This page visualizes data from a survey of prostitution clients in four different cities in the US.

One of the survey's original aims was to identify the reasons men visited prostitutes. Going into this project I aimed to visualize these reasons, but discovered that few of the researchers' suggestions/assumptions were actually confirmed by the recipients.

The size of the text represents the strength of the men's responses (whether either positive or negative). Before the statements they disagree with, I put "I don't think" in parenthesis. The repetition of this phrase then mirrors the absence of causality between the suggested motive and action, as well as the lack of logic I found inherent in the survey results.

Behind the words is a faded image of a woman hunched over her knees. The woman can hardly be seen behind the "data." Men's words, and quantitative data, take a primary role in the study of women and construction of the act of prostitution.

Original survey description can be found on the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) website.

Original survey data (.txt)
Perl program script (.pl)