THE OLDEST PROFESSION
Even though prostitution is often labeled as the world’s ‘oldest profession’ our thinking on the topic is riddled with ambivalence. The very fact that it is acceptable in many cultures for men to visit prostitutes though it is not acceptable to be a prostitute indicates to say the least a certain level of confusion.
If the essence of prostitution is the exchange of sex for money without affective content
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether hiring out one’s body is fundamentally any different or more reprehensible than hiring out other aptitudes and skills and talents also without affective content? The Oxford English Dictionary in fact defines a prostitute as ‘a woman who offers her body to indiscriminate sexual intercourse, especially for hire’ but also recognizes more general and non-sexual usages as in describing as a prostitute ‘a person given over to infamous practices, a base hireling, a corrupt and venal politician’.
It is often argued that women who marry for money in exchange for sexual (& reproductive access) are ‘as good as’ prostitutes even though they are not installed in brothels, ‘walking the streets’ or ‘call girls’ leaving their cards in telephone booths.
The term ‘sex worker’ invented in the 1970’s by sex workers themselves covers in addition to prostitutes a range of professionals who may not be (overtly or only) selling sex…..bar girls, masseuses, lap dancers, strippers, some varieties of the ever-fascinating Geisha, purveyors of telephone or internet sex…… but who are nevertheless assumed to be open to negotiation. The invention of the new compound term was an attempt to focus on the career and rights aspects of these professions, to induce some solidarity across a range of professional activities, and to reduce the social and moral stigma attached to all of them.
Most of the social political and economic analysis of prostitution has focused on the supply and not the demand side. Discussion of the function of prostitution as an institution in any given society and how this function might change as the social context changes has usually been sacrificed in favour of emotion and ‘morality’.
Are prostitutes ‘fallen women’ who actively choose and prefer the highway to hell, innocent victims of trafficking, or strong women making a rational career choice from the options available to them. Should prostitution be eradicated by making it illegal and/or by equipping prostitutes with education and alternative career skills. A recent study of the 19th century English novelist Charles Dickens shows that he established a house in London to rehabilitate ‘fallen women’ and to prepare them for new lives in the colonies.
The fact that the oldest profession exists in all societies at all levels and at all historical periods and that most prostitutes are currently and have always been women should lead us to ask some questions as to any underlying social function of the phenomenon, and whether it will change as gender roles change.
The poet Ogden Nash (or perhaps it was Dorothy Parker or Edward Lear…opinions differ) famously wrote
Hoggamous, higgamous,
men are polygamous.
Higgamous, hoggamous
women monogamous.”
This bit of nonsense verse expresses what is generally assumed to be ‘true’ about the different sexual natures of men and women. Even serious scientists agree that ‘men would if they could….indulge a taste for variety in their sexual partners… and what stops them is that women are generally not interested. Only the rich and famous, and gay men, have the option of casual sex open to them to any degree, unless of course they pay for it, and there are plenty of men who take this route’.(quoted in Sex and Gender by John Archer and Barbara Lloyd, Cambridge University Press 2005).
As women are designed to bear and feed their children they are also thought to be hard-wired to select and keep one man who will protect and care for them during that period and preferably afterwards. It is in men’s interest on the other hand to sow their wild oats where they may as so few of those oats are going to take root. And for men of course the biological clock tends to tick on much longer.
In summary because of their different sexual natures it is assumed that there will always be more demand from men than from women for ‘extra –pair copulation (EPC)’ as it is known in some circles. Prostitution increases where men are gathered en masse at mines or naval and army bases, and has become part of the tourist industry in some usually poorer developing countries. The rise in the numbers of prostitutes is also explained by some economists for some countries as a response to economic crisis or macro-economic adjustments which have ‘adjusted’ jobs normally occupied by women without providing new opportunities or re-training.
Different countries have treated prostitution in very different ways. In the Sudan prostitution is a capital offence whereas prostitutes in Hungary and the Netherlands are tax-paying, unionized legal workers. In the USA the state of Nevada famously has legal brothels though prostitution exists in a state of varying degrees of illegality in other cities and states across the country. In Sweden it is legal to sell but not to buy sex, and in the UK prostitution is legal but pimping or running a brothel is illegal. Recently in the UK it was proposed that men who hired prostitutes who had been trafficked should be punished though it is not at all clear how that would work.
In Thailand which has one of the world’s most celebrated sex industries prostitution is in fact illegal although at some historical periods it has enjoyed legal status and has always been a well-developed institution given a boost during the Vietnam war when the Thai government negotiated with the US government an agreement for US soldiers to spend their Rest & Recreation in Thailand. The function of prostitution in the overall economy of Thailand has been interestingly analyzed by Peter F. Bell in his article ‘Thailand’s Economic Miracle: Built on the Backs of Women'. Bell writes ‘Forced by rural poverty into the cities, or choosing higher paid sex work over low waged alternatives women use their bodies as sex workers to earn the foreign exchange over $3.5 billion which pays for part of the capital goods imports needed for industrialization. Prostitution which enjoys low social status is paying for the machines at which the sisters of the CSW’s (Commercial Sex Workers) toil in the factories and produce about $30 billion of exports. In terms of the value added to the Thai economy it is the CSW who should be the highest paid profession.’ Another study has shown that an annual transfer of funds in remittances from urban to rural areas is estimated at over $300 million which means that the CSWs make a greater contribution to alleviating rural poverty than does the government.
EMPOWER, an organization which promotes the rights of sex workers in Thailand (www.empowerfoundation.org) considers that the illegal status of prostitution renders women vulnerable to exploitation by the bar owners, the police, their pimps and their clients and advocates for the legalization of the bars and other premises where the clients meet the women. Currently the actual negotiation and rendez-vous takes place ‘off-site’ this enabling the bars to evade prostitution laws. If their workplaces were legalized then the women would have legal protection and rights like any other employee. ‘Whilst sex work as an occupation is not a form of violence against women, the stigma, discrimination, physical abuse and exploitative labour practices that sex workers face are kinds of violence that have not only been neglected but legitimized by the government’.
Are there any other factors which might be expected to change the balance of supply and demand? Does the incidence of use of prostitutes go down where contraception and therefore the presumed easier access to free recreational sex increases. Have Viagra and Hormone Replacement Therapy made a change in our ‘innate’ sexual natures?
Increasingly women are demanding to be entertained by male dancers and strippers, and high - flying single women may use professional escort services. Are emancipated women with a variety of career choices open to them less likely to become prostitutes or more likely to regard it as an objective career choice a ‘trade like any other’.
Further Reading
A Trade Like Any Other: female Singers & Dancers in Egypt by Karin van Nieuwkerk University of Texas press (1995)
Thailand’s Economic Miracle: Built on the Backs of Women by Peter F. Bell in Women, Gender Relations and Development in Thai Society (ed) Virada Somswasdi & Sally Theobald Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiangmai University (1997)
Rest, Recreation and Resistance: Advancing the Rights of Sex Workers in Thailand by Veronica Magar & Chantawipa Apisuk in Sexuality,Gender & Rights: Exploring Theory & Practice in South & Southeast Asia (ed) Geetanjali Misra & Radhika Chandiramani (2005)
The Wisdom of Whores: bureaucrats, brothels and the business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani GRANTA Books London 2008