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place constructed to control the kind of women in it. T hey live

entirely on male terms. Whatever happens to them is appropriate

on those male terms because of what they do and what they are, all

of which is expressed in where they are. The impersonality of the

brothel as a working place is precisely congruent with the impersonality of their sexual function; men romanticize the place and the function for themselves, to themselves, for their own sakes, men

among men; but even men are not so dense as to try to romanticize

prostitution to the prostitute.

In the brothel model, the women are held to a strictly sexual

standard of behavior and accountability: they sell themselves for

sex, not to make babies. T hey do what men want them to do for

money that men pay them and that then they usually turn over to a

man. Women are defined strictly with reference to sex and they are

defined unfailingly without reference to personality or individuality or human potential; they are used without reference to anything but sex orifices and sex class and sex scenes. In the brothel model, several women belong to one man or in some cases are supervised by an older woman who is herself accountable to a rich man or men. The job of the women is to bring in— to a man or to a

house— a certain amount of money by servicing a certain number

of men. T hey sell parts of their bodies— vagina, rectum, mouth;

and they also sell acts— what they say and what they do. In

sex, they absorb, endure, or get indifferent toward an enormous

amount of male aggression, hostility, and contempt. Men have few

restraints in expressing to prostitutes—during sex or in any sexual

scenario— their real attitudes toward women as a class; they have

no reason to feel constrained, since the woman is there to be a

woman, period— to be inferior, subservient, and used. She is there

because the man wants a woman, someone exactly of her class,

someone who is her sex function, not human but an it, a cunt: she

is there for that reason, not for anything human in her. Her func­

tion is limited, specialized, sex-specific, and intensely and intrinsically dehumanizing.

It is essential to recognize how genuinely accepted both the

brothel model and prostitution are in the social structure, and how

this disposition of women is simply accepted as inevitable because

they are women. However evil prostitution is held to be, however

righteous or religious men are said to be, the brothel model does

more than endure; it thrives. However marginal the women are

said to be, they form the sex nucleus of a sex industry that is in no

sense marginal. The brothel model thrives because men accept it

and all that is part of it as proper treatment for sexual women:

women who are sexual in male terms, women who get fucked by

many men, women who get fucked outside the protective custody

of a traditional father or husband. The staying power of both the

brothel as an institution and prostitution as a practice comes from

the efficacy of both for regulating the sexual use of women and the

disposition of sexually exploitable women. Think of what it means.

The brothel is most often something like a prison—women cannot

come and go freely. Women are displayed, used, and treated like

sexual things or sexual animals, all penned up. The brothel exists

usually with the tacit or overt protection of police and politicians;

the brothel is used by the rich and powerful as well as by all other

kinds of men; the brothel is the kind of place men like to have

women in, confined in, locked in, penned in, shut in; the brothel

suggests a wealth of women available to the man, it means he is

rich in having so many women in one place for him, it means he

chooses absolutely and his will is done by whomever he chooses.

Prostitution is the way women are used in the brothel model; it is

what women are shut in for, penned in for. The street comer

merely extends the brothel beyond the walls of a building into the

cold and rain. Pimps run several prostitutes; and usually some or

all live together, whether business is done in the domicile or not.

This is a version of the brothel: a kind of public harem. The

brothel model can sim ply be imposed on a neighborhood, which

then becomes a ghetto for prostitutes. In some cities with good

reputations for socially advanced ideas, women sit in windows,