The intersection between gender and nationality and the perspective of the regulation of media contents

Abstract

The Mediatized Construction of the Stigma against the Prostitute in Spain

The media construct a speech that simplifies the reality of prostitution and stigmatizes those who exercise it. This article is based on an analysis of the discourse of the representation of prostitution in the newspapers El País and ABC, from the Spanish transition to 2012. Despite being ideologically opposed (conservative and Catholic ABC, and identified with the progressive ideology next to PSOE El País), in both the stigma is present. It is a stigma constructed differently, since the image of the prostitute is articulated around the morality in ABC and around the progressive ideas in El País, but with the same starting point and a final confluence. In both, the woman who prostitutes herself is a prostitute before being a a woman and a person and both will coincide in reducing the representation of the prostitute to the «hypervictim» from an abolitionist perspective.