Ryerson University Digital Commons @ Ryerson Theses and dissertations 1-1-2011 Fact and fiction : representations of prostitution in contemporary British news media and novels Kristen Antonia Harris Aspevig Ryerson University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.ryerson.ca/dissertations Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons Recommended Citation Aspevig, Kristen Antonia Harris, "Fact and fiction : representations of prostitution in contemporary British news media and novels" (2011). Theses and dissertations. Paper 669. This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Ryerson. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Ryerson. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FACT AND FICTION: REPRESENTATIONS OF PROSTITUTION IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NEWS MEDIA AND NOVELS by Kristen Antonia Harris Aspevig M.A., Ryerson and York Universities, Toronto, 2002 B.A., McGill University, Montreal, 1999 A dissertation presented to Ryerson and York Universities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in the Program of Communication and Culture Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2011 © Kristen Aspevig 2011 Abstract Fact and Fiction: Representations of Prostitution in Contemporary British News Media and Novels Ph.D. 2011 Kristen Antonia Harris Aspevig Communication and Culture Ryerson and York Universities Prostitution remains a controversial issue in the United Kingdom. The period of 2000 to 2009 saw a range of disparate solutions, from legalization to abolition, debated by policy makers and feminists and covered extensively in the news media. The debates raised questions about the public’s rights, the treatment of prostitution as a legitimate form of work in the liberal economy, the limits on women’s choice to enter sex work, and the extent of violence and harm experienced by sex workers. Definitions of prostitution are enacted via a complex relationship between legal and cultural discourses. The media uses certain tropes that create discursive boundaries in the debates. The first principal research question is, “How are competing discourses of prostitution conveyed in contemporary British news media?” The project provides an empirical analysis of the competing constructions of prostitution in British news media over the last decade, focusing on the depiction of sex workers, clients and the phenomenon of prostitution generally. Previous operationalizations of Habermas’ theory iii of communication suggest that it is an effective approach for revealing distortions in media discourses. The study operationalized the validity claims of Truth, Sincerity and Legitimacy and systematically applied them to a sample of 342 articles from The Daily Mail and The Guardian, theoretically representing both the popular political right- and left-leaning framings of issues. Key findings of this project were that many media discourses are distorted compared to empirical realities, and that they are often expressed in dualisms and dichotomies. Media constructions of prostitution also reflect long-standing cultural themes. Nineteenth-century discourses of prostitutes as “fallen” – simultaneously doomed victims and immoral seducers – also appeared in many of the media characterizations of sex workers today. Finally, the dissertation argues that the neo-Victorian novels of Michel Faber and Sarah Waters consider prostitution with particular attention to the persistent historical cultural tropes. A second key finding of the project is that literature provides alternative ways of conceptualizing questions of “choice” and “harm.” By including an examination of literature, the dissertation explores alternative, more nuanced perspectives that may allow superior understandings of the phenomenon than many of the “factual” media accounts. iv Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the exceptional support of my supervisor, Dr. Wendy Cukier of Ryerson University, whose extraordinary contributions of time, expertise and resources enabled me to finish this dissertation. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Steven Bailey and Dr. Fred Fletcher of York University; their contributions informed the methodological approach and greatly enriched the interpretation of results, and their timely reviews of drafts are much appreciated. I would like to thank Dr. Errol Aspevig, Marilyn Aspevig and Lauren Beatty for their excellent assistance in the coding of articles. I would also like to thank the external members of the committee, Dr. Tish O’Reilly of Ryerson, and Dr. Angela Miles of the University of Toronto, whose close readings allowed for an impassioned and exciting debate during the defense, and whose critiques identified many areas for further development. Thanks also to Dr. Isabel Pedersen, for her great professional advice. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Dennis Denisoff for his early contributions to the dissertation, particularly the discussion of neo-Victorian literature. v Dedication This work is dedicated to my family, who gave me unlimited support, help and encouragement, as always. vi Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Prostitution in the U.K. and the Aims of this Project..........1 2. Empirical Studies of Prostitution in the Victorian Age and in the U.K. Today..........16 Historical factors contributing to women’s entry into prostitution..........17 Conditions of historical prostitution..........26 Contemporary factors contributing to women’s entry into prostitution..........31 Conditions of contemporary prostitution..........40 Conclusion.......... 49 3. British Feminist Conceptualizations of Prostitution..........52 Victorian feminist views of prostitution: vice and “white slavery”..........54 Second wave feminism: women’s subordination in the patriarchy..........58 Sex work feminism: prostitution conceptualized as labour..........60 Third wave feminism: sex work as subjective experience..........62 Post feminism: sex as a commodity..........65 Unresolved debates and questions..........69 Conclusion..........75 4. Methodology for a Critical Discourse Analysis of Prostitution in British News Media and Fiction..........77 Prostitution in the British news media: sampling rationale and method.........78 Prostitution in the British news media: principles for analysis..........82 vii Some flaws and limits in the analysis..........93 The use of fiction in research on prostitution..........93 The neo-Victorian novel: illuminating the Victorian discourses in operation today......97 A methodological approach to neo-Victorian fiction as a source of research......103 Conclusion..........106 5. Results of a Critical Discourse Analysis of Prostitution in British News Media..........108 Truth claims: results, examples and analysis.........110 Sincerity claims: results, examples and analysis..........140 Legitimacy: results and analysis..........155 Other observations: sex workers as locus of discussion..........159 Conclusion.........160 6. A Historical Perspective on Prostitution Discourses........163 Dominant discourses.....164 Nineteenth-century discourses of gender and women’s victimization......167 Prostitution as commodity exchange in nineteenth-century liberal capitalism........178 Conclusion.......186 7. Prostitution in Contemporary British Fiction..........188 Tipping the Velvet as a response to discourses of prostitution as harmful........188 The Crimson Petal and the White as a response to neo-liberal discourses of prostitution....194 Conclusion............204 viii 8. Conclusion: Summary and New Directions..........206 A summary of the project.........206 Limits of the analysis and new directions..........213 ix List of Tables Table 4.1. The Guardian and Daily Mail: comparative raw query results, 2000-2009.....81 Table 4.2. Categories and principles for an adapted Habermasian discourse analysis.....87 Table 4.3. Operationalization of an adapted Habermasian analysis .........88 Table 5.1. Truth claims of news media: prostitution as a phenomenon in the sample of The Daily Mail, 2000-2009...................112 Table 5.2. Truth claims of news media: prostitution as a phenomenon in the sample of The Guardian, 2000-2009...............117 Table 5.3. Truth claims of news media: prostitution as a phenomenon in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009................121 Table 5.4. Truth claims of news media: characterizations of sex workers in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009...............130 Table 5.5. Truth claims of news media: characterizations of clients in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009..................135 Table 5.6. Sincerity of news media: nomenclature used for sex workers in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009................141 Table 5.7. Sincerity of news media: nomenclature used for clients in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009..............145 Table 5.8. Sincerity of news media: framing of sex workers in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009...............147 Table 5.9. Sincerity of news media: framing of clients in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009..................152 Table 5.10. Legitimacy of news media: source types in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009.................156 x Table 5.11. Legitimacy of news media: balanced sources in the sample of The Daily Mail and Guardian, 2000-2009.................158 Table 5.12. Total references to sex workers and clients in