prostitute

a prostitute may be either sex. Use "prostitute" or "prostituted woman" instead of the hundreds of slurs and euphemisms: baggage, bawd, B-girl, call girl, chippie/chippy, doxy, drab, fallen woman, fancy girl/woman, floozie/floozy, hussy, lady of the night, magdalen, painted woman, pavement princess, piece, pro/pross/prossie/prostie/prosty, round heels, scarlet woman, sidewalk hostess, streetwalker, strumpet, tail, trollop, trull, woman of easy virtue/ill fame/ill repute, working woman. The male-dominated language has been slow to demean male prostitutes, which is why all the foregoing words apply to women. Prostitution involving adults is a takes-two-to-tango operation and could not survive without the active and continued participation of both parties. Yet our language in no way treats prostitute and prostitute buyer equally. The prostitute is often disadvantaged, compelled by poverty, homelessness, a pimp, or drugs to maintain the system. The prostitute user does not suffer from similar life-and-death compulsions. Yet by naming prostitutes pejoratively, society apportions to them all the blame, all the "badness." When it comes to the men who do with prostitutes that which supposedly makes the prostitutes bad women, we have only four words for them: john, trick, score, date. "John" is a nice word. Many people name their sons John. "Trick" and "score" are not too shabby either; they are both used (although not in that sense) in polite society. And "date" is even more innocuous. Virtually none of the prostitute words have this double life; they live only on the streets. Avoid all terms for prostitutes except "prostitute" or "prostituted woman/man/person" or "woman/man/person working as a prostitute." Call the prostitute's partner a "prostitute user" (linguistically connecting the two) or "sex buyer." Eliminate cover-ups like outcall service, escort service, red light district, call girl service, brothel, bordello, call house; they are houses of prostitution or prostitution services. See also camp follower, courtesan, demimondaine, harlot/harlotry, ho, hooker, Jezebel/jezebel, kept woman, lady of easy virtue/of pleasure/of the evening/of the night, loose woman, madam, sex worker, slattern, slut, tart, tramp (woman), wench, whore.