One study published in 2013 indicated that  Muslims  and  Hindus  are less likely to report having premarital sex than  Christians ,  Jews , and  Buddhists . [ 28 ]  The study indicated that people in predominantly  Islamic  societies have the lowest report of engaging in premarital sex, 53% lower than Christians (primarily in Europe and North America). [ 28 ]   Buddhists ,  Jews , and individuals from other religious traditions are more likely to report premarital sex compared to Christians. [ 28 ]  While  Christianity ,  Judaism , and  Islam  have strict rules regarding sex outside of marriage,  Buddhism  lacks such specific behavioral prohibitions, though its ethical precepts still discourage premarital sex. [ 28 ] [ 33 ]  Studies shows Buddhists are more likely than Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and people of traditional faiths to report premarital sex, with rates similar to Jews and no significant differences regarding  extramarital sex . [ 28 ]


Students who attend a faith-based (predominantly Christian) university view premarital sexual activity more negatively than students who do not. [ 34 ]


The cultural acceptability of premarital sex varies between individuals, cultures and time periods. Western cultures have traditionally been disapproving of it, on occasions forbidding it. In other cultures, such as the  Muria people  of  Madhya Pradesh , sexuality prior to marriage is accepted and at times expected. [ 3 ]


Individual views within a given society can vary greatly, with expectations ranging from total  abstinence  to frequent  casual sex . These views are dependent on the holders'  value system , as formed by their parents, religion, friends, experiences, and in many cases the media. [ 3 ]  Unmarried  cohabitation  and births outside marriage have increased in many Western countries during the past few decades. Economist Jeremy Greenwood (2019, Chp. 4) discusses how technological progress in contraception led to a rise in premarital sex and less stigmatization by parents, churches, and governments. He argues that singles weigh the cost (a potential pregnancy) and benefit of premarital sex.  As contraception improved the cost of premarital sexual activity fell.  Parents and social institutions also weigh the cost and benefit of socialization. Technological improvement in contraception reduced the benefit of socialization because premarital sexual activity was no longer as risky in terms of unwanted pregnancies, which placed a strain on parents and social institutions. As a result, there was social change.


Sex before the public marriage ceremony was normal in the  Anglican Church  until the  Marriage Act 1753 , which for the first time required all marriages in England and Wales occur in their  parish church . (The law also applied to  Catholics , but  Jews  and  Quakers  were exempt.) Before its enactment couples lived and slept together after their  betrothal  or "the spousals", which was considered a legal marriage. Until the mid-1700s it was normal and acceptable for the bride to be pregnant at the  nuptials , the later public ceremony for the marriage. The Marriage Act 1753 combined the spousals and nuptials, and by the start of the 19th century  social convention  prescribed that brides be virgins at marriage. Illegitimacy became more socially discouraged, with first pregnancies outside marriage declining from 40% to 20% during the Victorian era. At the start of the 21st century, the figure was back up to 40%. [ 35 ]


In the United Kingdom, births outside marriage were up to 47.6% by 2012. [ 36 ]  In 2014, only 13% of the population found premarital sex unacceptable. [ 2 ]


During the colonial period, premarital sex was publicly frowned upon but privately condoned to an extent. Unmarried teenagers were often allowed to spend the night in bed together, though some measures such as  bundling  were sometimes attempted to prevent sexual intercourse. Even though premarital sex was somewhat condoned, having a child outside wedlock was not. If a pregnancy resulted from premarital sex, the young couple were expected to marry. Marriage and birth records from the late 1700s reveal that between 30 and 40 percent of New England brides were pregnant before marriage. [ 37 ]


The growing prevalence of the automobile, and corresponding changes in dating practices, caused premarital sex to become more prevalent.  Alfred Kinsey  found that American women who became sexually mature during the 1920s were much less likely to be virgins at marriage than those who became mature before World War I. A majority of women during the 1920s under the age of 30 were nonetheless virgins at marriage, however, and half of those who were not only had sex with their fiancés. [ 38 ]  A 1938 survey of American college students found that 52% of men and 24% of women had had sex. 37% of women surveyed reported being virgins but believed sex outside marriage was acceptable. [ 39 ]  Prior to the middle of the 20th century, sexuality was generally constrained. Sexual interactions between people without plans to marry was considered unacceptable, with  betrothal  slightly lessening the stigma. However, premarital sex was still frowned upon. [ 3 ]


Beginning in the 1950s, as premarital sex became more common, the stigma attached to it lessened for many people. In 1969, 70% of Americans disapproved of premarital sex, but by 1973 this number had dropped to 50%. [ 40 ]  By 2000, roughly a third of couples in the United States had lived together prior to marriage. During the second half of the twentieth century, premarital sex has remained steady for men, but 60% more women lost their virginity prior to marriage during this same period. [ 41 ]  This has altered the traditional  nuclear family , with half of all children living with a  single parent  at some point in their life. [ 41 ]


During this period of  sexual liberation , sexual media and  pornography  became more prevalent and normalized premarital sex. People who watched pornography viewed both adult and teenage premarital sex as societally acceptable. [ 42 ]


However, premarital sex was considered unacceptable by 30% of the population in a 2014 study, while 29% found it acceptable, and 36% considered it not a moral issue. [ 3 ] [ 2 ]


According to a 2004 peer-reviewed study published in the  Journal of Marriage and Family  found that women who have more than one premarital sexual relationship have a higher likelihood in the long run of disruptions if ever married, with this effect being the "strongest for women who have multiple premarital co-residential unions". [ 43 ]  Kahn and London (1991) found that premarital sex and divorce are positively correlated. [ 44 ]


In December 2022  Indonesia 's parliament  passed a bill that partially criminalizes  sex outside marriage and  cohabitation . [ 45 ]  Government officials have stated that the new criminal code respects privacy and human rights, due to the law being codified and complaint based, which can only be filed by a spouse or parents or children. With the code, government expected that local law enforcement will not invade privacy due to being codified and there will be no more local regulation sweeping power to their local law enforcement. "When these articles are regulated in the criminal code, there would definitely be no raids," deputy minister of the  Ministry of Law and Human Rights  said. He explained that so far, there have been regulations in several regions based on which, officers of the Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) have carried out raids at hotels and inns.
After the articles are regulated in the criminal code and an explanation is provided, those regulations that are beneath the law will all be revoked, he said. [ 46 ]  Indonesia is predominantly Muslim. [ 47 ] [ 48 ]


In  psychoanalysis , the  primal scene  ( German :  Urszene ) is the theory of the initial unconscious fantasy of a child of a  sex act , between the parents, that organises the  psychosexual development  of that child.


The expression "primal scene" refers to the sight of sexual relations between the parents, as observed, constructed, or fantasized by the child and interpreted by the child as a scene of violence. The theory suggests that the scene is not understood by the child, remaining enigmatic but at the same time provoking sexual excitement.


The term appeared for the first time in Freud's published work apropos of the " Wolf Man " case (1918b [1914]), but the notion of a sexual memory experienced too early to have been translated into verbal images, and thus liable to return in the form of conversion symptoms or obsessions, was part of his thinking as early as 1896 [as witnessed in his letter of May 30 of that year to  Wilhelm Fliess , where he evokes a "surplus of sexuality" that "impedes translation" (1950a, pp. 229–230)]. Here Freud is already close to the model of the trauma and its " deferred " effect. The following year, in his letter to Fliess of May 2, Freud uses the actual term  Urszene  for the first time; [ 1 ]  and gives the approximate age when in his estimation children were liable to "hear things" that they would understand only "subsequently" as six or seven months (SE 1, p. 247). The subject of the child's witnessing parental coitus came up as well, albeit in an older child, with the case of "Katharina," in the  Studies on Hysteria  (1895d), and Freud evoked it yet again in  The Interpretation of Dreams , with the fantasy of the young man who dreamed of watching his parents copulating during his life in the womb (1900a [addition of 1909], pp. 399–400).


Freud persistently strove to decide whether the primal scene was a fantasy or something actually witnessed; above all, he placed increasing emphasis on the child's own fantasy interpretation of the scene as violence visited upon the mother by the father. He went so far, in "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908c, p. 221), as to find a measure of justification for what he called the "sadistic concept of coitus", [ 2 ]  suggesting that, though the child may exaggerate, the perception of a real repugnance towards sexual intercourse on the part of a mother fearful of another pregnancy may be quite accurate. In the case of " Little Hans ," however, the violence was explained in terms of a prohibition: Hans deemed it analogous to "smashing a window-pane or forcing a way into an enclosed space" (1909b, p. 41).


The case history of the Wolf Man gave Freud the opportunity not only to pursue the issue of the reality of the primal scene, but also to propose the idea that it lay at the root of childhood (and later adult) neurosis: the sexual development of the child was "positively splintered up by it" (1918b [1914), pp. 43–44).  In his  Introductory Lectures , however, he argued for the universality of the fantasy of the primal scene (like the sexual theories of children): it may be encountered in all neurotics, if not in every human being (Freud, 1915f), and it belongs in the category of "primal" fantasies. It appears, however, not to have the same force for all individuals.  Freud would later assign a central place to the primal scene in his analysis of  Marie Bonaparte , although in her case the scene took place between her nanny and a groom (Bonaparte, 1950–53).


Looked upon as an actual event rather than as a pure fantasy reconstructed in a retrospective way (as with  Carl Jung 's  zurückphantasieren ), the primal scene had a much more marked traumatic impact, and this led Freud to insist on the "reality" of such scenes, thus returning to the debate over event-driven (or "historical") reality versus psychic reality. Beyond the issue of the scene itself, however, it was the whole subject of fantasy that was thus raised (in chapter five of the Wolf Man case-history [1918b, pp. 48–60]), discussed in terms that would be picked up by Freud again later in  Constructions in Analysis  (1937d).


It was not merely, in Freud's view, that the technique of psychoanalysis demanded that fantasies be treated as realities so as to give their evocation all the force they needed, but also that many "real" scenes were not accessible by way of recollection, but solely by way of dreams. Whether a scene was constructed out of elements observed elsewhere and in a different context (for example, animal coitus transposed to the parents); reconstituted on the basis of clues (such as bloodstained sheets); or indeed observed directly, but at an age when the child still had not the corresponding verbal images at its disposal; did not fundamentally alter the basic facts of the matter: "I intend on this occasion," wrote Freud, "to close the discussion of the reality of the primal scene with a  non liquet " (1918b, p. 60).


Melanie Klein 's view of the primal scene differed from Freud's, for where Freud saw an enigmatic perception of violence, she saw the child's projective fantasies. Klein considered that a child's curiosity was first provoked by the primal scene, and that typically the child felt both excited and excluded by the primal scene. [ 3 ]  The sexual relationship between the parents, fantasized as continuous, is also the basis of the "combined-parent figure", [ 4 ]  mother and father seen as locked in mutual (but excluding) gratification.


Where Klein laid emphasis on the way the infant projected hostile and destructive tendencies onto the primal scene, with the mother pictured therein as just as dangerous for the father as the father is for her, later Kleinians like  John Steiner  have stressed the creative aspect of the primal scene; and the necessity in analysis of overcoming a  splitting  of its image between a loving couple on the one hand, and a combined parent figure locked in hate. [ 5 ]


The primal scene is inseparable from the sexual theories of childhood that it serves to create. This disturbing representation, which at once acknowledges and denies the familiar quality of the parents, excludes the child even as it concerns them, as witness the libidinal excitement the child feels in response.  Otto Fenichel  has stressed the traumatic nature of the excess excitement felt by the child, which they are unable to process — what he called the "overwhelming unknown". [ 6 ]


The particularity of the primal scene lies in the fact that the subject experiences in a simultaneous and contradictory way the emergence of the unknown within a familiar world, to which they are bound by vital needs, by expectations of pleasure, and by the self-image that it reflects back to them. The lack of common measure between the child's emotional and psychosexual experience and the words that could give an account of the primal scene creates a gulf that the sexual theories of childhood attempt to bridge. A sadistic reading of the scene combines the child's curiosity about both the origin and the end of life in a representation in which death and life are indeed fused. [ citation needed ]


Ph.D. dissertations on primal scene began to appear since 1970s. M.F. Hoyt's Ph.D. dissertation entitled 'The primal scene: A study of fantasy and perception regarding parental sexuality' was submitted to the Yale University. Based on the approximately 400 college student samples, Hoyt inferred that approximately 20% of respondents reported actually witnessing (by sight and/or sound) their parents engaging in sexual relations. The conclusion of this study indicated that primal scene experience per se is not necessarily deleterious; the traumatic or pathogenic effects usually occur only within the context of general brutality or disturbed family relations. A segment of Paul Okami's doctoral dissertation to the University of California Los Angeles in 1990s, was published in the  Journal of Sex Research  in 1995.


Ned Lukacher has proposed using the term in literary criticism to refer to a kind of intertextuality in which the ability to interpret one text depends on the meaning of another text. It is "the interpretive impasse that arises when a reader has good reason to believe that the meaning of one text is historically dependent on the meaning of another text or on a previously unnoticed set of criteria, even though there is no conclusive evidential or archival means of establishing the case beyond a reasonable doubt." [ 7 ]


——. (1908c). On the sexual theories of children. SE, 9: 205-226.


——. (1909b). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy. SE, 10: 1-149.


——. (1915f). A case of paranoia running counter to the psycho-analytic theory of the disease. SE, 14: 261-272.


——. (1918b [1914]). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17: 1-122.


——. (1937d). Constructions in analysis. SE, 23: 255-269.


——. (1950a [1887-1902]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. SE, 1: 173-280.


Promiscuity  is the practice of engaging in  sexual activity  frequently with different  partners  or being indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners. [ 1 ]  The term can carry a moral judgment. A common example of behavior viewed as promiscuous by many cultures is the  one-night stand , and its frequency is used by researchers as a marker for promiscuity. [ 2 ]


What sexual behavior is considered promiscuous varies between cultures, as does the prevalence of promiscuity. Different standards are often applied to different genders and civil statutes.  Feminists  have traditionally argued a significant  double standard  exists between how men and women are judged for promiscuity. Historically, stereotypes of the promiscuous woman have tended to be pejorative, such as "the  slut " or "the harlot", while male stereotypes have been more varied, some expressing approval, such as "the stud" or "the player", while others imply societal deviance, such as "the womanizer" or "the philanderer". A scientific study published in 2005 found that promiscuous men and women are both prone to derogatory judgment. [ 3 ]


Promiscuity is common in many animal species. [ 4 ]  Some species have promiscuous  mating systems , ranging from  polyandry  and  polygyny  to mating systems with no stable relationships where mating between two individuals is a one-time event. Many species form stable  pair bonds , but still mate with other individuals outside the pair. In  biology , incidents of promiscuity in species that form pair bonds are usually called  extra-pair copulations .


Accurately assessing people's  sexual behavior  is difficult, since strong social and personal motivations occur, depending on social  sanctions  and  taboos , for either minimizing or exaggerating reported sexual activity.


American experiments in 1978 and 1982 found the great majority of men were willing to have sex with women they did not know, of average attractiveness, who propositioned them. No woman, by contrast, agreed to such propositions from men of average attractiveness. While men were in general comfortable with the requests, regardless of their willingness, women responded with shock and disgust. [ 5 ]


The number of sexual partners people have had in their lifetimes varies widely within a population. We see a higher number of people who are more comfortable with their sexuality in the modern world. A 2007 nationwide survey in the United States found the median number of female sexual partners reported by men was seven and the median number of male partners reported by women was four. The men possibly exaggerated their reported number of partners, women reported a number lower than the actual number, or a minority of women had a sufficiently larger number than most other women to create a mean significantly higher than the median, or all of the above. About 29% of men and 9% of women reported to have had more than 15 sexual partners in their lifetimes. [ 6 ]  Studies of the spread of  sexually transmitted infections  consistently demonstrate a small percentage of the studied population has more partners than the average man or woman, and a smaller number of people have fewer than the statistical average. An important question in the  epidemiology  of sexually transmitted infections is whether or not these groups copulate mostly at random with sexual partners from throughout a population or  within their social groups .


A 2006  systematic review  analyzing data from 59 countries worldwide found no association between regional sexual behavior tendencies, such as number of sexual partners, and sexual-health status. Much more predictive of sexual-health status are socioeconomic factors like poverty and mobility. [ 7 ]  Other studies have suggested that people with multiple casual sex partners are more likely to be diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections. [ 8 ]


Severe and impulsive promiscuity, along with a compulsive urge to engage in illicit sex with attached individuals is a common symptom of  borderline personality disorder ,  histrionic personality disorder ,  narcissistic personality disorder , and  antisocial personality disorder  but most promiscuous individuals do not have these disorders. [ 9 ]


In 2008, a U.S. university study of international promiscuity found that  Finns  have had the largest number of sex partners in the industrialized world, and  British people  have the largest number among big western industrial nations. [ 10 ]  The study measured one-night stands, attitudes to  casual sex , and number of  sexual partners . [ citation needed ]  A 2014 nationwide survey in the United Kingdom named Liverpool the country's most promiscuous city. [ 11 ]


Britain's position on the international index "may be linked to increasing social acceptance of promiscuity among women as well as men". Britain's ranking was "ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women, and a highly sexualized popular culture". [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ]


The top-10-ranking  OECD  nations with a population over 10 million on the study's promiscuity index, in descending order, were the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechia, Australia, the United States, France, Turkey, Mexico, and Canada. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ]


A 2017 survey by Superdrug found that the United Kingdom was the country with the most sex partners with an average of 7, while Austria had around 6.5. [ 15 ] [ 16 ]  The 2012 Trojan Sex Life Survey found that African American men reported an average of 38 sex partners in their lifetime. [ 17 ]  A study funded by  condom -maker  Durex , conducted in 2006 and published in 2009, measured promiscuity by a total number of sexual partners. The survey found Austrian men had the highest number of sex partners globally, with 29.3 sexual partners on average. New Zealand women had the highest number of sex partners for females in the world with an average of 20.4 sexual partners. In all of the countries surveyed, except New Zealand, men reported more sexual partners than women. [ 18 ] [ 19 ]


One review found the people from developed Western countries had more sex partners than people from developing countries in general, while the rate of STIs was higher in developing countries. [ 7 ]


According to the 2005 Global Sex Survey by Durex, people have had on average nine sexual partners, the most in Turkey (14.5) and Australia (13.3), and the fewest in India (3) and China (3.1). [ 20 ]


In many cases, the population of each country that participates is approximately 1000 people and can equate to less than 0.0003% of the population, e.g. the 2017 survey of 42 nations surveyed only 33,000 people. In India, data was collected from less than 0.000001% of the total population at that time. [ 21 ] [ 18 ] [ 22 ]  According to the 2012 General Social Survey in the United States by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, Protestants on average had more sex partners than Catholics. [ 23 ]  Similarly, a 2019 study by the Institute for Family Studies in the US found that of never married young people, Protestants have more sexual partners than Catholics. [ 24 ]


A 1994 study in the United States, which looked at the number of sexual partners in a lifetime, found 20% of heterosexual men had one partner, 55% had two to 20 partners, and 25% had more than 20 sexual partners. [ 26 ]  More recent studies have reported similar numbers. [ 27 ]


In the United Kingdom, a nationally representative study in 2013 found that 33.9% of heterosexual men had 10 or more lifetime sexual partners. Among men between 45 and 54 years old, 43.1% reported 10 or more sexual partners. [ 28 ]


A 2003 representative study in Australia found that heterosexual men had a median of 8 female sexual partners in their lifetime. For lifetime sexual partners: 5.8% had 0 partners, 10.3% had 1 partner, 6.1% had 2 partners, 33% had between 3 and 9 partners, 38.3% had between 10 and 49 partners and 6.6% had more than 50 female sexual partners. [ 29 ]


A 2014 representative study in Australia found that heterosexual men had a median of 7.8 female sexual partners in their lifetime. For lifetime sexual partners: 3.7% had 0 partners, 12.6% had 1 partner, 6.8% had 2 partners, 32.3% had between 3 and 9 partners, 36.9% had between 10 and 49 partners and 7.8% had more than 50 female sexual partners. [ 30 ]


Research by  J. Michael Bailey  found that heterosexual men had the same level of interest in casual sex as gay men. However he found straight men were limited in their ability to acquire high numbers of female partners. According to Bailey, "These facts suggest that women are responsible for the pace of sex. Gay and straight men both want casual sex, but only straight men have the brake of women’s sexually cautious nature to slow them." [ 31 ]


A 1989 study found having over 100 partners to be present though rare among homosexual males. [ 32 ]  An extensive 1994 study found that difference in the mean number of sexual partners between gay and straight men "did not appear very large". [ 33 ] [ 34 ]


A 2007 study reported that two large population surveys found "the majority of  gay men  had similar numbers of unprotected sexual partners annually as straight men and women." [ 35 ] [ 36 ]


The 2013 British  NATSAL  study found that gay men typically had 19 sexual partners in a lifetime (median). [ 37 ]  In the previous year, 51.8% reported having either 0 or 1 sexual partner. A further 21.3% reported having between 2 and 4 sexual partners, 7.3% reported having between 5 and 9, and 19.6% reported having 10 or more sexual partners. [ 37 ]


A 2014 study in Australia found gay men had a median of 22 sexual partners in a lifetime ( sexual partner  was defined as any sexual contact, kissing, touching or intercourse). [ 38 ]  30% of gay respondents reported 0–9 partners in their lifetime. 50.1% of gay men reported having either 0 or 1 partner in the previous year, while 25.6% reported 10 or more partners in the previous year. [ 38 ]


Research on gay sexual behavior may overrepresent promiscuous respondents. [ 39 ] [ 33 ] [ 40 ]  This is because gay men are a small portion of the male population, and thus many researchers have relied on  convenience surveys  to research behavior of gay men. Examples of this type of sampling includes surveying men on dating apps such as  Grindr , or finding volunteers at gay bars, clubs and saunas. Convenience surveys often exclude gay men who are in a relationship, and gay men who do not use dating apps or attend gay venues. [ 39 ] [ 41 ]  For example, the British and European convenience surveys included approximately five times as many gay men who reported "5 or more sexual partners" than the nationally representative NATSAL study did. [ 42 ] [ 40 ]   Probability sample  surveys are more useful in this regard, because they seek to accurately reflect the characteristics of the gay male population. Examples include the  NATSAL  in the United Kingdom and the  General Social Survey  in the United States.


According to  John Corvino , opponents of gay rights often use convenience sample statistics to support their belief that gay men are promiscuous, but that larger representative samples show that the difference is not so large, and that extreme promiscuity occurs in a minority of gay men. [ 43 ]  Psychologist  J. Michael Bailey  has stated that social conservatives use promiscuity among gay men as evidence of a "decadent" nature of gay men, but says "I think they're wrong. Promiscuous gay men are expressing an essentially masculine trait. They are doing what most heterosexual men would do if they could. They are in this way just like heterosexual men, except that they don't have women to constrain them." [ 31 ]


Regarding  sexually transmitted infections  (STIs), some researchers have said that the number of sexual partners had by gay men cannot fully explain rates of HIV infection in this population. Most gay men report having similar numbers of unprotected sexual partners as straight men on an annual basis. Unprotected receptive anal sex, which holds a much higher risk of HIV transmission, appears to be the major factor. [ 44 ]


In 1994, a study in the United States found almost all married heterosexual women reported having sexual contact only with their husbands, and unmarried women almost always reported having no more than one sexual partner in the past three months. Lesbians who had long-term partners reported having fewer outside partners than heterosexual women. [ 32 ]  More recent research, however, contradicts the assertion that heterosexual women are largely monogamous. A 2002 study estimated that 45% to 55% of married heterosexual women engage in sexual relationships outside of their marriage, [ 45 ] [ better source needed ]  while the estimate for heterosexual men engaging in the same conduct was 50–60% in the same study. [ 45 ]


One possible explanation for hyper sexuality is child sexual abuse (CSA) trauma. Many studies have examined the correlation between CSA and  risky sexual behavior . Rodriguez-Srednicki and Ofelia examined the correlation of CSA experienced by women and their self-destructive behavior as adults using a questionnaire. The diversity and ages of the women varied. Slightly fewer than half the women reported CSA while the remainder reported no childhood trauma. The results of the study determined that self-destructive behaviors, including hypersexuality, correlates with CSA in women. [ 46 ]  CSA can create sexual schemas that result in risky sexual behavior. [ 47 ]  This can play out in their sexual interactions as girls get older. The sexual behaviors of women that experienced CSA differed from those of women without exposure to CSA. Studies show CSA survivors tend to have more sexual partners and engage in higher risk sexual behaviors. [ 48 ]


Since at least 1450, the word ' slut ' has been used, often pejoratively, to describe a sexually promiscuous woman. [ 49 ]  In and before the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean eras , terms like "strumpet" and "whore" were used to describe women deemed promiscuous, as seen, for example, in  John Webster 's 1612 play  The White Devil . [ citation needed ]


Thornhill and Gangestad found that women are much more likely to sexually fantasize about and be attracted to  extra-pair men  during the fertile phase of the  menstrual cycle  than the  luteal phase , whereas attraction to the primary partner does not change depending on the  menstrual cycle . [ 50 ]  A 2004 study by Pillsworth, Hasselton and Buss contradicted this, finding greater in-pair sexual attraction during this phase and no increase in attraction to extra-pair men. [ 51 ]


In Norwegian students, Kennair et al. (2023) found no signs of a sexual double standard in short-term or long-term mating contexts, nor in choosing a friend, except that women's self-stimulation was more acceptable than men's. [ 52 ]


Evolutionary psychologists  propose that a conditional  human  tendency for promiscuity is inherited from  hunter-gatherer  ancestors. Promiscuity increases the likelihood of having children, thus "evolutionary" fitness. According to them, female promiscuity is advantageous in that it allows females to choose fathers for their children who have better genes than their mates, to ensure better care for their offspring, have more children, and as a form of fertility insurance. [ 53 ]  Male promiscuity was likely advantageous because it allowed males to father more children.


Primitive promiscuity or original promiscuity was the 19th-century hypothesis that humans originally lived in a state of promiscuity or " hetaerism " before the advent of society as we understand it. [ 54 ] [ 55 ] [ 56 ] [ 57 ] [ 58 ]  Hetaerism is a theoretical early state of human society, as postulated by 19th-century anthropologists, which was characterized by the absence of the institution of marriage in any form and in which women were the common property of their tribe and in which children never knew who their fathers were. [ 59 ]


The reconstruction of the original state of  primitive society  or humanity was based on the idea of progress, according to which all cultures have degrees of improvement and becoming more complicated. It seemed logical to assume that never before the types of families developed did they simply exist, and in primitive society, sexual relations were without any boundaries and taboos. This view is represented, inter alia, by anthropologist  Lewis H. Morgan  in  Ancient Society  and  Friedrich Engels ' work  The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State . [ 60 ]


In the first half of the 20th century, this notion was rejected by a number of authors, e.g.  Edvard Westermarck , a Finnish philosopher, social anthropologist and sociologist with in-depth knowledge of the history of marriage, who provided strong evidence that, at least in the first stages of cultural development, monogamy has been a perfectly normal and natural form of man-woman coexistence. [ 61 ] [ 62 ]


Modern cultural anthropology has not confirmed the existence of a complete promiscuity in any known society or culture. The evidence of history is reduced to some texts of  Herodotus ,  Strabo , and  Solinus , which have been hard to interpret. [ 63 ]


Christianity ,  Judaism , and  Islam  condemn promiscuity and instead advocate lifelong monogamous marriage (although Islam allows polygamy for men). [ 64 ]  The perspectives on promiscuity vary significantly depending on the region. Every country has different values and morals pertaining to sexual life.


Promiscuity has been practiced in  hippie  communities and other  alternative subcultures  since the  1960s cultural revolution . [ 65 ]


Sex and Culture  is a book by  J. D. Unwin  concerning the correlation between a society's level of 'cultural achievement' and its level of sexual restraint. Published in 1934, the book concluded with the theory that as societies develop, they become more sexually liberal, accelerating the social entropy of the society, and thereby diminishing its "creative" and "expansive" energy. [ 66 ] [ 67 ]


Some researchers have suggested that the practice of referring to animals as promiscuous in reference to their mating system is often inaccurate and potentially biased. More precise terms such as  polyandry ,  polygyny , and  polygynandry  are increasingly preferred. [ 68 ] [ 69 ]


Many animal species, such as  spotted hyenas , [ 70 ]   pigs , [ 71 ]   bonobos [ 72 ]  and  chimpanzees , are promiscuous as a rule, and do not form  pair bonds . Although social monogamy occurs in about 90% of avian species and about 3% of  mammalian  species, an estimated 90% of socially monogamous species exhibit individual promiscuity in the form of  copulation outside the pair bond . [ 4 ] [ 73 ] [ 74 ]


In the animal world, some species, including birds such as  swans  and fish such as  Neolamprologus pulcher , once believed  monogamous , are now known to engage in  extra-pair copulations . One example of extra-pair fertilization (EPF) in birds is the  black-throated blue warblers . Though it is a socially monogamous species, both males and females engage in EPF. [ 75 ]


The Darwin-Bateman paradigm, which states that males are typically eager to copulate while females are more choosy about whom to mate with, has been confirmed by a  meta-analysis . [ 76 ]  There is, however, continued debate about the utility and pitfalls of the Bateman perspective. [ 77 ] [ 78 ] [ 79 ]


Prostitution  is a type of  sex work  that involves engaging in  sexual activity  in exchange for  payment . [ 1 ] [ 2 ]  The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g.,  sexual intercourse ,  non-penetrative sex ,  manual sex ,  oral sex , etc.) with the customer. [ 3 ]  The requirement of physical contact also creates  the risk of transferring infections . Prostitution is sometimes described as  sexual services ,  commercial sex  or, colloquially,  hooking . It is sometimes referred to euphemistically as "the  world's oldest profession " in the English-speaking world. [ 4 ] [ 5 ]  A person who works in the field is usually called a  prostitute  or  sex worker , but other words, such as  hooker  and  whore , are sometimes used  pejoratively  to refer to those who work in prostitution. The majority of prostitutes are female and have male clients. [ 6 ] [ 7 ]


Prostitution occurs in a variety of forms, and  its legal status  varies from  country to country  (sometimes from region to region within a given country). In most cases, it can be either an  enforced  crime, an  unenforced  crime, a  decriminalized  activity, a legal but unregulated activity, or a regulated profession. It is one branch of the  sex industry , along with pornography,  stripping , and  erotic dancing .  Brothels  are establishments specifically dedicated to prostitution. In  escort prostitution , the act may take place at the client's residence or hotel room (referred to as out-call), or at the escort's residence or a hotel room rented for the occasion by the escort (in-call). Another form is  street prostitution .


According to a 2011 report by Fondation Scelles there are about 42 million prostitutes in the world, living all over the world (though most of Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa lack data, studied countries in that large region rank as top  sex tourism  destinations). [ 8 ]  Estimates place the annual revenue generated by prostitution worldwide to be over $100 billion. [ 9 ]


The position of prostitution and the law varies widely worldwide, reflecting differing opinions. Some view prostitution as a form of exploitation of or  violence against women , [ 10 ]  and  children , [ 11 ]  that helps to create a supply of victims for  human trafficking . [ 12 ] [ 13 ]  Some critics of prostitution as an institution are supporters of the " Nordic model " that decriminalizes the act of selling sex and makes the purchase of sex illegal. This approach has also been adopted by  Canada ,  Iceland ,  Ireland , [ 14 ]   Northern Ireland ,  Norway ,  France  and  Sweden . Others view sex work as a legitimate occupation, whereby a person trades or exchanges sexual acts for money.  Amnesty International  is one of the notable groups calling for the  decriminalization of prostitution . [ 15 ]


Prostitute  is derived from the  Latin   prostituta . Some sources cite the verb as a composition of " pro " meaning "up front" or "forward" and " stituere ", defined as "to offer up for sale". [ 16 ]  Another explanation is that  prostituta  is a composition of  pro  and  statuere  (to cause to stand, to station, place erect). A literal translation therefore is: "to put up front for sale" or "to place forward". The  Online Etymology Dictionary  states: "The notion of 'sex for hire' is not inherent in the etymology, which rather suggests one 'exposed to lust' or sex 'indiscriminately offered'." [ 17 ] [ 18 ]


The word  prostitute  was then carried down through various languages to the present-day Western society. Most  sex worker activists  groups reject the word  prostitute  and since the late 1970s have used the term  sex worker  instead. However,  sex worker  can also mean anyone who works within the sex industry or whose work is of a sexual nature and is not limited solely to prostitutes. [ 19 ] [ 20 ]


A variety of terms are used for those who engage in prostitution, some of which distinguish between different types of prostitution or imply a value judgment about them. This terminology is hotly contested among scholars. [ 21 ]  Common alternatives for  prostitute  include  escort  and  whore ; however, not all professional escorts are prostitutes.


The English word  whore  derives from the  Old English  word  hōra , from the  Proto-Germanic   *hōrōn  (prostitute), which derives from the  Proto-Indo-European   root   *keh₂-  meaning "desire", a root which has also given us Latin  cārus  (dear), whence the French  cher  (dear, expensive) and the Latin  cāritās  (love, charity). Use of the word  whore  is widely considered  pejorative , especially in its modern slang form of  ho . In Germany, however, most prostitutes' organizations deliberately use the word  Hure  (whore) since they feel that  prostitute  is a bureaucratic term. [ citation needed ]


Those seeking to remove the  social stigma  associated with prostitution often promote terminology such as  sex worker ,  commercial sex worker  (CSW) or  sex trade worker . Another commonly used word for a prostitute is  hooker . Although a popular etymology connects "hooker" with  Joseph Hooker , a Union general in the  American Civil War , the word more likely comes from the concentration of prostitutes around the shipyards and ferry terminal of the  Corlear's Hook  area of  Manhattan  in the 1820s, who came to be referred to as "hookers". [ 22 ]  A  streetwalker  solicits customers on the streets or in public places, while a  call girl  makes appointments by phone, or in recent years, through email or the internet.


Correctly or not, the use of the word  prostitute  without specifying a sex may commonly be assumed to be female; compound terms such as  male prostitution  or  male escort  are therefore often used to identify males. Those offering services to female customers are commonly known as  gigolos ; those offering services to male customers are  hustlers  or  rent boys .


Organizers of prostitution may be known colloquially as  pimps  if male or  madams  if female. More formally, one who is said to practice procuring is a  procurer , or  procuress . [ 23 ]  They may also be called  panderers  or  brothel keepers .


Examples of procuring include:


Clients of prostitutes, most often men by  prevalence , are sometimes known as  johns  or  tricks  in North America and  punters  in Britain and Ireland. These slang terms are used among both prostitutes and law enforcement for persons who solicit prostitutes. [ 24 ]  The term  john  may have originated from the frequent customer practice of giving one's name as "John", a common name in  English-speaking  countries, in an effort to maintain anonymity. In some places, men who drive around  red-light districts  for the purpose of soliciting prostitutes are also known as  kerb crawlers .


Female clients of prostitutes are sometimes referred to as  janes  or  sugar mamas . [ 25 ] [ 26 ] [ 27 ]


The word "prostitution" can also be used metaphorically to mean debasing oneself or working towards an unworthy cause or "selling out". [ 28 ]  In this sense, "prostituting oneself" or "whoring oneself" the services or acts performed are typically not sexual. For instance, in the book  The Catcher in the Rye ,  Holden Caulfield  says of his brother ("D.B."): "Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me." D.B. is not literally a prostitute; Holden feels that his job writing  B-movie  screenplays is morally debasing.


The prostitution metaphor, "traditionally used to signify political inconstancy, unreliability, fickleness, a lack of firm values and integrity, and venality, has long been a staple of Russian political rhetoric. [ 29 ]  One of the famous insults of  Leon Trotsky  made by  Joseph Stalin  was calling him a "political prostitute". [ 29 ]   Leon Trotsky  used this epithet himself, calling German Social Democracy, at that time "corrupted by  Kautskianism ", a "political prostitution disguised by theories". [ 30 ]  In 1938, he used the same description for the  Comintern , saying that the chief aim of the Bonapartist clique of  Stalin  during the preceding several years "has consisted in proving to the imperialist 'democracies' its wise conservatism and love for order. For the sake of the longed alliance with imperialist democracies [Stalin] has brought the Comintern to the last stages of political prostitution." [ 31 ]


Besides targeting political figures, the term is used in relation to organizations and even small countries, which "have no choice but to sell themselves", because their voice in world affairs is insignificant. In 2007, a Russian caricature depicted the Baltic states as three "ladies of the night", "vying for the attentions of Uncle Sam, since the Russian client has run out of money". [ 29 ]


Usage of the "political prostitute" moniker is by no means unique to the Russian political lexicon, such as when a  Huffington Post  contributor expressed the opinion that  Donald Trump  was "prostituting himself to feed his ego and gain power" when he ran for President of the United States. [ 32 ]


Sex work researcher and writer Gail Pheterson writes that these metaphorical usages exist because "the term  prostitute  gradually took on a Christian moralist tradition, as being synonymous with debasement of oneself or of others for the purpose of ill-gotten gains". [ 33 ]


Although historically it was suggested that peoples of the  Ancient Near East  engaged in  sacred prostitution  based on accounts of ancient Greek authors like  Herodotus , the veracity of these claims has been seriously questioned due to a lack of corroborating evidence. [ 34 ] [ 35 ]  Amongst the oldest reliable references to  prostitution in ancient Greece  comes from the  Archaic  era poet  Anacreon  (  c.  575 – c. 495 BC) in his poem about Artemon, which references "whores by choice". The record of prostitution in the  classical period  is better documented, and includes references to both free-born voluntary prostitutes, including the high social status  hetairai , as well as involuntary slave prostitutes. [ 36 ]  Male prostitutes also existed in Ancient Greece. [ 37 ]


There was never a unified legal approach to  prostitution in ancient Rome . [ 38 ]  In ancient Rome, prostitutes had low social status and were considered  infamia . [ 39 ]  Under the reign of emperor  Caligula , a taxation on prostitution was implemented. [ 38 ]  Roman slave owners were able to include the  ne serva prostituatur   covenant  as part of slave sale contracts, which prohibited the slaves being forced to prostitute themselves by their owners after being sold. [ 40 ]


Throughout the  Middle Ages  the definition of a prostitute has been ambiguous, with various secular and canonical organizations defining prostitution in constantly evolving terms. Even though medieval secular authorities created legislation to deal with the phenomenon of prostitution, they rarely attempted to define what a prostitute was because it was deemed unnecessary "to specify exactly who fell into that [specific] category" of a prostitute. [ 41 ]  The first known definition of prostitution was found in Marseille's thirteenth-century statutes, which included a chapter entitled  De meretricibus  ("regarding prostitutes"). [ 41 ]  The Marseillais designated prostitutes as "public girls" who, day and night, received two or more men in their house, and as a woman who "did business trading [their bodies], within the confine[s] of a  brothel ." [ 42 ]  A fourteenth-century English tract,  Fasciculus Morum , states that the term  prostitute  (termed ' meretrix ' in this document), "must be applied only to those women who give themselves to anyone and will refuse none, and that for monetary gain". [ 42 ]  In general prostitution was not typically a lifetime career choice for women. Women usually alternated their career of prostitution with "petty retailing, and victualing," or only occasionally turned to prostitution in times of great financial need. [ 43 ]  Women who became prostitutes often did not have the familial ties or means to protect themselves from the lure of prostitution, and it has been recorded on several occasions that mothers would be charged with prostituting their own daughters in exchange for extra money. [ 44 ]
Medieval civilians accepted without question the fact of prostitution, it was a necessary part of medieval life. [ 45 ]  Prostitutes subverted the sexual tendencies of male youth, just by existing. With the establishment of prostitution, men were less likely to collectively rape honest women of marriageable and re-marriageable age. [ 46 ]  This is most clearly demonstrated in  St. Augustine 's claim that "the removal of the institution would bring lust into all aspects of the world." [ 47 ]  Meaning that without prostitutes to subvert male tendencies, men would go after innocent women instead, thus the prostitutes were actually doing society a favor, according to Augustine.


In urban societies there was an erroneous view that prostitution was flourishing more in rural regions rather than in cities, however, it has been proven that prostitution was more rampant in cities and large towns. [ 48 ]  Although there were wandering prostitutes in rural areas who worked according to the calendar of fairs, similar to riding a circuit, in which prostitutes stopped by various towns based on what event was going on at the time, most prostitutes remained in cities. Cities tended to draw more prostitutes due to the sheer size of the population and the institutionalization of prostitution in urban areas which made it more rampant in metropolitan regions. [ 48 ]  Furthermore, in both urban and rural areas of society, women who did not live under the rule of male authority were more likely to be suspected of prostitution than their oppressed counterparts because of the fear of women who did not fit into a stereotypical category outside of marriage or religious life. [ 44 ]


Secular law, like most other aspects of prostitution in the Middle Ages, is difficult to generalize due to the regional variations in attitudes towards prostitution. [ 49 ]  The global trend of the thirteenth century was toward the development of positive policy on prostitution as laws exiling prostitutes changed towards  sumptuary laws  and the confinement of prostitutes to  red light districts . [ 50 ]


Sumptuary laws became the regulatory norm for prostitutes and included making  courtesans  "wear a shoulder-knot of a particular color as a badge of their calling" to be able to easily distinguish the prostitute from a respectable woman in society. [ 50 ]  The color that designated them as prostitutes could vary from different earth tones to yellow, as was usually designated as a color of shame in the Hebrew communities. [ 51 ]  These laws, however, proved no impediment to wealthier prostitutes because their glamorous appearances were almost indistinguishable from noble women. [ 52 ]  In the  14th century , London prostitutes were only tolerated when they wore yellow hoods. [ 53 ]


Although brothels were still present in most cities and urban centers and could range from private bordelages run by a procuress from her home to public baths and centers established by municipal legislation, the only centers for prostitution legally allowed were the institutionalized and publicly funded brothels. [ 54 ]  This did not prevent illegal brothels from thriving. Brothels theoretically banned the  patronage  of married men and clergy, but it was sporadically enforced and there is evidence of clergymen present in brawls that were documented in brothels. [ 55 ]  Thus the clergy were at least present in brothels at some point or another. Brothels also settled the "obsessive fear of the sharing of women" and solved the issue of "collective security." [ 56 ]  The lives of prostitutes in brothels were not cloistered like that of nuns and "only some lived permanently in the streets assigned to them." [ 57 ]  Prostitutes were only allowed to practice their trade in the brothel in which they worked. [ 58 ]  Brothels were also used to protect prostitutes and their clients through various regulations. For example, the law that "forbid brothel keepers [from] beat[ing] them." [ 59 ]  However, brothel regulations also hindered prostitutes' lives by forbidding them from having "lovers other than their customers" or from having a favored customer. [ 59 ]


Courts showed conflicting views on the role of prostitutes in secular law as prostitutes could not inherit property, defend themselves in court, or make accusations in court. [ 60 ]  However, prostitutes were sometimes called upon as witnesses during trial. [ 61 ]


By the end of the 15th-century attitudes seemed to have begun to harden against prostitution. An outbreak of  syphilis  in  Naples  1494 which later swept across Europe, and which may have originated from the  Columbian Exchange , [ 62 ]  and the prevalence of other  sexually transmitted infections  from the earlier 13th century, may have been causes of this change in attitude. By the early 16th century, the association between prostitutes, plague, and contagion emerged, causing brothels and prostitution to be outlawed by secular authority. [ 63 ]  Furthermore, outlawing brothel-keeping and prostitution was also used to "strengthen the criminal law" system of the sixteenth-century secular rulers. [ 64 ]
 Canon law  defined a prostitute as "a promiscuous woman, regardless of financial elements." [ 65 ]  The prostitute was considered a "whore … who [was] available for the lust of many men," and was most closely associated with promiscuity. [ 66 ]


The Church's stance on prostitution was three-fold: "acceptance of prostitution as an inevitable social fact, condemnation of those profiting from this commerce, and encouragement for the prostitute to  repent ." [ 67 ]  The Church was forced to recognize its inability to remove prostitution from the worldly society, and in the fourteenth century "began to tolerate prostitution as a lesser evil." [ 68 ]  However, prostitutes were to be excluded from the Church as long as they practiced. [ 69 ]  Around the twelfth century, the idea of prostitute saints took hold, with  Mary Magdalene  being one of the most popular saints of the era. The Church used Mary Magdalene's biblical history of being a reformed harlot to encourage prostitutes to repent and mend their ways. [ 70 ]  Simultaneously, religious houses were established with the purpose of providing asylum and encouraging the reformation of prostitution. 'Magdalene Homes' were particularly popular and peaked especially in the early fourteenth century. [ 71 ]  Over the course of the Middle Ages,  popes  and religious communities made various attempts to remove prostitution or reform prostitutes, with varying success. [ 72 ]


With the advent of the  Protestant Reformation , numbers of Southern German towns closed their brothels in an attempt to eradicate prostitution. [ 73 ]  In some periods prostitutes had to distinguish themselves by particular signs, sometimes wearing very short hair or no hair at all, or wearing  veils  in societies where other women did not wear them. Ancient codes regulated in this case the crime of a prostitute that dissimulated her profession. In some cultures, prostitutes were the sole women allowed to sing in public or act in theatrical performances.


In the 19th century, legalized prostitution became the center of public controversy as the  British government  passed the  Contagious Diseases Acts , legislation mandating pelvic examinations for suspected prostitutes; they would remain in force until 1886. The  French government , instead of trying to outlaw prostitution, began to view prostitution as a necessary evil for society to function. French politicians chose to regulate prostitution, introducing a "Morals Brigade" onto the streets of Paris. [ 74 ]  A similar situation did in fact exist in the  Russian Empire ; prostitutes operating out of government-sanctioned brothels were given yellow internal passports signifying their status and were subjected to weekly physical exams. A major work,  Prostitution, Considered in Its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects , was published by  William Acton  in 1857, which estimated that the County of London had 80,000 prostitutes and that 1 house in 60 was serving as a brothel. [ 75 ]   Leo Tolstoy 's novel  Resurrection  describes legal prostitution in 19th-century Russia.


The leading  Marxist theorists  opposed prostitution. Communist governments often attempted to repress the practice immediately after obtaining power, although it always persisted. In most contemporary  communist states , prostitution remained illegal but was nonetheless common. [ 76 ]  The economic decline brought about by the  collapse of the Soviet Union  led to increased prostitution in many current and former Communist countries. [ 77 ]


In 1956, the United Kingdom introduced the  Sexual Offences Act 1956 . While this law did not criminalise the act of  prostitution in the United Kingdom  itself, it prohibited such activities as running a brothel. Soliciting was made illegal by the  Street Offences Act 1959 . These laws were partly repealed, and altered, by the  Sexual Offences Act 2003  and the  Policing and Crime Act 2009 .


Since the break up of the  Soviet Union , thousands of eastern European women end up as prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year. Some enter the profession willingly; many are tricked, coerced, or kidnapped, and often experience captivity and violence. [ 78 ]  There are tens of thousands of women from eastern Europe and Asia working as prostitutes in  Dubai . Men from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates form a large proportion of the customers. [ 79 ]


In the Islamic world, sex outside of marriage was normally acquired by men not by paying for temporary sex from a free sex worker, but rather by personal sex slave called  concubine , which was a sex slave trade that  was still ongoing in the early 20th-century . [ 80 ]


Traditionally, prostitution in the Islamic world was historically practiced by way of the pimp temporarily selling his slave to her client, who then returned the ownership of the slave after intercourse.
The Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution. However, since Islamic Law allowed a man to have sexual intercourse with his   slave concubine , prostitution was practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who returned his ownership on the pretext of discontent after having had intercourse with her, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world. [ 81 ]
This form of prostitution was practiced by for example  Ibn Batuta , who acquired several female slaves during his travels. [ citation needed ]


According to  Shia  Muslims,  Muhammad  sanctioned  fixed-term marriage — muta'a  in Iraq and  sigheh  in Iran—which has instead been used as a legitimizing cover for sex workers, in a culture where prostitution is otherwise forbidden. [ 82 ]   Sunni  Muslims, who make up the majority of Muslims worldwide, believe the practice of fixed-term marriage was abrogated and ultimately forbidden by either Muhammad, or one of his successors,  Umar . Sunnis regard prostitution as sinful and forbidden. Some writers have argued that  mut'ah [ 83 ]  and  nikah misyar [ 84 ]  approximate prostitution. Julie Parshall writes that  mut'ah  is legalised prostitution which has been sanctioned by the  Twelver Shia  authorities. She quotes the Oxford encyclopedia of modern Islamic world to differentiate between marriage ( nikah ) and  mut'ah , and states that while nikah is for procreation,  mut'ah  is just for sexual gratification. [ 85 ]  According to Zeyno Baran, this kind of temporary marriage provides Shi'ite men with a religiously sanctioned equivalent to prostitution. [ 86 ]  According to Elena Andreeva's observation published in 2007, Russian travellers to Iran consider  mut'ah  to be "legalized profligacy" which is indistinguishable from prostitution. [ 87 ]  Religious supporters of  mut'ah  argue that temporary marriage is different from prostitution for a couple of reasons, including the necessity of  iddah  in case the couple have sexual intercourse. It means that if a woman marries a man in this way and has sex, she has to wait for a number of months before marrying again and therefore, a woman cannot marry more than 3 or 4 times in a year. [ 88 ] [ 89 ] [ 90 ] [ 91 ] [ 92 ] [ 93 ]


According to  Dervish  Ismail Agha, in the  Dellâkname-i Dilküşâ,  the  Ottoman  archives, [ 94 ] [ 95 ]  in the  hammams , the masseurs were traditionally  young men , who helped wash clients by soaping and scrubbing their bodies. They also worked as  sex workers . [ 96 ]  The  Ottoman  texts describe who they were, their prices, how many times they could bring their customers to  orgasm , and the details of their sexual practices.


In the early 17th century, there was widespread male and female prostitution throughout the cities of  Kyoto ,  Edo , and  Osaka , Japan.  Oiran  were  courtesans  in Japan during the  Edo period . The  oiran  were considered a type of  yūjo  ( 遊女 ) ( ja ) "woman of pleasure" or prostitute. Among the  oiran , the  tayū  ( 太夫 )  was considered the highest rank of courtesan available only to the wealthiest and highest ranking men. To entertain their clients,  oiran  practiced the arts of dance, music, poetry, and calligraphy as well as sexual services, and an educated wit was considered essential for sophisticated conversation. Many became celebrities of their times outside the pleasure districts. Their art and fashions often set trends among wealthy women. The last recorded  oiran  was in 1761. Although illegal in modern Japan, the definition of prostitution does not extend to a "private agreement" reached between a woman and a man in a  brothel .  Yoshiwara  has a large number of  soaplands  where women wash men's bodies. They began when explicit prostitution in Japan became illegal, and were originally known as  toruko-buro  ( "Turkish bath" ).


Japanese prostitutes were held in high regard by European travelling men in the 19th century. A British army officer reported that Japanese women were the best prostitutes in the world, for their attractiveness, cleanliness, and intelligence. [ 97 ]


The  Mahabharata  and the  Matsya Purana  mention fictitious accounts of the origin of Prostitution. Although, Later Vedic texts tacitly, as well as overtly, mention Prostitutes, it is in the Buddhist literature that professional prostitutes are noticed. [ 98 ]  A  tawaif  was a  courtesan  who catered to the nobility of the  Indian subcontinent , particularly during the era of the  Mughal Empire . These courtesans danced, sang, recited poetry and entertained their suitors at  mehfils . Like the  geisha  tradition in Japan, their main purpose was to professionally entertain their guests, and while sex was often incidental, it was not assured contractually. High-class or the most popular tawaifs could often pick and choose between the best of their suitors. They contributed to music, dance, theatre, film, and the  Urdu  literary tradition. [ 99 ]


During the  East India Company 's  rule in India  from 1757 until 1857, it was common for European soldiers serving in the  presidency armies  to solicit the services of  Indian prostitutes , and they frequently paid visits to local  nautch  dancers for purposes of a sexual nature. [ 100 ]  Prostitutes from Japan were also popular. Asian prostitutes were held in higher regard than prostitutes from Europe because they came from higher social backgrounds and were regarded as cleaner, more attractive and entertaining than prostitutes back in Europe. [ 97 ]


In the 21st century,  Afghans  revived a method of prostituting young boys which is referred to as " bacha bazi ". [ 101 ]


India's  devadasi  girls are forced by their poor families to dedicate themselves to the  Hindu  goddess  Renuka . The BBC wrote in 2007 that devadasis are "sanctified prostitutes". [ 102 ]


In  Latin America  and the  Caribbean  sex worker movements date back to the late 19th century in Havana,  Cuba . A catalyst in the movement being a newspaper published by Havana sex workers. This publication went by the name  La Cebolla , created by  Las Horizontales . [ 103 ]


During this period, prostitution was also very prominent in the  Barbary Coast, San Francisco  as the population was mainly men, due to the influx from the  Gold Rush . [ 104 ]  One of the more successful madams was  Belle Cora , who inadvertently got involved in a scandal involving her husband, Charles Cora, shooting US Marshal William H. Richardson. [ 105 ]  This led to the rise of new statutes against prostitution, gambling and other activities seen as "immoral". [ 104 ]


Originally, prostitution was widely legal in the United States. Prostitution was made illegal in almost all states between 1910 and 1915 largely due to the influence of the  Woman's Christian Temperance Union . [ 106 ] [ 107 ]


On the other hand, prostitution generated much national revenue in South Korea, hence the military government encouraged  prostitution for the U.S. military . [ 108 ] [ 109 ]


Beginning in the late 1980s, many states in the US increased the penalties for prostitution in cases where the prostitute is knowingly HIV-positive. Penalties for felony prostitution vary, with maximum sentences of typically 10 to 15 years in prison.


Sex tourism  emerged in the late 20th century as a controversial aspect of Western tourism and  globalization .


Historically , and currently, church prostitutes exist, and the practice may be legal or illegal, depending on the country, state or province. [ 110 ]


Prostitutes' salaries and payments fluctuate according to the economic conditions of their respective countries. Prostitutes who usually have foreign clients, such as business travelers, depend on good foreign economic conditions. [ 111 ]  Payment may vary according to regulations made by pimps, brothel keepers, madams, and procurers, who usually take a slice out of a prostitute's income. [ 112 ]  Prices may further depend on demand; popular, high-end prostitutes can earn significant amounts of money (upwards of $5,000 per client), [ 113 ]  and virgins may receive even higher payments.


The position of prostitution and the law varies widely worldwide, [ 114 ]  reflecting differing opinions on victimhood and  exploitation ,  inequality ,  gender roles ,  gender equality , ethics and  morality ,  freedom of choice , historical  social norms , and  social costs and benefits .


Legal themes tend to address four types of issues: victimhood (including potential victimhood), ethics and morality, freedom of choice, and general benefit or harm to society (including harm arising indirectly from matters connected to prostitution).


Prostitution may be considered a form of exploitation (e.g., Sweden, Norway, Iceland, where it is illegal to buy sexual services, but not to sell them—the client commits a crime, but not the prostitute), a legitimate occupation (e.g., Netherlands, Germany, where prostitution is regulated as a profession) or a crime (e.g., many  Muslim  countries, where the prostitutes face severe penalties).


The legal status of prostitution varies from country to country, from being legal and considered a  profession  to being  punishable by death . [ 115 ]  Some jurisdictions outlaw the act of prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money); other countries do not prohibit prostitution itself, but ban the activities typically associated with it (soliciting in a public place, operating a brothel, pimping, etc.), making it difficult to engage in prostitution without breaking any law; and in a few countries prostitution is legal and  regulated .


In some countries, there is controversy regarding the laws applicable to  sex work . For instance, the legal stance of punishing pimping while keeping sex work legal but "underground" and risky is often denounced as hypocritical; opponents suggest either going the full abolition route and criminalize clients or making sex work a regulated business.


Other groups, often with religious backgrounds, focus on offering women a way out of the world of prostitution while not taking a position on the legal question.


Prostitution is a significant issue in feminist thought and activism. Many feminists are opposed to prostitution, which they see as a form of exploitation of women and male dominance over women, and as a practice that is the result of the existing patriarchal societal order. These feminists argue that prostitution has a very negative effect, both on the prostitutes themselves and on society as a whole, as it reinforces stereotypical views about women, who are seen as sex objects which can be used and abused by men. Other feminists hold that prostitution can be a valid choice for the women who choose to engage in it; in this view, prostitution must be differentiated from  forced prostitution , and feminists should support sex worker activism against abuses by both the sex industry and the legal system.


Decriminalization views prostitution as labor like any other and that the sex industry premises should not be subject to any special regulation or laws. This is the current situation in New Zealand; the laws against operating a brothel, pimping, and street prostitution are struck down, but prostitution is hardly regulated at all. Proponents of this view often cite instances of government regulation under legalization that they consider intrusive, demeaning, or violent, but feel that criminalization adversely affects sex workers. [ 116 ]   Amnesty International  is one of the notable groups calling for the decriminalization of prostitution. [ 117 ] [ 15 ] [ 118 ]


Many countries have sex worker advocacy groups that lobby against criminalization and discrimination of prostitutes.
These groups generally oppose Nevada-style regulation and oversight, stating that prostitution should be treated like other professions. In the United States of America, one such group is  COYOTE  (an abbreviation for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics") and another is the North American Task Force on Prostitution. [ 119 ]  In Australia the lead sex worker rights organisation is  Scarlet Alliance . [ 120 ]  International  prostitutes' rights  organizations include the  International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights  and the Network of Sex Work Projects. [ 121 ]


Some view prostitution as something to be legalized and regulated: prostitution may be considered a legitimate business; prostitution and the employment of prostitutes are legal, but regulated. This is the current situation in the Netherlands, Germany, [ 122 ]  most of  Australia  and parts of  Nevada  (see  Prostitution in Nevada ). The degree of regulation varies very much; for example, in the Netherlands, prostitutes are not required to undergo mandatory health checks (see  Prostitution in the Netherlands ), while in  Nevada , the regulations are very strict (see  Prostitution in Nevada ). Because prostitution is considered criminal in many jurisdictions, its substantial revenues are not contributing to the tax revenues of the state, and its workers are not routinely screened for sexually transmitted infections which is dangerous in cultures favouring unprotected sex and leads to significant expenditure in the health services. According to the 1992  Estimates of the costs of crime in Australia  report, there was an "estimated $96 million loss of taxation revenue from undeclared earnings of prostitution". [ 123 ]


In  abolitionism , prostitution itself is not prohibited, but most associated activities are illegal, in an attempt to make it more difficult to engage in prostitution, prostitution is heavily discouraged and seen as a social problem. Prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal, but the surrounding activities such as public  solicitation , operating a  brothel  and other forms of  pimping  are prohibited. This is to some extent the current situation in Great Britain, where prostitution is considered "both a public nuisance and sexual offence", and Italy among others. [ 124 ]


Neo-abolitionism  view prostitution as inherently abusive and a form of  violence against women . [ 125 ]  Prostitutes are not prosecuted, but their clients and pimps are. In 1999, after lobbying by a coalition of feminists and Christians, Sweden criminalized the buying, not the selling, of sex and neo-abolitionism has come to also be known as the "Nordic model". It has since become law in France, Norway and Iceland (in Norway the law is even more strict, forbidding also having sex with a prostitute abroad). [ 126 ]  Exxpose, a Dutch group led by evangelical students gathered 40,000 signatures for a petition for the Dutch parliament to adopt the Swedish model but were unsuccessful. [ 127 ]  Advocates feel that legalizing and regulating prostitution creates a parallel illegal prostitution industry, and fails to dissociate the legal part of the sex trade from crime. [ 128 ] [ 129 ] [ 130 ] [ 131 ]


In 1949, the  UN General Assembly  adopted a  convention  stating that "prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person", [ 132 ]  requiring all signing parties to punish pimps and brothel owners and operators and to abolish all special treatment or registration of prostitutes. As of January 2009, the convention was ratified by 95 member nations including France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and not ratified by another 97 member nations including Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.


In February 2014, the members of the European Parliament voted in a non-binding resolution, (adopted by 343 votes to 139; with 105 abstentions), in favor of the 'Swedish Model' of criminalizing the buying, but not the selling of sex. [ 133 ]


In  prohibitionism , both prostitutes and clients are criminalized and are seen as immoral, they are considered criminals. This is the prevailing attitude nearly everywhere in the United States, with a few exceptions in some rural  Nevada  counties (see  Prostitution in Nevada )


Prostitution, often when it is illegal, is used in  extortion  and  blackmail , which always involves extortion, where the extortionist threatens to reveal information about a victim or their family members that is potentially embarrassing, socially damaging, or incriminating unless a demand for money, property, or services is met. The subject of the extortion may be manipulated into or voluntarily solicit the use of prostitution which is then later used to extort money or for profit otherwise. The film  The Godfather Part II  famously depicts the role of Senator Geary who is implicated in the use of prostitution in order to gain his compliance on political issues. [ 134 ]


Survival sex is when the prostitute is driven to prostitution by a need for basic necessities such as food or shelter.


Drug addiction is associated with increased odds of survival sex work. [ 135 ]


Researchers estimate that of  homeless youth  in  North America , one in three has engaged in survival sex. In one study of homeless youth in  Los Angeles , about one-third of females and half of males said they had engaged in survival sex. [ 136 ] [ 137 ] [ 138 ]


Survival sex is common in  refugee camps . In  internally displaced persons  camps in northern  Uganda , where 1.4 million civilians have been displaced by conflict between Ugandan government forces and the militant  Lord's Resistance Army ,  Human Rights Watch  reported in 2005 that displaced women and girls were engaging in survival sex with other camp residents, local defense personnel, and Ugandan government soldiers. [ 139 ]


A difficulty facing migrant prostitutes in many developed countries is the illegal residence status of some of these women. They face potential deportation, and so do not have recourse to the law. This increases their fear of reporting violence they may suffer, due to their fear of being deported, as well as fear of reprisal from human traffickers. [ 140 ] [ 141 ]  The immigration status of the persons who sell sexual services is—particularly in Western Europe—a controversial and highly debated political issue. Currently, in most of these countries, most prostitutes are immigrants, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe; in Spain and Italy 90% of prostitutes are estimated to be migrants, in Austria 78%, in Switzerland 75%, in Greece 73%, in Norway 70% (according to a 2009  TAMPEP  report,  Sex Work in Europe-A mapping of the prostitution scene in 25 European countries ). [ 142 ]
An article in  Le Monde diplomatique  in 1997 stated that 80% of prostitutes in  Amsterdam  were foreigners and 70% had no immigration papers. [ 143 ]


Castes are largely hereditary social classes often emerging around certain professions. Lower castes are associated with professions considered "unclean", which has often included prostitution. In pre-modern Korea, some women from the  lower caste   Cheonmin , known as  Kisaeng , were trained to provide entertainment, conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class. [ 144 ]  In South Asia,  castes  associated with prostitution today include the  Bedias , [ 145 ]  the  Perna caste , [ 146 ]  the  Banchhada , [ 147 ]  the  Nat caste  and, in  Nepal , the  Badi people . [ 148 ] [ 149 ]


Prostitution among the elderly is a phenomenon reported in  South Korea  where  elderly  women, called  Bacchus Ladies , turn to prostitution out of necessity. They are called that because many also sell the popular  Bacchus  energy drink to make ends meet.  State pensions  of about  ₩ 200,000 ( US$ 168) provide a basic income but are often not enough to cover the rising medical bills of old age. It first arose after the  1997 Asian financial crisis  when it became more difficult for children and grandchildren to support their elders. Clients tend to be more senior. The use of erection-inducing injections with reused needles has contributed to the spread of sexually transmitted infections. [ 150 ] [ 151 ]


Sex trafficking is defined as using coercion or force to transport an unwilling person into prostitution or other sexual exploitation. [ 153 ]  The United Nations stated in 2009 that  sex trafficking  is the most commonly identified form of human trafficking and estimates that about 79% of human trafficking reported is for prostitution (although the study notes that this may be the result of statistical bias and that sex trafficking tends to receive the most attention and be the most visible). [ 154 ]  Sex trafficking has been described by Kul Gautum, deputy executive director of  UNICEF , as "the largest  slave trade  in history." [ 155 ]  It is also the fastest growing  criminal industry , predicted to outgrow drug trafficking. [ 156 ] [ 157 ] [ 158 ]  While there may be a higher number of people involved in  slavery  today than at any time in history, the proportion of the population is probably the smallest in history. [ 159 ] [ 160 ]  "Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors", estimated the US Department of State in a 2008 study, in reference to the number of people estimated to be victims of all forms of human trafficking. [ 161 ]  Due in part to the illegal and underground nature of sex trafficking, the actual extent of women and children forced into prostitution is unknown. A statistical analysis of various measures of trafficking found that the legal status of prostitution did not have a significant impact on trafficking. [ 13 ]  Globally, forced labour generates an estimated $31 billion, about half of it in the industrialized world and around one-tenth in transitional countries, according to the  International Labour Organization  (ILO) in a report on forced labour ("A global alliance against forced labour", ILO, 11 May 2005). [ 162 ]  International trafficking of people has been heavily facilitated by communication technologies. [ 163 ]  The most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the US, according to a report by the UNODC ( UN Office on Drugs and Crime ). [ 164 ]  Major sources of trafficked persons include Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. [ 164 ]


The legalization of buying sex is associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where it is prohibited. The type of legalization, such as allowing third-party involvement (i.e, “pimps”), is not shown to make a difference in the effect of sex trafficking inflows. [ 165 ]


Regarding the  prostitution of children  the laws on prostitution as well as those on sex with a child apply. If prostitution, in general, is legal there is usually a minimum age requirement for legal prostitution that is higher than the general  age of consent  (see above for some examples). In the early 1990s, some countries, mainly in Latin America, did not single out patronage of child prostitution as a separate crime. [ 166 ]  According to Steinman (2002), by the early 2000s, several such countries had passed laws against child prostitution, yet they were weakly enforced, and pimps continued to profit from the exploitation of minors in Latin America. [ 167 ]


Children are sold into the global sex trade every year. Often they are kidnapped or orphaned, and sometimes they are sold by their own families. According to the International Labour Organization, the occurrence is especially common in places such as Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, and India. [ 168 ]


In India, the federal police say that around 1.2 million children are believed to be involved in prostitution. [ 169 ]  A  CBI  statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the ministry of women and child development estimated that about 40% of all India's prostitutes are children. [ 169 ]


Children are often medicated to make them appear more mature. In Bangladesh, child prostitutes are known to take the drug Oradexon, also known as  dexamethasone . This over-the-counter  steroid , usually used by farmers to fatten cattle, makes child prostitutes look larger and older. Charities say that 90% of prostitutes in the country's legalized brothels use the drug. According to social activists, the steroid can cause  diabetes ,  high blood pressure  and is highly addictive. [ 170 ] [ 171 ] [ 172 ]  In India, some girls are injected with  oxytocin  to make their breasts grow faster. [ 173 ]


Thailand's Health System Research Institute reported that children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand. [ 174 ]


Some adults travel to other countries to have access to sex with children, which is unavailable in their home country. Cambodia has become a notorious destination for sex with children. [ 175 ] [ 176 ]  Thailand is also a destination for child sex tourism. [ 176 ] [ 177 ]  Several western countries have recently enacted laws with extraterritorial reach, punishing citizens who engage in sex with minors in other countries. As the crime usually goes undiscovered, these laws are rarely enforced. [ 178 ] [ 179 ] [ 180 ]


Prostitution is seen by some people with disabilities, or some people with neurological differences – such as some on the  autism spectrum  – to be an effective way to have sexual experiences, find intimacy or receive human affection that may be difficult for them to come by via traditional means and that may be lacking in their lives. [ 181 ] [ 182 ]  A poll by  The Observer  in 2008 indicated that 70% of Britons would not consider having sex with someone who has a physical disability. [ 181 ]  Some people that have disabilities are referred to prostitutes by friends or family, such as a parent or guardian, carers, or support workers. [ 183 ]  In 2021, a UK judge ruled that council care workers can help disabled people meet prostitutes without breaking the law. [ 184 ]  Prostitutes that cater to people with disabilities have argued that people with disabilities have the same needs and desires as everyone else. [ 183 ]


In some countries such as  Denmark  and the  Netherlands  access to sex workers for those with disabilities is funded by the state on the basis that sexuality is a human right and leads to improved well-being for people with disabilities. [ 185 ] [ 186 ]


In countries where prostitution is legal, advertising it may be legal (as in the  Netherlands ) or illegal (as in  India ).
Covert advertising for prostitution can take a number of forms:


In the United States,  massage parlors  serving as a cover for prostitution may advertise "full service", a euphemism for coitus. [ 187 ]


In  Las Vegas , prostitution is often promoted overtly on the  Las Vegas Strip  by third party workers distributing risque flyers with the pictures and phone numbers of escorts (despite the fact that prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas and  Clark County , see  Prostitution in Nevada ).


The way in which prostitutes advertise their presence varies widely. Some remain in apartments that have hints or clues outside such as posters with "model" written on them to lure potential customers inside. Others advertise by putting numbers or locations in  phoneboxes  or in online or newspaper ads. In more sexually permissive societies, prostitutes can advertise in public view, such as through display windows. In sexually restrictive societies it may occur through word-of-mouth and other means. [ 188 ]


In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners, sometimes called "the track" by  pimps  and prostitutes alike. They usually dress in skimpy, provocative clothing, regardless of the weather. In American usage, street prostitutes are often called "streetwalkers" while their customers are referred to as "tricks" or "johns". Servicing the customers is described as "turning tricks". The sex is usually performed in the customer's car, in a nearby alley, or in a rented room. Motels and hotels that accommodate prostitutes commonly rent rooms by half or full hour.


In Russia and other countries of the  former USSR , prostitution takes the form of an open-air market. One prostitute stands by a roadside and directs cars to a so-called "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. Prevalent in the late 1990s, this type of service has been steadily declining in recent years.


A "lot lizard" is a commonly encountered special case of street prostitution. [ 189 ]  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 a 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.


Window prostitution is a form of prostitution that is fairly common in the  Netherlands  and surrounding countries. [ 190 ]  The prostitute rents a window plus workspace off a window operator for a certain period of time, often per day or part of a day. [ 191 ] [ 192 ] [ 193 ]  The prostitute is also independent and recruits her own customers and also negotiates the price and the services to be provided. [ 191 ] [ 192 ] [ 193 ]


Brothels  are establishments specifically dedicated to prostitution, often confined to special  red-light districts  in big cities. Other names for brothels include  bordello ,  whorehouse ,  cathouse ,  knocking shop , and  general houses . Prostitution also occurs in some  massage   parlours , and in Asian countries in some  barber  shops where sexual services may be offered as a secondary function of the premises.


Escort services may be distinguished from prostitution or other forms of prostitution in that sexual activities are often not explicitly advertised as necessarily included in these services; rather, payment is often noted as being for an escort's time and companionship only, although there is often an implicit assumption that sexual activities are expected.


In escort prostitution, the act takes place at the customer's residence or hotel room (referred to as out-call), or at the escort's residence, or in a hotel room rented for the occasion by the escort (called in-call). The prostitute may be independent or working under the auspices of an  escort agency . Services may be advertised over the Internet, in regional publications, or in local telephone listings.


Use of the Internet by prostitutes and customers is common. [ 195 ]  A prostitute may use adult boards or create a website of their own with contact details, such as email addresses. Adult contact sites, chats, and online communities are also used. This, in turn, has brought increased scrutiny from law enforcement, public officials, and activist groups toward online prostitution. In 2009,  Craigslist  came under fire for its role in facilitating online prostitution, and was sued by some 40 US state attorneys general, local prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.


Reviews of the services of individual prostitutes can often be found at various escort review boards worldwide. These  online forums  are used to trade information between potential clients, and also by prostitutes to advertise the various services available. Sex workers, in turn, often use online forums of their own to exchange information on clients, particularly to warn others about dangerous clients.


Sex tourism  is travel for  sexual intercourse  with prostitutes or to engage in other sexual activity. The  World Tourism Organization , a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary purpose of effecting a commercial sexual relationship by the tourist with residents at the destination". [ 196 ]


As opposed to regular sex tourism, which is often legal, a tourist who has sex with a  child prostitute  will usually be committing a crime in the host country, under the laws of his own country (notwithstanding him being outside of it) and against  international law . Child sex tourism (CST) is defined as travel to a foreign country for the purpose of engaging in commercially facilitated  child sexual abuse . [ 197 ]  Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil, and Mexico have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation. [ 198 ]


Virtual sex , that is, sexual acts conveyed by messages rather than physically, is also the subject of commercial transactions. Commercial  phone sex  services have been available for decades. The advent of the Internet has made other forms of virtual sex available for money, including computer-mediated  cybersex , in which sexual services are provided in text form by way of  chat rooms  or  instant messaging , or audiovisually through a  webcam  (see  camgirl ).


The  International Union of Sex Workers  is a United Kingdom-based  labor union  for sex workers and is affiliated with the  general trade union ,  GMB .


Daulatdia , sometimes called the world's largest brothel, is an entire village in Bangladesh dedicated to prostitution. Many were born there, being the children of prostitutes. [ 199 ]  Another similar community in Bangladesh is  Kandapara . [ 200 ]  The village of  Vadia , India, is known locally as the  village of prostitutes , where unmarried women are involved in prostitution. Mass weddings for children of prostitutes in the village are held to protect them from being pushed into prostitution. [ 201 ]


According to the paper "Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women", [ 202 ]  the number of full-time equivalent prostitutes in a typical area in the United States (Colorado Springs, CO, during 1970–1988) is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population (0.023%), of which some 4% were under 18. The length of these prostitutes' working careers was estimated at a mean of 5 years. According to a 2012 report by  Fondation Scelles  there are between 40 and 42 million prostitutes in the world. [ 203 ]


In 2003, it was estimated that in  Amsterdam , one woman in 35 was working as a prostitute, compared to one in 300 in London. [ 204 ]


The number of men who have used a prostitute at least once varies widely from country to country, from an estimated low of between 7% [ 205 ]  and 8.8% [ 206 ]  in the  United Kingdom , to a high of between 59% and 80% in Cambodia. [ 207 ]  A study conducted by  ProCon  – a nonpartisan nonprofit organization – estimated the percentage of men who had paid for sex at least once in their lives, and found the highest rates in Cambodia (between 59 and 80% of men had paid for sex at least once) and Thailand (an estimated 75%), followed by Italy (16.7–45%), Spain (27–39%), Japan (37%), the Netherlands (13.5–21.6%), the United States (15.0–20.0%), and China (6.4-20%). [ 207 ]  Nations with higher rates of prostitution clients display much more positive attitudes towards commercial sex. [ 207 ]  In some countries, such as Cambodia and Thailand, sex with prostitutes is considered commonplace and men who do not engage in commercial sex may be considered unusual by their peers. [ 207 ]  In Thailand, it has been reported that about 75% of men have visited a prostitute at least once in their lifetimes. In Cambodia, that figure is 59% to 80%. [ 207 ]


In the United States, a 2004 TNS poll reported 15% of all men admitted to having paid for sex at least once in their life. [ 208 ]  However, a paper entitled "Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners" concluded that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners provides a serious underestimate. [ 209 ]


In Australia, a survey conducted in the early 2000s showed that 15.6% of men aged 16–59 reported paying for sex at least once in their life, and 1.9% had done so in the past year. [ 210 ]


Reports disagree on whether prostitution levels are growing or declining in  developed countries . Some studies indicate that the percentage of men engaging in commercial sex in the United States has declined significantly in recent decades: in 1964, an estimated 69–80% of men had paid for sex at least once. [ 207 ]  Some have suggested that prostitution levels have fallen in sexually liberal countries, most likely because of the increased availability of non-commercial, non-marital sex [ 211 ]  or, for example in Sweden, because of stricter legal penalties. [ 212 ]  Other reports suggest a growth in prostitution levels, for example in the US, [ 213 ]  where again, sexual liberalisation is suggested as the cause. As Norma Ramos, executive director of the  Coalition Against Trafficking in Women  says "The more the commercial  sex industry  normalizes this behavior, the more of this behavior you get". [ 214 ]


Prostitutes have long plied their trades to the military in many cultures. For example, the British naval port of  Portsmouth  had a flourishing local sex industry in the 19th century, and until the early 1990s there were large  red-light districts  near American military bases in the Philippines. The notorious  Patpong  entertainment district in  Bangkok , Thailand, started as an  R&R  location for US troops serving in the  Vietnam War  in the early 1970s. Washington D.C. itself had  Murder Bay  which attracted the military of the  Civil War .


Street prostitutes are at higher risk of  violent crime  than brothel prostitutes and bar prostitutes. [ 215 ] [ 216 ]


In the United States, the homicide rate for female prostitutes was estimated to be 204 per 100,000. [ 217 ]  There are substantial differences in rates of victimization between street prostitutes and indoor prostitutes who work as escorts, call girls, or in brothels and massage parlors. [ 218 ] [ 219 ]  Violence against male prostitutes is less common. [ 220 ]


The call to decriminalize selling sex is in part to reduce harm and violence. Under criminalization, prostitutes become more vulnerable to be victims of crimes, even by serial killers, because those committing crimes know that prostitutes would be less likely to report such crimes to the police as they would risk arrest. Additionally, this puts prostitutes at risk of violence by police as police are able to extort prostitutes by threatening arrest. The  ACLU ,  Human Rights Watch  and  Amnesty International  argue that, in addition to decriminalize selling sex as in the  Nordic model , decriminalizing buying sex makes it more safer for prostitutes. [ 221 ] [ 222 ] [ 223 ]


In some places, prostitution may be associated with the spread of  sexually transmitted infections  (STIs). Lack of condom use among prostitutes and their clients has been cited as a factor in the spread of HIV in Asia: "One of the main reasons for the rapid spread of HIV in Asian countries is the massive transmission among sex workers and clients". [ 224 ]  As a result, prevention campaigns aimed at increasing condom use by sex workers have been attributed to play a major role in restricting the spread of HIV. [ 225 ]


One of the sources for the spread of HIV in Africa is prostitution, with one study finding that encounters with prostitutes produced 84% of new HIV infections in adult males in Accra, Ghana. [ 226 ]  The spread of HIV from urban settings to rural areas in Africa has been attributed to the mobility of farmers who visit sex workers in cities, for example in Ethiopia. [ 227 ]
Some studies of prostitution in urban settings in developing countries, such as Kenya, have stated that prostitution acts as a reservoir of STIs within the general population. [ 228 ]


Typical responses to the problem are:


Some think that the first two measures are counter-productive. Banning prostitution tends to drive it underground, making safe sex promotion, treatment, and monitoring more difficult. Registering prostitutes makes the state complicit in prostitution and does not address the health risks of unregistered prostitutes. Both of the last two measures can be viewed as  harm reduction  policies.