Portal:Prostitution
Introduction
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penetrative sex, manual sex, oral sex, etc.) with the customer. The requirement of physical contact also creates the risk of transferring infections. Prostitution is sometimes described as sexual services, commercial sex or, colloquially, hooking. It is sometimes referred to euphemistically as "the world's oldest profession" in the English-speaking world. A person who works in this field is called a prostitute, and sometimes a sex worker, but some other words, such as hooker, putana, or whore are also sometimes used to refer to those who work as prostitutes.
Prostitution occurs in a variety of forms, and its legal status varies from country to country (sometimes from region to region within a given country), ranging from being an enforced or unenforced crime, to unregulated, to a regulated profession. It is one branch of the sex industry, along with pornography, stripping, and erotic dancing. Brothels are establishments specifically dedicated to prostitution. In escort prostitution, the act may take place at the client's residence or hotel room (referred to as out-call), or at the escort's residence or a hotel room rented for the occasion by the escort (in-call). Another form is street prostitution.
According to a 2011 report by Fondation Scelles there are about 42 million prostitutes in the world, living all over the world (though most of Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa lack data, studied countries in that large region rank as top sex tourism destinations). Estimates place the annual revenue generated by prostitution worldwide to be over $100 billion. (Full article...)
Selected article
Salon Kitty was a high-class Berlin brothel used by the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), for espionage purposes during World War II.
Created in the early 1930s, the salon was taken over by SS general Reinhard Heydrich and his subordinate Walter Schellenberg in 1939. The brothel was managed by original owner Kitty Schmidt throughout its entire existence. The plan was to seduce top German dignitaries and foreign visitors, as well as diplomats, with alcohol and women so they would disclose secrets or express their honest opinions on Nazi-related topics and individuals. Notable guests included Heydrich himself, Joseph Dietrich, Galeazzo Ciano and Joseph Goebbels. The building housing the salon was destroyed in an air raid in 1942 and the project quickly lost its importance. Salon Kitty has been the inspiration or subject to many brothels featured in films involving Nazi espionage. (read more ...)
Wikipedia Good Article
Selected biography
Esther Lachmann (French pronunciation: [ɛstɛʁ laʃman]; 7 May 1819 – 21 January 1884), generally known as La Païva (French: [la paiva]), was the most famous of 19th-century French courtesans. A notable investor and architecture patron, and a collector of jewels, she had a personality so hard-bitten that she was described as the "one great courtesan who appears to have had no redeeming feature". Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".
Rising from modest circumstances in her native Russia to becoming one of the most infamous women in mid-19th-century France to marrying one of Europe's richest men, Lachmann maintained a noted literary salon out of Hôtel de la Païva, her luxurious mansion at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris. (read more...)
Did you know?
- ... that San Antonio's Sporting District, (pictured) one of the largest red-light districts in the U.S. in the early 1900s, was so large that a tourist guide was published for visitors?
- ...that Matild Manukyan, a wealthy Turkish businesswoman of Armenian origin, made her fortune as a brothel owner?
- ...that loans made by Seattle brothel-owner Lou Graham saved some of the city's most prestigious families from bankruptcy after the Panic of 1893?
- ...that madame Anna Wilson, the "Queen of the Underworld" in early Omaha, Nebraska, bequeathed her 25-room brothel mansion to the city to use as an emergency hospital upon her death?
Quotes
“ | I think it proves that if my business could be made legal, the way off-track betting is in New York, I and women like me could make a big contribution to what Mayor John Lindsay calls Fun City, and the city and state could derive the money in taxes and licensing fees that I pay off to crooked cops and political figures. | ” |
Anniversaries - May
- 9th
- 1914: Birth of Denham Fouts, an American male prostitute, socialite and literary muse. He served as the inspiration for characters by Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood and Gavin Lambert.
- 14th
- 1973: Death of Dorothy Baker, also known as Big Dorothy, an American madam in Helena, Montana.
- 26th
- 1956: The Prostitution Prevention Law, which outlawed Prostitution in Japan, was passed by Japan's National Diet
- 27th
- 1835: Birth of Anna Wilson, a pioneer madam in Omaha, Nebraska. When she died she bequeathed her life savings to the City of Omaha, along with her 25-room mansion brothel, which was used as a hospital.
- 1951: Birth of Norma Jean Almodovar, American author and sex workers activist.
- 28th
- 1905: Birth of Sada Abe, a Japanese geisha and prostitute, who erotically asphyxiated her lover and then cut off his penis and testicles and carried them around with her in her kimono.
- 30th
- 1949: The government-run brothel, Campo Alegre, opened in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao in an attempt to concentrate prostitution in one location on the island.
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Recognised content
Featured (13)
Good (18)
- Mah Laqa Bai
- Butters' Bottom Bitch
- Child prostitution
- Elizabeth Cresswell
- Casey Donovan
- Dumas Brothel
- Andrea Dworkin
- Natasha Falle
- Kanhopatra
- Caroline Lacroix
- Ipswich serial murders
- National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking
- Neaira (hetaera)
- Salon Kitty
- She Has a Name
- Soho
- Valerie Solanas
- Three Sisters Tavern
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