in the 21st century : where do we go from here?

by Lea Bernier-Coffineau

In the night of August 16th to 17th, Vanesa Campos, 36 years old, was shot in the thorax at her workplace. A transgender prostitute from Peru, Vanesa was working, like the majority of her colleagues, in the , a more than two thousand acres forest in the west of known to be one of the main spots of parisian prostitution. The announcement of this violent murder immediately aroused the wrath of the organizations for the protection and defense of prostitutes' rights. Once more they denounced the alarming work conditions of prostitutes in France, and criticized the policies consistently pursued by the administrations since the middle of the 20th century, which have failed to ensure the safety and security of prostitutes.

The STRASS (Syndicat des Travailleurs du Sexe or Sex Workers Union) used the occasion to express yet again its deep disagreement with the law of April 13th 2016 that penalized the purchase of all sexual acts. According to this organization, as well as to several others like Médecins du Monde or the Mouvement français pour le planning familial, punishing the client only results in increasing the clandestinity, precarity and insecurity of prostitutes. Indeed, these organizations were echoing a position which emerged during the debates around the 2016 law when Médecins du Monde, for example, was already concluding that “the negative effects of this law already impact their safety, their health and their living conditions in general.”1 Yet the law, which had the support of

1 GIAMETTA, Calogero, LE BAIL, Hélène, “Que pensent les travailleur(se)s du sexe de la loi prostitution ?” : Enquête sur l’impact de la loi du 13 avril 2016 contre le système prostitutionnel, the main feminist and abolitionist movements, was meant to “invert the criminal charge” by dropping the passive soliciting offense that had targeted prostitutes since the Loi pour la

Sécurité Intérieure (Law for Internal Security) from 2003, and by granting them a victim status. If the perverse effect of this new law is unquestionably confirmed by the figures and testimonies collected within the community, one can be surprised by the STRASS arguments. The website of the organizations says: “We fight for the recognition of all forms of sex work, against prohibition”; “We demand that all sanctions against procurement be withdrawn from the criminal code”; “Punishing sex workers' clients […] is an unacceptable harm to our sexual freedom”2. This position, neither a regulationist nor an abolitionist, purely calling for the liberalization of the activity brings a new voice to the public debate.

Backed by many LGBTQ rights (Inter-LGBT), people affected by HIV/AIDS (Act-up) and women rights (Collectif 8 Mars pour tou-te-s) organizations, this position is spreading and it is reaching more and more scholars and intellectuals. Françoise Gil, a sociologist specialized in sexual issues, has been taking a stand against “moral crusaders” and for the prostitutes' rights over their own bodies. Her article entitled “The prostitute, a social fiction”3 published in 2008 in the journal Sociétés offers a perfect illustration of the paradoxes that the debate on prostitution involves as well as on the limits of this debate.

To shed light on the different positions involved in the issue of prostitution in the

21st century France, I will first review the emergence the liberationist ideal too often reduced to the highly broadcasted and controversial rants of its partisans. I will then focus on Françoise Gil's article in order to better identify the contradictions and inadequacies of

Médecins du Monde, 2018. Read online : https://www.medecinsdumonde.org/sites/default/files/Rapport- prostitution-BD.PDF 2 STRASS website: http://strass-syndicat.org 3 GIL, Françoise, “La prostituée, une invention sociale ?”, Sociétés, 2008, n°99, pp. 21-32. Available at: https://www.cairn.info/revue-societes-2008-1-p-21.htm the arguments brought up by this current. Finally it will be necessary to take stock of the stakes of the fight and the factual data available as to get out of inertia.

UNDERSTANDING LIBERATIONISM

The sociopolitical context that led to the emergence of French liberationism has been fnourished for centuries with reflections and recommendations that tried to deal with the ancient phenomenon of prostitution. For most of its history, French society has adopted a prohibitionist policy that repressed the activity by all means. Using persecution, banishment, imprisonment and even deportation to the Americas, the successive monarchs, guided by the Catholic Church, considered the prostitute as a threat to the population.

Because she's afflicted with venereal diseases, attracting honest men between her thighs, the prostitute is a scourge to eradicate. “The repression is active but apparently ineffective: not only the number of girls arrested and locked up does not decline during the [18th] century but it even tends to swell.”4 The entry into the 19th century marked a radical change of strategy. Because prostitution was now seen as inevitable, it would have to be regulated by law.

At the dawn of the first empire, tilts the sclae towards the tolerance of that allow authorities to better monitor the activity and to protect the eyes of the world from debauchery5. Registries are created and kept up to date in big cities in order to count and track prostitutes, and medical visits are organized in the "public houses" for

4 MERICKSAY, A, “La prostitution à Paris: dans les marges d'un grand livre”, Histoire, économie et société, 1987, pp. 495-508. 5 CHIMIENTI, Milena, “Prostitution: une histoire sans fin ?”, Sociétés, 2008, n° 99, pp. 11-20. regular sanitary controls, enabled by the collaboration between the “mères maquerelles”

(madams) and the “Brigade des moeurs” (mores squad). It is the advent of regulationism on behalf of preserving social order. Within a new functionalist approach, prostitution is now considered as a “necessary evil” that needs to be legislated. Thus, as German philosopher

Georg Simmel puts it, it presents itself as an essential “release” that contributes to the balance of marital relations and to the preservation of the honor of married women. The

French hygienist doctor Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, a fervent defender of the regulationist system, wrote with the delicacy he is known for: “prostitutes are as inevitable in an agglomeration of men as sewers, roads and filth dumps”6. The “French system”, imitated in Europe as in the colonies, thrived throughout the 19th century, and gave way to the golden age of “maisons closes” that would give Paris a sulfurous reputation (that is still alive today as evidenced by postcards).

It was only after the Second World War that the country adopted a position called abolitionist, aiming at the disappearance of the “state institution” (“institution étatique”)7 of prostitution. Unlike prohibitionism, abolitionism considers prostitutes as victims rather than criminals. The 1946 Law8 constitutes the official end of the regulationist era, shuting down brothels and making procurement as well as soliciting illegal.

As a consequence, prostitution plunged back into the shadows, and the ambivalence of French modern policy against it would provide fertile ground for the birth of the liberationist current. Indeed, describing the prostitute as a victim while criminalizing their activity as soon as it is visible to the eyes of all seemed at the very least hypocritical.

6 PARENT-DUCHÂTELET, A-J-B, De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 1836. 7 CHIMIENTI, Milena, “Prostitution: une histoire sans fin ?”, Sociétés, 2008, n° 99, pp. 11-20. 8 Named after the female politician, former prostitute, who introduced the bill. Françoise Gil's speech, shared by the STRASS and other organizations, rejects all past or extant attempts to deal with the phenomenon and calls for a total decriminalization of what they see as a “profession” in its own right. According to this line of thought, any repressive law forces "sex workers" into hiding and insecurity. The activists of this feminist and libertarian movement, many of them prostitutes themselves, advocate for full and complete disposition of their bodies and refuse the status of helpless victims assigned to them by society. Furthermore facing a system that repeatedly imposes standards and limits on the woman body, prostitution appeared as the ultimate transgression and even as an elevation.

It was Sophie Maksimowski, a young Canadian anthropologist, who brilliantly verbalized this point using a Foucaultian perspective: “It is important to recognize the ability of people, such as sex workers, to challenge discourses that constrain them, and to build discourses of their own.”9 Proponents of liberalization claim the right to choose to prostitute themselves and demand a professional status be created for them to obtain social protections equal to that of other citizens. Lastly, they denounce the French legislation contradictory double discourse which penalizes prostitution with the soliciting offense while demanding taxation of sex workers incomes10.

Deliberately provocative and therefore widely publicized, many public interventions of STRASS and other public figures (like that of Ovidie, a former pornographic movies' actress and director), have contributed to include prostitutes' voices in the social debate.

Their voices had already united in 2003 when the Loi pour la Sécurité Intérieure (Law for

Internal Security) introduced by , then Minister of Internal Security under

9 MAKSIMOWSKI, Sophie, “A Brief History of the Anthropology of Sexuality, and Theory in the Field of Women’s Sex Work”, Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology, 2012, vol. 20. Available at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/totem/vol20/iss1/9 10 French tax administration and jurisprudence consider the prostitution's incomes as non-commercial profits, in accordance with Article 92 of the Tax Code. the Chirac administration, was passed. This law changed the offense of soliciting into the offense of passive soliciting (the mere fact of pacing on a sidewalk at night becomes suspicious), and marked an inclination to go back to a prohibitionist policy that criminalizes prostitutes. A few years later, in 2016, under François Hollande's socialist government, the passive soliciting offense is however repealed in favor of the penalization of customers. That way, France enters the neo-abolitionist era in the name of women's rights and against the traditional male “right” to dispose of their body. This law is however very poorly received by those most concerned. A survey by the A*MIDEX Foundation found that 98% of consulted prostitutes declared themselves against the criminalization of customers11. It is in this context that the liberationist position gained momentum. The arguments put forward by the feminist sociologist Françoise Gil, which I am now going to analyze, reveal the complexity of an issue that involves the eternal opposition between right and morality. But they also reveal the limits of what today's solutions have to offer.

A “FREE” CHOICE

In 2008, on the occasion of the theme “Prostitution and Socialities”, he journal

Sociétés published a paper by the sociologist Françoise Gil entitled “The prostitute, a social fiction”12. Although these pages are now more than ten years old, their content remains current and can be seen as a prelude to the publication of Prostitution: fantasies and realities13. In a vehement argumentation against prohibition as well as against abolition proponents, the sociologist attempts to deconstruct the “miserabilist” image of the

11 A study conducted in 2014 on more than 500 men, women and transgenders working in the sex industry in France, on the street or on the web. 12 Sociétés, revue des sciences humaines et sociales, 2008, n°99, pp. 21-32. 13 GIL, Françoise, Prostitution : fantasmes et réalités, ESF, 2012. prostitute as someone “degenerated” and “incapable of thinking”. She denounces the

“symbolic violence” made to sex workers by the generalization of an antique and archetypal representation that has nothing to do with reality. She attacks the “moral crusaders” who separate the woman from the prostitute, good sexuality from bad sexuality; one happening in the marital bed and the other in the sullied corner of a . Finally, by opposing the individual right to prostitute one's body to morality, which sees the human body as a sacred property and therefore as an impossible commodity, Françoise Gil puts her finger on the painful knot of the debate. The strength of her position is however weakened by a contradictory argumentation that eventually highlights the many shortcomings that constitute now a burden to the debate on prostitution.

If the prostitute is fantasized by society, it is also fantasized in Gil's article. She criticizes the dominant discourse for resorting to an “essentialization process” that portrays all prostitutes as vulgar, lazy and uneducated. Using Gail Pheterson's words, she points out that the most often used image is created “from samples of women that are not representative of a larger population of sex workers”14. And yet, she operates the same formula in her article. She thus plays the spokeswoman for “most prostitutes” or “all women who practice” without any qualitative or quantitative data corroborating her thesis.

She depicts “traditional prostitutes” who claim “being free”, “being in a position of real control in the relationship with the client” and who “know how to reverse the power relationship to their advantage”. Gil's argument relies only on the testimony of Grisélidis

Réal, a famous Swiss prostitute who became an author15 and ardent activist of prostitution as a social act that “relieves the world from the burden of its miseries”. If this single voice

14 PHETERSON, Gail, The prostitution prism, Amsterdam University Press, 1996. 15 RÉAL, Grisélidis, La passe imaginaire, Gallimard, coll. Verticales, 2006. is of course insufficient to support the point being made, its use also reveals an important fault in Gil's sociological approach. The speech of observed subjects must certainly be taken into consideration for the elaboration of a thesis, but it is never worth universal truth.

I must be taken into account because it is “the condition of access to the logic and universe of meaning of those whom [the sociologist] observes. […] The 'reality' that must be conferred to the informants' words is in the meaning that they place on them.”16 This intellectual approach, which confuses subjective reality with objective reality, recalls the very common short circuits that emerge in social debates, as for example on surrogacy or even on the Islamic veil. Françoise Gil adopts the same methods she denounced of her enemies when she pointed to their "subjectivity and reassuring attachment to an ideology."

With the same approach she used to defend her idea of the prostitute, she also defends the portrait of a client very different from the “big, strong, dominating and violent male” usually depicted. “The reality is rather a man in need of female presence and warmth, who seeks reassurance on his manhood”, and who “can easily be dispossessed of his dominant role.” But what reality is she referring to? Once again, no data to support what appears to be a mere point of view, opposed to another. Gil also mentions the "very frequent requests for fellatio" from customers acting in a "passive attitude", therefore non-violent and far from a controlling behavior. But what do we really know about customers' demands?

Again, the data is missing. The client, however essential condition for the existence of prostitution, is systematically left out of the equation.

While Françoise Gil's article focuses on destroying the arguments of prostitution opponents, it also sets out its own arguments for the liberalization of the “profession”. The

16 DE SARDAN, Jean-Pierre Olivier, “La politique du terrain. Sur la production des données en anthropologie”, Enquête, 1995, n°1, p.71-109. sociologist insists on the "social utility" of prostitutes which exists at two different levels.

For her, as for the 19th century regulationists, the services offered by prostitution counteract the rigidity and propriety of monogamous marriage. “[Prostitutes] allow men to stealthily escape the severe settings of conjugal sexuality”, “they allow men to live sexual moments that they can not live elsewhere, to realize fantasies that a wife or a partner would not accept”. In the liberationist perspective, prostitution is the incarnation of the Everett C.

Hughes' bastard institution17. “An institution that responds illegitimately to legitimate needs, thus marked by social and moral disapproval, but at the same time tacitly - or explicitly, depending on the context – recognized.”18 Necessary for the relief of the modern man's frustrations generated by a partner too chaste to satisfy his fantasies, prostitution is a guarantor of "sexual liberation". If this point of view may seem daring and above all anachronistic (21st century free unions are not the religious marriages of the previous century), Gil expresses it again in 2015 on the set of a television news channel.

Commenting on the law project penalizing clients, she declares: “We arrived at the penalization of sexuality.” Isn't there any real sexuality apart from that consumed with prostitutes? This is the thesis the sociologist seems to propose by explaining the driving force of abolitionists and prohibitionists' passionate fight in terms of “a deep detestation of sex”. The so called scientific article does not stand up to the passions that this debate unleashes and ends up taking the form of a thundering forum of opinion.

The second "social utility" of prostitution advocated by Gil, always in conformity, and probably unwillingly, with the regulationist thesis, is ”to allow women to feel virtuous,

17 HUGHES, Everett, Cherrington, The Sociological Eye. Selected Papers, Transaction Edition, 1984. 18 PRYEN, Stéphanie, “La prostitution : analyse critique de différentes perspectives de recherche”, Déviance et société, 1999, vol. 23, n°4, pp. 447-473. to reassure them about their own status.” We find here the notion of balance, already encountered above, between the virgin modesty of the married woman and the redeeming debauchery of the prostitute. The wife is protected from dishonor thanks to the prostitute who accepts with a smile the requests for fellatio and sodomy of the client. “The ideal order of society is guarded by dangers which threaten transgressors.”19 Prostitution is considered here as a decompression valve necessary for the fragile balance of society as a whole. The argument doesn't bring anything new, as the Saint Agustine maxim shows: "Take away the prostitutes from society, and you will throw everything into disorder by lust."20 However, it gives very little credit to new generations of women struggling to emancipate themselves from the heavy social rules that weigh on their gender. It is however giving very little credit to new generations of women struggling to emancipate themselves from the heavy social rules that weigh on their gender.

The dissection of Françoise Gil's article reveals the ideological struggle playing out in the social and the political debate about prostitution. Different, irreconciliable visions clash endlessly, reinforcing each other's positions with each new television interview or journalistic publication. The words of those most concerned must obviously be placed at the heart of the struggle and the question of the "free" choice to prostitute ones body deserves to be heard and respectfully discussed. As Pheterson says: « It is a radical stance to assume prostitute legitimacy »21. Radical, yes, but necessary. Perhaps then one will be able to go beyond the sterility of an ancient and deafening standoff.

19 DOUGLAS, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge Classics, 2002. 20 Saint Augustin, De ordine, liv. 2, chap. 4, par. 12. 21 PHETERSON, Gail, A Vindication of the Rights of Whores, The Seal Press, 1989. BEYOND RADICALISM

Françoise Gil's reflection, debatable on numerous points, nevertheless enables us to highlight the gray areas of the debate. We can thus identify two main shortcomings responsible for the immobility of the situation: the obvious absence of tangible data concerning the phenomenon of prostitution as a whole; and the confusion of struggles.

As we have seen it earlier, the national debate on the issue of prostitution is primarily ideological. Driven by irreconcilable and hypersensitive passions, it is on both sides fueled by fantasies. Who are the prostitutes? How many are they? Why and where? In

France, we can only use the results of three studies carried out during the last ten years. The most recent figures were published in a 2014 report by OCRTEH (Central Office for the

Suppression of Trafficking in Human Beings). This report estimates the number of prostitutes in France at around 30,000 after studying the judicial proceedings initiated for soliciting. The same year, the Mouvement du Nid, first French abolitionist association, conducted its own study called PROSTCOST22, and estimated that this number could reach

44 000 after taking into account the internet offer. According to this study, prostitution spreads over three areas: 30% on the street, 62% on the internet and 8% “indoor” (massage parlors, hostess bars). The greater part of the phenomenon operates today in a virtual sphere that neither the State nor the associations can penetrate. Yet meeting these online prostitutes and taking into account their word are essential to a fair and pragmatic treatment of the issue of prostitution. According to OCRTEH, in 2014 80 to 90% of prostitutes were foreigners and most of them were under the influence of networks. The “traditional

22 PROSCOST : Estimation du coût économique et social de la prostitution en France, Mouvement du Nid/PSYTEL, 2015. Available at: http://www.prostcost.org prostitute” described by Françoise Gil, independent, practicing in the comfort of her home according to her own rules suddenly appears very exceptional. The ProSanté study, conducted in 2010 and 2011 by the FNARS (National Federation of Reception and Social

Rehabilitation Associations) and the InVS (Institute for Public Health Surveillance) among prostitutes, found that more than half of them have suffered physical violence in the exercise of their activity and that 38% of them were raped at least once in their lifetime. To complete the picture, let's remember that the suicide rate is 12 times higher among prostitutes than in the general population.

These common abuses, that affect both their physical and mental integrity, can not be ignored or relativized. They occupy a central place in all studies conducted on the phenomenon and the figures seriously question the fantasy of prostitution as a simple professional choice among others. Efforts still need to be made in collecting the data needed to formulate effective discourses and policies. The study of the phenomenon must overcome many obstacles, among which shame, fear, invisibility and the language barrier.

Only 251 people were consulted for the ProSanté study. The information report on published by the National Assembly in 2011 surveyed only about fifteen people who practiced prostitution. The samples are very poor, the means are lacking and the approach of the people concerned does not seem to change with the shift of prostitution from the street to the web.

Moreover, one can not be content, in such a complex debate, with simple figures.

The data collected is mostly quantitative, and it does not take into consideration the voice of actual prostitutes, their realities and subjective truths. The reasons that drove them to sell their bodies, their feelings vis-à-vis the eyes of society, doctors, their families or even their customers are only being guessed and generalized by those who speak on their behalf.

Finally, clients, the indispensable actors of the prostitution system, are also very rarely mentioned in the reports. The one and only study concerning them was conducted in 2004 by the Mouvement du Nid under the direction of sociologist Saïd Bouamama23. The results make it possible to draw up a series of recurring portraits, providing information on their personalities and motivations to consume sexual services. Out of a desired sample of 500 clients, only 63 accepted to participate in the interviews. “The access to a field has rarely been that difficult.”24 But even if interviews were fewer than expected, “they shed light on important aspects of the process of becoming-client and highlighted needs and urgencies in the fight against clientelism.”25 Twelve years later, customer criminalization entered the law: an up to 1500 euros fine is envisaged for any purchase of sexual act. I seriously doubt that the recommendations of the only scientific inquiry dealing with prostitutes' clients are simply to attack their wallets.

Under cover of inviolable principles, radical positions do not improve the living and working conditions of prostitutes. Considered as victims, they are not protected by the State nor by society. One could wonder what goal is pursued by all these policies claiming the defense of fundamental human rights. Abolitionism, in the name of this ideal, can not be content with legislating on the tip of the iceberg. Counseling prostitutes to make “better” choices and requiring a check for clients caught in the act can not and should not suffice.

The prostitution system must be addressed in its entirety. To eliminate , the exploitable population should be addressed. To eliminate prostitution, demand should be

23 BOUAMAMA, Saïd, Mouvement du Nid/IFAR, L'homme en question. Le processus du devenir-client de la prostitution, 2004. Available at: http://www.mouvementdunid.org/IMG/pdf/HommeEnQuestion.pdf 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. addressed. To dry up the demand, customers should be educated. We do it with smokers, why not with “prostituters”26 ? Tackling the very existence of prostitution requires distinguishing and leading several struggles that are both distinct and intertwined. As we have noticed, clientelism, largely forgotten by the market equation, remains a fallow field of action. And if the penalization of clients marks the acknowledgement of their role in the prostitution system, the measure remains mainly symbolic. In three departments (out of 96), a two-day awareness workshop (180 euros) is offered to them in addition to the fine. As of

January 1 2018, one and a half years after the application of the law, 2130 clients had been fined and 125 of them had completed a workshop. The recommendations of the

Mouvement du Nid, following the survey L'homme en question conducted in 2004, that included the development of prevention campains for the public and, above all things, the implementation of an education for “sexual socialization” in school, are far from the current administration's concerns. The punitive system is winning the game.

Another battlefield is that of the exploitable population, and it requires aggressive social policies for the benefit of single women, young women, and single mothers. As the philosopher Elsa Dorlin rightly notes: “Prostitution is considered as a possible source of income for women of the most disadvantaged classes: the choice is very rarely between whore and lawyer; much more often it is between whore and worker or cashier.”27 To invoke the principle of individual freedom to advocate the legitimacy of prostitution is simply dishonest. Drying up the offer means fighting social precariousness and financial insecurity. In the same way, accompanying the prostitutes in the cessation of their activity

26 Expression used by the Mouvement du Nid to insist on the active role and responsibility of the client in the prostitution relationship. 27 DORLIN, Elsa, “Les putes sont des hommes comme les autres”, Raisons politiques, 2003, n°11, pp. 117- 132. and their reintegration into the professional world, as provided for by the April 13 2016

Law, requires significant resources. Support must be total, from psychological care to housing assistance through professional training. The law provided for a budget of 20 to 24 million euros for programs that help prostitutes quit the practice. In 2017, only 6.6 million were released, the proposed financial assistance amounted to 330 euros per month, and only

30 people entered a program28. Faced with these figures, rather than invest in a more relevant and effective information campaign among the most socially “disaffiliated” prostitutes (R. CASTEL), the National Assembly decided a new budget cut for 2018.

Finally, organizations estimate that the vast majority of prostitutes working on

French soil are foreigners and victims of sexual exploitation. Mainly from ,

Sub-Saharan Africa, China and South America, these women have fled their countries and entered France via networks that demand unreasonable sums from them.

They are then forced to prostitute themselves for several years in deplorable conditions in order to repay their debt. Fleeing war, persecution or poverty, unable to go back home but illegal immigrant on French soil, they are literally reduced to slavery. Scared of reprisals from their procurer but also scared of being sent back to their country by the State, these women do not know where nor how to seek help. In this case, it is the entire French migration policy that needs to be thought over. Mafia networks must be fought to protect those women who, before being “undocumented”, are human beings with irreducible rights and freedoms.

Whether prostitutes are French or foreign, whether they work on the sidewalk, in a

28 Declaration of Marlène Schiappa, State Secretary for Equality between Women and Men, November 2017. hotel room or in the basement of an erotic massage parlor; whether they are women, men or transgender; whether they work independently or for a procurer, their activity responds to two irrefutable constants which teach us about the deepest roots of the oldest profession and illuminate the most immediate fields of action to work on. On the one hand, the venal dimension (C. FOSSÉ POLIACK) of prostitution: one prostitutes oneself for money, and if possible for a lot of money and as quickly as possible. And most importantly, prostitution attracts individuals in precarious situations and human trafficking networks because there is a large population willing to pay for access to sexual services without caring about assent.

“Even in the case of the so-called free choice, prostitution in the form of an available offer exists only because there is a strong demand.”29 And this demand is more than 99% composed of men.

In 1979, Kathleen Barry published Female , a pioneer book in which she attempts to deconstruct the idea of a free prostitution opposed to a .

To that end she peels the phenomenon to its marrow in search of its social roots. ”Her analysis argues that causes are less to be found in material conditions, in economic domination, than in sexual domination, 'sexual colonization'. [...] It is because women are considered as social-sexual objects in patriarchal societies in which the power of men is unquestioned and integrated by women, that women sexual slavery is made possible.”30

Can we think of prostitution as a form of domination of the masculine gender on all that does not meet its criteria? What does the increasing proportion of men (10%) and transgender people (5%31) among prostitutes means in this regard? And what does it mean

29 HÉRITIER, Françoise, Masculin Féminin II: Dissoudre la hierarchie, Odile Jacob, 2002. 30 PRYEN, Stéphanie,“La prostitution: analyse critique de différentes perspectives de recherche”, Déviance et société, 1999, vol. 23, n°4, pp. 447-473. 31 PROSCOST : Estimation du coût économique et social de la prostitution en France, Mouvement du Nid/PSYTEL, 2015. Available at: http://www.prostcost.org for the eternal binarity opposing male and female kinds? I believe here is a new and fascinating field to investigate.