Examples of procuring include: Clients of prostitutes, most often men by prevalence, are sometimes known as johns or tricks in North America and punters in Britain and Ireland.

[30] In 1938, he used the same description for the Comintern, saying that the chief aim of the Bonapartist clique of Stalin during the preceding several years "has consisted in proving to the imperialist 'democracies' its wise conservatism and love for order.

[32] Sex work researcher and writer Gail Pheterson writes that these metaphorical usages exist because "the term prostitute gradually took on a Christian moralist tradition, as being synonymous with debasement of oneself or of others for the purpose of ill-gotten gains".

[41] The Marseillais designated prostitutes as "public girls" who, day and night, received two or more men in their house, and as a woman who "did business trading [their bodies], within the confine[s] of a brothel.

An outbreak of syphilis in Naples 1494 which later swept across Europe, and which may have originated from the Columbian Exchange,[62] and the prevalence of other sexually transmitted infections from the earlier 13th century, may have been causes of this change in attitude.

[74] A similar situation did in fact exist in the Russian Empire; prostitutes operating out of government-sanctioned brothels were given yellow internal passports signifying their status and were subjected to weekly physical exams.

Since the break up of the Soviet Union, thousands of eastern European women end up as prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year.

[citation needed] According to Shia Muslims, Muhammad sanctioned fixed-term marriage—muta'a in Iraq and sigheh in Iran—which has instead been used as a legitimizing cover for sex workers, in a culture where prostitution is otherwise forbidden.

[88][89][90][91][92][93] According to Dervish Ismail Agha, in the Dellâkname-i Dilküşâ, the Ottoman archives,[94][95] in the hammams, the masseurs were traditionally young men, who helped wash clients by soaping and scrubbing their bodies.

To entertain their clients, oiran practiced the arts of dance, music, poetry, and calligraphy as well as sexual services, and an educated wit was considered essential for sophisticated conversation.

[103] During this period, prostitution was also very prominent in the Barbary Coast, San Francisco as the population was mainly men, due to the influx from the Gold Rush.

[112] Prices may further depend on demand; popular, high-end prostitutes can earn significant amounts of money (upwards of $5,000 per client),[113] and virgins may receive even higher payments.

Proponents of this view often cite instances of government regulation under legalization that they consider intrusive, demeaning, or violent, but feel that criminalization adversely affects sex workers.

In the United States of America, one such group is COYOTE (an abbreviation for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics") and another is the North American Task Force on Prostitution.

Prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal, but the surrounding activities such as public solicitation, operating a brothel and other forms of pimping are prohibited.

The film The Godfather Part II famously depicts the role of Senator Geary who is implicated in the use of prostitution in order to gain his compliance on political issues.

In pre-modern Korea, some women from the lower caste Cheonmin, known as Kisaeng, were trained to provide entertainment, conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class.

[161] Due in part to the illegal and underground nature of sex trafficking, the actual extent of women and children forced into prostitution is unknown.

[163] The most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the US, according to a report by the UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime).

[166] According to Steinman (2002), by the early 2000s, several such countries had passed laws against child prostitution, yet they were weakly enforced, and pimps continued to profit from the exploitation of minors in Latin America.

Prostitution also occurs in some massage parlours, and in Asian countries in some barber shops where sexual services may be offered as a secondary function of the premises.

In 2009, Craigslist came under fire for its role in facilitating online prostitution, and was sued by some 40 US state attorneys general, local prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

[207] Some have suggested that prostitution levels have fallen in sexually liberal countries, most likely because of the increased availability of non-commercial, non-marital sex[211] or, for example in Sweden, because of stricter legal penalties.

For example, the British naval port of Portsmouth had a flourishing local sex industry in the 19th century, and until the early 1990s there were large red-light districts near American military bases in the Philippines.

[224] As a result, prevention campaigns aimed at increasing condom use by sex workers have been attributed to play a major role in restricting the spread of HIV.

[226] The spread of HIV from urban settings to rural areas in Africa has been attributed to the mobility of farmers who visit sex workers in cities, for example in Ethiopia.

[224] It has been estimated that successful implementation of safe sex practices in India "would drive the [HIV] epidemic to extinction" while similar measures could achieve a 50% reduction in Botswana.

In 2012, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, which was convened by Ban Ki-moon, and which is an independent body, was established at the request of the UNAIDS, and supported by a Secretariat based at the UNDP,[230] reached the same conclusions, also recommending decriminalization of brothels and procuring.

[231][232][233] Nevertheless, the report states that: "The content, analysis, opinions and policy recommendations contained in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Development Programme.

De Marneffe further argued that this may affect the prostitute's ability to perform sexual acts for the purpose of building a trusting intimate relationship, which may be important for their partner.