ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the backcloth against which the newspaper discourses of prostitution can be investigated, and considers a range of different approaches to the issue of prostitution. Various commentators begin their deliberations on the subject of prostitution by drawing attention to the enormous volume and outpourings of writings on prostitution. The legal approach to prostitution has changed over the 20th century and has itself been influenced by the different arguments and suppositions advanced by changing knowledges. The religious/moral approach to prostitution is fundamentally influenced by Judeo-Christian dualistic thinking on sexuality. The medical profession's involvement in the formulation of public health and legal strategies to deal with prostitution has a complex and lengthy history. The medical discourses of prostitution have drawn upon extra-medical assumptions in their approach to prostitution. The medical discourses include psychiatry and one of its derivatives, psychopathology, and the construction of the prostitute as exhibiting identifiable psychopathological 'disturbances' has been a feature of medical discourses.
