I was angry once upon a time

We (women) are all Prostitutes


What is wrong with prostitution? One answer can be, “Nothing!” but this is far from being convincing. Maybe a better but temporary answer would be, “Not very much!”
I actually agree with the argument that most of the stigma attached to prostitution is coming from prejudice. Taking money for the use of the body can not make prostitution immoral since in all types of occupations that I can think of people use, if not over-use, some body parts. When we look into history we can see that many jobs were stigmatized and taking money for a service was making the service less genuine and they were even considered as prostitution. Evolution of values in society has taken away the stigma attached to many such professions. This makes one ask whether prostitution is ethically wrong or if it is only from prejudice that leads to stigmatization of it. Once again by comparing prostitution with some other professions, we can say that most of the points that make prostitution bad are already in them, too [Nusbaum]. But I believe what makes prostitution stigmatized is the idea that sex is dirty and degrading. Once we say that this is a prejudice and sex is not dirty or degrading we can conclude that there is not anything wrong specific to prostitution. Without going into further thoughts at this point one can support the decriminalization of prostitution. However, we had better also examine the patriarchal principle underlying it and what this principle does to the prostitutes and other women.
According to Marxist theory all people in the position of laborers are prostitutes due to commonality of being exploited. I will not make such a general statement, instead I claim that all women have been prostitutes through the ages and they continue to be. In the rest of the paper I will be using the word “prostitute” in the classical understanding but when I say we (women) are all prostitute I mean that we live and behave in a way to please men and we are awarded in the degree we succeed in doing this. I believe once we find out the similarity, perhaps the analogy, between prostitution and a moral woman’s life style, and see how they complete and support each other and come from the same capitalist patriarchal principle we will be more strict about condemning the modern patriarchal capitalist system and it’s institutions.
Let me explain it: The human-being history has shown that individuals have the tendency to improve their living standards. Men, even those who are coming from humble beginnings, do this by enterprising whereas it is a lot harder for a woman to gain power and economic liberty [MacKinnon]. This has reasons but instead of trying to understand the reasons we will focus on the consequences. Women’s access to power and money has mostly been either through the family they were born into or the men they have married to in the societies where man is favored to woman and man’s standards are taken as the standard of human being. Women have been subordinated to them as a direct consequence of these questionable standards [MacKinnon]. I assume that everyone has a tendency to make the best choice no matter how restricted the choice set is; women for a happy and prosperous life, try their best to marry a husband who will bring better living standards to their life. In exchange for these living standards she will be pleasing him in all possible ways. However, due to distribution of both sexes almost equally in each economical class there is not a richer husband for every woman. Therefore they fight with each other, but how? With the power that is really power in the man’s perspective: boobs, hips, lips…The prettier they are, the more stronger they are. Finally the sexiest wins. But the game does not end here and we’ll turn back to life-long slavery of women. Unfortunately the over demand to the men may make them fail to see the woman who is depending on him economically as a life partner but one side of the contract and he might not mind in entering other similar contracts with different people, as long as he can afford it. This seems to explain men’s demand on prostitution quite neatly. Men are the main providers in contemporary societies; we can say that most of them, the ones that have got the idea of “contract” have a hard time to take the women who are in relationship with them as their equal. Instead they use them in a way to maximize their profit. The economical dependence brings the slavery in all aspects, as money can meet primary needs of people making it incomparably more important than anything a woman can give to a man. So the profit has a wide range. For the contract to continue it is not enough that she gives what she has but she should sometimes change and sometimes pretend to be another person which will please her guy. I might be culturally biased when thinking about this issue but I also believe the things which might not be obvious in a society might be more apparent in another since changing parameters may reveal some information that was hidden in other cases. For example in Turkey men can explicitly say that they prefer obedient woman to the liberal ones. Because of deficiency of feminism, they do not know how bad it is to behave and think so and do not mind expressing their genuine thoughts. A young woman, to find a husband or to not be abandoned she should keep more silent when she is with him but laugh at his jokes in order to make him feel smart. In short, the men can mention their preference literally or not and the women try to fulfill it in order to be able to get married and save their marriage, as the social pressure dictates to her.
Next, I will talk about prostitution in the classical understanding and discuss what a prostitute’s life and her self-perception are like. From these arguments, I will conclude that prostitution is degrading. Then I will turn back to the life of women and their deficient self-esteem due to the service they are providing to men and the feedback they are getting from this act. This will be the part where we answer the question, “What is wrong with prostitution?” And part of this answer will apply to the question, “What is wrong with women-men relationship?” The common point will show what is wrong with man’s thinking. We will not stop our discussion here and figure out what makes men think this way: The idea of being a Contractor in a contract. Since we will be agreeing on the argument saying that there is something wrong with this contract, there will follow: Abolish these contracts or the social structure on-going that leads to unhealthy contracts. Moreover I will add to these arguments that the contracts fix the position of contractors and their relationship. Therefore to make renovations one should start with abolishing all contracts. This is why I will be defending perpetuation of a ban of prostitution. On the other hand it is not only about prostitution but the impact it makes on man’s thinking---specifically the slave-master relationship it brings and structures the other relationship with female parties. From now on, I will be calling classical prostitution as the immoral one and the other type of woman-man relationships as the moral prostitution. I want to compare two and show how the close relationship between two types of prostitution brings the similarity between two different types of prostitutes: the moral prostitute, who is called a woman, and the immoral prostitute, who is called only a prostitute. So let us go into the scrutiny of immoral prostitutes and answer what is wrong with having sex with a random person, who might be a psychopath of any type although you know that you will not be awarded by the society for taking such a big risk and lending your body to a man who obviously wants to practice something he can not do with a girlfriend or a wife. You do it for money and this thing probably was the best choice you had. However, you imprison yourself into a class to which a huge stigma is associated. Unfortunately it does not end here. We know what society thinks about prostitutes, but how about the way they think off themselves? Actually the main problem is in self-perception. If all religions and social values tell that she is fallen, to be able to keep her self-esteem she should really be mentally strong and determined, but if it was the case probably she would have better options than being a prostitute. I should also note that I am handling the prostitution due to economical coercion. These all say that a prostitute does not have much incentive to feel good about her and probably being a prostitute becomes her only identity as time passes. Therefore to be consistent with herself, she behaves like a prostitute and even treats herself like a prostitute. She meets the needs of a prostitute, not the needs of a human being. She does not think much or try to contribute to her intellectual being, instead she buys stuff that will make her attractive to customers. In short, she invests for the contract she is in. Do not you think that it has so much in common with the rest of women? As soon as they become the dependent of a man, they give up big goals or ideals and instead fulfill the demands of the contract. Unfortunately in the type of contracts where there is an owner who holds the economic power and a worker who holds the labor power, the worker becomes trapped in the contract. This is because the contract is never equal and asks for everything the laborer has, even an identity she might be carrying beside the contract. What I say here is vey parallel to the Marxist critique about exploitation of workers and their alienation. Indeed, he was using the prostitution example to build analogy with the status of workers to their bosses. What I have done in this paper is almost the restriction of Marxist critique to women as workers and men as bosses who award them with money as long as they satisfy his needs and fantasies either in a moral way or immoral way.
My point is a bit more than that. I claim that the prostitution and marriage contract are two forms of the same idea and one’s being there brings the other. To make it clear: If marriage is a contract which makes the man provide a living to a woman in exchange for sexual and other services, he may volunteer to pay someone for sexual services being inspired from the principle marriage contract is based on. On the other hand, prostitution gives the man the idea that he can buy a woman for longer term use or might inspire him to use his wife in a similar way. The weirdness is that, the marriage contract exploits the women but it is socially approved and even encouraged. Therefore women can alienate from their individuality and guys can cause this without feeling guilty about it. That is why prostitution has been controversial for many centuries while marriage has recently started being questionable.
If we are convinced that there is exploitation of women after they enter into the contract, how can we keep silent about it? I believe that anything that reminds the principle which sometimes leads to the contract and sometimes comes as a consciousness after entering into the contract is unhealthy because of the nature of the moral and immoral forms of this contract, both of which clearly exploit people and lead to the alienation of them.
Then what is the solution? Is the marriage contract in classical form inevitable?
I do not thinks so; this is just a result of the social structures that have ignored women for thousands of years and imprisoned them in the houses where they have served as personal servants and built a cruel hierarchy in which man is holding the power as the superior gender. With the changing world, literally two genders have the same rights but there exist glass ceilings for women and the social values which are resistant to changes that impose patriarchy as if it is an ethical system. That is why women are still dependents of men and marriage turns out to be a contract which is not much different than other contracts the workers enter and be exploited. Society needs a deconstruction and abolishment of all contracts. This is my argument for the perpetuation of a ban of prostitution.
A ban of prostitution is necessary but not enough. And as we discussed at the very beginning, prostitution can look not more harmful than other professions and prostitutes are not in worse conditions than other workers. But the problem is with the patriarchal principle that leads to the unequal contract between prostitutes and the man or the woman and man which results in exploitation of women. The exploited women alienate from their individuality and after a while stop realizing the injustice that surrounds them. This makes the injustice settled and fixed in the society as if everything is a natural result of human nature. Throughout the history of humankind money and physical power have been over-valued. Standards of society have favored man and made women obedient to the men with these harsh contracts. In capitalist societies where money is the leading power and parties can engage in one-to-one contracts freely, exploitation of one side is inevitable. When capitalism and patriarchy come together in a society the exploitation of the women becomes unavoidable.