Like a prism, prostitution dynamics reflect and magnify pervasive social patterns. These essays examine those patterns both inside and outside the context of explicit sex commerce. The author elaborates a cross-cultural critique of the categories "prostitute" and "prostitution" as constructed in science, policy and society. At every level of analysis, terms and social categories prove to be slippery, consequential and reflective of an underlying political logic that subordinates women to men. Key to that logic is the whore stigma, an official and traditional mechanism of social control inextricable from issues as diverse as migration, health care, sexual autonomy, employment and freedom of speech.