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Prostitution is, they say, 'the oldest profession in the world' and, as far as the historical record goes, it's at least close to being so. The first mention of prostitution that we know of was 5,500 years ago, in the city of Uruk, in Sumer in Mesopotamia, where priestesses in the Temple of Inanna performed this service.
The religious connection with prostitution, of course, is one that has long since been lost -- though we might discuss it in another piece; yet of course, the practice itself continues. Until recently, the major push to suppress prostitution was religious, coming from, in particular, the Protestant Christian traditions and notably the Anglican one, which has always been a pillar of sex-negativity and repression.
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/RodFleming
Of recent decades, however, the attempt to prevent women from engaging in prostitution has come from other women. Indeed, it has become a bastion of modern feminism. But this throws up a thorny moral question: do we or do we not have the right to do as we will with our own bodies?
Prostitution from a Libertarian perspective
From a libertarian perspective, this is easy to resolve. The first principle of libertarianism is that we do, indeed, own our own bodies and lives and have the right to do with them as we will, providing that we do not impede on the right of others to do the same. The second principle of libertarianism is that force or violence should never be initiated, but should always be countered -- never pick a fight, but never run from one.
So, as regards prostitution, for a libertarian the answer is simple: if a person wishes to hire out his or her body for sex, it's their own business and nobody else's. Period. Secondly, preventing people from doing this requires that society employ sanctions -- in other words, force or violence -- to make them stop. So on two counts -- the most important two counts -- a libertarian has no choice; we must accept prostitution and not engage in violent attempts to suppress it.
This is what Human Rights Watch says
Criminalizing adult, voluntary, and consensual sex – including the commercial exchange of sexual services – is incompatible with the human right to personal autonomy and privacy. In short – a government should not be telling consenting adults who they can have sexual relations with and on what terms.
Criminalization exposes sex workers to abuse and exploitation by law enforcement officials, such as police officers. Human Rights Watch has documented that, in criminalized environments, police officers harass sex workers, extort bribes, and physically and verbally abuse sex workers, or even rape or coerce sex from them.
Women think in terms of power
Feminists, however, are usually women and we already know that women do not think like men. Men think in terms of sex and are target oriented. Men like clear lines of logic and accept the notion of reality. Men are realists, in other words.
Women, au contraire, think in terms of power. For them, everything is subject to that power. Women think in terms of narratives and feelings but always, above all else, in terms of power. And the seat of that power is in the control they have over their own bodies -- power over reproduction.
This is natural and we have discussed it at length elsewhere. Men's best evolutionary strategy is to impregnate as many women as possible, while women -- who have to ensure that their offspring survive -- cannot pursue this. Instead they must choose the partner whose offspring are most likely to survive. Women take far greater care in mate selection than men do, because of the serious consequences of becoming pregnant; men are just trying to get laid.
The power balance that has been evolved in humans favours women when they are in groups. Women control access to sex by arranging a social and usually, physical space wherein they are in charge. I have called this the 'Home' group; this is actually the matriarchy. It is a contiguous group of women who live together and whose purpose is to protect each other while they are pregnant and having children and to help each other raise those children. If men are allowed into the space, they do so under the rules that women set -- in other words, women exercise power over the space and the men in it.
The reasons for this.
A supportive male partner is a great advantage to a woman in her struggle to survive and protect her family. And the way that she can assure this is through the human pair-bonding mechanism.
While it is probably
only circumstance that causes humans to make lifelong bonds, it is
certainly beneficial for them to remain bonded for as long as it takes
their children to reach reproductive age. -- especially their girl
children. This is about the age of 12 to 14.
LinkTree:
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Evolution
This is assisted, in humans, by an evolutionary device: women remain sexually receptive at all times, even when they are already pregnant and so, cannot become pregnant. This is called 'extended sexuality'. It apparently confers no advantage, because the woman cannot conceive from it. Why would a mechanism like that evolve?
Thornhill, R. The Evolutionary Biology of Human Female Sexuality 2008
So we can see that women's extended sexuality confers advantage in areas that are not strictly reproductive and have, instead, to do with means by which the woman, and her children, can be supported and protected. As Thornhill puts it 'men subsidize the reproduction of their partners and their offspring'. He goes on to show that this activity has both a parental and a mating benefit for the man. In other words, part of the reason men pair-bond and support their partners is to ensure the carry forward of their own genes, through the survival of their children; and part is access to sex.
Women have evolved extended sexuality so that they can continuously offer sex to their partners, even when they cannot become pregnant from it. This helps them directly through the provision of food and also through protection from other males who desire sex.
To put that another way, a sexual marketplace exists in which women exchange access to sex for support and protection. Women are evolved to sell sex.
Now of course, we don't call it 'selling sex' in polite
company, but that is what all human society is based on: an arrangement
whereby a woman exchanges sex for the things she needs in order to
successfully have and raise children and to survive this; marriage is
emphatically not a system whereby a woman is bound like property to a
man but one in which a man is attached permanently to a particular woman
and set of offspring.
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Aggressiveness
In an advanced social culture such as humans have, mechanisms have evolved to ensure that male strength and aggressiveness are kept away from situations where they could, by accident or deliberately, harm the woman or the children. This is how we come to have the 'Two Group' system, where a matriarchal 'Home' group looks after the children and a patriarchal 'Away' group looks after the hunting and provisioning, as well as defence. While in most human societies, women forage, trap and cultivate, and this can be enough to provision the entire tribe, this division of spaces is consistently seen: a 'Home' space where women are in charge and an 'Away' space where men are. These correlate to contemporary notions of 'matriarchy' and 'patriarchy'.
So, to put it bluntly, all human society is based on the provision of access to sex, by women, in exchange for goods (provisions) or favours (protection). Human society, therefore, is based on prostitution. All women are, in this sense, prostitutes and all men are johns. (Feminists have long identified all men as johns without ever recognising the corollary -- that this identifies women as whores.)
Why then, are feminists so hostile to it?
Power is the most important issue to a woman. This is derived from her power over her own body. She decides with whom she will have sex. If this were not the case, then the human pair-bonded social model would not work. Men would just take sex with any female. Being able to control who has sex with her, in other words, having power over them, is the key to her arrangement.
There is another issue, however. While a woman might, through the pleasure of her body, be able to ensure that a man keeps returning to her, what does she do about the unbonded women in the group? If these are able to offer sex to her mate, might he not accept that and if he does, would he not then form a bond with another woman? And if he does this, what happens to his original mate? Would her protection and provision not be reduced, as a consequence of her mate providing for and protecting another woman and, in all likelihood, other children? Yes of course it would.
We know this happens. Think how
many men have mistresses. How many have affairs. This has been written
about for thousands of years and it certainly is not anything new. Men's
primary reproductive strategy is to get as many women pregnant as
possible. As a result they have such powerful libidos that they are not
at all fussy about who or what they have sex with. They just want sex.
LinkTree:
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Men think in terms of sex.
For the woman's strategy to work, she must have power over her own body such that she can choose with whom to have sex; power over her mate such that he constrains his natural desire to penetrate anything with legs, but also crucially, power over other women, such that they cannot provide competition in sex provision. In other words, women don't want a free market in sex, they want one where they are, individually, the sole providers. Where they have monopoly.
Women have evolved, as a part of their social structures, mechanisms whereby other women are prevented from sharing sex with men. They invent rules about virginity, where young girls are prevented from having sex with boys until a recognised bond can be made. That is the basis of marriage and the reason why not having sex before marriage is so much vaunted. That is why 'promiscuity' is so bitterly hated -- a promiscuous man is betraying his pair-bonded partner and a promiscuous woman is betraying every other woman in the tribe.
Women establish social sanctions against women who break the rules and provide sex to men whom they are not in a bonded pair with. This can range from derision and shunning to violence and witch-burning.
By definition
Prostitutes are, by definition, in the business of breaking the rules set by the matriarchy, because they provide sex directly in exchange for good (money).
This totally destroys the matriarchy's power over the society and even over the Home group that it was established within. Social bonds will fragment and the group may schism. This is a very bad strategy.
So women, not men, oppose prostitution and they use their power over men, through their own provision of sex, to rally them to their cause -- something that men would not normally do.
This is why feminists oppose prostitution. Modern feminism is in the business of taking over the whole of human society and turning it into a matriarchy, a Home group. To that end, of course, all masculinity must be banished. But further, all those women who operate outside the power-structure that feminism has established, must be suppressed.
Prostitution
directly challenges the feminist hegemony by providing sex outwith the
power-structures designed and maintained by women.
LinkTree:
https://linktr.ee/RodFleming
Protecting vulnerable women? Yeah, right
Clearly, feminists couch their arguments in more palatable terms. They talk about 'protecting vulnerable women'. But there are plenty of laws already in place that criminalise slavery, coercion and extortion. We need only apply these. But that would risk creating a safe, well organised sex market where providers had security. That is the very last thing feminists want. They don't care if prostitutes are abused, beaten or killed, because they can use that to further their specious, authoritarian agenda.
There are middle class prostitutes called 'escorts' -- feminists know they can't touch those. Feminists, as always with the authoritarian Left, impinge most heavily on those prostitutes who are most needy -- those who work the streets. These are the 'sisters' whose livelihood feminists would take away. The entirety of Feminist 'morality' is betrayed by this one hypocrisy: we claim to defend the weakest and most oppressed, but it is they whom we most oppress ourselves.
It makes no difference whether the focus of Feminist attack is on sex providers or their clients. Clearly it is a deceit to suggest that provision of a service is permissible, but acquisition of it is not. This is a blatant double standard which has the same effect: deny, to those who desire to provide a marketable service, access to the market.
The reason why feminists seek to so oppress their own sisters should now be clear: like the nuclear family, and the traditional arrangement whereby mothers care for children and fathers provide, prostitution stands in the way of the takeover of society by the feminist harpies.
Full disclosure
I have employed prostitutes in the past; I have no shame of this and I believe in all cases, both parties were satisfied with the exchange. I do not do so now, because I have no need. But here is a simple thing: we do own our own bodies and we can decide what to do with them; and if you deny that, you do not believe in liberty.
This is the real crux. The Left, which, in contemporary terms is just feminism in a pussy hat, does not believe in liberty. It believes in social control, enforced by the threat of a bullet from a Makarov in the back of the head. Or whatever other sanctions their mobs can apply.
Prostitution, the right of a woman to say, 'It's my body and I will decide what to do with it,' is like acid in the face of feminism. It is a beacon of liberty -- 'I own my body and you, society, cannot stop me from doing as I will with it.' Feminists care not a jot for the individual, only for the group. We can make a simple rule of thumb: masculine = individualism, feminine = collectivism. This is the great divide in politics and why Feminism and Marxism are so closely related. Marxism is feminine because it is collectivist; Feminism is Marxist for the same reason.
The struggle has nothing to do with class, or race, or ethnicity, or culture. It is simple: feminists desire to colonise the whole of society and destroy both individuality and masculinity.
Prostitution stymies them because as long as there are prostitutes, a man can employ one and so render his pair-bonded mate's decision to withhold sex -- on whatever pretext -- null. By doing so he destroys women's power over him, and by implication, Feminism's power over society.
The real reason feminists hate prostitution
Feminists cannot abide by liberty, because women hate it. Women want everything and everyone to be subject to their own power. No exceptions can be tolerated. The whole of human society is constructed to enslave men to women; prostitution is the rock that ship founders on.
The real reason feminists want to stop prostitution is that it interferes with their strategy of overtaking society and abolishing men.
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/RodFleming
