Criminalization Of Prostitution Essay

“Sex solely for pleasure, sexual promiscuity, prostitution, and homosexuality have all been the object not merely of stigma, but often of outright repression aimed at minimizing the threat they pose to normal sexuality,” says Parker (2009) in his work, Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions (Parker, 2009:96). Hegemonically, prostitution is seen as a monetary activity that seeks to exploit and transgress normative values. For this and other reasons, prostitution is considered to be one of the most marginalized professions in the world. As Hoang (2015) shows us, illicit sexual trade typically takes place “underground” and at night due to the harsh punishments that befall sex workers and their clients (Hoang 2015:36). Those who practice prostitution are subject to constant discrimination, violence, and, in various instances, abuse. Furthermore, prostitutes are submitted to the imposition of the moral and …show more content…
Such criminalization gains strength when this activity becomes associated with travestis and other non-heteronormative sexual behaviors; cisgendered female prostitutes are traditionally seen as victims of a larger system because they enact this transgressive sexual activity due to economic necessity (de Castro & Sá 2016:1). Travesti prostitutes, however, are doubly discriminated against for prostitution as well as for violating the sex and gender system.
Travesti prostitution is incredibly conceptually and behaviorally distinct in the way it subverts social and cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality. This subversion situates travesti prostitution in a