Prostitution or especially global policy towards it is in my opinion so terribly captivating because of the amount of legitimate angles it can be argued. I love everything to do with it--it is intriguing for its various cultural adaptations as it exists in virtually every society everywhere, it is statistically generous from health and social work standpoints as it plays into various phenomenons, and it is academically useful in its connotations-- prostitution has everything to do with class, economics, politics, culture, and well everything. It is what people do and have done forever. Forever.
But that's not why I wrote my UG thesis on it or why I bring it up to anybody that won't immediately freak out at the P-word. I do this because my whole life I thought prostitution should be legalized and regulated until I read the book Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn about the correlation between legalize/regulate models and human trafficking. They argued basically that prostitution wasn't as much about policy as I always thought but about power and how women don't have it but could. They drastically changed my opinions, and I can't stress this enough: that is pretty damn difficult to do... but here I am scribbling out some stuff about prostitution again. This time I'm blaming someone else: Elizabeth Pisani and her pithy, thoughtful book The Wisdom of Whores and it's humanistic approach to what *some* people don't consider about *some* hookers: the stigma is a social construct. Prostitution is a SOCIAL pathology, not a real one. At least not to prostitutes.
I have this ongoing debate with a friend of mine who interned at the DA's office and developed a deep empathy for guys that had it rough and stumbled into prison without a second chance for dumb reasons. I argued him that prostitution was inherently degrading and inherently victimized-- that there were of course deviations from this norm, but that it was indeed the norm. I guess I'm changing my mind about that (again) as I read this book. What I've realized is that to take a step back from the narrow viewpoint of my experience means separating prostitution, a profession which many enjoy and reap a variety of benefits from, from its connotations. Sure, in a paternalistic social system, prostitution will manifest itself as a paternalistic evil, thus our stereotype of prostitution today-- misogynistic and cruel. But trying to "fix" prostitution is trying to fix the symptoms without blaming the disease. It is just a part of the big picture, albeit a rather ugly and messy part that nobody wants to look at.
Your blog provided me with ample distraction from valuable thesis work time. Anyway my knowledge on the whole "prostitution" discussion is grossly lacking but attempting to build off your last idea of a "larger picture", an argument could be made that the source of all western civilization's problems can be deduced to a shift in worldview from pre-modern concepts of sacred space to modern concepts of profit and accessibility that happens somewhere during the reformation with the introduction of John Calvin upon the world stage. Usury becomes socially acceptable, concepts of intrinsic human value are destroyed by Calvinist theology and merit becomes measured through pursuit of "profit" in a market based economy (Weber explains this much more eloquently) anyways the rest is history, human society evolves into a culture based in the pursuit of monetary capital until we reach the present day where capital and its acquisition have become the sole importance in human life to the degree that ecosystems, cultures, and any chance for sustainable endurance of the human race in general take the back seat to the acquisition of capital . Taking this into consideration it could be argued that prostitution is an inherently dehumanizing act in that it reduces the human body to a mere medium for the acquisition of profit. In a way it is a banner for the moron virtues of the modern age? Just an idea.
ReplyDeleteNow of course the counter-argument could be made that prostitution has existed long before the creation of any capitalist market economy dating back to early human history with examples recorded in the Old Testament and the Epic of Gilgamesh etc. Its presence even exists in aggressively uncompromising agrarian society ( with relatively collectivist economies) I'll cite Gaelic Ireland and Scotland in this case as that is an area of expertise for me. The greatest pre-Christian Gaelic epic " Táin bo Culaigne" begins with a monarch( in a very broad definition of the term) offering her "friendly thighs" as a medium of political exchange. So I suppose that in this situation the argument could be made for prostitution as a medium of power over compromised appetites? (This sounds super foucaulish now) .
Just thoughts I suppose.
Well yeah that's a really good point that I would completely agree with and argue that even though we see prostitution as far back as we can trace human history, it has meant different things to different people. I think prostitution has always reflected what is important to the people within the society that support it, because sex has always been about power, and is always traded for something-- if not monetary reward than physical or emotional, etc. It's because of this that it has become a means of degrading the human body to a means to acquire capital, reflecting as you aptly described our moron virtues.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about Fucault and in a broader sense I think we're both taking a stab at explanation from a sort of evolution of a constant power stance...But whatever, politics is power, sex is power, it will always be traded for whatever represents power to humans. Right now in the US that happens to be cash.
Stop meandering and get back to thesis work! ;)