Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States

by Rita Nakashima Brock, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Overview

This stunning look at the global sex industry brings fresh analysis and new approaches to the baffling and complex issues that surround prostitution.

Religion and society have both cast stones at prostitutes, seeing them as archetypal sinners and blaming them for their situation. Brock and Thistlethwaite, after many years of research, travel, and interviews, offer this cross-cultural study. They compare and highlight structures that sustain prostitution as a global system of exploitation of the most vulnerable in the United States as well as Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan.

This structural analysis is then submitted to a theological critique of doctrines of sin and karma, the traditional rubrics under which religion (in this instance, Christianity and Buddhism) has considered prostitution. The heart of their project is rethinking the deeper cultural and religious notions of sexuality, power, and violence that undergird sexual exploitation. New approaches to prostitution through religious and social change are proposed.

Brock and Thistlethwaite make the case to all persons of conscience that prostitution is a serious social justice issue, and they suggest modes of analysis and practical ways to make a difference. They demand each reader to ask, "Who am I to cast the first stone?"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800629793
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	09/23/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Rita Nakashima Brock is at The Bunting Institute, Radcliffe University. She is the author of Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, President of Chicago Theological Seminary, is a theologian and social ethicist whose many influential books include Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the U.S. (with Rita Nakashima Brock; Fortress Press, 1996), Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside (with Mary Potter Engel, 1998), and Sex, Race, and God: Christian Feminism in Black and White (1989).

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Loathsome Thing

PART I: A SYSTEMIC ANALYSIS OF PROSTITUTION IN ASIA AND THE UNITED STATES

Sex and the Female Body

Shooting for Fun and Seeking Salvation

If Women Counted: The Economics of the Sex Industry

Prostitution and the Law

Power and Prostitution: The Social/Psychological Dynamics of the Sex Industry

Tricks, Trauma, and Terror: The Psychological Impacts of Prostitution

PART II: A LIBERATION RESPONSE

Jokes, Lies, and Stereotypes: Introduction to a Liberation Analysis of Prostitution

Lying in the Beds We Do Not Make: Sin, Karma, and the Sex Industry

Movements of Grace and Compassion

Strategies for Change and Solidarity: What Are We to Do?

Afterword

Appendix: Men in Prostitution

Notes

Index