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While doing research into condom use and effectiveness, Alexa Albert got access to the Mustang Ranch, one of Nevada's leading legal houses of prostitution. She found the people, the institution, the setting so interesting that she spent some considerable period of time there, getting to know the prostitutes, the support staff, the history and politics of the institution. In this book, she tells us what it was like, and what she found. For anyone interested in sex-work, in the issues surrounding its criminalization and its proper place in society, this is an essential source.
The book is most worthwhile as a first-person account. When it goes significantly beyond that, it sometimes strays into oversimplification or confusion.
For instance, I wish there was as strong a consensus among feminists as is suggested here:
...once most feminists maintained that prostitution was exploitative of women, period, but now most would agree that it's all right for women to do what they want to do.
And this is a terribly confusing sentence:
Decriminalization would also mean the abolution of any statutory regulation of prostitutes, including the requirement of medical examinations and STD workups.
Clearly that's just wrong: cabdriving, hair styling, dentistry, and food service are all "decriminalized", but all are more or less tightly regulated by the state. I'm sure there are radical libertarians who would abolish all state regulation of prostitution (probably it was from talking to one of them that Albert got this sentence), but even in that world there'd be private organizations that would, Underwriters Labs style, perform essentially the same function, albeit voluntarily.
But these are quibbles (in fact they're both on the same page). The rest of the book is full of interesting stories, obscure history, authentic portraits, and tragedy. It books ends with the seizure of the Ranch by the federal government, after its owner is convicted for bankruptcy fraud. The owner, an impressively shifty character on the run in Brazil, gets away essentially scot-free. The people who live and work at the Ranch, on the other hand, have their lives turned upside down.
This book won't necessarily change anyone's opinion about the place of prostitution, legal or not, in society. While Albert does come out with a positive impression of the institution and the people, she is not proselytizing so much as she is providing primary evidence, good and bad, on what it's really like in practice, as practiced today (or in the late 1990's) in Nevada. Most people's opinions on the subject (mine included) are probably based on very little actual information; this book can help fix that.
This web page is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.