Gail Pheterson

The Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness

Whore means prostitute. And a prostitute is a woman who offers to hire her body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse, or so says The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Prostitute is further defined as a verb: to prostitute oneself is to sell ones honor for base gain or to put ones abilities to infamous use. Other dictionaries include men1 secondarily in the noun definition and specify in the verb definition the shame attached to dishonor and the unworthiness and wrongdoing attached to infamous use. The noun clearly denotes a person, especially a woman, offering heterosexual sex, in particular intercourse, for money; the verb denotes any persons activity, which need not be sexual, put to uncommendable use. Those meanings are likely to conform to popular opinion except that many people collapse the second definition into the first. A prostitute then becomes one who sells her honor by offering to hire her body for base gain or for an unworthy doing, specifically sexual intercourse. The following discussion will begin by comparing the dictionarys noun definition with the actual behavior of prostitutes. Since a whore is a prostitute, both words will be used interchangeably throughout this text. Actual whore life is described for the purpose of testing formal as well as popular definitions with reality. There are many reasons for exposing the reality of prostitution. Nonprostitute women are socialized not to possess sexual information or skill, not to talk about sex, not to ask for money in any situation, and not to associate with whores. A sharing of prostitute financial and sexual practices with nonprostitute women challenges that socialization, challenges the divisions it imposes upon women, and challenges the normative assumption of female sexual and financial dependency.

The category “prostitute” in scientific inquiry

Social science research is infected with prejudices against prostitute‐branded women. Even the category “prostitute” is based more upon symbolic and legal representations of the bad woman or whore than upon an actual set of characteristics within a population of persons. Two recent articles in The Journal of Sex Research, one which concludes that prostitutes are a devastating health menace to men, women, and babies and the other which concludes that prostitutes experience greater sexual satisfaction than other women, illustrate the problem. Researchers are criticized for limiting their study of sexual‐economic behavior to prostitutes and for relying upon a status variable, “prostitute,” in designing a broad range of needed research in which status is either irrelevant or one variable among many. Deconstruction of the category “prostitute” is necessary to counter prejudice and to conduct scientifically valid inquiry.

Love in Freedom

GAIL PHETERSON began her work in the Netherlands in 1975 when invited by Dutch feminists to give training in feminist radical therapy. Shortly thereafter she moved from America to Holland and, after a year of writing and facilitating feminist groups, she began teaching psychology and women studies at the University of Utrecht as well as teaching social work at IVABO, a graduate school in Amsterdam. In 1979 she organized an alliance project of black women with white women allies, lesbian women with heterosexual women allies, and Jewish women with non-Jewish women allies. That ongoing project, focused upon both understanding and combatting oppression, was in part inspired by the ideas presented in this essay on love in freedom.

Wards of the State: Pregnant and Prostitute Women

The paper demonstrates common mechanisms underlying state control of prostitute and pregnant women. On a global level, institutional regulation of pregnancy and prostitution has been incorporated into “population control” and “migration control” under the name of “family planning” and “anti trafficking”. Although those policies fit within a coherent system, reproductive and sexual issues are most often isolated, or framed as ideological and strategic opposites, also by feminist theorists and activists. This false dichotomy reinforces the division of women and colludes with social hypocrisy and injustice.

Identité de groupe et rapports sociaux aux Etats-Unis, aux Pays-Bas et en France

IDENTIDAD DEL GRUPO Y RELACIONES SOCIALES EN ESTADOS UNIDOS, HOLANDA Y FRANCIA El autor compara los conceptos de « identidad de grupo » y de « relaciones sociales » en Estados Unidos, Holanda y Francia. Entre el sueňo americano de adquisicion, el ideal neerlandes de tolerancia y la nocion francesa de una comunidad de ciudadanos se evidencian los diversos sentidos de la identidad de grupo. Los debates feministas sobre la oposicion esencialismo/materialismo o esencialismo/construccionismo social permiten ilustrar las implicaciones politicas y teoricas.