My Views on Prostitution
Posted by H in me, prostitution
A short time after G. and I started dating, we had a talk on prostitution, which pre-dated my discovery of her secret job.
It was one of those lazy evenings where you prefer to stay at home doing nothing and just talk, having a smoke on your balcony, wrapped in the private shade of the dimming light of the sun while you can still enjoy its warmth.
One of these evenings where you start talking about nothing and everything, and make nothing out of everything. We talked about politics, cinema, music, video games, genetics, politics, some more politics, episodes of our respective childhoods, and we ended up rambling about prostitution (probably because it came as a logic sequel to another political argument).
I had no clue back then she was an escort. Not a single tiny clue, I have to admit. I could feel the was the kind of person who definitely knows how to use her looks and had learnt to move in ways that just drive you crazy. Or if she didn't learn it, boy, did she do it well unconsciously. That's what I thought.
No that I recall this episode, it is quite funny. Maybe she was trying to test me and check if I'd be alright if the problem came under the spotlight. Or maybe she tried to give me a hint and I just didn't pick it up.
Anyway... This post and the followings are about this. What we talked about, a short summary of our views on prostitution.
As a teenager, when I started sharing with friends the usual kind of thoughts every teenager has about sex, relationship and his future life, I wondered if it would be a problem to me to date a stripper or even a prostitute.
Though I couldn't imagine myself going to a strip-club or hiring an escort or picking up a girl on a sidewalk or going to a house, I was not repulsed by the idea. I just didn't feel any dislike for the other part.
But I had pretty strong feelings about the business in general. I was pitying the girls doing and cordially hating people who would take advantage of them in such situations, as pimps or customers, though I would acknowledge some girls would do it for fun.
[NB: you'd have noticed by now that I usually refer to the actors of "escort/prostitute" role as girls and to the actors of the "customers/pimp" roles as guys. This is not a sexist point of view nor a reflection of my vision of society. This is just how it is in my situation, though G. has had female pimps, male coworkers, and female and males customers. This is just a standard work environment lately, and I grow tired quite fast of paying attention to genders. No offense intended to anyone here, with any kind of sexual attraction.]
I couldn't accept these people's job, because I couldn't accept my sister, if I had one, to be part of such a business.
And though I didn't feel any disgust towards the girls, I'd consider there's always something better you can do to earn money, like I consider there's always something better than asking for charity on a sidewalk. I'd review my judgment now, having met pretty successful tramps making more money by the hour than me (though with less social security and workplace safety conditions...) and dating a girlfriend making a hell of a lot of money in a few hours of job). But back then I was less pragmatic and less experienced, and my ethics were more binary.
Though appaled by the business, the principle in itself appeared to me fairly acceptable. Like considering nuclear chemics an acceptable field of research as long as it's not used to produce atomic bombs. I understood it as a service, a desire, a need, and maybe the opportunity for people cast away by the unsaid rules of our society to get a glimpse of humanity, ironically by acting in a dishumanized way.
And hey, if it was OK in ancient Greece, then it probably still should be, after all they were pretty smart fellows.
Nowadays, my views have changed a little. Like I said, I am much more pragmatic, and I sometimes even see it from the business side. It's a very profitable business. For everybody. Then is it shameful ?
It can be, of course. It just depends how it is managed. How it gets done. But what people see as awful in prostitution are the sexual acts and the willingness of people to sell out their bodies. They're more repulsed by the service providers and their sleazy pimps, who sometimes are not that sleazy, than by the innocent customers, who sometimes are far from innocent.
It is morally wrong then ?
I don't really think so. Imposed domination is wrong. It doesn't mean that prostitution necessarily implies forced domination. Or forced depreciation, forced humiliation.
It can be a part of the customer's fantasy, in which case it might be acceptable if the girl is OK with it, or it might be a part of a more morbid and sexist habit, in which case, even if the girl would accept it, I consider it clashes with higher ethical considerations.
Unfortunately, one is forced to admit that prostitution does not always occur in the best conditions. It is already much better in most of the western countries than the way it's done in - even developed - Asian countries, for instance. But even then, there is almost always a social context behind the girls ending up there. So it's not really a completely willing commitment, nor a completely stable situation, from a moral point of view.
I think one's views on prostitution is influenced by many things. But mostly, I think your education is what determines your balance. The education given to you by your parents, your school, your TV, your stereo, your iPod, your XBox, your neighbor, your neighbor's kids, your old grumpy local bookkeeper and so on.
They influence you and define - sometimes by contrast ... - your moral values. Then comes your sexual education, if we can call it like this. Anything remotely related to your perception of sex. Your church, your hot friends, your first crushes, your first dates, your neighbor's older kids doing it, your parents doing it, and so on...
A friend of mine used to tell me that basically, it all comes down to the fact that our society frowns on anything that is associated with the pleasures of the flesh. Which is, I agree, kind of true. There is a "taboo", a seal, applied on everything bearing the symbol of our carnal desires.
Therefore we grow up ashamed of being naked, ashamed of revealing emotions experienced by just about everyone else, ashamed of our performances, ashamed of our inclinations. Ashamed of our desires. That friend's parents where managers in a swingers' club. By 9, he was working at the club distributing free condoms.
I hear people screaming to all their saints in the background already. Though surprised at first by this mental picture, I still can't find anything wrong with it, nothing that I could blame his parents for.
He is now a very caring person, very respectful of the opposite sex and of people's sexual preferences. He has an open mind and doesn't judge, and has empathy for people like G. and me. He doesn't fell ashamed of himself when anything private about him surfaces in a conversation.
And see the good side: at least they were giving out free condoms and ensuring safe sex in a family-friendly environment where people where keeping some control over themselves and taking care of him and not forcing him to do or try anything. And now he can say he's from the people who have been to swingers' clubs. And seen strippers, and have some stripper-friends, and have tried what there is to try. People who've done it all, seen if they like it or not, and who know can sit back and think "OK this doesn't do it for me but go for it if you want. This sucks. period. That I wouldn't really recommend or take it easy".
Though my parents didn't raise me in such an extreme environment, I thank them for no homophobic grudges, for giving me a religious education just out of tradition and letting me decide for myself, and for having been there in case of uneasy talks without being too bald and bringing them bluntly upfront in any embarrassing way, and being good parents in that they managed to make a good distinction between the "raising", the "bounding", and the "buddy" parts of our relationship. I owe them a lot.
Not that he would necessarily mean that they would be OK with G.'s job, though I guess they would. Because they'll probably see it like I do.
And now that I know what G. does, and that she could give me more information on this scene, I can even be more lenient towards the "puppet masters" of this business.
The only evil in there, is the one you create, and the one imposed by others, the evil puppet masters, and the customers who don't accept their own desires and still come to get some with a perverted and twisted mind instead of a simple desire to satisfy a need or find a beautiful and nice girl to smile at your for a few hours.
I accept the principle.
I understand but partially condemn the industry.
I respect the workers hanging at the leaves of the organization's chart.