard work; access to sex is an incentive for miners to continue working in the mine; sex strengthens identity and social networks; sex helps miners to affirm manhood, group membership and masculinity; and sex workers are confidants with whom they can share their problems. Facing accidents at work on a daily basis, miners are less inclined to worry about the long-term risks of HIV infection. In addition, being excluded from access to relevant information, miners feel distant from HIV infection. Findings suggest that interventions on sexual behaviour and practices should be sensitive to the concepts of risk and meanings of sex among migrant groups such as coal miners.

The State, the family and language of 'social evils': re-stigmatising victims of trafficking in Vietnam

The Vietnamese Government continues to take steps to address trafficking in women and girls. However, rather than perceiving trafficking as a violation of human rights, greater attention is given by the government to its effects on society and social morals, particularly where victims have engaged in sex work in destination countries. Trafficked returnees are directly implicated in the State's approach to defining sex work as a 'social evil'. This approach reproduces the socio-economic inequality involved in trafficking and further marginalises trafficked women. Simultaneously, although Vietnamese women are often drawn into trafficking due to family obligations, they frequently face dishonour upon their return or are forced to hide the truth of their experience of being trafficked. This paper argues that the language of 'social evils' and the responses of the State and family undermine the ability of trafficked returnees to reintegrate. This is heightened where returnees are deemed to be transmitters of HIV infection, hence suffering human trafficking, sex-work and HIV/AIDS-related stigma. I also reflect upon whether the approach of service providers exacerbates stigma, particularly in the context of shelter rehabilitation and present several recommendations for reform, the most pressing being the need to eliminate the language of 'social evils'.

Seduction, prostitution, and the control of female desire in popular Antebellum fiction

During the antebellum era, increased attention to the prostitute coincided with a prevalent conception of women as, in Nancy Cott's words, essentially "passionless" unless aroused by sincere romantic love. Yet it seems paradoxical that this ideology existed alongside an increasing awareness of women whose livelihood depended upon manufacturing and marketing sexual desire. In this essay I argue that the prostitute became an object of antebellum fascination and concern less because of her defiance of the ideology of passionlessness and more because of the extent to which she could be made to reinforce this ideology. Casting the prostitute as a victim of seduction preserved predominant beliefs about the dependency of female desire on male impetus. The popular novels of George Thompson and Osgood Bradbury elide the sexual autonomy of the prostitute by making her a victim of men, but they do so in different ways. Thompson employs two variants of the seduction narrative that differ according to class, but both result in the subjection of female desire to male control. His indigent females are chaste victims of violent forms of sexual exploitation, while his licentious rich women reveal an inherent tendency toward monogamy or an inability to command their own aberrant desires. Bradbury, in contrast, is remarkable for his willingness to allow fallen women and prostitutes the chance to reform. As refreshingly progressive as Bradbury's novels seem, however, his adherence to the seduction narrative ultimately suggests that female desire is doomed to dissatisfaction unless properly channeled toward working-class men.

"This base stallion trade": he-whores and male sexuality on the early modern stage

Recent scholarship on early modern male sexuality has stressed the threat that sexual relations with women were believed to pose to manhood. Focusing on such plays as Middleton's Your Five Gallants (c. 1608), Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of The Country (c.1620), and Davenant's The Just Italian (1630), this paper analyzes representations of male prostitutes for women to argue that cultural attitudes toward male sexual performance were more complex and self-contradictory than generally acknowledged. The patriarchal codes that warned against effeminating sexual desire and advocated parsimonious seminal “spending” are undermined by their own inherent corollary: the most masculine man is one who can demonstrate unlimited seminal capacity. Furthermore, it has been posited that the early modern period marked the beginning of a shift from “reproductive” to “performative” constructions of manhood, in which the manhood-affirming aspects of male sexuality gradually became unmoored from their traditional association with bloodlines and attached instead to penetrative sexual conquest. The class implications of this shift inform patriarchal anxieties about the superior sexual stamina of servant-class men and their bodily “service” to elite women. Representing a fantasy of empowering male sexuality that relies on detaching virile performance from effeminating desire—a physiologically absurd notion—and on providing sexual “service” while leaving intact both class and gender hierarchies, a successful he-whore like Middleton's Tailby or Davenant's Sciolto playfully challenges the dictates of patriarchal masculinity by fulfilling them in absurd and unorthodox ways. Ultimately, he illuminates just how untenable those dictates might be.

The regulation of prostitution in Beyoğlu (1875-1915)

This study examines the development and nature of the regulation of prostitution in Beyoğlu during the late Ottoman Empire with special emphasis on the way the regulationist regime reinforced existing patterns of class and gender domination. The regulation of prostitution became a matter of urgency in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Istanbul, particularly in Beyoğlu, the cosmopolitan centre of the city. Through this process, the protests of the local residents of the area objecting to the proliferation of prostitution in their neighbourhoods played a crucial role in prompting the governmental authorities to tighten the regulations.

Muslim women and foreign prostitutes: victim discourse, subjectivity, and governance

In this article, we juxtapose the ways “Muslim women” and “foreign prostitutes” are commonly constituted as victims in media and politics. We analyze the functions of these two prototypical female victims in terms of the role they play in epitomizing “the problems of globalization” and in reinforcing the existing social and political structures. Victim discourse, when tied to the transnational proliferation of the sex industry and of (radical) Islam, has depoliticizing effects because it places nonindividual causes of victimization outside of “our” polity and society and casts the state as protector and neutral arbiter of national and global inequalities, marginalization, and social conflict.

The role of the concentration camps in the Nazi repression of prostitutes, 1933-9

This article uses prostitutes as a case study in order to investigate the role of the early concentration camps as centres of detention for social deviants. In contrasting the intensification of repressive policies towards prostitutes against narratives which demonstrate the unexpectedly lax treatment of these women, it explores what the reasons behind these contradictions might have been, and what this demonstrates about the development of these institutions. It asks the following questions. How and why were prostitutes interned? Which bureaucrats were responsible for incarcerating these women and what did they view the role of the camp to be? Were such policies centrally directed or the product of local decision-making? Through asking these questions, the article explores to what extent these camps were unique as mechanisms for the repression and marginalization of prostitutes.

Vulnerability of Nigerian secondary school to human sex trafficking in Nigeria

Sex trafficking contributes to the cycle of violence against women, and inflicts global social and health consequences, particularly in this era of HIV/AIDS pandemic. This paper is based on a cross-sectional survey conducted in two urban and two rural schools located in Delta and Edo states of Nigeria. The aim is to assess in-school students' knowledge and awareness of, and attitude toward sex trafficking as a way to understanding their personal vulnerability to trafficking. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered in 2004-2005 to a classroom random sample of 689 adolescents in the age range of 16-20 years. The results show that in-school adolescents are vulnerable to sex trafficking due to poverty (77.2%); unemployment (68.4%); illiteracy (56.1%); and low social status (44.5%). Students in co-ed schools showed higher knowledge and awareness of the serious health consequences of trafficking.

Structural and environmental barriers to condom use negotiation with clients among female sex workers: implications for HIV-prevention strategies and policy

OBJECTIVES

We investigated the relationship between environmental-structural factors and condom-use negotiation with clients among female sex workers.

METHODS

We used baseline data from a 2006 Vancouver, British Columbia, community-based cohort of female sex workers, to map the clustering of "hot spots" for being pressured into unprotected sexual intercourse by a client and assess sexual HIV risk. We used multivariate logistic modeling to estimate the relationship between environmental-structural factors and being pressured by a client into unprotected sexual intercourse.

RESULTS

In multivariate analyses, being pressured into having unprotected sexual intercourse was independently associated with having an individual zoning restriction (odds ratio [OR] = 3.39; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.00, 9.36), working away from main streets because of policing (OR = 3.01; 95% CI = 1.39, 7.44), borrowing a used crack pipe (OR = 2.51; 95% CI = 1.06, 2.49), client-perpetrated violence (OR = 2.08; 95% CI = 1.06, 4.49), and servicing clients in cars or in public spaces (OR = 2.00; 95% CI = 1.65, 5.73).

CONCLUSIONS

Given growing global concern surrounding the failings of prohibitive sex-work legislation on sex workers' health and safety, there is urgent need for environmental-structural HIV-prevention efforts that facilitate sex workers' ability to negotiate condom use in safer sex-work environments and criminalize abuse by clients and third parties.

Correlates of paid sex among men who have sex with men in Chennai, India

OBJECTIVES

To assess correlates of paid sex among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Chennai, India.

METHODS

A randomised survey was conducted among 200 MSM recruited from public sex environments using time-space sampling. The association of predictors with paid sex was assessed with chi(2) tests and multiple logistic regression.

RESULTS

Participants' mean age was 28.5 years (SD 8.7). Most (71.5%) were kothis; 60% had less than high school education and two-thirds had a monthly income less than 2000 Indian rupees. More than one-third (35.0%) reported daily/weekly harassment; 40.5% reported forced sex in the past year. The prevalence of paid sex was 59.5% (95% CI 52.7% to 66.3%). Univariate analyses indicated that paid sex was associated with kothi identity (chi(2) = 14.46; p<0.01), less than high school education (chi(2) = 4.79; p<0.05), harassment (chi(2) = 11.75; p<0.01) and forced sex (chi(2) = 3.98; p<0.05). Adjusted analyses revealed that paid sex was associated with kothi identity (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 2.62, 95% CI 1.34 to 5.10) and harassment (AOR 2.34, 95% CI 1.16 to 4.72). MSM who engaged in paid sex (versus no paid sex) had a mean of 31 partners in the past month (versus 4, t = 6.17, p<0.001) and 71.2% used condoms consistently (versus 46.4%, chi(2) = 18.34; p<0.01). Overall, 32.5% were never tested for HIV.

CONCLUSIONS

Epidemic rates of harassment and sexual violence against MSM who engage in paid sex, predominantly kothis, suggest that interventions should target structural factors placing these men at increased risk of HIV/sexually transmitted infections and other health-compromising conditions. The effectiveness of individual-level, knowledge-based and condom-focused preventive interventions may be constrained in the context of poverty, low education, harassment and sexual violence.