Stigma and Visibility
The terms used to discuss prostitution have historically distinguished between the lower-class public streetwalker and the relatively upper-class private escort or mistress. This same distinction between public verses private women is reflected more broadly to divide sex workers from non-sex workers as well as lower class women from their upper class counterparts. In terms of sex work, this boundary is built upon the relative visibility of one identity from the other: while a streetwalker conducts her business out of doors, an escort generally has more varied means of soliciting clients and, consequently, is afforded more privacy and discretion.
Yet, while a streetwalker and escort participate in the same line of work, the lived experience of their respective positions varies widely. The differing conditions under which a streetwalker and escort conduct business results in differing levels of stigma given their relative positioning on the spectrum of appropriate female visibility. The rhetoric that dominates popular culture therefore chooses to demonize or victimize the common prostitute for her identity as a public commodity, with recognizable signifiers of her function in society distributed through art and media. In contrast, an escort is afforded the flexibility to maintain her business out of the public sphere. Serving either an elite client base or a discrete group of regulars, an escort is able to physically assimilate across class settings and exhibit professional discretion where a common prostitute is not.
This difference in cultural perception between streetwalkers and escorts translates into different manners of policing. While a streetwalker is historically more likely to face criminal charges for engaging in sex work, because an escort's client base typically exists within an elite, private sphere, she is less likely to experience any interaction with law enforcement officials. From nineteenth century Paris to the twenty-first century United States, this trend towards the biased policing of sex work can have larger implications for the streetwalkers disadvantaged by this inequality. In the following pages, I will examine some differences in lived experience between Victorian-era Parisian prostitutes and courtesans as well as contemporary American streetwalkers and escorts, highlighting the similarities in classist regulation across time and space.