The Whore Stigma

Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness

Bibliographic Data

ID2935547
AuthorsGail Pheterson (corresponding author)
Year1993
Issue37
Pages39
Publication date1993-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/466259
OpenAlexW2333984555
LanguageEN
Citations received121
References cited1

Whore means prostitute. And a prostitute is a woman who offers to hire her body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse, or so says The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Prostitute is further defined as a verb: to prostitute oneself is to sell one's honor for base gain or to put one's abilities to infamous use. Other dictionaries include men1 secondarily in the noun definition and specify in the verb definition the shame attached to dishonor and the unworthiness and wrongdoing attached to infamous use. The noun clearly denotes a person, especially a woman, offering heterosexual sex, in particular intercourse, for money; the verb denotes any person's activity, which need not be sexual, put to uncommendable use. Those meanings are likely to conform to popular opinion except that many people collapse the second definition into the first. A prostitute then becomes one who sells her honor by offering to hire her body for base gain or for an unworthy doing, specifically sexual intercourse. The following discussion will begin by comparing the dictionary's noun definition with the actual behavior of prostitutes. Since a whore is a prostitute, both words will be used interchangeably throughout this text. Actual whore life is described for the purpose of testing formal as well as popular definitions with reality. There are many reasons for exposing the reality of prostitution. Nonprostitute women are socialized not to possess sexual information or skill, not to talk about sex, not to ask for money in any situation, and not to associate with whores. A sharing of prostitute financial and sexual practices with nonprostitute women challenges that socialization, challenges the divisions it imposes upon women, and challenges the normative assumption of female sexual and financial dependency

Honor · Internet privacy · Linguistics · Noun · Shame · Verb · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Computer Science · Philosophy · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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