WEBVTT NOTE 1. The Prostitute 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 PART ONE SEXUAL 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:07.000 CHAPTER ONE THE PROSTITUTE 3 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:18.000 Subject to ceaseless harassment by blue laws, church groups, chambers of commerce, etc., prostitutes nevertheless continue to trade with the public. 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:27.000 The value of their service is proven by the fact that people continue to seek them out, despite legal and civic opposition. 5 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.480 A prostitute may be defined as one who engages in the voluntary trade of sexual services 6 00:00:33.480 --> 00:00:35.160 for a fee. 7 00:00:35.160 --> 00:00:40.800 The essential part of the definition, however, is voluntary trade. 8 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:46.960 A magazine cover by Norman Rockwell some time ago illustrated the essence of prostitution, 9 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:49.040 if not the specifics. 10 00:00:49.040 --> 00:00:55.400 It portrayed a milkman and a pie man standing near their trucks, each busily eating a pie 11 00:00:55.400 --> 00:01:02.380 and Drinking Milk, both obviously pleased with their voluntary trade. 12 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:08.080 Those lacking sufficient imagination will see no connection between the prostitute entertaining 13 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:12.520 her customer and the aforementioned milk and pie episode. 14 00:01:12.520 --> 00:01:20.140 But, in both cases, two people have come together on a voluntary basis in an attempt to mutually 15 00:01:20.140 --> 00:01:22.340 gain satisfaction. 16 00:01:22.340 --> 00:01:28.620 In neither case is force or fraud applied. Of course the customer of the prostitute may 17 00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:34.940 later decide that the services he received were not worth the money he paid. The prostitute 18 00:01:34.940 --> 00:01:40.340 may feel that the money she was paid did not fully compensate her for the services she 19 00:01:40.340 --> 00:01:47.620 provided. Similar dissatisfactions could also occur in the milk pie trade. The milk could 20 00:01:47.620 --> 00:01:54.780 have been sour or the pie underbaked, but both regrets would be after the fact and would 21 00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:59.540 not alter the description of these trades as voluntary. 22 00:01:59.540 --> 00:02:04.980 If all the participants were not willing, the trades would not have taken place. 23 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:10.900 There are those, women's liberationists among them, who lament the plight of the poor downtrodden 24 00:02:10.900 --> 00:02:16.300 prostitute and who think of her life as demeaning and exploitative. 25 00:02:16.300 --> 00:02:21.240 But the prostitute does not look upon the sale of sex as demeaning. 26 00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:27.340 After considering the good features, short hours, high remuneration, with the drawbacks, 27 00:02:27.340 --> 00:02:34.180 harassment by the police, enforced commissions to her pimp, uninspiring working conditions, 28 00:02:34.180 --> 00:02:40.740 the prostitute obviously prefers her work, otherwise she would not continue it. 29 00:02:40.740 --> 00:02:46.520 There are, of course, many negative aspects experienced by prostitutes which belie the 30 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:48.780 happy hooker image. 31 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:54.580 There are prostitutes who are drug addicts, prostitutes who are beaten by pimps, and prostitutes 32 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:57.960 who are held in brothels against their will. 33 00:02:57.960 --> 00:03:04.560 But these sordid aspects have little to do with the intrinsic career of prostitution. 34 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:10.720 There are nurses and doctors who are kidnapped and forced to perform for fugitives from justice. 35 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:16.680 There are carpenters who are drug addicts, there are bookkeepers who are beaten by muggers. 36 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:22.780 We would hardly conclude that any of these professions or vocations are suspect, demeaning 37 00:03:22.780 --> 00:03:24.880 or exploitative. 38 00:03:24.880 --> 00:03:30.300 The life of the prostitute is as good or as bad as she wishes it to be. 39 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:37.240 She enters it voluntarily, qua prostitute, and is free to leave at any time. 40 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:41.840 Why then the harassment and prohibitions against prostitution? 41 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.360 The momentum does not come from the customer. 42 00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:46.500 He is a willing participant. 43 00:03:46.500 --> 00:03:51.640 If the customer decides that patronization of a prostitute is not to his advantage, he 44 00:03:51.640 --> 00:03:53.320 can stop. 45 00:03:53.320 --> 00:03:59.080 Nor does the move toward prohibition of prostitution come from the prostitutes themselves. 46 00:03:59.080 --> 00:04:04.740 They have volunteered for their tasks and can almost always quit if they change their 47 00:04:04.740 --> 00:04:14.280 The Impetus for the Prohibition of Prostitution is initiated by third parties, not directly 48 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:16.840 involved in the trades. 49 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:23.140 Their reasons vary from group to group, from area to area, and from year to year. 50 00:04:23.140 --> 00:04:28.080 What they have in common is the fact that they are outside parties. 51 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:33.100 They have neither stake nor standing in the matter, and should be ignored. 52 00:04:33.100 --> 00:04:38.820 To allow them to decide this matter is as absurd as allowing an outsider to decide 53 00:04:38.820 --> 00:04:43.100 about the trade between the milkman and the pie man. 54 00:04:43.100 --> 00:04:47.220 Why then are the two cases treated differently? 55 00:04:47.220 --> 00:04:52.740 Imagine a league called the Decent Eaters, organized to espouse the doctrine that eating 56 00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:56.180 pie together with milk is evil. 57 00:04:56.180 --> 00:05:00.760 Even if it could be demonstrated that the league against pie and milk and the league 58 00:05:00.760 --> 00:05:06.800 Ludwig against prostitution had identical intellectual merit, namely, none. 59 00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:10.200 The reaction to the two would still be different. 60 00:05:10.200 --> 00:05:15.320 The attempt to prohibit pie and milk would evoke only laughter, but there would be a 61 00:05:15.320 --> 00:05:20.680 more tolerant attitude toward the attempt to prohibit prostitution. 62 00:05:20.680 --> 00:05:27.280 There is something in operation which staunchly resists an intellectual penetration of the 63 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:29.040 prostitution question. 64 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:32.760 Why has prostitution not been legalized? 65 00:05:32.760 --> 00:05:38.200 Though the arguments against this legalization are without merit, they have never been clearly 66 00:05:38.200 --> 00:05:42.800 assailed by the intellectual community as specious. 67 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:48.720 The difference between sexual trades, such as the ones that take place in prostitution, 68 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:55.360 and other trades, such as the pie-milk trade, seems to be based on, or at least connected 69 00:05:55.360 --> 00:06:16.360 The following well-known joke illustrates this point. 70 00:06:16.360 --> 00:06:21.160 A good-looking man asks an attractive and virtuous woman if she will go to bed with 71 00:06:21.160 --> 00:06:23.680 him for $100,000. 72 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:29.640 She is appalled by the offer. However, after some reflection, she concludes that, as evil 73 00:06:29.640 --> 00:06:36.400 as prostitution is, she could use the proceeds of the offer for charity and good works. 74 00:06:36.400 --> 00:06:43.560 The man seems charming, not at all dangerous or repugnant. She shyly says, yes. The man 75 00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:50.200 then asks, how about for twenty dollars? The woman indignantly replies, how dare you? 76 00:06:50.200 --> 00:06:56.560 What kind of woman do you think I am? As she slaps his face. Well, we've already established 77 00:06:56.560 --> 00:07:03.360 what kind of woman you are. Now we're trying to establish the price, he replies. 78 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:08.960 The degree to which the man's reply strikes a telling blow against the woman is a small 79 00:07:08.960 --> 00:07:15.360 measure of the scorn heaped upon individuals involved in this kind of endeavor. There are 80 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:21.820 There are two approaches which might combat the attitude that paying for sex is degrading. 81 00:07:21.820 --> 00:07:27.800 There is the frontal attack which simply denies that it is wrong to pay for sex. 82 00:07:27.800 --> 00:07:33.280 This however would hardly convince those who think of prostitution as an evil. 83 00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:39.240 The other possibility would be to show that we are always paying for sex, all of us, all 84 00:07:39.240 --> 00:07:44.120 the time, and therefore we should not cavil at the arrangements between a professional 85 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:53.880 In what sense can it be said that we all engage in trade and payments when we engage in sexual 86 00:07:53.880 --> 00:08:00.400 activity? At the very least, we have to offer something to our prospective partners before 87 00:08:00.400 --> 00:08:06.280 they will consent to have sex with us. With explicit prostitution, the offer is in terms 88 00:08:06.280 --> 00:08:07.880 of Cash. 89 00:08:07.880 --> 00:08:11.640 In other cases, the trade is not so obvious. 90 00:08:11.640 --> 00:08:16.400 Many dating patterns clearly conform to the prostitution model. 91 00:08:16.400 --> 00:08:22.820 The male is expected to pay for the movies, dinner, flowers, etc. and the female is expected 92 00:08:22.820 --> 00:08:26.360 to reciprocate with sexual services. 93 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:31.640 The marriages in which the husband provides the financial elements and the wife, the sexual 94 00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:37.560 Social and Housekeeping functions also conforms clearly enough to the model. 95 00:08:37.560 --> 00:08:44.760 In fact, all voluntary human relationships, from love relationships to intellectual relationships, 96 00:08:44.760 --> 00:08:46.360 are trades. 97 00:08:46.360 --> 00:08:52.240 In the case of romantic love and marriage, the trade is in terms of affection, consideration, 98 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:54.500 kindness, etc. 99 00:08:54.500 --> 00:09:00.720 The trade may be a happy one, and the partners may find joy in the giving, but it is still 100 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:08.560 a trade. It is clear that unless affection, kindness, etc. or something is given, it will 101 00:09:08.560 --> 00:09:15.960 not be reciprocated. In the same way, if two non-mercenary poets did not get anything from 102 00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:24.300 each other, their relationship too would terminate. If there are trades, there are also payments. 103 00:09:24.300 --> 00:09:29.880 Where there are payments for relationships which include sexual congress, such as marriage 104 00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:37.520 and in some dating patterns, there is prostitution, according to the definition of that term. 105 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:42.680 Several social commentators have correctly likened marriage to prostitution. 106 00:09:42.680 --> 00:09:49.020 But all relationships where trade takes place, those which include sex as well as those which 107 00:09:49.020 --> 00:09:53.300 do not, are a form of prostitution. 108 00:09:53.300 --> 00:09:59.980 Instead of condemning all such relationships because of their similarity to prostitution, 109 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:05.420 prostitution should be viewed as just one kind of interaction in which all human beings 110 00:10:05.420 --> 00:10:07.300 participate. 111 00:10:07.300 --> 00:10:13.500 Objections should not be raised to any of them, not to marriage, not to friendship, 112 00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:14.900 to Prostitution.