ABSTRACT
Prostitutes have been the focus of social control in sexually transmitted epidemics since at least the sixteenth century (Bullough and Bullough, 1987). In this century the historian Allan Brandt (1985) has chronicled the perception of prostitutes as ‘pools of infection’ for sexually transmitted diseases in the United States. It is hardly surprising, then, that the identification of HIV and its categorization as sexually transmitted should again focus attention on the prostitute as a source of infection. Early studies of prostitutes with respect to HIV and AIDS were primarily concerned to discover rates of HIV infection, to assess the ‘threat’ posed by prostitutes. Davies and Simpson (1990) have commented with regard to male prostitutes on this deplorable tendency to regard prostitutes as a vector of disease and a threat to the monogamous pretensions of their clients, rather than as workers whose work puts them at risk of coming into contact with HIV.
