I. Background

Prostitution in America has two central purposes: First, to examine the history and structural causes of prostitution in the United States. Second, to allow students to work collectively to generate new knowledge about prostitution, develop ways of sharing it with others, and combine academic experience with political practice in an attempt to transcend the traditional, passive consumption of knowledge characteristic of large university courses.

The class, Prostitution in America, was offered only once, at the School of Criminology at the University of California, Berkeley during the winter quarter of 1973. Over 200 people enrolled in the course. Some came away embittered, disillusioned, or just plain bored, because the course failed to meet their expectations of a detailed examination of modern prostitution, while others were genuinely excited about a learning situation combining theory and practice. To a large extent, the different responses to the class reflected initial orientations, ranging from sheer voyeurism to extensive political experience. Tensions between the two orientations and over the instructor's commitment to a socialist feminist analysis generated struggles during the lectures and in the small work groups.

The class on prostitution was unique, both because of its subject and because of its historical location at the School of Criminology when that school was a wellspring of radical criminology in the United States. While Berkeley is still a center for radical criminology, the school itself is rapidly being isolated and eradicated. This outline and bibliography for a course on prostitution emerged from that used at Berkeley two years ago. However, recent publications have been added to the bibliography and some of the criticisms of the class are incorporated into the outline. This outline is designed to be altered and incorporated into a wide range of courses dealing with sexism and/or criminology in many different teaching situations.

II. Organization of the Course

One of the first questions raised about Criminology 191 U was whether prostitution was a subject worthy of a full quarter's attention. Recently, a former probation officer who has written on teenage prostitution dismissed prostitution as an unimportant problem. This stance stems from popular liberal assumptions, holding that prostitution is a victimless crime which is historically and socially inevitable. A radical course on prostitution rejects these assumptions, instead attempting to answer four basic questions: (1) Is prostitution itself a crime? (2) Is it indeed victimless? (3)What is the history of prostitution in the United States? (4) What social conditions generate prostitution in Western industrial societies?

A course about prostitution initially suggests a focus on a form of sexual barter which is generally considered legally or morally criminal. It is essential to dispel the belief that prostitution itself is really criminal. Instead, it is a survival tactic primarily developed by women to fight against their domination and exploitation. Symptoms such as prostitution reflect basic crimes against humanity: racism, sexism, capitalism, and imperialism.

Many liberals are willing to argue that prostitution should not be punished or informally condemned. It is frequently asserted that prostitutes merely engage in a service transaction beneficial to both parties. Once prostitution is legalized or decriminalized it will be revealed as relatively unimportant, meriting no more special attention than accounting, bartending, or plumbing. This position ignores the fact that prostitution represents an extreme case of sexual oppression. While all American women are not prostitutes, most of us have found ourselves in prostitution situations, using some sort of sexual barter (feminine wiles) to achieve financial or social success. Prostitution is not "victimless." Prostitutes face moral degradation and physical danger whether or not their activities are illegal. They are the victims!

No analysis of prostitution in the United States should exclude its historical roots. Brothels flourished in colonial port cities. However, the great boom in American prostitution accompanied industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Industrial capitalism generated both prostitutes and eager customers. Prostitution also flourished on the Western mining frontier, which attracted fancy women from the East and also from abroad.

The history of American prostitution reflects sexism, the development of capitalism, and racism. Black women slaves were not explicitly prostitutes, but were at their masters' sexual disposition, and many of their best looking mulatto daughters were traded into the demimondes of New Orleans and other Southern cities. Well after slavery had been ostensibly eliminated, Chinese women were sold once on the mainland and again when their ships reached the United States to brothel owners who serviced Chinese laborers.

South and Latin American women in the nineteenth century were not sold, but rather were indentured as prostitutes for several years to pay for their passage to the U.S.A. A disproportionate number of Third World women are currently prostitutes because of interacting sexual, racial and economic oppression.

Their historical subjugation is but a small part of prostitution in the United States, exemplifying the complexity and importance of the subject. Prostitution must be understood in terms of race, class, sex, and state power.

III. Teaching Method

The class on prostitution was taught in a large lecture, combined with small work groups for those interested in further participation. To try to eliminate competition, grading was organized around a contract system involving take home examinations for those not interested in sections. A few people did individual projects ranging from video tapes to art portfolios.

By and large the contract system failed because it was only a small alteration in an exacting university grading system. Many people saw the contract as a means to beat the grading system by doing a stipulated amount of barely literate work. Most of those doing examinations only came to the large lectures which suffered from the impersonality and enforced passivity common to that teaching situation.

The lectures were both plagued and intensified by hostile debates over whether prostitution was good or bad. This debate was rooted in questions about the reality and meaning of sexism. These questions affected not only the subject matter but also everyone's daily life. Many women were incredibly frustrated by people's unwillingness to accept sexism as a reality, while other men and women were equally disturbed by the presentation of sexism as established fact. People in the latter group were doubly annoyed when discussion was terminated by the instructor.

There is no easy solution to the problem of different political orientations in a large class. In many ways the unanticipated struggles over sexism heightened interest and participation. However, they also limited the amount of other material that could be covered. It would be best if everyone taking a large class on prostitution had some formal or informal exposure to general premises of socialist feminism. An additional aid would be small, informal discussions about sexism for people questioning its importance and validity.

Guest speakers and films were another problem for the course. Some of the small work groups had guests who talked openly and comfortably, but an audience of over 200 discouraged honesty from speakers currently involved in illegal activities. Moreover, asking someone directly involved in prostitution to speak before a class for little compensation was in itself a form of exploitation. This analysis was confirmed when a vice squad agent speaking to the class brought along a prostitute/snitch who answered class questions which were primarily of the how-much, how-many, and how-did-you-like-it variety.

Most of the class guest speakers were conservatives or liberals involved with the law or with research on prostitution. There was some well deserved criticism of the instructor's initial, highly critical comments on some of the speakers. Those comments were simply unnecessary, since many student questions focused on the same issues. Some speakers who might be useful to a course on prostitution include police, probation officers, criminal lawyers, legislators, social researchers, and journalists. As exploited groups become political and wish to put forth their own analyses, they are no longer so vulnerable to voyeurism. Members of gay liberation groups, Coyote-the prostitutes' union [in San Francisco], and student groups from countries experiencing American imperialism could be outstanding speakers.

Good films about prostitution are banned from institutional film libraries. However, students should be encouraged to attend movies, such as "Klute," which are playing nearby. School film libraries do contain large numbers of police training films and films offering advice to growing girls, both of which are useful in examining stereotypes about prostitution and the ideology surrounding it.

By far the most satisfying part of the class were the small work groups which met in addition to the lectures. Those groups could not have formed without the energies of Lynn Cooper, Dorie Klein, and Lynn Osborne who were graduate assistants for the class, and without the commitment of other participants in the sections. The groups were organized on the premise that good intellectual work must go beyond the university and should involve collective, rather than individual effort. Everyone in each section received a collective grade for a group presentation to the class and research and discussion within the sections.

There were several criticisms every section shared. Some people objected to the wide differences in involvement of people ostensibly committed to a collective enterprise. Another problem was the absence of much communication among sections during the quarter. Moreover, people in the lecture as a whole felt that one or two hours was too little time for the presentations which were among the most interesting parts of the class. Finally, many people in the sections felt that they wanted their groups to continue, because they had just begun their work.

The work groups met with different degrees of success, depending primarily on the relationship of their topic to ongoing political movements. Almost everyone participating preferred this collective form of education. However, the most stimulating analyses and presentations were tied to peoples' activities outside the classroom. The sections were:

A. Public Opinion on Prostitution -- which did survey research on attitudes toward prostitution.

B. The Alameda County Report on Vice -- which did research on police practices and ownership and control of prostitution in the East Bay. This group redefined "vice," examined the irregular economy, and also presented its findings on a feminist radio show.

C. Prostitution and Imperialism -- which researched the relationship between prostitution and U.S. intervention in Asia and Latin America.

D. Prostitution and the Law -- which did research on the criminal law, and on legalization and decriminalization of prostitution. The group created a pamphlet, "Prostitution: A Non-Victim Crime," the profits of which went to Coyote, the prostitutes' union.

E. Prostitution in the Black Community -- which resulted in a stunning presentation of an original skit, slides, and theory on prostitution as a survival technique of oppressed people.

F. Prostitution and the Arts -- which combined music, poetry, literature, and slides to show how prostitution is part of every woman's life. This feminist presentation was also part of the first prostitutes' convention in San Francisco. It was given the last day of class and created a real sense of solidarity and strength.

There are very few good works on prostitution, combining both empirical data and solid analysis. Below is a list of useful sources for a class on prostitution. Although no class could read them all in a quarter, they represent only a beginning in the search for a radical theory of prostitution. Many of the empirical works should be presented after a critical, analytic framework has been developed.

Selected Course Bibliography