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From: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: A bit on prostitution...
Message-ID: <5159@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 1-May-85 21:26:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.5159
Posted: Wed May  1 21:26:10 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 02:23:45 EDT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 40

Since people are bringing up the subject of the prostitutes' roles in society,
here's some comments from various periods in history...

The Indus Valley civilization, which to my knowledge is still seen as the
oldest on Earth, had a religion emphasizing the bounty of Nature, etc, etc,
and they had a very well-developed practice of temple-prostitution, although
properly speaking the priestesses of the temple were not prostitutes.  We,
millenia later, put that label on them.  The societies that practiced these
forms of religious worship (in their opinion, which is the one that counts),
did not see these activities as sinful or degrading, rather, from what we
can gather of their opinions, the temple priestesses were prestigious and
revered members of society.

In California, not long after the Gold Rush, the ratio of men to women was
around 4:1, with the predictable (or postdictable) advent of prostitution
as a major service industry (no pun intended).  One woman of the time reported
she could make several thousand (1860) dollars a year, but quit after a very
few years because her body couldn't take the strain.  The rampant prostitution
of those days (for there is no better term for it) ended only when the number
of MARRIED women in the area (San Francisco) increased, and the prostitutes
became "fallen women" again.  Note they were considered "fallen" only by
comparison.

In the vast majority of Judeo-Christian societies, and in most others I have
heard of, the prostitute has been vilified by the respectable society, and
frequently prostitutes were held to be in violation of the law (like here),
and some of the punishments were pretty henious.  But in no society I have
ever heard of, with the exception of those with one important trait, was
prostitution ever eradicated.  The one trait was chattel slavery.  This makes
sense if you think that a person can own another person, then there is no
need to pay for prositution.

For those interested in the history of prostitution, the dissertation of
J. Barnhart (now at CSU Chico, California) is quite informative.  But be
warned, she occasionally suggests prostitution should be legalized, licensed,
regualted, and taxed, which is an opinion that is controversial in the least.

					-Eric
					...!ucla-cs!mccolm
Shade and sweet water...