Prostitution

Prostitution is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse, for money. A person selling sexual services is a prostitute, a type of sex worker. In a more general sense of the word, anyone selling their services for a cause thought to be unworthy can be described as prostituting themselves.

Types of prostitution

Prostitution today occurs in various different settings.

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• In street prostitution the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street.
• Prostitution occurs in some massage parlors and in Asian countries in some barber shops where sexual services may be offered for an additional tip.
• Where prostitution is more out in the open, solicitation is done at bars, even open-air bars. Thailand is famous world-wide for these establishments.
• Brothels are establishments specifically dedicated to prostitution, often confined to special red-light districts in big cities. Other names for a brothel include bordello, whorehouse and cathouse. Historical and rarer slang terms for brothels include bordel (from the French), bovril, case (compare Spanish casa or Italian casa chiusa), common-house*, creep, crib, dress-house, drum, flash-house, flesh-shambles, gaff, harlot-house, hook shop, hot house*, house of ill/evil repute/fame, house of accommodation, house of assignation, house of joy, house of horizontal refreshment, joy-house, juke, kip, knocking-shop, leaping house, lupanar (from Latin), maison close (French closed house), maison de passe (house of passage), maison de tolérance (tolerated house, i.e. licensed), massage parlour, meat house, moll-shop, notch-house, nunnery*, panel-house, parlour-house, peg house, picked hatch*, public house, rap club, rib-joint, slaughter-house, smuggling-ken, sporting-house, stew, trugging house/place, vaulting house, warren and whore-shop/sty. (* used by Shakespeare) Many of these are or originated as euphemisms, and their variety is affected in part by the euphemism treadmill.
• Prostitution can also take place in the prostitute's apartment and in many countries this is the only legal form of prostitution. A hybrid between brothel and apartment prostitution exists in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, China and the Netherlands: female prostitutes rent tiny one-room apartments and solicit customers from behind windows or through advertising. (A handful of websites are kept to advertise these one-woman brothels. e.g. sex141.com.)
• In escort or out-call prostitution, the customer calls an agency and the act takes place at the customer's place of residence or more commonly at his or her hotel room. This form of prostitution often shelters under the umbrella of escort agencies, who supply attractive escorts for social occasions. While some escort agencies provide non-sexual services only, many turn a blind eye to escorts who provide additional sexual services or actively encourage them. Alternately, an escort may work independently of an agency and place advertisements in newspapers and magazines for his or her own services. Even where this prostitution is legal, the euphemistic term "escort service" is common. See call girl. In the US, escort agencies advertise frequently on the World Wide Web and example advertisements can be readily found on any major search engine.
• The setting prevalent in Moscow takes the form of a girl market. One prostitute stands by a roadside, and directs cars to a "tochka" (usually located in alleyways or carparks), where lines of women are paraded for customers in front of their car headlights. The client selects a prostitute, whom he takes away in his car. This leaves the woman (often very young girls) particularly open to abuse.
• A "lot lizard" is a commonly-encountered special case of street prostitution. Lot lizards mainly serve those in the trucking industry at truck stops and stopping centers. Prostitutes will often proposition truckers using a CB radio from vehicle parked in the non-commercial section of a truck stop parking lot, communicating through codes based on commercial driving slang, then join the driver in his truck.

Street prostitution

In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street, usually dressed in skimpy, suggestive clothing. Often the prostitute (commonly called a "hooker", "street hooker", or "street walker" to distinguish them from other sex workers) appears to mind his or her own business and waits for the customer to initiate contact. The act is performed in the customer's car or in a nearby alley or rented room (motels that service prostitutes commonly rent rooms by the half or full hour).

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Escort/Out-call Prostitution

Those who work for an escort agency may obtain the position by responding to an employment advertisement, usually placed in a regional newspaper. Escort agencies maintain a database or "stable" of employees of different types in order to cater to a wider client base. Some agencies may specifically cater to a certain type of prostitute. There are male-for-male, female-for-male, and female-for-female escort agencies, as well as a few male-for-female agencies. Agencies commonly specialise in only one sex. Transsexual prostitutes are available from some escort agencies.

Related Topics:
Advertisement - Newspaper - Transsexual

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Escort agencies typically advertise in regional publications and even telephone listings like the Yellow Pages. Many of them maintain websites with photo galleries of their employees. An interested client contacts an agency by telephone and offers a description of what kind of escort they are looking for. The agency will then suggest an employee who might fit the client's need.

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The agency collects the client's contact information and calls the escort. It is then up to the escort to contact directly the client to make arrangements for an appointment. It is during this telephone call that details of the business arrangement are discussed—i.e., whether or not (and what) sex acts will be incorporated into the "date". The escort then makes a call to the agency to confirm the appointment's location and time. Generally the escort is also expected to call the agency upon arrival at the location and upon leaving to assure his or her safety.

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The purpose of these details is to protect the escort agency (to some degree) from prosecution for breaking the law. If the employee is solely responsible for arranging any illegal aspects of their professional encounter the agency can maintain plausible deniability should an arrest be made.

Related Topics:
Law - Plausible deniability - Arrest

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The amount of money that is made by an escort is different depending on gender, service rendered and location. Generally male escorts make less than women, and women make less than transsexuals. For a point of reference, the gay escort agency "TOPPS", based in Washington, D.C., charges $150 an hour for male escorts, and $250 an hour for transsexuals. The agency takes $50 an hour from the employee.

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