History of Prostitution Final

History of prostitution final

Ancient Near East As early as the 18th century B.C., the ancient society of Mesopotamia recognized the need to protect women's property rights. In the Code of Hammurabi, provisions were found that addressed inheritance rights of women, including female prostitutes. For example, if a dowry was established by the father for his unwedded daughter, upon his death, her brothers (if she had any) would act on her behalf as her trustee. However, if the woman received the property as a gift from her father, she owned the property outright and could leave the property to whomever she pleased. Greece In ancient Greek society, prostitution was engaged in by both women and boys. The Greek word for prostitute is porne (Gr: πόρνη), derived from the verb pernemi (to sell), with the evident modern evolution. The English word pornography, and its corollaries in other languages, are directly derivative of the Greek word porne (Gr: πόρνη). Female prostitutes could be independent and sometimes influential women. They were required to wear distinctive dresses and had to pay taxes. Some similarities have been found between the Greek hetaera and the Japanese oiran, complex figures that are perhaps in an intermediate position between prostitution and courtisanerie. (See also the Indian tawaif.) Some prostitutes in ancient Greece, such as Lais were as famous for their company as their beauty, and some of these women charged extraordinary sums for their services.

Rome In ancient Rome, there were some commonalities with the Greek system; but as the Empire grew, prostitutes were often foreign slaves captured, purchased, or raised for that purpose, sometimes by large-

scale "prostitute farmers" who took abandoned children. Indeed, abandoned children were almost always raised as prostitutes.Enslavement into prostitution was sometimes used as a legal punishment against criminal free women. Buyers were allowed to inspect naked men and women for sale in private and there was no stigma attached to the purchase of males by a male aristocrat. Middle Ages During the Middle Ages, prostitution was commonly found in urban contexts. Although all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage were regarded as sinful by the Roman Catholic Church, prostitution was tolerated because it was held to prevent the greater evils of rape, sodomy, and masturbation (McCall, 1979). Augustine of Hippo held that: "If you expel prostitution from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts". The general tolerance of prostitution was for the most part reluctant, and many canonists urged prostitutes to reform. After the decline of organised prostitution of the Roman empire, many prostitutes were slaves. However, religious campaigns against slavery, and the growing marketisation of the economy, turned prostitution back into a business. By the High Middle Ages it is common to find town governments ruling that prostitutes were not to ply their trade within the town walls, but they were tolerated outside if only because these areas were beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities. In many areas of France and Germany town governments came to set aside certain streets as areas where prostitution could be tolerated. In London the brothels of Southwark were owned by the Bishop of Winchester. (MCCall) Still later it became common in the major towns and cities of Southern Europe to establish civic brothels, whilst outlawing any prostitution taking place outside these brothels. In much of Northern Europe a more laissez faire attitude tended to be found. Prostitutes also found a fruitful market in the Crusades. According to Jacques Rossiaud, the clergy made up about twenty percent of the clientele of private brothels and bath-houses in Dijon, France during the 14th century, and it seems the situation was similar

all throughout Europe. Sixtus IV (1471–1484) was the first Pope to impose a license on brothels. 16th–17th centuries By the end of the fifteenth century attitudes seemed to have begun to harden against prostitution. An outbreak of syphilis in Naples 1494 which later swept across Europe, and which may have originated from the Columbian Exchange, and the prevalence of other Sexually transmitted disease from the earlier sixteenth century may have been causes of this change in attitude. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, numbers of European towns closed their brothels in an attempt to eradicate prostitution. In some periods prostitutes had to distinguish themselves by particular signs, sometimes wearing very short hair or no hair at all, or wearing veils in societies where other women did not wear them. Ancient codes regulated in this case the crime of a prostitute that dissimulated her profession. In some cultures, prostitutes were the sole women allowed to sing in public or act in theatrical performances. 18th century In the 18th century, presumably in Venice, prostitutes started using condoms, made with catgut or cow bowel. During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was initially fairly common for British soldiers to engage in inter-ethnic prostitution in India, where they would frequently visit local Indian nautch dancers.As British females began arriving in British India in large numbers from the early to mid19th century, it became increasingly uncommon for British soldiers to visit Indian prostitutes, and miscegenation was despised altogether after the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. 19th century In the 19th century, legalized prostitution became a public controversy as France and then the United Kingdom passed the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation mandating pelvic examinations

for suspected prostitutes. This legislation applied not only to the United Kingdom and France, but also to their overseas colonies. In 1839, in London, a city of two million inhabitants, there were estimated to be up to 80,000 prostitutes. Many early feminists fought for repeal of these laws, either on the grounds that prostitution should be illegal and therefore not government regulated or because it forced degrading medical examinations upon women. A similar situation did in fact exist in the Russian Empire prostitutes operating out of government-sanctioned brothels were given yellow internal passports signifying their status and were subjected to weekly physical exams. Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection describes legal prostitution in 19thcentury Russia. 20th century Originally, prostitution was widely legal in the United States. Prostitution was made illegal in almost all states between 1910 and 1915 largely due to the influence of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union which was influential in the banning of drug use and was a major force in the prohibition of alcohol.[citation needed] In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson wanted all prostitution ended near any military and naval base as America prepared to enter World War I.[citation needed] In 1956, the United Kingdom introduced the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which would partly be repealed, and altered, by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. While this law did not criminalise the act of prostitution itself, it did prohibit such activities as running a brothel, and soliciting. Beginning in the late 1980s, many states in the US increased the penalties for prostitution in cases where the prostitute is knowingly HIV-positive. These laws, often known as felony prostitution laws, require anyone arrested for prostitution to be tested for HIV, and if the test comes back positive, the suspect is then informed that any future arrest for prostitution will be a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Penalties for felony prostitution vary in the states that have such laws, with maximum sentences of typically 10 to 15 years in prison. An

episode of COPS which aired in the early 1990s detailed the impact of HIV/AIDS among prostitutes; this episode is deemed as part of HIV/AIDS awareness. Sex tourism has emerged in the late 20th century as a controversial aspect of Western tourism and globalization. Sex tourism is typically undertaken internationally by tourists from wealthier countries.

2 Prostitution was a part of daily life in ancient Greece. In the ancient city of Heliopolis in Syria, there was a law that stated that every maiden should prostitute herself to strangers at the temple of Astarte.3 In India, the practice of prostitution has been prevalent since time immemorial. Originally, devdasis were celibate dancing girls used in temple ceremonies and they entertained members of the ruling class. But sometime around the 6th Century, the practice of "dedicating" girls to Hindu gods became prevalent in a practice that developed into ritualized prostitution. Devdasis literally means God's (Dev) female servant (Dasi), where according to the ancient Indian practice, young pre-pubertal girls are 'married off, „given away' in matrimony to God or Local religious deity of the temple. 4 The marriage usually occurs before the girl reaches puberty and requires the girl to become a prostitute for upper-caste community members. Such girls are known as jogini '. They are forbidden to enter into a real marriage. The system of devdasis started only after the fall of Buddhism and records about them start appearing around 1000 A.D. [Bharatiya Sanskruti Kosh, IV, 448]. It is viewed that the devodosis are the Buddhist nuns who were degraded to the level of prostitutes after their temples were taken over by Brahmins during the times of their resurgence after the fall of Buddhism. According to the 1934 Devadasi Security Act, this practice is banned in India.5 India is home today to Asia's largest red-light district--Mumbai's Kamathipura, which originated as a massive brothel for British occupiers and shifted to a local clientele following Indian independence. The Mughal Empire (1526 -1857) also witnessed prostitution the word „tawaif’ and 'mujra ' became common during this era. King Jahangir's harem had 6,000 mistresses which denoted authority,

wealth and power. Even during the British era prostitution flourished the famous Kamathipura, a red light area in Bombay, was built during this era for the refreshment of British troops and which was later taken over by Indian sex workers. *Assistant Professor, RML National Law University Lucknow,INDIA. 12 www.turbowars.com/people/.../should-prostitution-be-legal-in-indi www.hrmun.org/committees/un-human-rights-council 3 68articles.com/the-problem-of-prostitution-an-indian-perspective2ffe6ce0.html 4 indianredlight.wordpress.com 5 iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring02/Chattaraj/genesis.html

Case Study: Prostitution We can learn a great deal about women’s history from studying women in a particular situation. Discussion of prostitution, a topic that has long excited widespread interest, incorporates ethnographic, historical, philosophical, medical, religious, and sociological elements and can tell us much about different societies’ attitudes toward women. Popular attitudes toward prostitution also provide information on a particular society’s beliefs about race, class, gender, and age, as well as eugenics and hygiene, not to mention gender difference in marriage. The variety of sources described here can be employed as a model for students interested in other women’s history topics.

Courtesans, or upper-class prostitutes, are among the women often mentioned in traditional histories, from the hetaerae of Ancient Greece, through the Byzantine Empress Theodora, to Diane de Poitiers, the 16th-century mistress of Henri II, King of France. Courtesans have been the subject of Japanese woodcuts, “Pictures of the Floating World,” dating from the Edo Period [See Analyzing Evidence: Paintings and Prints], and of European portrait painters. Some, like the Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, the mistresses of French King Louis XV during the mid-18th century, came to wield significant power. These women, however, represent only a small percentage of prostitutes, many of whom lived—and still live—in poverty. Both men and women have been employed as sexual laborers throughout history. When Western governments began attempting to regulate prostitution during the 19th century, however, their policies concentrated on the sexual behaviors of women. Journalists, moral crusaders, and politicians discussed prostitution in newspapers, periodicals, parliament, and public speeches or discussions. Novels reflected contemporary female stereotypes associated with prostitution (the “weaker” morals of women or the “dirtiness” of women from certain ethnic groups, often immigrants). Physicians, sociologists, and other specialists sought to explain its causes. Reflecting the growth of prostitution as a global concern, beginning in the late 19th century, countries throughout the world began signing international treaties banning the transportation of women for illicit purposes, which was known as the “white slave trade.” European states, as well as some cities in East Asia (but not the United States), that regulated prostitution kept a close eye on “registered” prostitutes, who constituted a small percentage of sex laborers. Most sex laborers worked clandestinely, sometimes only temporarily.

Governments passed laws meant to control the behavior of prostitutes. Officials tracked their health with compulsory medical examinations designed to detect venereal diseases. “Morals” police monitored their behavior and movements, and arrested them for a variety of violations, sometimes resulting in court cases. All of these documents (laws, court records, police records, and health exams) provide a rich source basis for the study of prostitution.

For example, the regulation of prostitution in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy included a variety of assumptions, among them the widespread literacy of women and a competent bureaucracy large enough to oversee the administration of prostitution. Prostitutes were expected to fill in application forms for health books as well as to read behavioral and health rules and regulations the police provided. The questionnaires demanded personal information, including name, date, place of birth, residence, religion, and marital status. If the applicant were married or a minor, the permission of her husband or parents was necessary for registration. Some health book applications might contain subjective questions, such as why the applicant had chosen to become a prostitute. The health books, which varied locally throughout the Habsburg Monarchy, usually contained the name, age, and place of birth of its holder, and from 1894, also

an identifying photograph of the prostitute.

These were primarily

photographs of faces only, but occasionally, they included full-length, formal studio portraits. Health books tracked the government-mandated regular visits prostitutes had with police doctors to determine the state of their health. In addition to telling us about the health of individual prostitutes, as well as more general information about the age of regulated prostitutes, their hometowns, and the towns and cities in which they chose to work, this material also provides evidence that prostitution was part of the family economy among the poor of the Monarchy. In an era before antibiotics, venereal disease was the main cause of concern about the health of prostitutes. Because registered prostitutes might have as many as 20 clients a day, they risked great exposure to venereal disease (and other infectious diseases) and at the same time exposed many people to it. Indeed, by the time a registered prostitute was discovered to have a venereal disease, she might already have infected numerous clients, who might pass the disease along to a spouse or other partners. When a registered prostitute left a city or town, she was obliged to inform the local police. If she planned to continue practicing prostitution in her new place of residence, she had to reregister with the police. They in turn contacted the police at her previous place of residence to verify her presence there as well as any criminal record or venereal infection. In addition to information on the health and possible criminal activity of prostitutes, this correspondence tells us about the mobility of prostitutes within the Monarchy. In addition to local, regional, and state governmental documentation of the behavior of individual prostitutes, there are also the numerous publications by social organizations concerned with the

issue of prostitution. Although many male and female bourgeois social reformers sought to eliminate prostitution altogether, their approaches were often very different, in part because of contrasting attitudes toward venereal diseases. For example, many reforming middle-class women’s groups in the United States asserted that the very regulation of prostitution discriminated against women and helped force them into a lifetime of prostitution; once labeled as prostitutes, their possibility of finding “respectable” employment was limited. These varied materials reflect differing class, cultural, religious, and social perspectives on prostitution, especially in the modern, Western world. They tell us what observers thought about prostitution and how their attitudes changed over time. Until recently, there were few personal accounts by prostitutes to provide clues about their varying motivations or their attitudes toward the governments, organizations, or individuals that sought to regulate the practice or abolish prostitution. Oral histories as well as the anthropological and sociological studies that document the lives of prostitutes, many of them from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe and almost all of them poor, have begun filling this gap. Case Study: Prostitution

About the Author Nancy M. Wingfield has published widely on the cultural history of Habsburg Central Europe. Most recently, she is editor of Creating the Other: Nationalism and Ethnic Enmity in Habsburg Central Europe (2003) and coeditor with Maria Bucur of Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (2001). Gender and World War in TwentiethCentury Eastern Europe, also coedited with Maria Bucur, is forthcoming in 2006.

THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION THROUGH THE RENAISSANCE Magistra Rosemounde of Mercia Prostitution is frequently called the world's oldest profession. Actually the profession of "shaman" predates it by thousands of years.[1] This inaccuracy reflects many of western

society's traditional attitudes about women, e.g. women are property, women are sinful, women's purpose is to serve the needs of men. Because these attitudes are so ingrained, it is impossible to think of a time when they were not truisms. Prostitution is very ancient, however, and is documented in humankind's earliest written records.[2] The question of its origins has nearly as many answers as it has authors addressing the subject.

The various theories break down into four basic categories. The first is that prostitution is inevitable because nature determines certain roles for men and women, and one of women's roles is to serve the sexual needs of men. This theory is shared by both traditional anthropologists[3] and by some modern theorists.[4] The socialist/Marxist view is that prostitution is an inevitable result of capitalism.[5] A third view, widely held by some anthropologists, is that prostitution is a holdover from early matriarchal societies where it was practiced without the negative social stigma that is attached to it today.[6] The final, and in my mind the most reasonable, theory is that prostitution is a function of a patriarchal and male-dominated society. This view is held by some traditional anthropologists, who believe that patriarchy is a superior form of social structure,[7] and by most modern feminists.[8] Whatever the origins and causes of prostitution, it has been a social institution throughout the recorded history of humankind. Yet there are many misconceptions concerning prostitutes. In general, it has always been a temporary job where any choice was involved. Most prostitutes left the profession to marry or simply found work of another type. For many it was a sideline, practiced to supplement their income from other sources. Prostitution is linked to other women's issues, such as the social status of women, birth control, and employment opportunities. One of the most important of these issues is economic status. Throughout history, prostitutes have fallen into three classes. The lowest is the prostitutes of the streets. These women were originally slaves, and in later times came from the entrenched poor. The next class up is composed of women who work in brothels or similar facilities, who mainly come from working-class backgrounds. The upper-class of prostitutes are the courtesans. Although there is some blurring between these categories, for the most part they are discrete and distinguished by working conditions, number of clients, amount of pay, and social status. Women of the Streets

Women of the streets were those who sold their sexual services by walking the streets in search of customers. In ancient times slaves made up the lowest class of prostitutes. These were the "temple prostitutes." Because of their association with state religions, many authors have assumed that prostitution carried no stigma in these cultures.[9] In actuality, the association with the temples was solely economic. The slave prostitutes carried on their business in the streets and taverns and turned their earnings over to priests to support the temples. This was the case in Babylonia, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and Rome.[10] Confusion is caused by incorrectly equating these women with the priestesses who had ritual sex as part of various religious rites. This has been labelled prostitution by many authors, though it bears no resemblance to any modern definition.[11] Most of the former group worked the streets, although in Greece and Rome, large brothels were considered an easier way to control them. Solon, the Athenian lawgiver of the 6th century B.C., owned a large brothel populated with slaves.[12] Secular prostitution in the streets also existed in the ancient world. In Babylonia at the time of Hammurabi, the harimate had a notorious reputation, and men were warned not to marry them under any circumstances.[13] In ancient Palestine, women sat along side the roadways to attract customers.[14] Greek street walkers worked the taverns, but shared status and name, pornoi ("whore"), with the slaves in the brothels.[15] The Romans considered

street prostitutes to be sexually insatiable, vicious, and likely to corrupt children.[16] The lives of these women were circumscribed in many ways. In Rome, the street prostitute's movements were controlled as well as her mode of dress,[17] and the Assyrians had severe penalties for those who wore veils in an attempt to pass as "respectable women."[18] Women of the ancient middle east turned to prostitution because they were widows, orphans, outcasts, or the daughters of prostitutes. There was no other place for those who did not have men to protect and support them. In early Islamic cultures, the harem was a form of slave prostitution, and men of wealth purchased hundreds of slaves for their harems.[19] Men could sell their slaves and concubines at will, but were not supposed to sell them into prostitution, which was illegal under Islamic law. Some did anyway, and prostitution was tolerated, though kept behind the scenes by the muhtasib--the morals police who had the power to punish prostitutes on sight.[20] The lowest class of prostitutes in India were the khumbhadasi. They came from the lower castes of society and had nominal legal protection from the State. Since marriage and prostitution were the only options available to women in Indian society, widows who failed to commit suttee had few, if any, alternatives.[21] In China, all prostitution was confined to brothels. The lowest class, called wa-shê, first appeared during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-24 C.E.),[22] and was filled with women criminals or the female relatives of male criminals, prisoners of war, and slaves. They had few legal rights and numerous social disabilities. They were used to service soldiers and the poorest elements of male society.[23]

Prostitution in medieval Europe was influenced by the views of the early Christian church. It was seen as a necessary evil, and therefore tolerated, although Church officials condemned the practice and encouraged women to give up the

trade.[24] The lowest class prostitutes of the Byzantine Empire were in brothels peopled with girls from the countryside who had been sold by their parents in time of economic need.[25] In early Germanic societies, voluntary prostitution was a crime against the male relatives of the prostitute and was severely punished, but the sexual exploitation of female slaves was practiced.[26] Prostitution increased with urbanization, and the lowest class of prostitutes were serfs who fled to the cities.[27] They made up the ranks of camp followers who plied their trade at military garrisons and followed the armies in the field. Prostitutes were required to wear distinguishing dress, and there was concern about public soliciting. As urbanization increased, prostitutes began to cluster in certain areas of the cities, especially near universities and around the public baths or "stews." As in modern times, "public women" [28] were identified with venereal disease. Pimping was illegal in most places, probably in an attempt to control the street crime which was associated with it,[29] although stories of mothers selling their daughters into prostitution abound.[30] By the Renaissance, regulation of prostitution existed throughout Europe. Wages, rents, hours, and health examinations were all controlled by the various governments.[31] Fear of syphilis, at that time as deadly a disease as AIDS is today, led to the closing of the stews and the removal of most prostitutes to brothels. Unfortunately, those women who were evicted from the brothels due to disease were left with no choice but to ply their trade in the

streets.[32] In some areas, prostitution was outlawed entirely, but strict regulation and some efforts at reforming prostitutes were the norm.[33] None of these measures succeeded in reducing prostitution, and in 1490 the official register recorded 7000 prostitutes in Rome and over 11,000 in Venice.[34] Since street prostitutes were not registered, these numbers represent a minimum.

Street prostitution has always been the most visible form of the profession. Composed of women from the lowest classes of society, it is unarguably the lowest status that a woman could have. It was not, however, the most prevalent form of prostitution. That distinction goes to the middle-class of the profession, the women in brothels.

Women in Brothels By far the most common form of prostitution throughout history was in a brothel. A brothel was an establishment where a number of prostitutes gathered to work, and sometimes live. The Babylonians referred to the women who worked in brothels and ale-houses as senhate,[35] and the ancient Hebrews called them zonah, which means "faithless one."[36] In Greece the middle-class prostitutes worked in inns, sat in windows of houses, or worked as musicians and dancers. This class of women were called aultrides, which means "flute players."[37] Women of this class were generally not slaves, and though they

probably came to the profession for reasons of economic hardship, they were able to turn beauty or talent to advantage. In Rome, the prostitutes of this class sometimes worked in brothels, but were more likely to be found in inns, working the circuses, or sitting in the windows of their houses--thus the word prostitute, which means "to set forth." [38] In the Islamic world, an interesting custom arose called mut'a. This was a form of temporary marriage, which could be for as short as one hour, in exchange for money. This was not considered prostitution, though it meets most modern definitions. Many of the women who practiced this were married and did so with their husbands permission and sanction of law.[39] Married women in India also sometimes practiced prostitution to make extra money, especially those from the sudra, servant caste. These artisan's wives were known as silpakarika. The women who worked in the brothels were called paricharika and usually had one or two special customers who looked after them. Musicians and dancing girls were also frequently prostitutes.[40] Prostitutes in China were classified according to their accomplishments, and the middle-class were entertainers. They worked in winehouses, establishments that also served as hotels. Red silk lamps were hung on their doors for identification, which may be where we get our expression "red light district."[41] Middle-class prostitutes in the Byzantine Empire were usually entertainers and theater women. Tradition has it that Empress Theodora was once a prostitute of this type who rose through the ranks and eventually seduced the Emperor into marriage.[42] In Europe, women plied the trade in taverns and inns, and as cities grew, actual brothels were established. Some prostitutes established guilds in the same way as the other professions. Female troubadours also sometimes practiced prostitution. Many of the prostitutes of this class had other employment which was inadequate to meet their needs.[43]

By the Renaissance, brothels were a well-established part of the cities, and were restricted to designated areas. Prominent men frequently owned brothels, and taxes on them were paid to the state, which regulated them. Regulation attempted to get all prostitutes into the brothels where they could be counted, taxed, and controlled. Fear of syphilis led to regular medical inspections.[44] Special hospitals were founded for diseased prostitutes, and there was

an active movement in the 16th century to abolish prostitution,[45] which built convents and shelters for reformed prostitutes. Despite these efforts, prostitution continued to flourish, especially in the larger cities where wages for women were low, and there were large numbers of men in the professional merchant class.[46] Courtesans Courtesans are the elite of prostitutes. Their lives have been lauded by writers of many times and places. In societies where wives were not allowed to interact socially with men, courtesans have been used to fill the gap. They are the only prostitutes to leave their names in histories, and at times they have had a profound effect on politics and the arts. Courtesans have inspired entire genres of poetry and set styles of fashion. Some rose from the ranks of middle-class prostitutes through talent and education, and some were trained virtually from birth. Many of them came from the middle and upper-classes and chose the profession because it was the only way to achieve wealth and prestige in a world dominated by men. The courtesans of Babylonia were the kizrete and were highly prized as concubines.[47] The Epic of Gilgamesh includes the story of how a courtesan defeated the wild man Enkidu through the arts of love.[48] In ancient Egypt tales of famous courtesans were written as popular stories. The concubines of the Hebrew patriarchs also came from this class, but no where was the courtesan more highly prized than in ancient Greece. The hetairai were educated and served an important social function because proper women were restricted to their homes and had no place in public life.[49] Stories of the hetairai abound, and some of their names are still known today. There was Thargelia, a 6th century B.C. Ionian, Aspasia of Athens, a lover of Pericles, and Thaïs of Athens, who became the mistress of Alexander the Great and later the wife of Ptolemy, king of

Egypt.[50]The stereotype of the good-hearted prostitute, now a part of our mythology, began with the stories about Greek courtesans.[51] Courtesans also did well in Rome, but they never had the status and devotion they knew in Greece.[52] The courtesans' role in Islamic countries was similar to that in Greece. They were usually entertainers, and frequently of foreign birth. Men made contact with them through procuresses, and hired them to provide diversions as well as sexual services. The love poetry of the Islamic Middle East, which later strongly influenced medieval European poetry, was written to courtesans.[53] The courtesans of India fostered the arts and education, and were even hired to tutor the daughters of the wealthy. The devadises were courtesans devoted to temples, a role that existed into the 17th century.[54] In China, courtesans were part of the elegant life.

They were extremely accomplished in the arts and served the same social function as the Greek hetairai. They worked in tea houses in a district known as the "green bower" from the color of the lacquer work on the houses.[55]In Japan, courtesans were known as geishas, and they populated "the floating world."[56] The best known courtesan of the early middle-ages was Empress Theodora (c. 497-548). Emperor Justinian changed the laws forbidding marriage to prostitutes by the upper-class shortly before he married her. Once Empress, Theodora helped change laws that denied property rights to women and built refuges for prostitutes who wanted to leave the profession.[57] Courtesans do not appear in the literature or histories of the later

middle-ages until the beginning of the Renaissance. Wealthy men had mistresses and concubines, but the courtesan did not come to prominence again until around 1450. During the rediscovery of the Classics, stories about the hetairai surfaced, and there was a market for courtesans once again, particularly in Italy. A courtesan of Venice, Veronica Franco, built a refuge for prostitutes in 1577. It was unique in its time, as it allowed the women to live there with their children and go outside to work at legitimate jobs.[58] Courtesans were the privileged class of prostitutes. Their lives were comfortable and their work well paid. Yet, even the hetairai of ancient Greece strove to achieve respectability through marriage.[59] As prostitutes, they were still stigmatized, and recognized as women of lower status. Like all prostitutes, they catered to men's sexual needs, and were considered inferior as a result.

Endnotes [1]

Tannahill, Sex in History, 78. "Profession" implies specialization on a full time basis.

[2]

This may not be technically true since cuneiform writing is now being accurately translated. Prostitution is mentioned in the law codes from the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2050 B.C.). Bullough, 16. [3]

Id., 1-2.

[4]

This is the position taken by Lars Ericsson as discussed in Schwarzenbach, Contractarians and Feminists Debate Prostitution, 28 Rev. of Leg. & Soc. Change 103, 105 (1991). [5]

[6]

[7]

Bullough, 3-4, and Tong, Women, Sex and the Law, 49-50. Bullough, 5-8. Id., 2-3.

[8]

[9]

[10]

Tong, 51. Tannahill, Sex in History 79 (1982) Bullough, 20, 22, 27, 36, 49.

[11]

The qadishtu of ancient Babylon, for example, engaged in sexual rituals associated with the goddess Inanna (Ishtar). Id., 19. [12]

Anderson, A History of Their Own, vol. I, 45 (1988).

[13]

Id., 20.

[14]

The story of Tamar and Judah in the Old Testament gives a graphic account of this practice. [15]

Bullough, 36. The word " pornography" means the writing of or about whores.

[16]

Id., 51.

[17]

I d., 54.

[`18]

Tannahill, 81.

[19]

Bullough, 73.

[20]

Id., 74.

[21]

Id., 89-94.

[22]

Tannahill, 189-191.

[23]

Bullough, 107.

[24]

Tannahill, 279.

[25]

Bullough, 111.

[26]

Id., 115.

[27]

Anderson, Vol. I, 358.

[28]

Tannahill, 279.

[29]

Bullough, 121-125.

[30]

Anderson, Vol. I, 363.

[31]

Id., 364.

[32]

Bullough, 139-155.

[33]

Anderson, Vol. I, 366.

[34]

Tannahill, 280.

[35]

Bullough, 20-21.

[36]

This refers to a lack of belief in the Hebrew god rather than having anything to do with fidelity. The word may have derived from an ancient type of marriage where the "metronymic" wife remained in the home of her parents and exerted far more independence than the traditional Hebrew wife. Id., 29. [37]

Id., 38. The term may be a clever euphemism rather than a reference to actual musical skill. Or it may be that these women were, in fact, entertainers and musicians as well. [38]

Id., 49-51.

[39]

Bullough, 75.

[40]

Id., 87-89.

[41]

Id., 107 and Tannahill, 191.

[42]

This "unauthorized biography" was written by one of her detractors, so its accuracy is dubious. Id., 111. [43]

Id., 121-123.

[44]

Id., 139-155.

[45]

Anderson, Vol. I, 365.

[46]

Some authors, such as Michel de Montaign (1533-1592), attributed prostitution to women's reduced status in society. Bullough, 155. [47]

Bullough, 20-21.

[48]

Tannahill, 79.

[49]

Id., 35-39.

[50]

Tannahill, 101.

[51]

Anderson, Vol. I, 48.

[52]

Bullough, 52-59.

[53]

Tannahill, 231-244.

[54]

Bullough, 86.

[55]

Tannahill, 189-191.

[56]

Id., 323.

[57]

Anderson, Vol. I, 47-48.

[58]

Anderson, Vol. I, 366.

[59]

Tong, Women, Sex and the Law, 54 (1984).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Anderson & J. Zinsser, A History of Their Own vol. I (1988) B. Anderson & J. Zinsser, A History of Their Own vol. II (1988) Vern and Bonnie Bullough, Women and Prostitution: A Social History (1987) Cooper, Prostitution: A Feminist Analysis, 11 Women's Rights L. Rep. 98 (1989) Erbe, Prostitutes: Victims of Men's Exploitation and Abuse, 2 Law & Inequality 609 (1984) Schwarzenbach, Contractarians and Feminists Debate Prostitution, 28 Rev. of Leg. & Soc. Change 103 (1991) Sion, Prostitution and the Law (1977) Tannahill, Sex in History (1982) Tong, Women, Sex and the Law (1984)

Prostitution An Illustrated History and Timeline By Tom Head, About.com Guide

See More About

 

prostitution sex workers Contrary to the old cliché, prostitution is almost certainly not the world's oldest profession--that would be hunting and gathering, perhaps followed by subsistence farming--but it has been found in nearly every civilization on Earth stretching back throughout all recorded human history. We can say with some confidence that wherever there have been money, goods, or services to be bartered, somebody has bartered them for sex. 18th Century BCE: Code of Hammurabi Refers to Prostitution

Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Code of Hammurabi includes provisions to protect the inheritance rights of prostitutes, the only category of women (except for widows) who had no male providers:

If a "devoted woman" or a prostitute to whom her father has given a dowry and a deed therefor ... then her father die, then her brothers shall hold her field and garden, and give her corn, oil, and milk according to her portion ... If a "sister of a god," or a prostitute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases ... then she may leave her property to whomsoever she pleases.

To the extent that we have records of the ancient world, prostitution appears to have been more or less ubiquitous. 6th Century BCE: Solon Establishes State-Funded Brothels

Public domain. Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center.

Greek literature refers to three classes of prostitutes: pornai, or slave prostitutes; freeborn street prostitutes; and hetaera, educated prostitute-entertainers who enjoyed a level of social influence that was denied to nearly all non-prostitute women. Pornai and street prostitutes, appealing to a male clientele, could be either female or male. Hetaera were always female. According to tradition, Solon established government-supported brothels in high-traffic urban areas of Greece--brothels staffed with inexpensive pornai that all men, regardless of income level, could afford to hire. Prostitution would remain legal throughout the Greek and Roman periods, though later, Christian Roman emperors strongly discouraged it. AD 590 (ca.): Reccared Bans Prostitution

Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The newly-converted Reccared I, Visigoth King of Spain, banned prostitution as part of an effort to bring his country into alignment with Christian ideology. There was no punishment for men who hired or exploited prostitutes, but women found guilty of selling sexual favors were whipped 300 times and exiled, which in many cases would have been tantamount to a death sentence. 1161: King Henry II Regulates But Does Not Ban Prostitution

Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

By the medieval era, prostitution was accepted as a fact of life in major cities. King Henry II discouraged but permitted it, though he mandated that prostitutes must be single and ordered weekly inspections of London's infamous brothels to ensure that other laws were not being broken. 1358: Italy Embraces Prostitution

Public domain. Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center.

The Great Council of Venice declared prostitution to be "absolutely indispensable to the world" in 1358, and governmentfunded brothels were established in major Italian cities throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. 1586: Pope Sixtus V Mandates Death Penalty for Prostitution

Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Penalties for prostitution--ranging from maiming to execution--were technically in place in many European states, but generally went unenforced. The newly-elected Pope Sixtus V grew frustrated and decided on a more direct approach, ordering that all women who participate in prostitution should be put to death. There is no evidence that his order was actually carried out on any large scale by Catholic nations of the period.

Although Sixtus reigned for only five years, this was not his only claim to fame. He is also noted as the first Pope to declare that abortion is homicide regardless of the stage of pregnancy; before he became Pope, the church taught that fetuses did not become human persons until quickening (about 20 weeks). 1802: France Establishes Bureau of Morals

Public domain. Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center.

Following the French Revolution, the government replaced the traditional bans on prostitution with a new Bureau of Morals (Bureau des Moeurs)--first in Paris, and then throughout the country. The new agency was essentially a police force responsible for monitoring houses of prostitution in order to ensure that they complied with the law, and did not become centers of criminal activity (as has historically been the tendency with respect to brothels). The agency operated continuously for over a century before it was abolished. 1932: Forced Prostitution in Japan

Photo: Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"The women cried out," Japanese WWII veteran Yasuji Kaneko would later recall, "but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance." During World War II, the Japanese government abducted between 80,000 and 300,000 women and girls from Japaneseoccupied territories and forced them to serve in "comfort battalions," militarized brothels that were created to serve Japanese soldiers. To this day, the Japanese government has denied responsibility and refused to issue an official apology or pay restitution. 1956: India Almost Bans Sex Trafficking

Photo: © 2008 John Hurd. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Although the Immoral Traffic Suppression Act (SITA) theoretically banned commercialized sex trade in 1956, Indian antiprostitution laws are generally enforced, and have traditionally been enforced, as public order statutes. As long as prostitution is restricted to certain areas, it is generally tolerated.

Subsequently, India is home today to Asia's largest red-light district--Mumbai's infamous Kamathipura, which originated as a massive brothel for British occupiers and shifted to a local clientele following Indian independence. 1971: Nevada Permits Brothels

Photo: © 2006 Joseph Conrad. Licensed under Creative Commons (ShareAlike 2.0).

Nevada is not the most liberal region of the United States--that would be Berkeley, California, which regularly rejects legalization of prostitution by an overwhelming margin--but it is among the most libertarian. State politicians have consistently held the position that they personally oppose legalized prostitution, but do not believe that it should be banned at the state level. Subsequently, some counties ban brothels and some allow them to operate legally. 1999: Sweden Takes a Feminist Approach

Photo: © 2006 jimg944 (Flickr user). Licensed under Creative Commons.

Although anti-prostitution laws have historically focused on the arrest and punishment of prostitutes themselves, the Swedish government attempted a new approach in 1999. Classifying prostitution as a form of violence against women, Sweden offered a general amnesty to prostitutes and initiated new programs designed to help them transition into other lines of work. But the new legislation did not decriminalize prostitution as such--while it became legal under the Swedish model to sell sex, it remained illegal to buy sex or to pander prostitutes. Evidence of the new system's efficacy is inconclusive, but early indications suggest that it may be working. 2007: South Africa Confronts Sex Trafficking

Photo: © 2007 Frames-of-Mind (Flickr user). Licensed under Creative Commons.

A semi-industrialized nation with a growing economy surrounded by poorer nations, South Africa is a natural haven for international sex traffickers eager to export their prey from poorer nations. And to make matters worse, South Africa has a serious domestic prostitution problem of its own--in a nation where an estimated 25 percent of prostitutes are children. But the South African government is cracking down. Criminal Law Amendment Act 32 of 2007 targets human trafficking,

and a team of legal scholars has been commissioned by the government to draft new regulations governing prostitution. South Africa's legislative successes and failures will create templates that can be used in other nations.

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REPORTAGE LIFE Canada

A History Of Prostitution: How Old Is The Sex Trade? by Zac Fanni 20 July 20136 Comments

This year, along with weed, Canada technically legalize prostitution, but how long has the sex trade really been in operation for?

Wherever we find evidence of human culture, we find evidence of prostitution. When the earliest known human societies emerged in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, the sex trade evolved alongside temples, customs, markets and laws. Beginning in the third millennium B.C, the Sumerians, the first major

inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, worshiped the goddess Ishtar, a deity that would remain a constant throughout Mesopotamia’s Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, symbolized by the planet Venus, and was born anew as a maiden every morning only to become a ‘whore’ every evening – the etymology of the word lying in the IndoEuropean root meaning ‘desire.’ Ironically, Mesopotamian religious practices gave birth to the prostitution trade, as women in Ishtar’s service would help men who offered money to her temples with the ‘sacred’ powers of their bodies. Achieving a priority of communication with the goddess from their fertility, only women enjoyed this religious position. Thus Ishtar temples became knowledge centers concerning birth, birth control, and sexuality. Priestesses became the nurses and sacred sex therapists of these early societies. Men of all rank could hire these women and, in turn, make an offering to the goddess from whose temple the prostitute came. The king would also take part in certain sacred sex rituals with the high priestesses in conjunction with grain harvests: the fertility of the earth was secured through a ritual that celebrated the fertility of the womb. The king, regent of the earth, and priestess, regent of the goddess, coupled in this highly symbolic manner that celebrates the sexual process that brought both grain and people into being. Thus Ishtar became known as the protector of all prostitutes. Prostitution, or at least the religious prostitution involved in these sacred sex rituals, existed without taboo or prohibition, as evidenced in some of our species’ earliest literary works. In one such work, The Epic of Gilgamesh, we are introduced to a nameless Harimtu woman – a term used by famed lawgiver Hammurabi which denoted lower-class prostitutes – who lavishes Gilgamesh’s rival Enkidu with many variations of love, from the maternal and mystical to the sexual and orgiastic. The prostitute emerges not just as a purveyor of sex but as a force of civilization: the harlot literally educates the savage in love and care of the body. This is certainly antithetical to the stigma prostitution harbors today, where the trade itself is seen as sexually primitive, an unfortunate remnant of a less civilized and more phallocentric past. The goddess of love was also seen as being connected to the prostitutes – including males – that operated beyond the temples, often under the supervision of a madam. Theologically, all were seen as being in service to the goddess of love, but in Babylonian law there remained legal distinctions between the priestesses and the roadside/inn prostitutes. More… 5 Sex Tips For Internet Porn Addicts Confessions Of A Prostitute #1: Why I Do It Prostitution also arises in the accounts of Herodotus, who recounted his observation of this originally Sumerian religious sexual practice among the Babylonians thousands of years later in the 5th century B.C. He noted that most young women lost their virginity in the temples of Ishtar to unknown men. Similarly, he tells of Syrian women who offered their bodies for money so that they would be able to take their earnings to their own love goddess, Astarte.

Interestingly, prostitution seems to have been an imported practice in Ancient Egypt, and was practiced apart from their patriarchal religion. The trade persisted in the region through the Hellenic and Roman periods. So how did the sex trade transition from the scared procession of fertility cults to the most sordid of commercial transactions? In the West at least, this history will involve a traversal through a new period of religious zealousness. The overall distinction here is between the early Semitic nomads, whose economy was more cattle-oriented, and who gave primacy to a single male god, and the pantheistic agricultural societies that worshiped the female fertility that they linked to the fertility of the field. The first account of prostitution in the Bible is found in Genesis, where Judah – one of Jacob’s twelve sons, descended from Abraham – paid the bride price, in accordance with Israelite custom, for Tamar and gave her to his eldest son. Long story short, she eventually went to the second son, who refused to copulate with her. Through no fault of her own, Tamar was sent back to her relatives in shame as a poor investment, as she produced no children. Determined to prove that the fault lay with Judah’s sons, she approached his tents disguised and exchanged sex with Judah for a goat. Tamar became pregnant, and avoided harsh punishment for being a pregnant widow that shamed Judah and his sons by revealing keepsakes given to the prostitute employed by Judah. Through prostitution, Tamar proved that it was her husbands who failed in conception. These narratives demonstrate that a bride’s ability to produce offspring, especially of the male variety, was integral to her social value. Rape was thus seen as a violation of property, not of person. The sale of wives and daughters was commonplace, as was informal sex, in Canaan. Since tribal honor was in some measure tied to the fidelity and fertility of the women, only foreign prostitutes were tolerated. Thus the Semitic prostitute had to practice from sufficient distance from her male relatives with clients that were unknown to her brothers and fathers. The proliferation of foreign gods, temples and priestesses also led to a rise in the sex trade on the Canaanite periphery. Prostitution began to become more pejorative, a sign of immorality, corruption, and foreign deities. One of the Semitic peoples’ most impervious enemies was a lecherous woman: the foreign Queen Jezebel, married to King Ahab, favored the foreign gods Baal and Ashera, and was subsequently depicted as purveying orgiastic cults and being both sexually and commercially covetous. According to the story, she spawned a religious war that ended with her defeat at Elijah’s hands. Prostitution became part of the rhetoric of the religious war between the adherents of Yahweh and those of Ashera and Baal. Prostitutes were accorded more power, Succubus-like in their ability to lure young men astray. Semitic prophets utilized this image of the prostitute in their thunderous proclamations and condemnations.

The women of Ancient Greece were also similarly ensnared in the domestic sphere: even during the period of Athenian democracy, only adult males were considered full citizens. Sexual schools rose in the Greek city states, where girls would be purchased from slave markets and trained to provide revenue by selling sex. Many young slaves prostituted themselves to earn money, which meant that, being women or slaves, prostitutes consisted of those excluded from Athens’ Popular Assembly. The famed homosexuality of Ancient Greece was not without its own strictures: while it was acceptable to enjoy the sexual company of younger males – often through the insertion of the penis through clenched thighs – it was always feminizing, and thus degrading, to be placed in the position of the woman, in the position where one was penetrated and not penetrating. Thus it was much more taboo for men to ask for money in return for sex. As in Sumerian and Babylonian societies, there existed a hierarchy of prostitutes. The elitehetaerae – a term always denoting female prostitute entertainers – made substantially more money, and had to be freeborn; this meant that slave prostitutes were motivated to earn enough money so that they could purchase their freedom and thereby increase their income. However, the expenses of this upper class were also greater: they offered symbolic gifts to the gods and had to maintain beautiful bodies and homes. Besides reading, maintaining physical beauty consumed much of their time. The hetaerae also enjoyed a social influence that far exceeded that of the nonprostitute women: some became famous for their clientele, others for their beauty, and they and their interactions were often recorded in some manner. The pornai, on the other hand, could be either male or female and were accessible to all classes of men. The Roman Republic shared many commonalities with the Hellenes, and prostitution was among them. During the Empire, however, prostitutes were increasingly comprised of the overwhelming slave class. Roman prostitution was also highly categorized, yet legal and licensed. While being a prostitute

could indicate your membership in the lowest social, economic and political rank, this same connotation of status did not apply to your patron: those of a higher social status could purchase the service without incurring major consequences. However, men of such status would usually have the economic means to engage the more professional service of a learned courtesan who themselves could become independently wealthy. As we will see in Japan, these sex workers were skilled in the arts and could become coveted party guests. Brothel owners could include those were only renting rooms to prostitutes or those who oversaw the women and their business more strictly. Actors, dancers, and other members of the lower entertainment class were also seen as people from whom sex could be purchased. As with many earlier periods of our history, the moral valence of prostitution was not nearly as strong as it is today. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs called buildings where prostitution was permitted by political and religious authority cihuacalli, meaning ‘house of women.’ Centered around the goddess of ‘filth,’ these brothels were closed compounds. As seen throughout most of our history, prostitution is ‘ghettoized,’ relegated to specific spaces and increasingly treated as a (sometimes necessary) vice. Despite Islam’s strict forbidding of prostitution, sexual slavery persisted and, some would say, persists today. Slaves served as concubines in the harems of the East, while fixed-term marriages – where the length of marriage was outlined at its inception – allowed for a persistence of the sex trade following the proliferation of Islam. During the Ottoman Empire, the famed Turkish baths existed as places where masseurs (often young men) could work as sex workers. We can again see the trend of prostitution being subsumed under another trade to keep it within a contained urban and social space.

Prostitutes also enjoyed a particular status within Hindu religious practice. Devadasis were girls who were symbolically married, and thus pledged, to a deity; their responsibilities included the care and maintenance of the temple. Many also exercised religious prostitution, and this practice proliferated as the arrival of West Asian invaders precipitated the decline of the temple status and the turn towards prostitution as a means of income, as the temples lost their patron kings. This system of religious dedication was outlawed in India in 1988. In Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868), oiran were courtesans who were also entertainers. Delegated to the city’s outskirts, brothels became quarters that offered a variation of entertainment. Like the Greek hetaerae, these women were elite prostitutes who could achieve significant social status. Artistic skill, along with beauty and education, determined a courtesan’s rank, and only the most highly ranked entertainers were deemed suitable for the daimyo, the military leader of Japan. The oiran gave way to the geisha, who was much

more accessible and did not sell sex, only entertainment in the form of dance, poetry and music. It was, and is, a grave and offensive mistake to attempt to purchase sex from a geisha. With the rise of Catholic Europe, all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage were regarded as sinful. However, prostitution persisted in urban environments and was seen as a lesser evil that prevented other, more deviant, sexual behaviors. The composition of the prostitute class also moved away from slaves and was revived as a business that was relegated to specific areas, whether it be outside the town perimeter, confined to a particular street, or kept within a designated building. Specific districts were allocated for the trade, and some brothels even came to be owned, and of course used, by religious authorities. Eventually prostitution became a prosecutable offense. As European colonization continuously expanded, legislation increasingly enacted a tighter control of the sex trade. Britain’s Contagious Diseases Act is one such example of the attempt to curb the spread of venereal disease and represented a trend of increasing political regulation over the practice. For example, physical examinations could be compulsory and prostitutes forced to undergo them. The sex trade persisted, and continues to persist, in the face of moral (and sometimes legal) condemnation. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (the major force of prohibition) contributed to the outlawing of prostitution in almost all of the United States in the early 20thcentury. Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom would not overtly outlaw prostitution, but would enact legislature that severely restricts the trade and the activities that surround it. Today the sex trade continues as it always has, with many governments officially maintaining its illegality, while some restrict certain sex trade-related activities and others keep it legal and regulated. In a world where we cannot, for the most part, attribute to prostitution a religious significance, it seems that the answer in dealing with such a trade is to allow it to persist – that is, to allow both men and women to continue to choose their own profession, while also ensuring that such individuals have the full support of the law in earning their living. Awareness (both social and legal) corresponds to safety for those who choose to enter the sex trade. So let’s be aware…that we can pay people to love us!

Debate on Prostitution in Canada & “A Historical Quickie” 4 Pure Sophistry November 25, 2011Articles, Prostitution in Canada

Zachary Fanni and Robert Rzepka discuss, debate and explore the issues surrounding prostitution within Canada. Many things have changed since the first fish-net wearing wenches went down on sailors in Nova Scotia, but should people be able to legally have sex for money in Canada? Are the laws surrounding Prostitution in Canada at odds with our freedoms? Does the government have the right to tell you what to do with your body? Is it normal to „tip‟ a hooker after getting a rusty charlie? Click below and enjoy the answers to these questions! A Historical Quickie: How Old is “The World’s Oldest Profession”?

Wherever we find evidence of human culture, we find evidence of prostitution. When the earliest known human societies emerged in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, the sex trade evolved alongside temples, customs, markets and laws. Beginning in the third millennium B.C, the Sumerians, the first major inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, worshiped the goddess Ishtar, a deity that would remain a constant throughout Mesopotamia‟s Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, symbolized by the planet Venus, and was born anew as a maiden every morning only to become a „whore‟ every evening – the etymology of the word lying in the Indo-European root meaning „desire.‟ Ironically, Mesopotamian religious practices gave birth to the prostitution trade, as women in Ishtar‟s service would help men who offered money to her temples with the „sacred‟ powers of their bodies. Achieving a priority of communication with the goddess from their fertility, only women enjoyed this religious position. Thus Ishtar temples became knowledge centers concerning birth, birth control, and sexuality. Priestesses became the nurses and sacred sex therapists of these early societies. Men of all rank could hire these women and, in turn, make an offering to the goddess from whose temple the prostitute came. The king would also take part in certain sacred sex rituals with the high priestesses in conjunction with grain harvests: the fertility of the earth was secured through a ritual that celebrated the fertility of the womb. The king, regent of the earth, and priestess, regent of the goddess, coupled in this highly symbolic manner that celebrates the sexual process that brought both grain and people into being. Thus Ishtar became known as the protector of all prostitutes. Prostitution, or at least the religious prostitution involved in these sacred sex rituals, existed without taboo or prohibition, as evidenced in some of our species‟ earliest literary works. In one such work, The Epic of Gilgamesh, we are introduced to a nameless Harimtu woman – a term used by famed lawgiver Hammurabi which denoted lower-class prostitutes – who lavishes Gilgamesh‟s rival Enkidu with many variations of love, from the maternal and mystical to the sexual and orgiastic. The prostitute emerges not just as a purveyor of sex but as a force of civilization: the harlot literally educates the savage in love and care of the body. This is certainly antithetical to the stigma prostitution harbors today, where the trade itself is seen as sexually primitive, an unfortunate remnant of a less civilized and more phallocentric past. The goddess of love was also seen as being connected to the prostitutes – including males – that operated beyond the temples, often under the supervision of a madam. Theologically, all were seen as being in service to the goddess of love, but in Babylonian law there remained legal distinctions between the priestesses and the roadside/inn prostitutes.

Prostitution also arises in the accounts of Herodotus, who recounted his observation of this originally Sumerian religious sexual practice among the Babylonians thousands of years later in the 5 th century B.C. He noted that most young women lost their virginity in the temples of Ishtar to unknown men. Similarly, he tells of Syrian women who offered their bodies for money so that they would be able to take their earnings to their own love goddess, Astarte. Interestingly, prostitution seems to have been an imported practice in Ancient Egypt, and was practiced apart from their patriarchal religion. The trade persisted in the region through the Hellenic and Roman periods. So how did the sex trade transition from the scared procession of fertility cults to the most sordid of commercial transactions? In the West at least, this history will involve a traversal through a new period of religious zealousness. The overall distinction here is between the early Semitic nomads, whose economy was more cattleoriented, and who gave primacy to a single male god, and the pantheistic agricultural societies that worshiped the female fertility that they linked to the fertility of the field. The first account of prostitution in the Bible is found in Genesis, where Judah – one of Jacob‟s twelve sons, descended from Abraham – paid the bride price, in accordance with Israelite custom, for Tamar and gave her to his eldest son. Long story short, she eventually went to the second son, who refused to copulate with her. Through no fault of her own, Tamar was sent back to her relatives in shame as a poor investment, as she produced no children. Determined to prove that the fault lay with Judah‟s sons, she approached his tents disguised and exchanged sex with Judah for a goat. Tamar became pregnant, and avoided harsh punishment for being a pregnant widow that shamed Judah and his sons by revealing keepsakes given to the prostitute employed by Judah. Through prostitution, Tamar proved that it was her husbands who failed in conception. These narratives demonstrate that a bride‟s ability to produce offspring, especially of the male variety, was integral to her social value. Rape was thus seen as a violation of property, not of person. The sale of wives and daughters was commonplace, as was informal sex, in Canaan. Since tribal honor was in some measure tied to the fidelity and fertility of the women, only foreign prostitutes were tolerated. Thus the Semitic prostitute had to practice from sufficient distance from her male relatives with clients that were unknown to her brothers and fathers. The proliferation of foreign gods, temples and priestesses also led to a rise in the sex trade on the Canaanite periphery. Prostitution began to become more pejorative, a sign of immorality, corruption, and foreign deities. One of the Semitic peoples‟ most impervious enemies was a lecherous woman: the foreign Queen Jezebel, married to King Ahab, favored the foreign gods Baal and Ashera, and was subsequently depicted as purveying orgiastic cults and being both sexually and commercially covetous. According to the story, she spawned a religious war that ended with her defeat at Elijah‟s hands. Prostitution became part of the rhetoric of the religious war between the adherents of Yahweh and those of Ashera and Baal. Prostitutes were accorded more power, Succubus-like in their ability to lure young men astray. Semitic prophets utilized this image of the prostitute in their thunderous proclamations and condemnations. The women of Ancient Greece were also similarly ensnared in the domestic sphere: even during the period of Athenian democracy, only adult males were considered full citizens. Sexual schools rose in the Greek city states, where girls would be purchased from slave markets and trained to provide revenue by selling sex. Many young slaves prostituted themselves to earn money, which meant that, being women or slaves, prostitutes consisted of those excluded from Athens‟ Popular Assembly.

The famed homosexuality of Ancient Greece was not without its own strictures: while it was acceptable to enjoy the sexual company of younger males – often through the insertion of the penis through clenched thighs – it was always feminizing, and thus degrading, to be placed in the position of the woman, in the position where one was penetrated and not penetrating. Thus it was much more taboo for men to ask for money in return for sex. As in Sumerian and Babylonian societies, there existed a hierarchy of prostitutes. The elite hetaerae – a term always denoting female prostitute entertainers – made substantially more money, and had to be freeborn; this meant that slave prostitutes were motivated to earn enough money so that they could purchase their freedom and thereby increase their income. However, the expenses of this upper class were also greater: they offered symbolic gifts to the gods and had to maintain beautiful bodies and homes. Besides reading, maintaining physical beauty consumed much of their time. The hetaerae also enjoyed a social influence that far exceeded that of the non-prostitute women: some became famous for their clientele, others for their beauty, and they and their interactions were often recorded in some manner. The pornai, on the other hand, could be either male or female and were accessible to all classes of men. The Roman Republic shared many commonalities with the Hellenes, and prostitution was among them. During the Empire, however, prostitutes were increasingly comprised of the overwhelming slave class. Roman prostitution was also highly categorized, yet legal and licensed. While being a prostitute could indicate your membership in the lowest social, economic and political rank, this same connotation of status did not apply to your patron: those of a higher social status could purchase the service without incurring major consequences. However, men of such status would usually have the economic means to engage the more professional service of a learned courtesan who themselves could become independently wealthy. As we will see in Japan, these sex workers were skilled in the arts and could become coveted party guests. Brothel owners could include those were only renting rooms to prostitutes or those who oversaw the women and their business more strictly. Actors, dancers, and other members of the lower entertainment class were also seen as people from whom sex could be purchased. As with many earlier periods of our history, the moral valence of prostitution was not nearly as strong as it is today. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs called buildings where prostitution was permitted by political and religious authoritycihuacalli, meaning „house of women.‟ Centered around the goddess of „filth,‟ these brothels were closed compounds. As seen throughout most of our history, prostitution is „ghettoized,‟ relegated to specific spaces and increasingly treated as a (sometimes necessary) vice. Despite Islam‟s strict forbidding of prostitution, sexual slavery persisted and, some would say, persists today. Slaves served as concubines in the harems of the East, while fixed-term marriages – where the length of marriage was outlined at its inception – allowed for a persistence of the sex trade following the proliferation of Islam. During the Ottoman Empire, the famed Turkish baths existed as places where masseurs (often young men) could work as sex workers. We can again see the trend of prostitution being subsumed under another trade to keep it within a contained urban and social space. Prostitutes also enjoyed a particular status within Hindu religious practice. Devadasis were girls who were symbolically married, and thus pledged, to a deity; their responsibilities included the care and maintenance of the temple. Many also exercised religious prostitution, and this practice proliferated as the arrival of West Asian invaders precipitated the decline of the temple status and the turn towards prostitution as a means of income, as the temples lost their patron kings. This system of religious dedication was outlawed in India in 1988. In Japan‟s Edo period (1600-1868), oiran were courtesans who were also entertainers. Delegated to the city‟s outskirts, brothels became quarters that offered a variation of entertainment. Like the Greek hetaerae, these women were elite prostitutes who could achieve significant social status. Artistic skill, along with beauty and

education, determined a courtesan‟s rank, and only the most highly ranked entertainers were deemed suitable for the daimyo, the military leader of Japan. The oiran gave way to the geisha, who was much more accessible and did not sell sex, only entertainment in the form of dance, poetry and music. It was, and is, a grave and offensive mistake to attempt to purchase sex from a geisha. With the rise of Catholic Europe, all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage were regarded as sinful. However, prostitution persisted in urban environments and was seen as a lesser evil that prevented other, more deviant, sexual behaviors. The composition of the prostitute class also moved away from slaves and was revived as a business that was relegated to specific areas, whether it be outside the town perimeter, confined to a particular street, or kept within a designated building. Specific districts were allocated for the trade, and some brothels even came to be owned, and of course used, by religious authorities. Eventually prostitution became a prosecutable offense. As European colonization continuously expanded, legislation increasingly enacted a tighter control of the sex trade. Britain‟s Contagious Diseases Act is one such example of the attempt to curb the spread of venereal disease and represented a trend of increasing political regulation over the practice. For example, physical examinations could be compulsory and prostitutes forced to undergo them. The sex trade persisted, and continues to persist, in the face of moral (and sometimes legal) condemnation. The Women‟s Christian Temperance Union (the major force of prohibition) contributed to the outlawing of prostitution in almost all of the United States in the early 20 th century. Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom would not overtly outlaw prostitution, but would enact legislature that severely restricts the trade and the activities that surround it. Today the sex trade continues as it always has, with many governments officially maintaining its illegality, while some restrict certain sex trade-related activities and others keep it legal and regulated. In a world where we cannot, for the most part, attribute to prostitution a religious significance, it seems that the answer in dealing with such a trade is to allow it to persist – that is, to allow both men and women to continue to choose their own profession, while also ensuring that such individuals have the full support of the law in earning their living. Awareness (both social and legal) corresponds to safety for those who choose to enter the sex trade. So let‟s be aware…that we can pay people to love us! This article is part of a series on prostitution inspired by the recent legal case in Canada. You can hear a debate on Canada‟s current legal case on the audio link immediately above this article .