Lakoff, Language and Women’s Place” Thesis ’women’s la.docx

Lakoff, “Language and Women’s Place”
Thesis: “’women’s language’ “submerges a woman’s personal
identity, by denying her the means
of expressing herself strongly, on the one hand, and
encouraging expressions that suggest
triviality in subject-matter and uncertainty about it; and, when a
woman is being discussed, by
treating her as an object—sexual or otherwise—but never a
serious person with individual
views” (48).
“Women experience discrimination in two ways: in the way
they are taught to use language, and
in the way general language uses them” (46)
Methods:
Evidence:
Women are taught to use language differently than are men
[Provide examples]
Lexicon (word choice): color terms: women use more nuanced
terms, i.e. mauve
Weaker “meaningless particles” i.e. Oh dear v. Oh shit (51)
(52) adjectives: “Woman only” divine, lovely-If men use these,
if denigrates them Significance?
Shows expectations and position of women are different from
those of men; women expected to
be “ladylike”; (51) women are denied more forceful linguistic
resources, which ‘reinforces’ men
’s position of strength in the real wold”

Also: (47) if girls aren’t allowed to speak strongly, they grow
up to be women who cannot
express themselves forcefully or speak precisely.
These patterns show that women are in more marginalized
positions in society, vis a vis men-
and these patterns reinforce those power inequities: women
don’t want to use strong language
because reinforce negative stereotype that women are “too
emotional”;
Syntax (grammar): Women use more tag question, don’t
they?(55) avoids conflict; less assertive.
Use rising intonation (56): even with non-question? Speakers
who do this not taken as seriously.
The language uses women differently than it uses men (i.e. talk
about women differs than talk
about men) [Provide examples]
“lady”(59): sounds less serious than “woman” (like Romaine)
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Asymmetric pairs (Romaine’s term): for linguistically equal
terms, female pair is often
sexualized; female is referred to relation to the male, but vice
versa
Naming: men more likely to be referred by their titles; “Ms”
misfired (72)
Significance and Resonance [TO DO IN LECTURE]: Why does
this matter? To what extent are
these trends still true today (and how would we know?). How
does this work compare to our
previous course readings?

Women, especially women of color are marginalized; men also
limited in emotional range
because of “toxic” or “hegemonic” masculinity
(75-76) “women”s lib movement: important to fight “right ”
battles; i.e. point out asymmetries
“herstories;” not naming hurricanes only after women (this has
changes)
For teachers: being aware of how they use language with
students
Teachers of (foreign) language- be aware of social context in
which language is embedded
Language make us participants in our own subjugation; even the
subjugated can be (unwittingly)
complicit in reproducing gender-biased ideologies.
(73) linguistic imbalances-> point to real world imbalance,
external situation that needs
changing.
Resonance with other readings? Romaine “English man made”
(labelling, naming, asymmetrical
pairs)
How does this reading relate to our reading coming up
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Feminist Criminology
2015, Vol. 10(3) 211 –234
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1557085114541141
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Article
Sex Workers/Sex
Offenders: Exclusionary
Criminal Justice
Practices in New Orleans
Susan Dewey1 and Tonia P. St. Germain1
Abstract
Until 2012, the New Orleans criminal justice system forced
persons convicted of
certain prostitution offenses to register as sex offenders under
an antiquated (1805)
statute that criminalizes oral or anal sex in exchange for
compensation. This article
explores attitudes and beliefs that enabled Louisiana’s misuse
of the sex offender
registry against primarily indigent African American street-
based sex worker
women and transgender individuals. Findings presented here
derive from a feminist
interdisciplinary (cultural anthropology and law)
methodological strategy that included
qualitative ethnography, quantitative examination of
Louisiana’s 64 parish-specific sex
offender registries, and legal/policy analysis.
Keywords
sex work, prostitution, sex offender registration, intersections
of race/class/gender,

legal issues, political/state crime
The lingering injustice, resulting from over 20 years of
discriminatory enforcement of
this law at police and prosecutors’ whims, will now finally
come to an end. The State of
Louisiana will now finally bring its conduct into compliance
with the Constitution and
the court’s prior rulings. This is an unqualified victory for
Black women, poor women,
and LGBTQ people who fought back against injustice and won.
—Andrea Ritchie, cocounsel in Doe v. Jindal and Doe v.
Caldwell
(Louisiana Justice Institute, 2013).
1University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA
Corresponding Author:
Susan Dewey, Gender & Women’s Studies, 102 Ross Hall, 1000
E. University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY
82070.
Email: [email protected]
541141 FCXXXX10.1177/1557085114541141Feminist
CriminologyDewey and St. Germain
research-article2014
mailto:[email protected]
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F15570851
14541141&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2014-09-16
212 Feminist Criminology 10(3)
This article draws on findings from a mixed methods study to
analyze the means by

which the New Orleans criminal justice system employed
Louisiana’s arcane “Crime
Against Nature by Solicitation” (CANS) statute1 to convict sex
workers and conse-
quently force them to register as sex offenders. It examines how
CANS’ application
disproportionately affected African American women and
transgender individuals,
leading the Louisiana Supreme Court, in 2012, to deem the law
unconstitutional and,
in 2013, to mandate the removal of convicted sex workers’
names from the sex offender
registry (Doe et al. v. Jindal et al., 2012; Doe et al. v. Caldwell
et al., 2013). Following
an exploration of the complexities involved in public policy and
legal debates sur-
rounding U.S. criminal justice responses to street-based sex
work, this article employs
qualitative interview findings to elucidate four discriminatory
forces African American
women and transgender individuals face in New Orleans. The
impact of these forces
worsen dramatically as a result of sex offender registration
following a CANS convic-
tion: gender-based violence, and exclusion from employment,
housing, and family and
community. Subsequent analysis draws upon quantitative data
gleaned from
Louisiana’s sex offender registry, which comprises 64 parish-
specific2 jurisdictions, to
establish the overrepresentation of African American women
and transgender indi-
viduals. Findings presented indicate that these four types of
sociolegal exclusion func-
tion to deepen, formalize, and legitimize discrimination against
African American

women and transgender individuals.
The Law Is Only as Good as the People Who Enforce It:
CANS and Criminal Justice Responses to Street-Based
Sex Work
They [the criminal justice system] call it “crimes against
nature” but it doesn’t mean you
had sex with a child, it could be oral sex in a car with a man.
It’s unfair to the woman
that’s trying to start over. It’s gonna force her back into
circumstances that she don’t
wanna get back into. You can’t find nowhere to stay, your
people not takin’ you in, you
just got out of jail, you have no job, what else can you do? So
you go back to the familiar,
and that’s it. It’s hard. (Latasha, personal communication,
August 2012)
Latasha, a mother of three who was struggling with crack
addiction and homelessness
at the time of her CANS conviction, became a felon and a sex
offender prior to the
legislative change. As a 45-year-old former New Orleans street-
based sex worker,3
Latasha is just one of 230 women who, prior to the 2013
Louisiana Supreme Court
decision, registered as a sex offender following a prosecutor’s
decision to charge, and
a court’s decision to convict, her with CANS, a felony offense,
rather than the misde-
meanor charge of prostitution. This was true of a full 80% of
women listed on the sex
offender registry of Orleans Parish and neighboring Jefferson
Parish. Some of the
tasks women like Latasha were required to undertake following

a CANS conviction
included providing law enforcement officials with their full
contact information,
which was made public on the sex offender registry, carrying
state-issued identifica-
tion that reads “sex offender,” paying hefty registration and
other fines, and restricting
Dewey and St. Germain 213
themselves to living in certain areas (Louisiana R.S. 15:542).
These legal stipulations,
as Latasha observes, virtually ensure that individuals who had
received a CANS con-
viction as a result of their involvement in prostitution continued
to struggle with find-
ing housing, employment, and faced stigma, marginalization,
and potential violence
within their communities. As registered sex offenders, female
and transgender sex
workers face the same felony charges, limits on their personal
freedoms, and moral
opprobrium as those who have raped, kidnapped, and otherwise
inflicted severe viola-
tions against another person’s bodily integrity.
CANS is an antiquated statute adopted in 1805 outlawing
“unnatural carnal copula-
tion,” which comprises oral and anal (but not vaginal) sex
(Louisiana Statute 14:89.2).
These activities became connected to the sex offender registry
in 1996 under circum-
stances unique to Louisiana. Sex offender registries are still a
relatively recent crimi-

nal justice practice that emerged as part of the Wetterling Act,
which was amended in
1996 to require public disclosure of sex offender registrants’
names and addresses, and
again in 2006 to extend the minimum period of sex offender
registration to 15 years
(U.S. Congress, 2006). This federal legislation clearly targeted
violent sexual preda-
tors with a history of harming children, rather than women who,
like Latasha, have
engaged in street-based sex work as a survival strategy while
addicted and precari-
ously housed. Yet in 1996 Louisiana legislators opted to apply
the sex offender registry
requirements to the crimes against nature statute (Louisiana RS
15:540), becoming the
only U.S. state to require people convicted of crimes that do not
involve minors or
sexual violence to register as sex offenders.
Prior to the 2012 and 2013 Louisiana Supreme Court rulings,
individuals convicted
under the CANS law had to carry state-issued identification,
such as a driver’s license,
with the words “sex offender” printed below their name. They
were required to pay a
US$60 annual registration fee as well as fees ranging between
US$250 and US$750 to
print and mail postcards featuring their name, address, and
photograph to their neigh-
bors every time they moved. Like any registered sex offender,
CANS offenders who
failed to register and pay these fees were guilty of a separate
crime that carried penal-
ties of up to 10 years in prison (Louisiana R.S. 15:542).
Individuals with a CANS

conviction had their names, addresses, and convictions appear
in newspapers, in an
online sex offender database, and at public sites such as schools
and community cen-
ters (Louisiana R.S. 15:542).
In March 2012, in response to Doe et al. v. Jindal et al., the
legislature passed
Louisiana House Bill 141,4 which ensured that prostitution and
CANS offenses shared
the same penalty—no more than a misdemeanor conviction. The
judge in that case
ruled that the sex offender registration requirement under CANS
violated the Equal
Protection Clause and ordered the state of Louisiana to cease
and desist from placing
any individuals convicted of CANS on the registry and to
remove the plaintiffs from
the registry within 30 days. Prior to this ruling, law
enforcement had a choice between
charging accused sex workers under the prostitution law, which
was a misdemeanor,
or under the centuries-old CANS law, a felony. The result was
that people convicted of
the CANS felony were forced to register as sex offenders and
those convicted of pros-
titution were not. Yet the removal from the registry only applied
to the nine plaintiffs
in the case, meaning that women like Latasha remained on the
registry and could have
been required to continue as registered sex offenders for 15

years from the date of their
first registration (Louisiana R.S. 15:544).
To purge the names of all CANS offenders from the sex
offender registry, a federal
class action lawsuit, Doe et al. v. Caldwell et al. had to be filed.
On June 12, 2013, Doe
et al. v. Caldwell et al. was settled and Louisiana removed from
the sex offender reg-
istry approximately 700 individuals who had been required to
register solely because
of a CANS conviction. Analysis presented below examines the
impact of sex offender
registration–related discriminatory forces following a CANS
conviction on African
American women and transgender individuals, including
gender-based violence and
exclusion from employment, housing, and family and
community.
Sociolegal Research Context
Doe et al. v. Jindal et al. exposed how the New Orleans criminal
justice system used
the CANS legislation to deliberately target African American
women and transgender
individuals, two populations already suffering from multiple
forms of sociolegal
exclusion. New Orleans, which has some of the nation’s highest
rates of poverty,
crime, illiteracy, and generalized economic deprivation, lost
30% of its population
subsequent to Hurricane Katrina’s massive destruction (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2012a),
which only compounded the steady reduction in stable jobs in
shipping and related

industries that had been ongoing since the 1970s (BondGraham,
2007; Frailing &
Harper, 2007). Researchers generally concur that Hurricane
Katrina disproportion-
ately negatively affected African Americans living in poverty
by exacerbating previ-
ously existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities (Barnshaw
& Trainor, 2007;
Hawkins & Maurer, 2012), access to affordable or subsidized
housing (Bullard &
Wright, 2007), and notions of personal and community safety
(Hawkins & Maurer,
2011), issues often only further compounded for sex workers.
Louisiana women are among the poorest in the United States,
the least likely to
have health insurance, and more than 40% of female-headed
households in New
Orleans live below the federal poverty line (Jones-Deweever &
Hartmann, 2006).
Median household income in New Orleans is US$37,325, a full
US$15,437 less than
the national average (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013a, 2013b), and
less than half of New
Orleanians, opposed to 70% of Louisianans, own their homes
(U.S. Census Bureau,
2012a, 2012b). Rates of crack and heroin use (as well as drug-
related sex markets) are
equivalent to New York City, which is nearly eight times New
Orleans’ size (Dunlap,
Johnson, & Morse, 2007).
These problems are systematically embedded in a political
culture, long predat-
ing Hurricane Katrina, that not only seems to absolve itself of
responsibility for its

less privileged constituents, but to actively target them. As
Louisiana Republican
Congressperson Richard H. Baker observed in the wake of the
most destructive
storm in the state’s history, “we finally cleaned up public
housing in New Orleans.
We couldn’t do it, but God did” (Long, 2007, p. 3). The
speaker’s use of the phrase
“cleaned up” with reference to the massive destruction wrought
by Hurricane
Katrina on Louisiana’s poorest communities is symptomatic of
the embedded nature
of a broader discriminatory culture mirrored in CANS-related
law enforcement
practices.
Increased scrutiny of these law enforcement practices and
mobilization toward
legal reform of the CANS statute, particularly the sex offender
registration require-
ment, came in the wake of increased federal government
scrutiny of the New Orleans
Police Department (NOPD). Just days after his inauguration as
Mayor of New Orleans,
Mitch Landrieu (2010) wrote to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder to request that the
U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division engage in a
full investigation of the
NOPD, noting,
I have inherited a police force that has been described by many

as one of the worst police
departments in the country. This assessment is made based on
several indicators including
the number of violent crimes, incidents of rape, and
malfeasance by members of the
police department. The force itself has been dealt a
demoralizing blow with the
investigations, indictments, and resignations stemming from
incidents in the days
following Hurricane Katrina. It is clear that nothing short of a
complete transformation is
necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New
Orleans. The police force,
the community, and our citizens are desperate for positive
change.
In response, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights
Division conducted a full
investigation of the NOPD, reporting in 2011 that
the NOPD has long been a troubled agency. Basic elements of
effective policing—clear
policies, training, accountability, and confidence of the
citizenry—have been absent for
years. Far too often, officers show a lack of respect for the civil
rights and dignity of the
people of New Orleans. (p. v)
The report resulting from the Department of Justice
investigation also found that
NOPD officers practiced unrestrained discretion in making
decisions about who to
arrest, and “failed to take meaningful steps to counteract and
eradicate bias based on
race, ethnicity, and LGBT status in policing practices” (U.S.
Department of Justice,

Civil Rights Division, 2011, p. v). This bias actively manifested
in CANS, which the
same report referred to as “a statute whose history reflects anti-
LGBT sentiment”
(U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, 2011, p. x).
These police behaviors resulted in racial profiling of African
American women
and transgender individuals as part of “a pattern or practice of
discriminatory polic-
ing in violation of constitutional and statutory law” (U.S.
Department of Justice, Civil
Rights Division, 2011, p. xi). Such policing practices relied on
an arresting officer’s
individual professional judgment with respect to detaining an
individual on prostitu-
tion or CANS-related charges. Findings from both the U.S.
Department of Justice
report and our own research strongly indicates that CANS-
related policing conse-
quently took the form of bias-based profiling, in which an
officer decides whom to
stop, search, or arrest based on racial or gender stereotypes,
rather than reasonable
suspicion or probable cause.
Research Method
The interdisciplinary research team, made up of a cultural
anthropologist and a
legal scholar, began preliminary research in December 2011 as
part of a broader

project investigating belief systems about sex work and sex
trafficking among
criminal justice professionals, sex workers, social service
providers, and social jus-
tice activists. The research examined occupation-specific
beliefs, perceptions, and
practices among these groups, particularly in terms of legal
distinctions between
sex workers as individuals who voluntarily participate in
criminalized behavior and
hence face prosecution, and sex trafficked persons as those who
have been victim-
ized by a third party and hence have entitlement to social
services and legal
protections.
Qualitative research comprised interviews with participants
from four groups,
defined as follows: (a) criminal justice professionals, any public
sector employee
sworn to uphold the law; (b) sex workers, those who self-
identify as having traded
sex or sexualized intimacy for money or something of value at
some point in their
lives; (c) social service providers, those paid to assist low-
income or otherwise mar-
ginalized individuals with receiving government or charitable
benefits and facilities,
including food, shelter, health care and housing; (d) social
justice activists, who
engage in harm reduction–oriented efforts to enact what they
believe to be positive
changes for particular communities. Data collected included 20
total semistructured
interviews with participants from each group. Interviews were
audio-recorded with

permission and detailed field notes were taken when permission
to record was
declined. Two of the criminal justice professionals and all five
of the sex workers
interviewed did not permit recording. Data analysis employed
methodological trian-
gulation of interview transcripts, field notes from interviews
and observation, legal
documents, news reports, and materials produced for
dissemination by social justice
groups.
The coinvestigators undertook a quantitative analysis of all 64
parish-specific sites
of the Louisiana sex offender registry, which the first author
compiled from May 31 to
June 2, 2013 by reviewing the 10,919 individual sex offender
webpages that the
Louisiana State Police’s Public Safety Services had posted for
each of the state’s par-
ishes (Louisiana State Police, Public Safety Services, 2013).
The coinvestigators first
disaggregated the number of sex offenders by gender, then by
the number of female
sex offenders with CANS convictions, and noted the racial
background of the female
CANS registrant. The particularly high number of female sex
offenders registered
solely as a result of a CANS conviction in Orleans Parish and
neighboring Jefferson
Parish resulted in a detailed review of all 360 female sex
offender registrants with
CANS convictions in these two parishes, disaggregating for
gender, race, other crimi-
nal convictions listed, as well as whether the court had
convicted the individual of an

aggravated offense. Quantitative analysis clearly demonstrated
the overrepresentation,
in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, of African American women
and, to the extent that
it is possible to do so without a clear statement of an
individual’s gender identity, trans-
gender persons.
Qualitative Findings
Sociolegal Exclusion
CANS-related practices in the criminal justice system actively
functioned to deepen,
formalize, and legitimize the social exclusion of African
American women and trans-
gender individuals. Our qualitative findings indicate that a set
of discretionary crimi-
nal justice practices directly enabled four specific forms of
CANS-related sociolegal
exclusion: gender-based violence and estrangement from
housing, employment, and
family and community bonds.
Throughout the United States, discretionary process generally
begins with a police
arrest report, which summarizes the events leading up to the
arrest and numerous other
details, including dates, times, and locations involved. The
arresting officer sends the
report to a prosecutor, whose job is to initiate and prosecute
criminal cases, who then

decides what, if any, criminal charges to file. The prosecutor
will decide whether the
case should be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor and follow
appropriate procedure
to file with the trial court or grand jury, or to determine that the
matter does not warrant
further attention. Speedy trial laws typically require prosecutors
to make this decision
quickly.
Prosecutorial discretion refers to the fact that under U.S. law,
government prosecut-
ing attorneys have nearly absolute powers. A prosecuting
attorney has power on vari-
ous matters, including those relating to choosing whether or not
to bring criminal
charges, deciding the nature of the charges, plea bargaining, and
sentence recommen-
dation (Melilli, 1992); this is also the case in Louisiana
(Dickerson Moore, 2000).
Prosecutorial decisions regarding whether to file charges and at
what level may be
influenced by factors beyond the specific facts of the incident
described in the police
report.
Some prosecution offices adopt policies on certain types of
crimes, often in response
to community pressure (as is often the case with street-based
sex work) and these poli-
cies may dictate the prosecutor’s approach in any given case.
An office, for instance,
may decide to always file street-based prostitution arrests as
misdemeanors. Prosecutors
may also be influenced by their own political ambitions, and in
Louisiana district

attorneys are elected officials and can view their position as a
stepping-stone to higher
office (State of Louisiana, 2013).
Public opinion or important support groups often impact a
prosecutor’s decision
making; for instance, a prosecutor may file charges on every
prostitution case, no mat-
ter how weak, to curry favor with local storeowners concerned
about the high level of
visibility that generally accompanies this particular crime. One
organization engaged
in legislative advocacy echoes this view in noting that
efforts to reform criminal justice policies are politically
perilous—no office holder wants
to be labeled “soft on crime,” and measures to make crime
policy . . . mayors, police
chiefs, legislators—even Presidents—love to take credit for
safer streets and are loath to
tinker with a winning electoral formula. (Leadership Conference
on Civil and Human
Rights, 2013)
Standard New Orleans criminal justice policies on CANS
strongly reflect such con-
cerns about public perceptions on crime. Shortly after taking
office, New Orleans
Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas publicly stated,
“prostitution is a crime of addic-
tion and violence,” thereby explicitly linking transactional
sexual exchanges to car-

jackings, robberies, and other violent crimes (Monteverde,
2011). Such a stance further
enabled discriminatory policing practices with respect to CANS
by increasing the
amount of police attention focused on these activities.
Interviews conducted as part of the research corroborated this
stance as an articula-
tion of a broader “tough on crime” policy. An attorney with
years of pro bono experi-
ence representing sex worker clients offered Dewey a rather
ominous view of why
NOPD favored CANS-related arrests over misdemeanor
prostitution arrests:
They would instead arrest people for crimes against nature,
which is a felony, which
made for a better arrest as far as the state was concerned. When
Harry Connick was the
district attorney that was his standard policy, that if there was
any suggestion of oral sex
at all in the transaction they would charge it as a crime against
nature and not as
prostitution because the felony would stick . . . it used to be that
essentially they would
send out “blow job patrols” and there were a couple of cops
whose only job was to solicit
blow jobs, and the problem with vice cops is that they become
crooked themselves, and
then take advantage of the people who they’re arresting and
soliciting from, and it’s a
very, very dirty thing.
Likewise, a retired New Orleans criminal district court judge
told Dewey that
because the law required an actual sex act to take place to

prosecute an individual for
CANS, “you had law enforcement people who would in fact
engage with these women
in these acts and arrest some and not others.” He attributed this
to what he termed “a
hard-nosed notion in terms of prosecution” that adversely
affected not only law
enforcement officers who engaged in such acts but also the
criminal justice system
more broadly. As a Louisiana law enforcement officer told
Dewey of his experiences
on patrol, “sometimes you feel like you’re just spinnin’ your
wheels out there. Vice is
always the lowest on the totem pole and down here it’s all
political because politicians
and other people are all tied up in drugs, prostitution.”
Such cynicism among criminal justice professionals underscores
the complexities
involved in prosecuting CANS-related cases, including the
reality that a prosecutor’s
decision-making processes may be influenced by his or her
sense of what justice
requires. Prosecutors are supposed to both enforce the law and
“do justice,” which
occasionally means that a prosecutor decides not to prosecute a
case (or file less severe
charges) because the interests of justice require it, even if the
facts of the case might
support a conviction. Conversely, a prosecutor might decide to
increase his or her
department’s reputation with a “law and order” public by
increasing the number of
felony convictions for political reasons and reap the financial
benefits from a law
enforcement system that makes budget decisions based on crime

and conviction rates.
Higher criminal conviction rates can mean more money, more
staff, and greater politi-
cal influence for prosecutors and police. Hence manufacturing
felony convictions
against middle class marijuana users would produce political
complication, but target-
ing marginalized and indigent African American women and
transgender individuals
generally would not.
The primary responsibility of a prosecutor is to seek justice,
which can only be
achieved by the representation and presentation of the truth
(National District Attorneys
Association, 2009, p. 11). For instance, the Orleans Parish
District Attorney’s (2013)
mission statement notes that it exists to “represent the interests
of the State of Louisiana,
advocate for victims of crime, protect public safety, and uphold
justice in an honest
and ethical manner.” Law is only as good as the people who
enforce it, and police and
prosecutors become successful in their careers by enforcing the
law rather than pro-
testing a discriminatory status quo. Internal systems of “self-
policing” have evolved,
including internal affairs investigative departments for police
and prosecutorial ethical
compliance, but these can fail in a systemic manner, as so
clearly shown in the

Department of Justice investigation of the NOPD.
The discretionary powers conferred by this system may cause
police officers and
other criminal justice professionals to rely on race or gender
expression, resulting in
skewed policing practices systematically exercised to
disadvantage New Orleanian
African American women and transgender individuals. This is
not to imply that pros-
ecutors are by and large prejudiced, but as with police activity,
prosecutorial judgment
is shaped by a set of self-perpetuating racial and gender
assumptions that have dispro-
portionate impacts, even if their intent is to be race-neutral or
gender-neutral.
Prosecutorial decision making, in tandem with police tactics in
Louisiana, have con-
tributed to the criminalization of race and gender expression in
four specific ways that
have had a devastating impact upon New Orleanian African
American women and
transgender individuals.
Gender-Based Violence
Sex workers, transgender individuals, and queer community
members all face consider-
able discrimination and stigma in the Southern United States as
part of what American
Studies scholar Robert Goss (2009) terms a “cultural
homophobia” supported by mass
media, jokes, and other pervasive social practices that directly
enable or excuse vio-
lence (p. 274). Likewise, Performance Studies and African
American Studies scholar E.

Patrick Johnson’s (2008) examination of oral histories collected
among gay African
American men in the South led him to argue that despite the
community resiliency and
creativity displayed by the men in his research, “the South is
still a place where hate
flourishes and manifests itself in senseless violence” (p. 546). A
review of hate crimes
statistics gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation led
The Southern Poverty
Law Center to conclude that LGBTQ individuals “are far more
likely than any other
minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent
hate crime” (Potok,
2010). Likewise, women who engage in sex work experience far
higher rates of victim-
ization than their non–sex worker peers (Salfati, James, &
Ferguson, 2008), which may
lead some to infer that these acts of violence also constitute
hate crimes.
The environment that directly enabled the …
The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking:
Ideology and Institutionalization
of a Moral Crusade
RONALD WEITZER

The issue of sex trafficking has become increasingly politicized
in recent years due
to the efforts of an influential moral crusade. This article
examines the social con-
struction of sex trafficking (and prostitution more generally) in
the discourse of
leading activists and organizations within the crusade, and
concludes that the
central claims are problematic, unsubstantiated, or
demonstrably false. The
analysis documents the increasing endorsement and
institutionalization of cru-
sade ideology in U.S. government policy and practice.
Keywords: prostitution, sex trafficking, moral panic,
criminalization
A robust moral crusade against sex trafficking has appeared in
the past
decade. This article examines the crusade’s construction of the
problem by iden-
tifying its central claims, and tracing the institutionalization of
these claims in
state policy in the United States.1 My analysis demonstrates
that the crusade’s
core claims regarding both trafficking and prostitution are
generally quite dubi-
ous, yet activists have met with remarkable success in getting
their views and
demands incorporated in government policy, legislation, and
law enforcement
practices.
447
I am grateful to Erich Goode, Ann Jordan, Barbara Stolz, and

the editors of Politics & Society
for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 35 No. 3, September 2007 447-
475
DOI: 10.1177/0032329207304319
© 2007 Sage Publications
448 POLITICS & SOCIETY
MORAL CRUSADES
In the social constructionist perspective, social conditions
become “problems”
only as a result of claims-making by interested parties, claims
that may or may not
reflect actual social arrangements. Claims about “putative
conditions” are more
consequential than the conditions themselves.2 Moral crusades
are one of the
forces responsible for transforming such conditions into
“problems.” These move-
ments define a particular condition as an unqualified evil, and
see their mission as
a righteous enterprise whose goals are both symbolic
(attempting to redraw or bol-
ster normative boundaries and moral standards) and
instrumental (providing relief
to victims, punishing evildoers).3 To achieve their aims,
activists seek to generate
widespread public concern about a problem and lobby political
elites to either
intensify punishment of offenders or criminalize acts that were
previously legal.

Moral crusades advance claims about both the gravity and
incidence of a par-
ticular problem. They typically rely on horror stories and
“atrocity tales” about
victims in which the most shocking exemplars of victimization
are described and
typified.4 Casting the problem in highly dramatic terms by
recounting the plight
of highly traumatized victims is intended to alarm the public
and policy makers
and justify draconian solutions. At the same time, inflated
claims are made about
the magnitude of the problem. A key feature of many moral
crusades is that the
imputed scale of a problem (e.g., the number of victims) far
exceeds what is war-
ranted by the available evidence.5 Moreover, crusade leaders
consider the problem
unambiguous: they are not inclined to acknowledge gray areas
and are adamant
that a particular evil exists precisely as they depict it.6
A number of studies have examined the claims and activities of
various moral
crusades and the larger issue of how social problems are
constructed,7 but much
less attention has been devoted to the impact of crusade claims
on public per-
ceptions of social problems or the dynamics of
institutionalization in state poli-
cies. Here, I identify and evaluate the core claims of dominant
forces in the
anti-trafficking campaign, and then trace the incorporation of
these claims in
state policy in the United States. The article is based on an

analysis of activists’
pronouncements, movement documents, publications of
government agencies,
and relevant legislation.
ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED
Two decades ago, a coalition of the religious right and some
radical feminists
launched a major campaign against pornography. These groups
played a predom-
inant role in some municipal campaigns to ban pornography
and, at the national
level, in the Reagan administration’s commission on
pornography, headed by
Attorney General Edwin Meese.8 The commission’s
recommendations relied
heavily on the testimony of leading anti-pornography activists,
privileged their
RONALD WEITZER 449
claims regarding the various harms of pornography (e.g.,
causing violence against
women, moral decline), and dismissed counterevidence.9 The
Justice Department
formally accepted and implemented the commission’s
recommendations, includ-
ing the creation of a new obscenity unit within the agency.10 In
the resulting crack-
down on pornography, the department launched an
unprecedented number of
obscenity prosecutions, resulting in huge fines that bankrupted
several distributors

and forced others to terminate sales in conservative areas of the
country.11
A remarkably similar alliance of the religious right, abolitionist
feminists, and
the U.S. government is occurring today. The inauguration of
President George
W. Bush in 2001 significantly altered the “political opportunity
structure” for anti-
prostitution forces,12 providing a degree of access and
influence that had not
existed since the Reagan administration two decades earlier. On
the right, cru-
sade members include Focus on the Family, National
Association of Evangelicals,
Catholic Bishops Conference, Traditional Values Coalition,
Concerned Women for
America, Salvation Army, International Justice Mission, Shared
Hope International,
Religious Freedom Coalition, and numerous others. The premier
abolitionist fem-
inist organization in the United States is the Coalition Against
Trafficking in
Women (CATW). Others include Equality Now, the Protection
Project, and
Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE).
Members of these conservative religious and feminist groups
hold opposing
views on other social issues, such as abortion and same-sex
marriage, but they
largely agree on prostitution and pornography. The single-issue
focus of most of
these feminist groups—targeting the sex industry exclusively—
trumps all other
issues and facilitates their willingness to work with right-wing

groups. The same
dynamic characterized radical feminist involvement in the anti-
porn coalition of the
mid-1980s.13 The partners in this alliance clearly recognize the
strategic advantages
of coalition work in enhancing the legitimacy of their campaign
as a bipartisan
enterprise. The advantages of a united front are outlined by two
prominent activists:
Feminists have been hampered in their response to this threat
because there are divisions
within feminism about the nature of prostitution. . . . Feminists
should stop demonizing
the conservative and faith-based groups that could be better
allies on some issues than
the liberal left has been. . . . Saving lives and defending
freedom are more important than
loyalty to an outdated and too-limited feminist sisterhood.14
Another leader describes the benefits of this alliance: “Having
faith-based
groups come in with a fresh perspective and a biblical mandate
has made a big dif-
ference” in that abolitionist feminists “would not be getting
attention internation-
ally otherwise.”15 Regarding President Bush, activist Donna
Hughes remarks,
“Mainstream feminists like to say he’s anti-woman, but by
supporting the aboli-
tionist work against the global sex trade, he has done more for
women and girls
than any other president I can think of. . . . Years from now,
when the anti-Bush
hysteria has died away, I believe he will be recognized as a true
advocate for

women’s freedom and human rights.”16
“Abolitionist feminist” refers to those who argue that the sex
industry should be
entirely eliminated because of its objectification and oppressive
treatment of
women, considered to be inherent in sex for sale. In the next
section, I critically
evaluate the claims made by activists in this camp regarding
both sex trafficking and
prostitution more generally. Here, it is important to note that
mainstream feminist
organizations have been far less active in this debate and have
been overshadowed
by the abolitionists.17 The premier women’s rights
organization, NOW, makes no
mention on its Web site of sex trafficking, prostitution, or
pornography, though it did
pass a resolution endorsing the decriminalization of prostitution
in 1973.18 Another
major mainstream association, the National Council of Women’s
Organizations, is
also silent on these issues, though its Web site does provide a
link on trafficking to a
member group, Vital Voices. Because the debate over sex work
has been so divisive
in the past and members continue to disagree, it is not
surprising that organizations
not directly involved with this issue would avoid it altogether.
The crusade’s claims have been challenged by other feminists
and by other

groups. In academia, a number of prominent feminists have
been involved in a
long-standing, heated debate with abolitionists over
pornography and prostitu-
tion.19 Among the groups that stand opposed to the current
anti-prostitution cam-
paign are the Network of Sex Work Projects (a coalition of forty
international
groups), the Sex Workers Outreach Project, the Global Alliance
Against Trafficking
in Women, and the Sex Workers Project in New York.20 These
organizations con-
duct research on trafficking and/or provide assistance to
individuals involved in sex
work, but they do not condemn sex work per se.21 Their
primary concern is the
empowerment of workers and harm reduction via provision of
condoms, counsel-
ing, and other support services. Because they reject
abolitionism, they have been
increasingly marginalized and dismissed as the “pro-prostitution
lobby” in the dis-
course of the preeminent anti-trafficking forces.22 These
groups, like American sex
workers’ rights groups more generally, have virtually no access
to state elites. 23 The
moral crusade under examination here has increasingly
dominated the debate.
CORE CLAIMS
Moral crusades often make grand and unverifiable claims about
the nature and
prevalence of a particular “social evil.” My analysis of the
publications, Web sites,
and testimony of organizations and activists in this campaign

identified a set of
core claims regarding prostitution in general and sex trafficking
in particular.
Such claims are based on (1) an ideology that simply decrees
that prostitution is
immoral, a threat to marriage and the family, or oppressive to
women; and (2)
studies conducted by activists. The former are articles of faith
that are difficult to
operationalize and evaluate, while the latter are more amenable
to scrutiny. This
section of the article outlines and assesses the core claims
regarding prostitution
and sex trafficking.
RONALD WEITZER 451
Claim 1: Prostitution is evil by definition. For abolitionist
feminists, prostitu-
tion is inherently an institution of male domination and
exploitation of women.24
CATW’s Web site proclaims, “All prostitution exploits women,
regardless of
women’s consent. Prostitution affects all women, justifies the
sale of any woman,
and reduces all women to sex.” It can never qualify as a
conventional commercial
exchange like other service work nor can it ever be organized in
a way that
advances workers’ interests. As a former activist and now
government official,
Laura Lederer, insists: “This is not a legitimate form of labor. .
. . It can never be

a legitimate way to make a living because it’s inherently
harmful for men, women,
and children. . . . This whole commercial sex industry is a
human-rights abuse.”25
The feminist wing of this crusade does not proffer religious
arguments against
prostitution, although moral indignation is sometimes
evident.26 Morality is cen-
tral, of course, for religious conservatives. Like pornography,27
they view prosti-
tution as sexual deviance, as a cause of moral decay, and as a
threat to marriage
because it breaks the link between sex, love, and reproduction.
As the founder of
Evangelicals for Social Action stated, the campaign against
prostitution and sex
trafficking “certainly fits with an evangelical concern for sexual
integrity. Sex is
to be reserved for a marriage relationship where there is a
lifelong covenant
between a man and a woman.”28 And an article in Christianity
Today, titled “Sex
Isn’t Work,” stated, “When sex becomes commerce, the moral
fabric of our cul-
ture is deeply damaged.”29 A government crackdown on
prostitution (and other
types of sex work, such as pornography and strip clubs) thus
ratifies the religious
right’s views on sex and the family.
While some conservatives are forthright in depicting
prostitution as a threat to
the family, to traditional sexual relations, and to society’s moral
fiber,30 others
have modernized their critique by espousing abolitionist

feminist arguments and
terminology that define prostitution as an institution of
exploitation and abuse of
women. The leading right-wing activists have adopted their
feminist allies’ fram-
ing of the problem and much of their language (“prostituted
women,” “sexual
slavery,” “violence against women”), terms that are now staples
of their dis-
course.31 An identical use of feminist constructs was evident
during the anti-
pornography campaign of the 1980s, when the right argued that
pornography was
not only sinful but also exploited and caused violence against
women.32 The
latter, more modern charge is easier to sell to mainstream policy
makers and the
wider public in America.
The claim that prostitution is intrinsically evil is an essentialist
tenet that does
not lend itself to evaluation with empirical evidence, unlike
most of the other
claims outlined below, but it is crucial to the debate because it
is the very key-
stone for all other crusade claims regarding the sex industry and
sex trafficking.
Claim 2: Violence is omnipresent in prostitution and sex
trafficking. It is
not simply that violent incidents occur; instead, prostitution is a
form of violence

categorically and universally. CATW co-director Janice
Raymond writes, “To
understand how violence is intrinsic to prostitution, it is
necessary to understand
the sex of prostitution. The sexual service provided in
prostitution is most often
violent, degrading, and abusive sexual acts.”33 Sex trafficking
is similarly defined
as involving coercion of some kind, physical or otherwise. As
discussed further
below, anti-prostitution activists have consistently tried to erase
the distinction
between coercive trafficking and voluntary migration, and insist
that victimization
is the hallmark of all trafficking and prostitution.
The claim that violence is pervasive in prostitution cannot be
confirmed. Since
no study uses a random sample because the population of sex
workers is unknown,
and all rely instead on convenience samples of persons
researchers manage to
access, all figures on the incidence of violence are unreliable.34
Thus, the frequent
assertion that victimization is pervasive violates a fundamental
scientific canon—
namely, that generalizations cannot be based on
unrepresentative samples. One
example of this tendency is a report on sex trafficking authored
by feminist aboli-
tionists Janice Raymond and Donna Hughes.35 Their report,
funded by the Justice
Department, is based on interviews with only forty women, who
were involved
with organizations committed to getting women out of

prostitution. From this small
and skewed sample the authors draw numerous, sweeping
conclusions about vic-
timization. The well-known dangers of generalizing from small,
convenience
samples and from anecdotal stories is routinely ignored in these
writings.36
Claim 3: Customers and traffickers are the personification of
evil. As in other
moral crusades, the perpetrators are presented as “folk
devils.”37 Customers are
labeled “sexual predators” that brutalize women, and traffickers
are vilified as
predators, rapists, and kidnappers involved in organized crime
and sexual slavery.
A leading coalition member, Michael Horowitz of the
conservative Hudson
Institute, says of traffickers and clients, “We want to drive a
stake through the heart
of these venal criminals. This is pure evil.”38
Research on customers cautions against sweeping
characterizations and gen-
eralizations. Customers vary in their background characteristics,
motivation, and
behavior, and they buy sex for different reasons.39 There is no
doubt that some
customers act violently, that some seek out underage
prostitutes, and that some
travel to other countries for this purpose. But it would be
premature to assume
that these kinds of abuse are widespread given the lack of solid
data addressing
this question, and some analysts make the counterargument that
only a small

minority of clients mistreats prostitutes.40 The crusade’s claims
about customers,
as well as traffickers, are caricatures.
Claim 4: Sex workers lack agency. The denial of agency is
evident in the very
framing of the problem as one involving “prostituted women,”
“trafficking,” and
“sexual slavery.” The central claim is that workers do not
actively make choices to
enter or remain in prostitution, and there is no such thing as
voluntary migration
RONALD WEITZER 453
for the purpose of sex work. The notion of consent is deemed
irrelevant, and
activists have pressed governments to criminalize all such
migration, whether con-
sensual or not: “Legislation must not allow traffickers to use the
consent of the
victim as a defense against trafficking,” argue Raymond and
Hughes.41 This cru-
sade rejects the very concept of benign migration for the
purpose of sex work,
since prostitution is defined as inherently exploitative and
oppressive. Instead, the
more nefarious term “sex trafficking” (borrowed from the
equally insidious “drug
trafficking”) is applied to every instance of relocation to a
destination where the
individual sells sex.
The issue of worker agency is central to the research literature

on the sex indus-
try, and the evidence shows variation, rather than uniformity, in
the degree to
which workers feel exploited versus empowered and in control
of their working
conditions.42 Workers do not necessarily see themselves as
victims lacking
agency. Instead of viewing themselves as “prostituted,” they
may embrace more
neutral work identities, such as “working women” or “sex
workers.”43 Some pros-
titutes make conscious decisions to enter the trade and do not
feel that their work
is degrading or oppressive. Many independent call girls and
employees of escort
agencies, massage parlors, and brothels fall into this
category.44 These workers are
invisible in the discourse of the anti-prostitution crusade
precisely because their
accounts clash with abolitionist goals.
Regarding sex trafficking, it is impossible to measure the ratio
of agency to
victimization—i.e., voluntary versus involuntary migration. But
several studies
suggest that a significant number of migrants have made
conscious and informed
decisions to relocate. A study of Vietnamese migrants in
Cambodia, who had been
assisted by intermediaries, reported that out of 100 women
studied, only six had
been duped, and the rest knew prior to leaving Vietnam that
they would work in a
brothel in Cambodia. Their motivations consisted of “economic
incentives, desire
for an independent lifestyle, and dissatisfaction with rural life

and agricultural
labor.” After raids on the brothels by “rescue” organizations,
the women “usually
returned to their brothel as quickly as possible.”45 The
researchers argue that crim-
inalizing the sex industry “forces [the workers] underground,
making them more
difficult to reach with appropriate services and increasing the
likelihood of
exploitation.” Similar findings have been reported in Europe,
where the women
are “often aware of the sexual nature of the work. . . . Many
migrants do know
what is ahead of them, do earn a large amount of money in a
short time selling
sex, and do have control over their working conditions.”46 One
investigation of traf-
ficking from Eastern Europe to Holland, based on interviews
with seventy-two
women, found that few of the women were coercively
trafficked, and that a “large
number” had previously worked as prostitutes:
For most of the women, economic motives were decisive. The
opportunity to earn a con-
siderable amount of money in a short period of time was found
to be irresistible. . . . In
most cases recruiting was done by friends, acquaintances, or
even family members.47
The facilitators made travel arrangements, obtained necessary
documents, and

provided money to the women. In Australia “the majority of
women know they
will be working in the sex industry and often decide to come to
Australia in the
belief that they will be able to make a substantial amount of
money. . . . Few of
the women would ever consider themselves sex slaves.”48
These are not isolated studies; others have shown that a
proportion of migrants
sold sex prior to relocating or were well aware that they would
be working in the
sex industry in their new home. One analyst concludes that,
“The majority of
‘trafficking victims’ are aware that the jobs offered them are in
the sex indus-
try.”49 Whether this is indeed true for the majority (or instead
applies to a minor-
ity) of women who have relocated to another locale and end up
selling sex, it is
clear that traffickers do not necessarily fit the “folk devil”
stereotype popularized
by the anti-trafficking movement. Some facilitators are
relatives, friends, or asso-
ciates who recruit workers and assist with migration, and these
individuals have
a qualitatively different relationship with workers than do
predators who use
force or deception to lure victims into the trade.
It would be mistaken to assume that coercion and deception are
myths or that
facilitators are necessarily benign agents even when they
employ no force or
fraud. Some women do not understand the terms of the contract
or fully appreci-

ate the impact of debt bondage or how difficult it can be to pay
off the debt. Some
facilitators alter the terms of the agreement after transit or
renege on specific
promises. In this scenario, the woman’s initial consent is
compromised by subse-
quent, unexpected job requirements. Other workers have little
prior awareness of
the specific working conditions or risks involved in sex work in
the new locale.
For those who sold sex in their home country, working
conditions in the destina-
tion country may be far worse in terms of health, safety,
accommodation, and the
sexual services required of them.50 Others enter the sex
industry reluctantly, out of
an obligation to support their families or because of tacit
pressure from relatives—
not uncommon in Southeast Asia. A study funded by the United
States Agency for
International Development (USAID) found that many of the
Vietnamese women
working in Cambodian brothels had been recruited and
transported by their
mothers and aunts, not by professional traffickers.51 In short,
the evidence indi-
cates that migration for sex work is a complex and varied
process. There are
multiple migration trajectories and worker experiences, ranging
from highly coer-
cive and exploitative to informed consent and intentionality on
the part of the
migrant. Yet, the crusade presents only the worst cases and
universalizes them, just
as anti-pornography activists have done for decades.52

Claim 5: Prostitution and sex trafficking are inextricably linked.
Activists in
this crusade insist that prostitution must be targeted, because it
is prostitution
more than anything else that is the root cause of trafficking.
Opposing trafficking
without simultaneously fighting prostitution is seen as treating
the symptom
instead of the disease.
RONALD WEITZER 455
The conflation of trafficking and prostitution is motivated by
the crusade’s
ultimate goal of eliminating the entire sex trade, a goal that is
frequently articu-
lated.53 Donna Hughes, for example, calls for “re-linking
trafficking and prosti-
tution, and combating the commercial sex trade as a whole.”54
Not only does she
equate the two (“sex trafficking of women and children—what’s
commonly
called prostitution”),55 but also claims that “most ‘sex workers’
are—or originally
started out as—trafficked women and girls.”56
The research literature does not support this claim. There is no
evidence that
“most” or even the majority of prostitutes have been trafficked.
Moreover, pros-
titution and trafficking differ substantively; the former is a type
of work, and the
latter is a means of accessing a new market. Both empirically
and conceptually,

it is inappropriate to fuse prostitution and trafficking.57
Claim 6: The magnitude of both prostitution and sex trafficking
is high and
has greatly increased in recent years. The size of a social
problem matters in attract-
ing media coverage, donor funding, and attention from policy
makers. Moral cru-
sades therefore have an interest in inflating the magnitude of a
problem, and their
figures are typically unverifiable and/or incredibly elastic (e.g.,
“hundreds of
thousands”).58 This is a staple of the anti-trafficking crusade.
For instance, SAGE
director Norma Hotaling recently claimed that “there are
thousands of trafficked
women in San Francisco”—a vague but seemingly high figure
presented with no
documentation.59 The shock value of such claims is perhaps
best reflected in the
frequent assertion that trafficking has reached an “epidemic”
level. And when
figures are presented, they vary dramatically—ranging in recent
years from a
high of 4 million trafficked persons annually to a low of
600,000. The crusade’s
checkered quantification of the problem (with vague, wide-
ranging, or fluctuat-
ing numbers) is, as shown below, being recapitulated by the
Bush administration.
In fact, there are no reliable statistics on the magnitude of
trafficking, and the
figures can only be described as guesswork. Even ballpark
estimates are dubious,
given the clandestine and stigmatized nature of the sex trade.

The mass media have uncritically reported these and other
unverified numbers.
An editorial in the New York Times, for example, was quite
emphatic: “Around the
world, about one million women and children are seduced into
leaving their
homelands every year and forced into prostitution or menial
work in other coun-
tries.”60 On the popular Oprah television talk show, a recent
episode claimed that
“millions” of children are sold into prostitution each year, and
that one-quarter of
all sex tourists in the world are American men.61 The term
“millions” is overly
broad, and no survey of sex tourists has ever been conducted.
The high numbers have not gone unchallenged. The United
Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO)
Bangkok office
suggests that most of the statistics being circulated are “false”
or “spurious”:
“When it comes to statistics, trafficking of girls and women is
one of several
highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical
faculties.”62 Researchers
have criticized the national, regional, and international statistics
proffered by
activists, organizations, and governments for their “lack of
methodological trans-
parency” and source documentation,63 for being extrapolated

from a few cases of
identified victims (persons who are unrepresentative of the
victim population),64
and for the lack of a standard definition of “victims” as a basis
for estimates of the
magnitude of the problem.65
The numbers issue was recently investigated by the U.S.
General Accountability
Office (GAO). The GAO report was very critical of the
prevailing figures, which
are replete with “methodological weaknesses, gaps in data, and
numerical discrep-
ancies,” and it concluded that “country data are generally not
available, reliable, or
comparable.”66 In short, the “U.S. government has not yet
established an effective
mechanism for estimating the number of victims,” and the same
is true for inter-
national nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) working in the
trafficking area.67
It is also claimed that the sex industry is expanding at an
unprecedented rate,
increasing the market for trafficked workers. The director of the
evangelical
International Justice Mission, for example, refers to “the
growing trafficking night-
mare,” and CATW proclaims that “local and global sex
industries are systemati-
cally violating women’s rights on an ever-increasing …

SEXfor
SALE
P R O S T I T U T I O N ,
P O R N O G R A P H Y ,
A N D T H E
S E X I N D U S T R Y
Second Edition
E D I T E D B Y
R O N A L D W E I T Z E R
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Sex for sale: prostitution, pornography, and the sex
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p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Prostitution. 2. Pornography. 3. Sex-oriented businesses. I.
Weitzer, Ronald
HQ115.S49 2009
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ISBN10: 0–415–99604–X (hbk)
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Sex work involves the exchange of sexual services,
performances, or products
for material compensation. It includes activities of direct
physical contact
between buyers and sellers (prostitution, lap dancing) as well as
indirect sexual
stimulation (pornography, stripping, telephone sex, live sex
shows, erotic
webcam performances). The sex industry refers to the workers,
managers,
owners, agencies, clubs, trade associations, and marketing
involved in sexual
commerce, both legal and illegal varieties.
O V E R V I E W O F T H E S E X I N D U S T R Y
Sex for sale is a lucrative growth industry. In 2006 alone,
Americans spent
$13.3 billion on X-rated magazines, videos and DVDs, live sex
shows, strip
clubs, adult cable shows, computer pornography, and
commercial telephone
sex.1 Rentals and sales of X-rated films jumped from $75
million in 1985 to
$957 million in 2006.2 In just one decade, the number of X-
rated films
released annually more than doubled, from 5700 in 1995 to
13,588 in 2005.3

There are around 3500 strip clubs in America, and the number
has grown over
the past two decades.4 In addition to these indicators of legal
commercial sex,
an unknown amount is spent on prostitution.
A significant percentage of the population buys sexual services
and
products. In 2002, 34% of American men and 16% of women
reported that
1
C
H A
P T E
R
1
SEX WORK:
PARADIGMS AND POLICIES
Ronald Weitzer
they had seen an X-rated video in just the past year.5 As of
2000, 21% of the
population had visited an Internet pornography site (32% of
men, 11% of
women).6 The most recent figures on strip club attendance are
from 1991,
when 11% of the population said they had done so in the past
year; fewer people
(0.5%) had called a phone sex number in the past year.7 And a

significant
percentage of American men have visited a prostitute. The
General Social
Survey reports figures on the number of men who said that they
had ever paid
for sex—between 15–18% in eight polls from 1991 to 2006 (in
2006, 4% said
they had done so in the past year).8 Remarkably similar figures
are reported for
Australia (16%) and the average within Europe (15%),9 and
11% of British
men say they have paid for sex with a prostitute.10 Because
prostitution is
stigmatized, the real figures may be significantly higher. In
some other
societies, even more men say they have paid for sex. For
example, in Spain 39%
of men have done so during their lifetime, and in northeastern
Thailand 43%
of single men and 50% of married men had visited a
prostitute.11 An unusual
question was included in a recent British survey: respondents
were asked
whether they would “consider having sex for money if the
amount offered was
enough”: 18% of women said yes, as did 36% of men.12
A steady trend is toward the privatization of sexual services and
products:
porn has migrated from the movie house to the privacy of the
viewer’s house.
Video, Internet, and cable TV pornography have exploded in
popularity,
almost totally replacing the adult theaters of decades past. The
advent of the
telephone sex industry and escort services also has contributed

to the
privatization of commercial sex. And the Internet has changed
the landscape
tremendously—providing a wealth of services, information, and
connections
for interested parties. Internet-facilitated sex work has grown as
a sector of the
market, while street prostitution has remained relatively stable
over time,
although it has declined in some areas.13
Despite its size, growth, and numerous customers, the sex
industry is
regarded by many citizens as a deviant enterprise: run by shady
people and
promoting immoral or perverted behavior. There has been some
“main-
streaming” of certain sectors of the sex industry (as documented
in Chapter 12
by Lynn Comella), but it would be premature to conclude that
sex for sale has
now become normalized, as some claim. Polls show that 72% of
Americans
think that pornography is “an important moral issue for the
country,”14 and
61% believe that it leads to a “breakdown of morals.”15 The
most recent poll
(in March 2008) reported that fully half the population defined
viewing
porn as “sinful behavior.”16 And almost half the population
thinks that
pornography is “demeaning towards women” (one-quarter
disagreed and the
remainder were undecided).17 When asked about the idea of
“men spending

2
RONALD WEITZER
an evening with a prostitute,” 61% of Americans consider this
morally
wrong,18 and two-thirds believe that prostitution can “never be
justified,”
while 25% considered it “sometimes justified” and 4% “always
justified.”19
(The term “justified” in this question is somewhat opaque, and
we can only
speculate as to what respondents have in mind when they say
prostitution can
“sometimes be justified.”) Two-thirds of the British population
believe that
“paying for sex exploits women,” and young people are even
more likely to
hold this opinion: 80% of those aged 18–24.20
Regarding public policies, most Americans favor either more
controls or
a total ban on certain types of commercial sex. More than three-
quarters (77%)
of the public think that we need “stricter laws” to control
pornography in
books and movies,21 and half believe that pornography is “out
of control and
should be further restricted.”22 In 2006, two-fifths of
Americans (39%) felt
that pornography should be banned, and this figure has
remained about
the same for two decades (41% held this view in 1984).23 A

huge majority of
women (70%) want porn outlawed today, compared to 30% of
men.24
Stripping and telephone sex work also carry substantial stigma.
Almost half
of the American public believes that strip clubs should be
illegal, while an
even higher number (76%) thought telephone numbers offering
sex talk
should be illegal.25 Despite these personal opinions, people
seem to think that
the country is headed in the direction of increasing tolerance.
There are no
national polls on this question, but a 2002 survey of Alabama
residents found
that 73% believed that “society as a whole” sees stripping as an
occupation for
women to be “more acceptable today than ten years ago.”26
Many Alabama
residents are dissatisfied with this trend, however. In the same
poll, 54% felt
that “stripping as an occupation is degrading or demeaning to
the women,”
and only 24% thought that it was not, with the remainder
undecided.
What we have, therefore, is a paradox: a lucrative industry that
employs
a significant number of workers and attracts many customers
but is regarded
by many people as deviant and in need of stricter control, if not
banned
outright. The sex industry continues to be stigmatized, even
when it is legal.

C O M P E T I N G PA R A D I G M S
When I mentioned the topic of prostitution to a friend recently,
he said, “How
disgusting! How could anybody sell themselves?” A few weeks
later an
acquaintance told me that she thought prostitution was a
“woman’s choice,
and can be empowering.” These opposing views reflect larger
cultural
perceptions of prostitution, as well as much popular writing on
the topic.
3
SEX WORK: PARADIGMS AND POLICIES
Many people are fascinated, entertained, or titillated by sex
work; many others
see it as degrading, immoral, sexist, or harmful; and yet others
hold all these
views. Indeed, some prominent people have simultaneously
condemned and
patronized the sex industry, and have been caught in
hypocritical behavior:
■ Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) prosecuted prostitution rings when
he served
as the state’s Attorney-General, but resigned the governorship
in disgrace
after it was revealed in March 2008 that he had spent $4300 on
an escort
employed by the exclusive Emperor’s Club agency. Shortly
thereafter, it

was reported that he had also been a client of another escort
agency,
Wicked Models. Prosecutors later determined that Spitzer had
paid for
sex “on multiple occasions,” yet they declined to press criminal
charges
against him.27
■ In 2007, Senator David Vitter (R-La) was linked to a
Washington, DC,
escort agency. He refused to relinquish his Senate seat, but
nevertheless
issued a public apology: “This was a very serious sin in my past
for which
I am, of course, completely responsible.” He was also accused
of repeatedly
visiting a New Orleans brothel in the late 1990s, according to
both the
madam and one of the prostitutes. Vitter is well known for his
con-
servative, “family values” positions.
■ In 2006, the president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, Rev.
Ted Haggard, resigned after revelations that he had frequently
paid for
sex with a male prostitute and had used methamphetamine with
him. The
Association claims to represent 30 million evangelical
Christians in the
United States.
■ In 1988, a prominent television evangelist, Rev. Jimmy
Swaggart,
resigned his church leadership after photos were released of him
with a call

girl in a New Orleans hotel (she later appeared on the cover of
Penthouse
magazine). He continued his television ministry. Three years
later, when
stopped by a police officer in California for a traffic violation, a
prostitute
in his car told the officer that Swaggart had propositioned her
for sex.
■ In Britain, Anthony Lambton, the Under-Secretary for
Defense, resigned
in May 1973 after being photographed in bed with a call girl. A
few days
later, another Cabinet member and the leader of the House of
Lords,
George Jellicoe, resigned after confessing his own liaisons with
call girls,
what he called “casual affairs.” Jellicoe had been in Parliament
for 68
years, and he and Lambton were members of the Conservative
Party.
■ Another member of the British Parliament, Mark Oaten,
resigned in
2006 after it was reported that he had a year-long relationship
with a male
prostitute.
4
RONALD WEITZER
These are just a few of the many examples of public figures who
have

purchased sex illicitly. And, in addition to political and
religious elites, the
clients include officials in the criminal justice system, with
police chiefs and
prosecutors sometimes caught buying sex even as they are
obligated to enforce
the laws against prostitution.28
The poles of condemnation and normalization are reflected in
two
paradigms in the social sciences.29 One of these, the oppression
paradigm, holds
that sex work is a quintessential expression of patriarchal
gender relations and
male domination. The most prominent advocates of this position
go further,
claiming that exploitation, subjugation, and violence against
women are
intrinsic to and ineradicable from sex work—transcending
historical time
period, national context, and type of sexual commerce.30 These
indictments
apply equally to pornography, prostitution, stripping, and other
commercial
sex. The only solution is elimination of the entire sex industry,
which is
precisely the goal of those who adopt the oppression paradigm.
In addition to these essentialist claims, some writers make
generalizations
about specific aspects of sex work: that most or all sex workers
were physically
or sexually abused as children; entered the trade as adolescents,
around 13–14
years of age; were tricked or forced into the trade by pimps or
traffickers; use

or are addicted to drugs; experience routine violence from
customers; labor
under abysmal working conditions; and desperately want to exit
the sex
trade.31 These writers often use dramatic language to highlight
the plight
of workers (“sexual slavery,” “prostituted women,” “paid rape,”
“survivors”).
“Prostituted” clearly indicates that prostitution is something
done to women,
not something that can be chosen, and “survivor” implies
someone who has
escaped a harrowing ordeal. Customers are labeled as
“prostitute users,”
“batterers,” and “sexual predators.” As shown later, these labels
are misnomers
when applied to most customers and most sex workers.
Violating a core canon of scientific research, the oppression
paradigm
describes only the worst examples of sex work and then treats
them as
representative. Anecdotes are generalized and presented as
conclusive evi-
dence, sampling is selective, and counterevidence is routinely
ignored. Such
“research” cannot help but produce tainted findings and
spurious conclusions,
and this entire body of work has been severely criticized.32
Unfortunately, the
writings of oppression theorists are increasingly mirrored in
media reports and
in government policies in the United States and abroad.
A diametrically opposed perspective is the empowerment
paradigm. The

focus is on the ways in which sexual services qualify as work,
involve human
agency, and may be potentially validating or empowering for
workers.33 This
5
paradigm holds that there is nothing inherent in sex work that
would prevent
it from being organized for mutual gain to all parties—just as in
other
economic transactions. In other words, coercion and other
unseemly practices
are not viewed as intrinsic aspects of sex work. Analysts who
adopt this
perspective tend to accent the routine aspects of sex work, often
drawing
parallels to kindred types of service work (physical therapy,
massage,
psychotherapy) or otherwise normalizing sex for sale. Eileen
McLeod argues
that prostitution is quite similar to other “women’s work,” and
that both sex
workers and other women “barter sex for goods,” although the
latter do so less
conspicuously.34 Writers who adopt the empowerment
perspective also argue
that the tenets of the oppression paradigm reflect the way in
which some sex
work manifests itself when it is criminalized. Much less is
known about
prostitution in legal, regulated systems. It is important,

therefore, to avoid
essentialist conclusions based on only one mode of production.
This kind of work may enhance a person’s socioeconomic status
and
provide greater control over one’s working conditions than
many traditional
jobs. It may have other benefits as well: “Many prostitutes
emphasize that they
engage in sex work not simply out of economic need but out of
satisfaction
with the control it gives them over their sexual interactions.”35
Some writers
who adopt the empowerment paradigm go further and make bold
claims that
romanticize sex work. Shannon Bell describes her book, Whore
Carnival, as “a
recognition and commendation of the sexual and political power
and
knowledge of prostitutes,” which sounds rather celebratory.
Both the oppression and empowerment perspectives are one-
dimensional
and essentialist. While exploitation and empowerment are
certainly present
in sex work, there is sufficient variation across time, place, and
sector to
demonstrate that sex work cannot be reduced to one or the
other. An alter-
native perspective, what I call the polymorphous paradigm,
holds that there is a
constellation of occupational arrangements, power relations,
and worker
experiences. Unlike the other two perspectives, polymorphism
is sensitive to
complexities and to the structural conditions shaping the uneven

distribution
of agency, subordination, and workers’ control.36 Within
academia, a growing
number of scholars are researching various dimensions of the
work, in different
contexts, and their studies document substantial variation in
how sex work is
organized and experienced by workers, clients, and managers.
Together, these
studies undermine some deep-rooted myths about prostitution
and present a
challenge to those writers and activists who embrace monolithic
paradigms.
Victimization, exploitation, choice, job satisfaction, self-
esteem, and other
dimensions should be treated as variables (not constants) that
differ between
types of sex work, geographical locations, and other structural
and organiza-
6
RONALD WEITZER
tional conditions. The chapters in Sex for Sale provide
additional evidence in
support of the polymorphous paradigm.
T Y P E S O F S E X W O R K
A brief discussion of different types of sex work will illustrate
the poly-
morphous approach.

Prostitution
Prostitutes vary tremendously in their reasons for entry, risk of
violence,
freedom to refuse clients and particular sex acts, dependence on
and exploita-
tion by third parties, experiences with the authorities, public
visibility,
number and type of clients, relationships with coworkers, and
impact on the
surrounding community. Table 1.1 presents a typology of
prostitution.
(Excluded from the table are borderline cases, such as lap
dancing, “kept”
women or men, geishas, etc.)
Before proceeding to a description of the different types of
prostitution,
it is important to note that individual workers may cross one or
more
categories. For instance, independent call girls may also accept
regular or
occasional appointments from an escort agency, and massage
parlor or brothel
workers sometimes moonlight by meeting customers in private
and keeping
the earnings for themselves. It is rare, however, for workers to
experience
substantial upward or downward mobility. As a general rule
“the level at
which the woman begins work in the prostitution world
determines her
general position in the occupation for much of her career as a
prostitute.
Changing levels requires contacts and a new set of work
techniques and

attitudes.”37 Occasionally, an upper or middle-tier worker
whose life situation
changes (e.g., because of aging, drug addiction) is no longer
able to work in
that stratum and gravitates to the street. But transitioning from
street work
to the escort or call girl echelon is quite rare, because most
street workers lack
the education and skill set required for upscale indoor work.
Likewise, very
few call girls and brothel workers have previously worked on
the streets. If a
move takes place, it is usually lateral and of limited mobility,
such as from the
streets to a down-market peep show or from a massage parlor to
an escort
agency or from an escort agency to independent work.
The most consequential division in Table 1.1 is that between
street
prostitution and the various indoor types. In street prostitution,
the initial
transaction occurs in a public place (a sidewalk, park, truck
stop), while the
7
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sex act takes place in either a public or private setting (alley,
park, vehicle,
hotel, etc.). Many street prostitutes are runaways who end up in
a new locale
with no resources and little recourse but to engage in some kind
of criminal
activity—whether theft, drug dealing, or selling sex. Many
street workers,
both runaways and others, experience abysmal working
conditions and are
involved in “survival sex.” They sell sex out of dire necessity or
to support a
drug habit. Many use addictive drugs; work and live in crime-
ridden areas; are
socially isolated and disconnected from support services; risk
contracting and
transmitting sexual diseases; are exploited and abused by
pimps; and are
vulnerable to being assaulted, robbed, raped, or killed on the
streets. This is
the population best characterized by the oppression paradigm.
Other street
prostitutes, especially those free of drugs and pimps, are in less
desperate
straits but still confront a range of occupational hazards. Judith

Porter and
Louis Bonilla’s chapter in this volume (Chapter 7) offers a
close look at street
prostitution and documents differences between three
prostitution zones in
Philadelphia.
When most people think of prostitution, they are thinking of
street
prostitution, but off-street sexual transactions are just as
important and, in
many countries, far more common than street work even though
we lack data
on the exact numbers in each sphere. (In Thailand, for example,
an estimated
0.7% of prostitutes work the streets, while the figures for the
United States,
Holland, and Britain are reportedly closer to 20%.)38 We do
know that ads for
escort agencies and for independent call girls on the Internet are
abundant and
ever increasing.
Indoor prostitution takes place in brothels, massage parlors,
bars, hotels,
and private premises. Compared to street prostitutes, indoor
workers are much
less likely to have a background of childhood abuse (neglect,
violence, incest),
to enter sex work at a young age, to engage in risky behavior
(e.g., to use
addictive drugs and to engage in unprotected sex), and to be
victimized by
others. Off-street workers who have not been coerced into
prostitution are
much less likely to experience assault, robbery, and rape. A

British study of
115 prostitutes who worked on the streets and 125 who worked
in saunas or
as call girls found that the street prostitutes were much more
likely than the
indoor workers to report that they had ever been robbed (37 vs.
10%), beaten
(27 vs. 1%), slapped/punched/kicked (47 vs. 14%), raped (22 vs.
2%),
threatened with a weapon (24 vs. 6%), or kidnapped (20 vs.
2%).39 Other
studies similarly find disparities in victimization between street
and off-street
workers, with some reporting high percentages of indoor
providers who have
never experienced violence on the job.40 Although random
sampling was not
possible in these studies, the fact that they consistently
document significant
9
street–indoor differences lends credence to the general
conclusion. In addition
to differences in ever being victimized, street workers are more
likely to
experience more frequent and more severe victimization.
This does not mean that indoor work is risk free: structural
conditions are
a key predictor of vulnerability—conditions that include
workers’ immi-

gration status, drug dependency, third-party involvement (as
protectors vs.
exploiters), etc. Moreover, indoor work in the Third World
usually exists
under harsher conditions than in developed countries, even
when it is legal.41
Having said that, there is no doubt that indoor settings are
generally safer than
the streets. Overall, “street workers are significantly more at
risk of more
violence and more serious violence than indoor workers.”42
Moreover, it
appears that legal context makes a difference: that is, the safety
of indoor work
increases where prostitution is legal (see later).
Those who work collectively indoors—in brothels, massage
parlors,
saunas, clubs—have the advantage of the presence of
gatekeepers and
coworkers, who can intervene in the event of an unruly
customer. Indoor
venues often have some screening mechanisms, video
surveillance, and alarm
systems. Call girls and escorts are more vulnerable given their
isolation when
doing outcalls at hotels or clients’ residences. But they also
have a greater
proportion of low-risk, regular clients (see Chapter 8, by Janet
Lever and
Deanne Dolnick) and they have their own methods of vetting
potentially
dangerous customers (though these methods are not foolproof).
They share
with other workers stories of bad clients who are then

blacklisted, and they
routinely check in by phone with the agency or a friend at a
designated time
before and after a visit. As one agency booker stated: “The girls
call to check
in when they first get to an appointment. We had code words,
like ‘Red Bull.’
If I heard her say she needed a Red Bull, I’d try to distract the
guy on the
phone so she could get out of there.”43 The autobiography of
former prostitute
Dolores French describes her unique ways of alerting her agent
(Sarah) that
she was in danger in a man’s hotel room:
Sarah told me certain code names that were to be used for cops
and crazies. . . .
“Judy” meant a cop; “Phyllis” meant a crazy . . .. So I called
Sarah and said:
“Everything is fine here. By the way, has Judy been in the
office lately? Well, if
Judy comes by, tell her I’d like to meet her for coffee.” [Sarah
said] “Did he ask
you to have sex?” “Oh yes, he’s lots of fun.” Any positive
answer I gave meant
yes, any negative answer . . . meant no. It was amazing how
wonderfully this all
worked. As soon as Sarah understood there was danger, she was
on full alert . . .

She knew I was in a bad situation, and she knew it was up to her
to help get me
out of it.44
10
RONALD WEITZER
Such providers learn ways of screening their clients before they
meet as well.
A study of independent call girls noted that they develop “a
sensitivity to
detecting potential danger in the caller’s attitudes, manners,
tone of voice, or
nature of the conversation.”45
It is not widely known that indoor and street prostitutes differ
in the
services they provide. Because street workers spend little time
with customers,
their social interaction is fleeting. As one street worker
remarked, “Usually,
they’re not even interested in talking to you. What they want is
quick sex.”46
Indoor interactions are typically longer, multifaceted, and more
reciprocal.
Diana Prince, who interviewed 75 call girls in …

Language and Woman's Place
Author(s): Robin Lakoff
Source: Language in Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Apr., 1973), pp. 45-
80
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4166707
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Lang. Soc. 2, 45-80. Printed in Great Britain
Language and woman's place

ROBIN LAKOFF
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
ABSTRACT
Our use of language embodies attitudes as well as referential
meanings.
'Woman's language' has as foundation the attitude that women
are marginal
to the serious concerns of life, which are pre-empted by men.
The mar-
ginality and powerlessness of women is reflected in both the
ways women
are expected to speak, and the ways in which women are
spoken of. In
appropriate women's speech, strong expression of feeling is
avoided,
expression of uncertainty is favored, and means of expression
in regard to
subject-matter deemed 'trivial' to the 'real' world are
elaborated. Speech
about women implies an object, whose sexual nature requires
euphemism,
and whose social roles are derivative and dependent in relation
to men.
The personal identity of women thus is linguistically
submerged; the

language works against treatment of women, as serious persons
with
individual views.
These aspects of English are explored with regard to lexicon
(color terms,
particles, evaluative adjectives), and syntax (tag-questions, and
related
aspects of intonation in answers to requests, and of requests
and orders),
as concerns speech by women. Speech about women is analyzed
with
regard to lady :woman, master: mistress, widow: widower, and
Mr:
Mrs., Miss, with notice of differential use of role terms not
explicitly marked
for sex (e.g. professional) as well.
Some suggestions and conclusions are offered for those
working in the
women's liberation movement and other kinds of social reform;
second
language teaching; and theoretical linguistics. Relevant
generalizations in
linguistics require study of social mores as well as of purely
linguistic data.
I. INTRODUCTION
Languages uses us as much as we use language. As much as our

choice of forms
of expression is guided by the thoughts we want to express, to
the same extent
the way we feel about the things in the real world governs the
way we express
ourselves about these things. Two words can be synonymous in
their denotative
sense, but one will be used in case a speaker feels favorably
toward the object
the word denotes, the other if he is unfavorably disposed.
Similar situations are
legion, involving unexpectedness, interest, and other emotional
reactions on the
part of the speaker to what he is talking about. Thus, while two
speakers may
45
2020 18:50:45 UTC
LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY
be talking about the same thing or real-world situation their
descriptions may
end up sounding utterly unrelated. The following well-known
paradigm will be

illustrative.
(i) (a) I am strong-minded.
(b) You are obstinate.
(c) He is pigheaded.
If it is indeed true that our feelings about the world color our
expression of
our thoughts, then we can use our linguistic behavior as a
diagnostic of our
hidden feelings about things. For often - as anyone with even a
nodding acquain-
tance with modern psychoanalytic writing knows too well - we
can interpret our
overt actions, or our perceptions, in accordance with our
desires, distorting them
as we see fit. But the linguistic data are there, in black and
white, or on tape,
unambiguous and unavoidable. Hence, while in the ideal world
other kinds of
evidence for sociological phenomena would be desirable along
with, or in addition
to, linguistic evidence, sometimes at least the latter is all we
can get with cer-
tainty. This is especially likely in emotionally-charged areas

like that of sexism
and other forms of discriminatory behavior. This paper, then, is
an attempt to
provide diagnostic evidence from language use for one type of
inequity that has
been claimed to exist in our society: that between the roles of
men and women.
I will attempt to discover what language use can tell us about
the nature and
extent of any inequity; and finally to ask whether anything can
be done, from the
linguistic end of the problem: does one correct a social
inequity by changing
linguistic disparities? We will find, I think, that women
experience linguistic
discrimination in two ways: in the way they are taught to use
language, and in the
way general language use treats them. Both tend, as we shall
see, to relegate
women to certain subservient functions: that of sex-object, or
servant; and that
therefore certain lexical items mean one thing applied to man,
another to women,
a difference that cannot be predicted except with reference to
the different roles
the sexes play in society.
The data on which I am basing my claims have been gathered
mainly by
introspection: I have examined my own speech and that of my
acquaintances,

and have used my own intuitions in analyzing it. I have also
made use of the
media: in some ways, the speech heard, e.g., in commercials or
situation comedies
on television mirrors the speech of the television-watching
community: if it
did not (not necessarily as an exact replica, but perhaps as a
reflection of how the
audience sees itself or wishes it were) it would not succeed.
The sociologist,
anthropologist or ethnomethodologist familar with what seem
to him more
error-proof data-gathering techniques, such as the recording of
random conver-
sation, may object that these introspective methods may
produce dubious
results. But first, it should be noted that any procedure is at
some point intro-
spective: the gatherer must analyze his data, after all. Then,
one necessariiy selects
46
2020 18:50:45 UTC
LANGUAGE AND WOMAN IS PLACE
a subgroup of the population to work with: is the educated,
white, middle-class
group that the writer of the paper identifies with less worthy of
study than any

other? And finally, there is the purely pragmatic issue: random
conversation
must go on for quite some time, and the recorder must be
exceedingly lucky
anyway, in order to produce evidence of any particular
hypothesis, e.g. that
there is sexism in language, that there is not sexism in
language. If we are to
have a good sample of data to analyze, this will have to be
elicited artificially
from someone; I submit I am as good an artificial source of
data as anyone.
These defenses are not meant to suggest that either the
methodology or the
results are final, or perfect. This paper is meant to suggest one
possible approach
to the problem, one set of facts. I do feel that the majority of
the claims I make
will hold for the majority of speakers of English; that, in fact,
much may,
mutatis mutandis, be universal. But granting that this paper
does in itself repre-
sent the speech of only a small subpart of the community, it is
still of use in
indicating directions for further research in this area: in
providing a basis for
comparison, a taking-off point for further studies, a means of
discovering what is
universal in the data and what is not, and why. That is to say, I
present what
follows less as the final word on the subject of sexism in
language - anything but
that! - than as a goad to further research.

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