Prostitution may not deserve its reputation as the world’s oldest profession, but it has been around for millennia, appearing in virtually every society. In this revised edition of a book originally published in 1978 (under a slightly different title), Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough document the ubiquity and diversity of prostitution, tracing the practice from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America. In some ancient cultures—in both Greece and Babylon, for instance—certain types of prostitution were not only accepted, but were practiced within temple walls. Yet most recorded societies, including the Egyptian,’Roman, Hebrew, and Oriental, distrusted the secular prostitute and treated her as an outcast, a woman “lower than the slave.” In most tribal societies a woman who prostituted herself deeply offended male relatives, who could punish her however they saw fit. Even in Islam, an exceptionally permissive religion on sexual matters, the prostitute is judged “a disgrace to her family.”
In preindustrial societies, prostitution prevailed primarily in the cities, showing up far less frequently in rural areas. Economic forces partly account for this pattern. While the spinster aunt of a village family could often earn her keep by helping with the cooking, child care, and farm chores, an unmarried woman usually faced bleak prospects in the money economy of the city. It is no accident that meretrix, the Latin term for a prostitute, means “she who earns.”
Pecuniary pressures pushing women toward prostitution grew even stronger after the Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, moral sanctions against prostitution could not survive more than a generation after religious faith faded among the West’s cultural elite. In a global summary, the Bulloughs conclude: “the key factor in the past in deciding the role that the prostitutes and prostitution would play in society was religious teaching.” While the eminent Victorians debated the available cultural substitutes for religion, prostitution—including a shocking incidence of child prostitution—flourished.
It is characteristic of their feminist bias that the Bulloughs lament the emergence of “a double standard” of sexual conduct in every major culture, attributing this sex-biased norm to social failures, not to human nature. In the sexual utopia of their fantasy, the double standard will completely disappear, allowing “the decriminalization of sexual activity between consenting adults whether or not money changes hands.” Contemporary America has not reached that Edenic state just yet, but the Bulloughs rejoice that since the sexual revolution, prostitution has declined in the United States. Because men no longer must pay for casual sex, demand for prostitutes has slackened. Credit for this remarkable development goes to the feminists who “created a climate of openness about female sexuality.”
Feminists likewise receive plaudits in these pages for helping the employed mother manage childbearing and child care so as to “offer the least interference to her career.” In the crazy world of post-feminism, extramarital sex may be had for the asking, while female care for children must be paid for. Yet nothing can dim the authors’ enthusiasm for the feminist revolution, not even research showing that “the primary predisposing factor to prostitution [is] a history of severe maternal deprivation.” I do not think it is too much to say that while modern mothers pursue their glamorous careers, they put their daughters at risk.
[Women and Prostitution: A Social History, by Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough (Buffalo: Prometheus Books) 374 pp., $17.95]
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