Prostitutes. Whores. Prostituted women. Toms. Sex workers. Entertainers. Hookers. Natashas. Working girls. Prossies. Market women. Women abused through prostitution. Sauna staff. Common prostitutes. Tarts. Ladies of the night. Madams. Self-employed workers. Trafficked women. Comfort women. Women involved in prostitution. Street walkers. Brothel workers. Victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

In no particular order, these are some of the many terms used to describe women involved in prostitution. What is immediately evident is how many different terms there are; there are far more words to describe women who sell sex than there are for men who purchase it. But there is another purpose for starting the book with this list of terms – to demonstrate how the words that are used to talk about prostitution reflect different approaches to prostitution.

Pick up a book or article about prostitution and the general approach to prostitution that the author is taking soon becomes clear. The language used to describe women involved in prostitution can sometimes give more information about the author than does the title of the book or article. The term ‘sex worker’ and any words relating to ‘trade’ or ‘work’ imply a different approach to prostitution from the terms ‘women abused through prostitution’, ‘prostituted women’ and ‘commercial sexual exploitation’. In reading these terms, certain value judgements are made about an author and their approach to prostitution. In some cases only those books with ‘appropriate language’ (where what is deemed ‘appropriate’ varies from reader to reader) will be read and cited.

In this book all the authors (including ourselves) have used the terminology of their choosing, for example ‘sex workers’, ‘prostitutes’ or ‘women involved in prostitution’. This did not happen by accident; we did not begin editing the chapters and then start debating which terms we should use. When we started the book we already knew that we as editors did not use the same words when talking about prostitution. To dictate to the authors the language they should use to talk about prostitution would, in our view, be taking editorial power more than one step too far.

Situated knowledges – our approaches to prostitution

The issue of prostitution brings to the fore many of the contradictions in feminist politics, and the ambivalence in dealing with issues of sexuality reflected both in Asian (Gangoli, 1998) and Western feminist politics (McElroy, 1991).