ABSTRACT
Rape is generally seen as a moral as well as a physical assault, particularly by feminist scholars advocating legal change. In order to understand ideas about rape, it is necessary first to elucidate distinctions between various sexual activities. The image of the broken contract in sex work throws light on general ideas about rape. This chapter focuses on an ethnography of sex work in London and describes how prostitutes operate the views of rape, which are associated with the different types of sexual activity. Prostitute women in London distinguish working sex from personal sexual relationships. While working sex involves contracts, prostitutes make use of the wider imagery of love, sexual desire and romance in describing their personal relationships. Outside work, prostitutes’ ideas about rape are much closer to the dominant naturalism. When rape in a prostitute’s private life is accommodated to work, this discourse provides, at once, a form of resistance and a defensive reaction to social stigma.
