Skip to main content. You're using an out-of-date version of Internet Explorer. Log In Sign Up. Cultural History Online Publication Date: Concentrated in large populations, and unable to afford the comforts of marriage, these men constituted a reliable pool of customers for women who sold sexual access to their bodies.
These women turned to prostitution on a casual or steady basis as a survival strategy in a sex segregated labor market that paid women perilously low wages, or in response to family disruptions such as paternal or spousal abandonment. Prostitution could be profitable and it provided some women with a path towards economic independence, although it brought risks of venereal disease, addiction, violence, harassment by law enforcement, and unintended pregnancy.
By mid-century most American cities tolerated red-light districts where brothels thrived as part of the urban sporting culture. After the war, the introduction of antibiotics and the celebration of marriage and family nudged prostitution into the margins of society, where women who sold sex were seen as psychologically deviant, yet men who purchased sex were thought to be sexually liberated. Nevertheless, attitudes about prostitution continue to divide activists, and sex workers still bear the brunt of criminalization.
Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice. This article focuses primarily on the woman who sold sex, not because men did not sell sex, but because commentators almost always imagined the figure of the prostitute as female; the prevalence of female prostitution emerged out of the sex segregated labor market that offered women few opportunities to make money, and the policing of prostitution primarily targeted girls and women.
Moreover, the historical scholarship on male prostitution remains underdeveloped. Crowded housing and close surveillance of family members, servants, and slaves limited the commercialization of sex in most communities. Only in seaport towns that hosted large numbers of sailors, visitors, and displaced youth have historians located a trade in sex.
