Relevance: Sociology: Sociology as Science: Science, scientific method and critique. Major theoretical strands of research methodology. Positivism and its critique. Fact value and objectivity. Non- positivist methodologies.
Beyond explaining why individual women and men are more likely than others to pay for sex or to receive pay for sex, the three sociological perspectives—functionalist theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism—offer more general insights on prostitution.
According to conflict theory, prostitution reflects the economic inequality in society.
Many poor women feel compelled to become prostitutes because of their lack of money; because wealthier women have many other sources of income, the idea of becoming a prostitute is something they never have to consider.
Sad but interesting historical support for this view comes from an increase in prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many women lost husbands and boyfriends in the war and were left penniless.
Lacking formal education and living in a society that at the time offered few job opportunities to women, many of these bereaved women were forced to turn to prostitution to feed their families and themselves.
This late nineteenth-century increase in prostitution, then, occurred because of women’s poverty.
According to the feminist version of conflict theory, prostitution results not only from women’s poverty but also from society’s patriarchal culture that still views men as the dominant figure in heterosexual relationships and that still treats women as “sex objects” who exist for men’s pleasure (Barry, 1996).
In such a culture, it is no surprise and even inevitable that men will want to pay for sex with a woman and that women will be willing to be paid for sex.
In this feminist view, the oppression and exploitation that prostitution inherently involves reflects the more general oppression and exploitation of women in the larger society.
Symbolic interactionism moves away from these larger issues to examine the everyday understandings that prostitutes and their customers have about their behavior.
These understandings help both prostitutes and customers justify their behavior.
Many prostitutes, for example, believe they are performing an important service for the men who pay them. Indoor prostitutes are perhaps especially likely to feel they are helping their customers by providing them not only sex but also companionship (Weitzer, 2009).
A woman who owned a massage parlor named “The Classic Touch” echoed this view. Her business employed fourteen women who masturbated their customers and offered a senior citizen discount.
The owner reasoned that her employees were performing an important service: “We have many senior citizens and handicapped people. We have some men who are impotent and others who are divorced or in bad marriages.
This is a safe, AIDS-free environment…that helps marriages. Husbands come in here and get a stress release and then they are able to go home and take on more. These are men who aren’t in bars picking up strange women” (Ordway, 1995, p. 1).
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