Whores and Heroes: Prostituting the Self as a Mediated Commodity (From Women, Crime and Culture: Whores and Heroes, P 117-137, 1998, Stephanie McMahon, ed. -- See NCJ-182071)

• NCJ Number: 182073
• Author(s): L. A. Visano
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 21 pages
• Sale Source: Centre for Police and Security Studies
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

Prostitution is examined in relation to cultural, political, and legal issues, with emphasis on the need to avoid a narrow legal discussion and instead to consider social justice.

Abstract

The stereotypical designation of prostitution refers to dominant discourses that justify control of challenges to social orders that are socially constructed and historically rooted. Specifically, law, morality, and capital are foundations of gendered control. Prostitution challenges prevailing moral rules and ordered worlds. It also has implications and applications that directly confront issues of male privilege and hegemonic knowledge claims. Prostitution as the affirmation of the authentic threatens the colonizing projects of capitalist cultures. The whore is not a disembodied spectacle; instead, it remains fully emblematic of the success of capital. The whore in a capitalist economy is a ubiquitous characteristic of a duplicitous society that refuses to confront the governing logic of labor in a predatory culture. Therefore, the appropriate way to consider prostitution is as a phenomenon that is contextualized culturally, mediated politically, and articulated legally. 51 references