In anomalous zones, society tolerates departures from fundamental norms. ... The customers of prostitutes "could experience the suspension of the values theoretically governing outside the district at any time through an easy exercise of mobility." Rather than view the spaces of prostitution as spaces of subversion, I focus on what such temporary excursions on the part of the customers enable. Their temporary abandonment of societal norms does not weaken these men's claims of respectability, but, rather, it puts the mark of degeneracy on the women in prostitution and thus reaffirms the men's position within the dominant group. That is, once men leave the space of degeneracy, having survived it unscathed, they return to respectability. In this way, prostitution reaffirms not only the hierarchies of gender but also of class, race, and sexual orientation.

-Sherene Razack

Race, Space, and Prostitution: The Making of the Bourgeois Subject