Brothel. Mustang Ranch and Its Women

Abstract

"Brothel. Mustang Ranch and Its Women" by Alexa Albert is reviewed.

Brothel. Mustang Ranch and Its Women, by Alexa Albert. New York: Random House, 2001. 271 pp., $24.95. DOI: 10.1002/pam.10035

Recent decades in the United States have witnessed a significant liberalization of the regulations governing such vices as gambling and pornography, and even the war on drugs shows signs of retreat. "Deviant" sexual behaviors, including most adultery, fornication, and homosexual activity, have been decriminalized, at least in a de facto sense. Prostitution is one venerable vice, however, that largely has been exempt from the American deregulatory deluge.

Appeals to morality having lost much (though not all) of their purchase as rationales for regulation, controls over commercial sex can still be justified on the basis of "harm to others," in John Stuart Mill's (1978, p. 9) famous formulation. First, children, falling as they do outside Mill's characterization of individuals "in the maturity of their faculties," are widely regarded as fit objects for prohibitions against consuming or producing any vice, including commercial sex. Second, prostitution is frequently accompanied by a variety of social costs. For instance, neighborhoods inundated with streetwalkers or brothels might be hotbeds of public nuisance, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) might be spread through contact with prostitutes. Marriages might be threatened by prostitution, and a social environment inhospitable to women fostered. Finally, adults caught up in a web of vicious activity do not themselves always appear to be "in the maturity of their faculties." While it is with respect to substance abuse that consumption decisions are particularly apt to seem unsound, choices to be a customer or a provider of prostitution likewise may not be fully rational-and decisions to use illegal drugs and to engage in prostitution are frequently linked. One variant of this argument in the commercial sex realm is that gender and economic relations in society are so biased against women that seemingly voluntary participation in prostitution (or, at the extreme, any consensual sex) cannot be viewed as non-coerced. From this perspective, then, the Millian deference to individual self-regarding behavior might be questionable when applied to prostitution.

Noting that under-age participation or negative externalities frequently accompany prostitution, of course, does not in itself argue for a prohibitory regime backed by criminal penalties. The external effects may not be inherent in prostitution itself, but rather, can be brought on or augmented by the existing regulatory structurejust as many of the social costs associated with illegal drugs can be traced to their illegality, and not their pharmacological properties. Even accepting, for the sake of argument, that prostitution involves no gains worthy of inclusion in a social costbenefit analysis, minimization of the harms attendant upon commercial sex might occur under less restrictive regimes, such as decriminalization or legalization with some state supervision. Indeed, many European countries eschew the prohibition of prostitution in favor of regulatory strategies that do appear to be successful in keeping the social costs of prostitution low, at least on a per-act basis (MacCoun and Reuter, 2001, pp. 150-151.)

Nevertheless, in the United States, the traditional regulatory approach to prostitution involves criminalization, with most of the enforcement effort aimed at streetwalkers, as opposed to call girls or other varieties of sex industry workers, or to their customers. Pimping, or living off the proceeds of prostitution, is also criminalized. The prohibition against prostitution is typically applied rather loosely, however, in one manifestation of what has been termed by Stanford law professor Lawrence Friedman (1985, p. 585) "the Victorian compromise: a certain toleration for vice, or at least a resigned acceptance, so long as it [remains] in an underground state." A glance through the telephone book of a large city under such headings as "entertainment-adult" provides some evidence of the extent of the toleration-though this is probably of little solace to the 90,000 or more Americans who are arrested annually for prostitution-related crimes. The Victorian compromise policing strategy that combines prohibition with mild, targeted enforcement is itself a type of harm reduction approach, where the harm that is targeted is not STD transmission or violence, but rather, the public nuisance of visible prostitution.

Since the early 1970s, however, one jurisdiction in the United States has taken a different path. Some counties in Nevada operate a regulatory regime for brothel prostitution, while maintaining the criminality of call girls, street walkers, and other forms of commercial sex. Systematic evidence from the Nevada approach has been scant, limiting the conclusions that can be drawn concerning the relative strengths and weaknesses of legal brothel prostitution. Brothel, by Dr. Alexa Albert, helps to fill this gap in our policy-relevant knowledge. Brothel is not intended to be a policy book; rather, it presents an ethnography, a non-academic anthropological look at one large, legal Nevada brothel. The policy relevance of the book emerges from the care and the empathy with which the ethnography is undertaken.

Dr. Albert, a physician, lived at the now-defunct Mustang Ranch outside Reno for a total of seven months in the 1990s. With an established research interest in STD prevention, Dr. Albert was intrigued by the folklore that no prostitute in Nevada's legal brothels had ever tested positive for HIV. After years of delay, the executive director of the Nevada Brothel Association agreed to allow Dr. Albert (then, in the early 1990s, just applying to medical schools) to study STD prevention practices at Mustang.

Dr. Albert largely verifies the folklore concerning the safe sex practices among Nevada's legal prostitutes. "Since March 1986, when the state's Bureau of Disease Control and Intervention Services began requiring brothel prostitutes to undergo monthly HIV tests, over 42,500 such tests have been conducted, and no licensed prostitute has ever tested positive" (pp. 173-174, footnote omitted). Most brothels voluntarily adopted HIV testing prior to the state regulation, too.

All sexual activity with brothel prostitutes requires the use of a condom, by order of the state disease control bureau. A sign to this effect is compulsory at each brothel; a photo of Mustang's sign is available at Dr. Albert's website, www.alexaalbert.com. Compliance with the condom usage rule is apparently quite high, though less so when the sexual act involves manual stimulation of the customers (p. 114). The prostitutes scan their customers for signs of STDs, and assure condom integrity in part by not relying on the customer to position the condom. Customers often voice a preference to forego condom use, but it seems this request for an illegal encounter is rarely countenanced-though there may be some exceptions (p. 240). Dr. Albert suggests that Nevada's licensed prostitutes are more careful about safe sex than her "square" friends (p. 30). ("Square" is the term applied by the prostitutes to those outside the sex industry.) Some of the early research findings on condom usage in Nevada brothels are reported in Albert et al. (1995).

But as noted, Dr. Albert's book goes well beyond a study of safe sex practices. There is a wealth of detail about the workings of Mustang and the lives of prostitutes. Mustang prostitutes earned between $300 and $1500 per day, from servicing an average of six customers (p. 21). A single "date" or "party" cost a minimum of $100, and averaged about $350. One particularly high-earning prostitute earned almost $150,000 in seven months' work (p. 126). Prostitutes were generally younger than 40 years old, and in some counties, as young as 18, though the oldest Mustang prostitute was in her 60s (p. 62). Prostitutes, who worked officially as independent contractors rather than employees and received none of the standard employee benefits, were supposed to split their fees 50-50 with Mustang management. As the actual prices were negotiated privately with customers, Mustang spied on the prostitutes, electronically eavesdropping on price conversations and searching rooms for stashed cash and drugs. Nevertheless, prostitutes' cheating on the 50-50 arrangement was common. Taxicab drivers, who played an important informational role in the face of bans on brothel advertising, also received a cut of the fee paid by clients they delivered. Restrictions on the prostitutes to stay on-site, which at one time had been draconian, were instituted in part to prevent freelancing with Mustang customers in avoidance of the sharing agreement. Financial considerations were the main rationale for the women to enter into prostitution, often at the behest of boyfriends or pimps.

Dr. Albert provides information on just about every aspect of the industry. She speaks with anti-brothel activists, other brothel owners, non-prostitute staff, boyfriends, regular customers, suppliers (of clothing, beauty services, etc.), and legislators. It is all interesting, and some of it is fascinating. But the soul of Brothel is in its depiction of the lives of the prostitutes. All in all, it is a life that Dr. Albert respects, and it is clear that she thinks that many of the harms associated with prostitution, including STDs and violence, are substantially mitigated by legality and regulation. Using false identification, underage practitioners have received prostitution licenses in Nevada in the past, though generally it seems that age limits are complied with- particularly when compared with the street. Nor does Dr. Albert evince much sympathy for the view that women cannot voluntarily engage in commercial sex. The prostitutes, though frequently manipulated by odious men, are nevertheless "selfaware professionals there of their own free will" (p. 32). They take pride in their work, even as they lie to their family and square friends about their actual employment-the prevarications being one demonstration that "Legality was no assurance of legitimacy" (p. 172). But while perhaps illegitimate, licensed prostitution at least reduces the chances that the prostitutes will develop a criminal record, and this alone might ease their integration into non-sex types of work. Nor are the prostitutes subject to violence and harassment at the hands of police, which prostitutes' rights groups point to as a serious problem within the prohibitory regime.

As with harm reduction measures in other areas of vice (such as free needle exchange for heroin addicts), the basic tradeoff presented by legalization and regulation of prostitution is an increase in the number of commercial sex acts in exchange for lower social harms per act (see, e.g., MacCoun and Reuter, 2001, pp. 385-395)-as opposed to the Victorian compromise, which reduces visible prostitution while potentially increasing such harms as STD transmission. Brothel suggests that indeed, per-act social harms associated with prostitution are significantly reduced through Nevada-style regulation. What Brothel cannot do, however, is provide a basis for estimating the increased participation in prostitution that presumably would arise in a system of widespread legalization, and how the amount and nature of commercial sex might change over time if legalization eventually were to lead to legitimation. Would the substantial earnings available to brothel prostitutes make commercial sex work the ambition of high-achieving teenage girls? Would the increased visibility of prostitution under a legalized regime involve such a rending of the social fabric as to reveal the wisdom of the Victorian compromise?

Dr. Albert has not provided the last word on prostitution policy-as noted, policy impact is not the point of the book. Illegal prostitution is not examined in any depth, though presumably it "was virtually nonexistent in counties that permitted brothels" (p. 182). (As these are counties with relatively small populations, however, one would not expect to see a thriving prostitution industry in the absence of the brothels.) International experience with legal prostitution likewise goes undiscussed, as does male and transgender prostitution. Despite these limitations, Brothel is of utmost relevance for understanding the outcomes associated with one alternative to prohibition, and serves as a particular challenge to those who find significant ills in the Nevada approach. Nevertheless, liberalization of laws against prostitution does not seem to be high on the public agenda in most of the United States, and Brothel is unlikely to change that status. (What might raise the priority of prostitution policy reform is the Internet, which has greatly eased and to some extent made more safe the establishing of connections between call girls and clients.) The legal regime in Nevada may itself not survive future challenges from its many political opponents. For most U.S. citizens, the Victorian compromise remains viable and in no need of reform.

References

REFERENCES

Albert, A., Warner, D.L., Hatcher, R.A., Trussell, J., &Bennett, C. (1995). Condom use among female commercial sex workers in Nevada's legal brothels. American Journal of Public Health, 85(11), 1514-1520.

Friedman, L.M. (1985). A History of American Law, 2nd edition. New York: Simon and Schuster.

MacCoun, R.J., &Reuter, P. (2001). Drug war heresies. Learning from other vices, times, and places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mill, J.S. (1978 [1859]). On liberty, Elizabeth Rapaport, ed. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing.