Warren Ockrassa wrote: > >> But making it illegal doesn't make it go away. Even strict Muslim > >> countries have prostitution. > > > > No, it doesn't. But, my point was that prostitution wasn't healthy > > for society, not how/whether it should be regulated. > > It's healthy in *any* society that treats prostitutes with respect, > doesn't stigmatize the trade, etc.
But does any society treat prostitutes with respect? Even if you don't stigmatise the trade, or stone /condemn them when they appear in your view, it still isn't the same as respecting the group. It is merely an absence of disrespect. You mentioned Vatsayana's _Kama Sutra_ in another mail, and if you take the literature from that period, you come across two different kinds of women who trade sex. The first group comprises of normal prostitutes, women who are neither reviled, nor respected - just a group which trades in the flesh. The other group, the skilled courtesans, were the ones who commanded respect. Not just because they were skilled in the art of sex, but also because they were trained in a lot of other fields as well - singing, dancing, statecraft and politics, chess, military strategies, writing poetry, adorning themselves and their houses, some form of martial arts, etc - a list of 64 'essential arts' for a well-rounded woman [I can barely tick 15 off that list]. Now these women were not only treated with respect, kings and nobles vied for their favours, and they were given a voice on the city councils. However, I am not sure they'd qualify as prostitutes - their prices [set by them] reflected their entire arena of expertise and indeed the kings/nobles they paired up with repected them and relied on them as counselors. As far as I have been able to make out, these women were more of a real-life version of the mythical apsaras. And the latter's traditional definition has always been 'svacharini' - women who live by their own rules. If one takes a look at the accounts of the dev-dasis, even from the region around the Khajurao temple, it is rare to come across women who didn't aim to get out of the business, and who wanted their own daughters to follow into the trade. And this is when the dev-dasi structure used to be rather well-organised in terms of patrons, economic security, and the provision of companionship. > I'm unsure, furthermore, how you make the jump from paying for sex to > treating the sex partner as an object. I guess it might be a matter of the amount of choice enjoyed by the women. Do they get to set their own price? Do they get to choose between prospective customers? I dunno. I think it would be hard to avoid feeling like an object if one is selling one's body for money, after all one is accepting money for the use of one's body. There is no guarantee of mutual attraction, and nothing else is included in the transaction - not your thoughts, not your feelings.... Conversely, if I were to pay a man for sex, I wouldn't expect myself to care about his thoughts or emotions, or any other aspect of his identity and persona. The sex might be mind-blowingly good [I don't see myself caring about his pleasure], but I'd be lying if I said that I care about him, or that I'd want to care about him. He'd be just an object of pleasure. He might not mind being objectified, but I reckon most individuals cannot deal with constant objectification without internalising it. And that is likely to cause some degree of damage to one's self-esteem, isn't it? Ritu _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
