The female body in the sex business: Feminist perceptions from a historical perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we examine feminist perceptions on the experiences and portrayal of women in sex commerce including pornography, prostitution, trafficking in persons and the use of sexual images of women to promote products and entertainment. This paper is largely a conceptual discussion of related literature, and thus data was generated through desktop review of related literature and previous empirical studies on sex markets. We establish that feminist theorists are divided on the question of whether markets in sexually explicit materials and sexual services are generally harmful to women. As a result, some feminist scholars have explored and developed arguments for restricting sex markets, while others have investigated political movements that aim to advance the rights of sex workers.