book: Brothel

Last night I read Brothel, a book about Mustang Ranch (and less directly Nevada's legal brothels), written by Alexa Albert.

Albert gained access to Mustang Ranch for health research but became very interested in life inside the brothel. She visited to the ranch for extended periods of time over a few years doing research for her book. She is clearly a proponent of legalized prostitution, citing decreased violence toward prostitutes in the legal Brothel system and dramatic numbers on the prevention of infection with HIV and other STDs among legal Nevada working girls. Her conclusion is based upon the realistic assumption that there will always be prostitution.

However, it seems to me that she glosses over a great deal of evidence that women are just as exploited and unhappy in Nevada's brothels as they are in the sex trade generally. For example, women are not allowed to leave the brothel and they are not supposed to have family visit. Women live at the brothel for as many as three weeks at a time and then take a vacation to return to loved ones. They are charged for their meals and board. In addition, they must pay someone to run errands off site. Surprisingly, Albert discovers that many of the women have pimps that take a cut (or all) of their earnings. Their occupation interferes with their family lives in other ways. For example, most of the women feel they cannot reveal their occupation to family and neighbors back home. Many have a difficult time being sexually intimate with their spouses. Finally the stigma attached to their occupations tends to lead to relationship dissolution anyway as, eventually, most significant others pull out the "You're only a worthless whore" line at some point in the relationship.

Anyway, an interesting book and a very quick read.