Prostitution in France
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Prostitution in France is legal but many activities surrounding it are not. All forms of procuring are illegal in France. Procuring (proxénétisme) is defined as:
- helping or protecting someone to prostitute him/herself
- profiting from the prostitution of another or receiving funds from someone who prostitutes him/herself habitually
- hiring or training someone to prostitute him/herself or pressuring someone to prostitute him/herself.
Paying someone for sexual services (except those under the age of consent) is never illegal in France.
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Politics
France is an "abolitionist" country - its public policy is the eradication of prostitution. However, it considers that making it illegal to offer sexual services in return for goods or services in the context of one's private life is a violation of individual liberty.
The 2007 Socialist Party Manifesto calls for holding clients "responsible". The vague language is due to the fact that the such measures remain controversial in the Socialist Party. The Manifesto also calls for repealing the ban on "passive solicitation".
Many sex workers oppose more constraining legislation since that would prevent them from choosing their clients, the acts they wish to perform, etc.
In a 2003 poll, nearly two thirds of the French favored re-opening legal brothels.
Forms and extent of prostitution
Studies from 2003 estimated that about 15,000 - 20,000 women work as prostitutes in France.
Regular street prostitution is partly controlled by pimps and partly autonomous prostitutes. The most famous prostitution street in Paris, 'la Rue Saint-Denis' has been somewhat gentrified in the recent years and the prostitutes have been moved up north.
Escort services, where you hire a girl for "entertainment" or companionship - followed by sex - exist in France, but remains quite rare compared to North America
In bars, women try to induce men to buy expensive drinks along with the sexual services. Prices are set by the bar owner, and the money is shared between the owner and the prostitute. Pigalle peepshows are well-known for practising such scams.
Apartment prostitution is frequently advertised in the adult newspapers.
Swingers clubs are a place where partner-swapping swing clubs with paid prostitutes in attendance, as well as 'amateur' women and couples who get in without paying the flat-rate charge of about 80 to 120 euros that men pay, including food, drink and unlimited sex sessions, with the added twist that these are performed in the open in full view of all the guests.
Earnings
The earnings of a French prostitute are estimated at €500 a day. For Sub-Saharian prostitutes living in France, it is less, around €200-300. Some barely make €50-150 a week.
History
In the middle of the 13th century, King Louis IX allowed brothels (then called bordeaux, from which the modern word derives) outside of city centers. The appearance of syphilis had stigmatized these houses at the end of the 16th century, but their continued existence was confirmed by King Henry IV.
In the 18th century, Madame Gourdan was the most famous entremetteuse, while Nerciat wrote its physiology in Le Pornographe.
In the early 19th century, Napoleon ordered the registration and bi-weekly health inspection of all prostitutes. Legal brothels (then known as "maisons de tolérance" or "maisons closes") started to appear in Paris and in other cities and became highly popular throughout the century. They had to be run by a woman (typically a former prostitute) and their external appearance had to be discreet. By 1810, Paris alone had 180 officially approved brothels.
Among the most expensive and best known maisons de tolérance in Paris were:
- le Chabanais (opened 1878),
- le Sphinx,
- le Montyon,
- la Rue des Moulins,
- le One Two Two (opened in the mid-1920s and soon became the top address)
More sordid brothels, offering quick and dirty services, the maisons d’abattage, were also popular amongst the lower-class.
During the World War II German occupation of France, twenty top Paris brothels, including le Chabanais, le Sphinx and le One Two Two, were reserved by the Wehrmacht for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen.
After the war, Marthe Richard, a town councillor in Paris who had been a prostitute herself, campaigned for the closure of all brothels, and the "loi de Marthe Richard" was passed on April 13th 1946, closing the legal brothels in France. Roughly 20,000 women were affected by this law and approximately 1400 houses closed.
Paintings and drawings of scenes in these brothels were produced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso, among others. Brassaï published photographs of brothels in his 1935 book Voluptés de Paris. A voluminous illustrated work on the phenomenon is Maisons closes. L'histoire, l'art, la littérature, les moeurs by Romi (Robert Miquet), first published in 1952.
The Musée de l'Erotisme in Paris devotes one floor to the maisons closes. Prince Edward's love seat from the Chabanais is shown there, as is Polissons et galipettes, a collection of short erotic silent movies that were used to entertain brothel visitors, and copies of Le Guide Rose, a contemporary brothel guide that also carried advertising. The 2003 BBC Four documentary Storyville - Paris Brothel describes the maisons closes.
Many former brothel owners soon opened "hôtels de passe" instead where prostitutes could keep on working but the visibility of their activities remained somewhat hidden. Prostitution thus became a free activity: forbidden was only its organization and exploitation - i.e. pimping - and its visual manifestations.
Active solicitation was also outlawed in the late 1940s. Passive solicitation was outlawed in 2003 as part of a package of law-and-order measures by then interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. Prostitutes' organizations decried the measure, calling it punitive and prone to increase the power of pimps.
