PROSTITUTION, ART AND PHILOSOPHY
On prostitution, art and philosophy
Sir,
As so often happens, BMJ raises a complex social issue
and then runs away from it by offering little analysis of its fundamental
aspects. In offering some reflections upon this topic, I hope to give
firstly some comments about sex in general and prostitution in particular;
second, to give some thoughts about the men who use prostitutes; third, to
look at the various modes of condemning both and a few refutations.
With very few exceptions, sex ordinarily occurs between
two people who know and like each other, who are attractive to each other
and who have at least a modicum of affection for one another. Women and
churchgoers predominantly tend to draw a wider, though incorrect principle
from this observation – that affection is an essential pre-requisite
ingredient, while most men can more often and genuinely take or leave the
affection side. The widespread existence of a thriving soft porn trade and
sex shops, and sex shows, and hardcore pornographic videos, and the
proliferation of massage parlours, lap-dancing clubs, internet porn sites,
etc, all more than amply demonstrate that overt affection between the
participants [or even some prior familiarity] is by no means a requisite
ingredient for sex to be a highly enjoyable [and often harmless?] activity
in itself for many people. Given any further removal of ancient moral
constraints upon the populace at large, it is highly likely that it would
be even more universally popular than it already is.
Prostitution involves sex purely for sex sake, usually
between complete strangers, and any affection in the equation is replaced
by an exchange of money. Like fetching a newspaper from the local shop,
this form of sex can be accurately described as solely a service industry.
It is demand-driven, unregulated, borders on the illegal in many
countries, and is highly lucrative. From a superficial glance, it appears
that the girls are entirely controlled as slaves by an industry [run by
greedy criminal men?] that lures and entraps them into a miserable life of
exploitation. This view also contends that they are largely unwilling
participants [victims] who do not choose or enjoy what they do, who do it
to feed a drug habit or because they are financially desperate in some
way. Or further, being psychologically crippled in some way has got them
hooked up to an addictive but miserable way of life they have little hope
of challenging let alone of escaping. The health risks from both STDs and
violence are notoriously high compared to most other occupations.
The men who use prostitutes fall into various
categories. They can be happy-go-lucky young fools who wish to
experiment and gain sexual experience. They can be sad losers who
have no partner, no prospect of a partner, a ruined marriage, several
ruined marriages, or those with perverted sexual instincts who, though
married, too ashamed to ask their wives to perform the type of sex act
they prefer. Alternatively, they seek excitement outside marriage. Some
engage with prostitution from an early age and become harnessed into a
lifelong addiction to it.
Many great writers, composers and playwrights have
regularly indulged, patronised, and befriended prostitutes, including
Franz Kafka, Guy de Mauppausant, Georges Rouault, Toulouse Lautrec, Dennis
Potter, Picasso, Paul Verlaine. The artistic fascination with prostitutes,
rather like their religious fascination, is hard to fathom precisely, but
tends to exaggerate their power, beauty, social function and intelligence.
Like medieval jesters, and circus clowns, and as social deviants,
prostitutes are held in awe and have a fearsome power and fascination
contingent upon their ability to engage in ‘immoral acts’ and mix
intimately and heedlessly with strangers – types of behaviour that are
completely taboo for ‘decent people’. Artists especially identify with
prostitutes because the inspired, creative mind is so often used and
abused by society and its rich patrons in a similarly merciless,
exploitative and disposable fashion. Many users of prostitutes are simply
lonely or addicted to sex, while others are deranged socially or
psychologically, and have concocted a dangerous or unhappy mixture of
various mistaken apprehensions about their psycho-social identity
connecting sex, violence, sado-masochism, desire to control or be
controlled and deviance.
Society condemns alike both the men who use prostitutes
and the girls who get into it. It condemns the men for being sick perverts
and as vicious exploiters of women. It condemns the girls for being loose,
immoral whores, “sexual perverts” [1], of lacking any
affection, self-respect, or human dignity, of being damaged goods
and of colluding with perverts for profit. These condemnations deserve
greater study.
Regarding the men, how can society honestly condemn the
genuine sexual needs of those who, having passed through the normal social
processes of adolescence and post-adolescence, still wind up with no
partner, or no happy long-term relationship? How else can their sexual
needs be met? Is it not marginally better for society that their sexual
frustrations are catered for by call girls, than by sporadic acts of
sexual predation such as rape? On Darwinian lines, some might feel tempted
to conclude that those who have failed to make children and contribute
their genes to the future of humanity, are fundamentally flawed in some
fashion. This would be hard to prove and runs counter to any more
inclusive or compassionate view of recognising their place alongside the
genetically successful in society as a whole.
The violence inherent in prostitution can be partially
explained by the frustration and anger these men feel about their social
position, their need to use prostitutes, their low feelings of self-worth,
their failure to win a long-term loving relationship [a sense of
social failure?] and the social condemnation they know would befall them
if their habits were outed. They may pity themselves for the social
outcasts and human failures they have become. They may be subject to
recurrent feelings of self-loathing, contamination, alienation and
repugnance. Many prostitutes themselves probably also share these feelings
of self-disgust and alienation, because they live very much enclosed in a
separate cultural group on the margins of normative society. In addition,
they are reviled by, and receive regular abuse from, many members of the
host society.
While sex workers clearly do stand in need of
regular clinical advice and psychological support, it is very hard to see
how prostitution could ever be effectively outlawed – it is here to stay –
and therefore the safer and more pragmatic option would be to fully
legalise it. That would also offer the prospect of offering some
psychological help to those men who are most seriously dependent upon it
for pleasure, social contact [marriage substitute?] and comfort. In
societies that are heading for increased future leisure time, the sex
trade is also likely to increase further.
As Kitzinger says: “laws against brothels inhibit
women from providing mutual support in shared premises.” [1]. The
legalisation of prostitution would in no way endorse the attitudes of some
of the men who use them – but is merely a pragmatic step. Legalisation
also offers the prospect of more stringent regulation and the removal of
much of the vicious controlling and exploiting element currently
undertaken by members of the criminal fraternity. All of this would
greatly benefit and re-dignify the sex workers themselves as providers
in a service industry, rather than being saddled with the social stigma
of being whores by common parlance
Finally, there is a cultural dimension to prostitution
that also needs to be taken into account. As something of an incurable
Hegelian, I find myself just as reluctant to condemn the prostitute, as I
would condemn the man who finds he must resort to them. I am just as
unwilling, in the last analysis, to condemn the itinerant traveller [gypsy]
or the immigrant, the down-and-out or the lonely billionaire. To each
their valid worldview based upon their own experience of it.
I think it was Wittgenstein who once said I merely
described the world as I found it [2]. I likewise refuse to condemn the
ancient medical practitioner, magician or alchemist for examining the
entrails of a dead sheep or casting astrological charts, to determine the
outcome of some pestilence. Divergent cultural perspectives should not be
dismissed so lightly or as hastily as they frequently are by scientists.
Each has their own path to tread and their own unique conceptual
basis on how they frame their lives and the world as they each found it.
This sentiment might be expressed by way of saying that for the mouse,
based upon its perception of the world, it formulates a worldview highly
suitable for mice. The elephant, based upon its own experience, does
likewise and conceives a worldview very suited to all elephants in all
times and places. Both are valid views of the world as they found it,
yet neither are suitable contrariwise, for each other.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my
world.” [3]
“Ways of life and uses of language change, so
meanings change, but not utterly and instantaneously.” [4]
“In 1931 Wittgenstein described his task thus:
Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of easily
accessible wrong turnings.” [5]
“Words, gestures, expressions come alive, as it
were, only within a language game, a culture, a form of life.” [6]
“Imagine a different form or way of life and you
imagine a different language with different concepts, different rules and
a different logic.” [7]
Although Wittgenstein said that language defines our
world [2, 3], this is only partially true, even for us language-obsessed
humans. Language does not define our world, or indeed any world – it is
conceptualisation that lies even behind the language. It is clearly the
conceptualisation of the mouse that defines the mouse’s world, for they
have little we can call a language. Likewise with an elephant. Likewise
with physicians, prostitutes, astrologers and alchemists – all these
diverse and apparently irreconcilable worlds are not defined or
differentiated each by their own language, as Wittgenstein claims, but by
their mode of conceptualisation that underpins their languages and their
worlds.
And thus, in this peculiar way, knowing all this,
knowing that such diverse worlds are all underpinned solely by varying
modes of conceptualisation, makes them all real and vivid and valid each
in their own way, and somehow unites them all within a broader framework.
My, how much that very serene sentiment would have pleased dear old Hegel!
Thus, all views are deserving of far greater respect
and tolerant understanding – through which we might just increase the
chance – ever so slightly – of becoming wiser and richer, more
appreciative, less arrogant and maybe more humble in the face of our own
deep ignorance.
Sources
[1] Some Mother’s Daughters, book review by Jenny
Kitzinger, BMJ 2001: 322: 561 [3 March]
[2] Duffy, Bruce, The World As I Found It, 1987,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, London
[3] Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy – Ludwig
Wittgenstein
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm
[4] In ‘Tractatus’, 5.6; same source as note 3
[5] In ‘Philosophical Investigations’; ibid. note 3
[6] ibid. note 3
[7] ibid. note 3