Disposable Sex Worker: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Archer:''' Oh my god, you killed a hooker!
'''Cyril:''' [[Insistent Terminology|"Call girl"]]! She was a call girl!
'''Archer:''' No, Cyril! When they're dead, they're just ''hookers!''
|''[[Archer]]''}}
A subtrope of [[Death by Sex]] which specifically guns after ladies of the night. Want to stress how depraved and vicious your killer is? Have him—it's almost always a man—target and/or kill a few sex workers—and they are nearly always women—to drive home the fact. Maybe it's because walking the streets is a dangerous occupation and the ladies involved tend to make easier targets for weirdos. Maybe it's because sex workers are an [[Acceptable Target]]. Maybe the prostitutes are killed because [[He Knows Too Much|they know something they shouldn't, or a villain thinks they do]]. Or maybe it's just easy short-hand to let people know there's a [[Serial Killer]] loose out there, but the sex industry tends to have a high percentage of casualties when it comes to this kind of thing. And they will nearly always be [[Red Shirt|forgotten by the story]] eventually.
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This is, in some ways, a [[Truth in Television]]. Prostitution (especially of the street-walking variety) carries with it a certain amount of danger by its nature, as the ladies occupy a gray area in society outside of the law, often being ignored both by the law and society at large as a result, and must by necessity place their trust in strangers whose intentions may not be benign. In all too many cases, women in the sex industry may be a [[Real Life]] [[Serial Killer]]'s first/only victims.<ref>Indeed, it's not uncommon for the [[Serial Killer]] to specifically ''target'' prostitutes, and actually believe that he's doing society a favor by killing them.</ref>
In many cases regarding their depiction, however, there is an unfortunate sense that the ladies in question are being somewhat... dehumanized in the process. The unfortunate ladies who fall victim to the killer are rarely given any kind of character outside of their profession. If they are lucky, we'll learn their name(s), and if the producers really want to hammer it home how far they're fallen we'll probably get some sense of their home life (which will no doubt contain some kind of drug-addiction, abuse, or even a child raised in poverty). They will usually be a vaguely formed [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold]] at best, someone with a conveniently tragic reason to be targeted by a serial killer.
Sometimes we don't even get that; we just get a string of nameless dead hookers. There can also be a sense that these women [[The Scourge of God|have it coming]] or somehow deserve what happens to them because of their circumstances; the detectives involved may be dismissive or or even contemptuous towards the victims and the other women in the same position because of their profession. This can be especially glaring if the killer then targets a woman who is not a prostitute. Whereas the victims from the sex industry may be casually dismissed as victims who "had it coming," the non-sex worker victim will be treated as an innocent whose death is a tragedy and must be avenged. Similarly, if a dead woman is mistaken for a sex worker, then her death might be initially dismissed, only for everyone to pick up and work their damned hardest to solve the case once it's revealed that she's actually an
The [[Disposable Sex Worker]] has an odd mixed relationship with [[Missing White Woman Syndrome]]. On one hand, they're mutually exclusive due to sex-worker victims not being "wholesome" ladies (especially if they're minorities compared to a white "normal" victim). But on the other hand, male and transgendered sex workers are almost never given mention in fiction or real life, despite being just as likely to be victims of violent crime, but with authorities even less likely to care.
Compare to [[Disposable Vagrant]]. Contrast like hell with [[Platonic Prostitution]].
{{examples}}▼
{{deathtrope}}
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Yumi teamed up with [[Big Bad]] Makoto Shishio in ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' because the Meiji government declared that geishas and courtesans like herself were worth little more than cattle. Shishio, in his own warped way, was one of the only people who valued Yumi as a human being.
==
* Played straight and subverted by the first ''[[Sin City]]'' story "The Hard Goodbye," in which the death of a prostitute in the opening pages kicks off the plot. {{spoiler|It turns out that the killers targeted prostitutes because nobody cared about them, but Marv decides to bring down the entire operation to avenge the murdered call girl who showed him a little kindness.}}
** The rest of the series mainly averts this. The girls of Old Town can typically take care of themselves often carry very large firearms. It's also implied the cops don't investigate cases where the victim was a prostitute, precisely because they know the girls of Old Town will do it instead.
* In ''[[Supreme Power]]'', a whole bunch of prostitutes are killed—and have their arms ripped off as trophies—by {{spoiler|Redstone}}.
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* In one ''[[Batman]]'' story Lex Luthor artificially inseminated a prostitute with a perfect copy of the reproductive DNA of a senator that was in the way of his latest scheme. He then waited until she had given birth to her daughter and murdered her in order to frame the senator of it. If things had gone Luthor's way, the people would come to the conclusion that the senator had relations with a prostitute which produced a daughter and had the mother killed to hide them—completely discrediting him in the process. Batman of course manages to find a measure of justice for the murdered woman and clears the senator's name. The senator also earns Batman's respect when he decides to adopt the child despite her bizarre origin. Batman notably gets pissed off when Gordon refers to the woman as a "hooker" instead of her name.
** In an issue of ''[[Catwoman (comics)|Catwoman]]'', Selina finds out that prostitutes in Gotham are being killed, but because they're only hookers, no one is investigating. She starts to investigate and even convinces Batman to join in, knowing he cares about justice for everybody, including prostitutes.
* ''[[Wonder Woman]]'': Hiketeia deals with this, but from the prostitute's perspective instead. The female lead's sister was tricked into the sex trade, raped and hooked onto drugs. Her eventual death due to overdose is ignored by the police due the trope.
* Averted in Alan Moore's ''[[From Hell]]'', in which the Ripper's victims are explored and fleshed out. One issue even directly compares the life of the Ripper and the life of one of his victims in the day before the two cross paths.
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* In ''[[The Crow]]'', the [[Big Bad]] Top Dollar and his [[Brother-Sister Incest|half-sister/lover]] reveal their creepy perversions by having a dead prostitute in their bed. Top Dollar states, "I think we broke her," suggesting that she died as a result of the villains' excessive indulgences.
** They have a dead ''girl'' in their bed. There is nothing but the Disposable Sex Worker trope itself to indicate she was a prostitute. (The sister follows up with an "I like her eyes. ''Pretty,''" and [[Eye Scream|a knife]]. The eyes appear in a later scene.)
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Perfume]]'', Grenouille tests his new scent-capturing process on a prostitute. She doesn't cooperate, so he simply kills her and finishes the process. Once he's perfected the technique, he discards her scent as unworthy and focuses on his real targets: virgins.
* In the "peyote western" ''[[Blueberry]]'' (AKA ''Renegade''), the hero's prostitute sweetheart is killed {{spoiler|by him by accident while trying to save her from the [[Big Bad]], though we only learn this in the end.}} She is basically a prostitute [[The Gwen Stacy|Gwen Stacy]].
* ''[[Total Recall]]''. The triple-breasted whore gets unceremoniously shot in the back while covering for the heroes. The rest of the brothel whips out guns for a shootout, resulting in several dead sex workers by the end.
* In ''[[
{{quote|'''[[The Consigliere|Tom Hagen]]:''' This girl had no family. ''Nobody'' knew she worked here. [[Unperson|It'll be like she never existed.]] }}
* ''[[Amsterdamned]]'' opens with a murder of a prostitute.
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* The first victim of Dr. Mirakle's experiments in 1932 ''[[Murders in the Rue Morgue]]'' is a prostitute.
* Played completely straight when the villian in the [[John Travolta]] vehicle ''Blow-Out'' ([[John Lithgow]]) offs a prostitute in a bus terminal.
== Literature ==
* In ''[[American Psycho]]'', the main character hires and brutally murders prostitutes after having sex with them. He does this several times, once in the apartment of another man he killed. He also preys on a homeless man, another convenient victim that society isn't very interested in.
* Jayne Ann Krentz favors this trope in many of her romance novels.
* Averted by Harry Bosch, the homicide detective from [[Michael Connelly]]'s series of crime novels. One of his personal mottos is "Either ''everyone'' matters, or ''no one'' matters".
* ''[[America (The Book)]]'' has an itinerary for a Republican Nation Convention that includes being woken up in the middle of the night by the screams of a congressman who thinks he must have killed a hooker.
* In the [[Matthew Hawkwood]] novel ''Resurrectionist'', when the body snatchers are paid to secure Colonel Hyde a fresh body, the victim they chose is young streetwalker Molly Finn.
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* Averted in the first season of ''[[The Shield]]'': we get a lot of information about Sally, a prostitute victim of a serial killer, and the detective investigating the case actually names her when cursing out a suspect for wasting police time.
* ''[[Millennium (TV series)|Millennium]]''. A demon who inspires a youth to become a [[Serial Killer]] is annoyed because he keeps targeting prostitutes. Although he convinces the youth to abduct a Satanist on one occasion, he quickly goes back to killing prostitutes in a bid to become the greatest serial killer in history ("Seeking quantity, not quality" as another demon puts it). Eventually the demon gets bored with him, and leaves evidence behind that leads Frank Black to the killer.
* The pilot to ''[[Sanctuary]]'' has a prostitute walking up to a recently teleported-in baddie and offering to show him a good time; he, of course, butchers her. It makes a little bit of sense, though, when you find out he's {{spoiler|[[Jack the Ripper]]. Her murder also clues Helen Magnus into the fact that he's back, making it a possible aversion}}.
* ''[[Deadwood]]'':
** In the second season, Francis Wolcott has a history of going hard on the merchandise. {{spoiler|He turns a local bordello into a bloodbath, and it's apparently not the first time. The new Deadwood madame had actually ''planned'' on Wolcott murdering her star prostitute and then blackmailing him to stay silent. She apparently didn't realize that [[Mugging the Monster]] is a bad idea. In a bit of s subversion, the ruthless Hearst decides that Wolcott is too much of a liability for his hooker-killing ways, and fires him.}}
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* ''[[The Wire]]'':
** Season 2 starts with one turning up in the harbor, and very quickly [[Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot|leads to the discovery]] of another ''dozen'' suffocated in a shipping container. Hammered home by the fact that pretty much no-one cares about the case other than the female beat cop and McNulty - and he just likes playing the [[Cowboy Cop]].
*** They're not ignored just because they're sex workers; they're also illegal immigrants in a vague jurisdiction, and [[Somebody Else's Problem|no one wants to take the case because]] [[Truth in Television|it would drag their murder-solving statistics down]]. The only reason the murders get solved at all is because McNulty manages to connect into an investigation of a corrupt foreman that [[Pointy-Haired Boss|Valchek]] has a petty grudge against.
** A minor subplot in season 1, where one of the dancers at Orlando's strip club turns up dead after a drug-fueled party with Wee-Bay and the rest of the Barksdale soldiers. The soldiers' cavalier attitude about it is what drives fellow stripper Shardene to actively assisting the police.
* In Season 2 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', {{spoiler|after Angel loses his soul}} his first target is assumed to be a prostitute, who was the first person he saw. (Of course, most unnamed characters who venture outdoors at night die in monster attacks, she's hardly alone.)
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* ''[[The X-Files]]'' took a [[Law and Order Special Victims Unit|Law and Order]] bent in one episode, where a [[Monster of the Week|creature]] that subsists on nothing but [[I'm a Humanitarian|human fat]] is only discovered when starvation drives it to hire a heavy-set streetwalker.
** Averted in another episode, a particularly scary and horrific serial killer murders a prostitute to collect parts of her body. The FBI treats the case very seriously, probably due to the brutal nature of the murder, and Mulder advises the victim's friend (also a prostitute) to try and leave town.
* In ''[[CSI]]'' and its spinoffs, rather infamously, though somewhat justified in the original show because prostitution is legal in Nevada. Sometimes, the [[Body of the Week]] disposable sex worker may turn out to be a different person entirely (eg a cop working deep undercover).
* Referenced in ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', where a neighbor takes a job acting as a murdered hooker on ''CSI''.
* One episode of ''[[Foyle's War]]'' has a murdered prostitute apparently tossed in for atmosphere; we never hear of the case again.
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* The narrator in the Arctic Monkeys song "When The Sun Goes Down" expresses concern that the prostitute whose propositioning he politely declines might end up as one of these, whether at the hands of the "scummy man" (either her pimp or just a creepy weirdo) he notices hanging around near her or a guy who propositions her immediately after the narrator declines her.
* "Brenda's Got A Baby" by [[Tupac Shakur|2Pac.]] The song is about a 12-year-old girl from the inner-city with an uncaring family who gets involved with [[Squick|and pregnant by]] her 20-something [[Incest Is Relative|cousin.]] (Who abandons her sometime during the pregnancy.) Shortly after she gives birth, her mother throws her out of the house, and she's out on the street. When selling drugs fails, she is driven to prostitution, and killed (presumably by one of her clients.)
* A murdered male prostitute in the Sting song "Tomorrow We'll See," who is described as just another victim on that road, carted away by the police and replaced by someone else the next day.
* Implied to be the fate of the Narrator (seemingly an Eastern European sex worker) in ''Maybe There's A Road'' by Karine Polwart: "Now somewhere someone’s saying I was in the wrong / And that I never should have travelled where I don’t belong / Maybe there's a road that's not this hard"
* "The (Peek-A-Boo) Game" by [[Sir Mix-a-Lot]], tells the story of [[Only Known by Their Nickname|"Coco"]] an abused runaway who turned to stripping, then prostitution. The song ends with Coco dead, ''strongly'' suggesting she ended up one of the Green River Killer's victims.
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* One of the Templar Agent missions in ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' sends Ezio after [[Bilingual Bonus|Malfatto]], a street doctor targeting Ezio's courtesan allies like a 15th century Jack the Ripper.
** On the other hand, Ezio actually ''has'' courtesan allies, and three major supporting characters are madames who do not react well at all to anyone killing their charges. That such women are seen as the dregs of society, somehow less human than the middle-class or nobles, forms a minor subplot.
* Inverted in the ''Godfather'' video game. A major part of the plot revolves around protecting the sex workers. Outside of that, flirting with them gets the charcter bonuses.
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* ''[[Archer]]'' features the following gem;
{{quote|'''Archer:''' Oh my god, you killed a hooker!
'''Cyril:''' [[Insistent Terminology|"Call girl"]]! She was a call girl!
'''Archer:''' No, Cyril! When they're dead, they're just ''hookers!'' }}
** Made even funnier by the fact that Cyril had previously called her a hooker and it had been Archer who had insisted she be called a call girl.
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== Real Life ==
* [[Jack the Ripper]] is a proto-example of a [[Serial Killer]] targeting prostitutes. Most murders of common victims such as prostitutes and laborers were ignored by the media, but serial killers were a fairly new phenomenon, and the Ripper murders horrified the city. Backlash against the inept handling of the investigation by the police caused numerous social reform movements and changes within the Metropolitan Police.
* [[wikipedia:Green River Killer|Gary Ridgway]], the 'Green River Killer', who is convicted of murdering 48 women, all but one of them a prostitute. He confessed to 71, and likely killed 90+. He spent 21 years killing women until he was found, including several in a day at various times.
* [[wikipedia:Steve Wright (serial killer)|Steve Wright]], who murdered five women in Ipswich, England, all prostitutes. The media portrayed the victims in a fairly unsympathetic tone. ''[[British Newspapers|Daily Mail]]'' columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote a piece which essentially insinuated that the victims got what they deserved, causing a backlash.
** The BBC drama about this (Five Daughers) is 100% an inversion, as it focusses entirely on the women and Steve Wright is just a shadowy menace in the background. It also showed how the huge focus on the case stretched the local police force to the limit.
* [[wikipedia:Robert Pickton|Robert William Pickton]]. Suspected of killing 46 women abducted from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (he is convicted for the murder of 6 of the women, and charged for the death of another 20), Pickton was eventually caught and tried, but not until the families of the many women he murdered raised an uproar over the fact that the police just didn't seem interested in investigating the disappearances of people who were all women, mostly sex workers and disproportionately First Nations.
** Of course, after it was all over, there was [https://web.archive.org/web/20200430055403/http://onthefarm.info/ a book] and at least a couple of documentary films about the murders.
* Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Not all of his victims were prostitutes, but most were. What's even more disturbing is the reaction to the crimes. Upon hearing of another attack, some men would shout things like "Twelve - nil" and "There's only one Yorkshire Ripper" in the style of a football chant. Some of the controversy stemmed from the media's tendency to distinguish Sutcliffe's non-prostitute targets as "innocent victims", with the implication being that the prostitutes almost deserved their fate.
* Joel Rifkin, believed to have killed 17 prostitutes, was actually caught with a dead hooker in the trunk of his car.
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[[Category:Death Tropes]]
[[Category:Dead Herring]]
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[[Category:Double Standard]]
[[Category:The Oldest Profession]]
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