Both the mechanisms that propel women into the
sex industry, and the discourses of clients who demand commercial sex have been analyized extensively. The selling of sexual services is a form of alienation as well as an exploitative relation of appropriated labor. It is a phenomenon, much like slavery, that has proliferated with the spread of capitalist markets, and with gender, sexual, and racial oppression. Yes, slavery made a huge comeback with the spread of market relations in the 1500s.
the selling of a body and as an inherently self-estranging activity.2 What makes prostitution
more problematic than other activities is not just the use of the human body but
the sexual use of a woman’s body (Pateman 1988, 204). Sexuality is regarded as one
of the most intimate aspects of the self. It is integral to and cannot be separated from
the self; therefore, a prostitute who sells her sexuality is also selling her “self.” In order
to protect her “self” psychologically, a prostitute must distance herself from her sexual
use (Pateman 1988, 207). While this process of emotional distancing, disengagement,
and segmentation is vital to women’s survival in prostitution, it is also “destructive of
women’s humanity” and intensifies the damage and psychological toll on them (Barry
1995, 32). The buying and selling of sexuality for the client’s own use transforms the
body into a vessel or object; the body becomes alienated as it is used as a “thing” for
someone else. This process of objectification is also seen to spill over to the objectification
of all women.
