We cannot, however,
define human prostitution simply
as the use of
sexual responses for an ulterior
purpose. This would include a great portion of
all social behavior,
especially that of
women. It would
include marriage, for example,
wherein women trade
their sexual favors
for an economic and social status supplied by men.9
It would include the employment of pretty girls
in stores, cafes,
charity drives, advertisements. It would
include all the feminine arts that women
use in pursuing ends that require
men as
intermediaries, arts that
permeate daily life,
and, while not generally involving actual intercourse, contain
and utilize erotic stimulation.
But looking at the subject in this way reveals one thing. The basic element
in what we actually call
prostitution the employment of sex for non-sexual ends within a competitive-authoritative system-characterizes not simply prostitution itself
but all of our institutions in which sex is involved, notably
courtship and wedlock. Prostitution
therefore resembles, from
one point of
view, behavior found in
our most respectable institutions. It is one
end of a long sequence or gradation of essentially
similar phenomena that stretches
at the other
end to such approved patterns as engagement and marriage. What, then, is the difference
between prostitution and these other
institutions involving sex?
The
difference rests at
bottom upon the
functional relation between society
and sexual institutions. It is through these institutions that
erotic gratification is made dependent
on, and subservient to, certain co-operative performances inherently necessary
to societal continuity.
The sexual institutions
are distinguished by the fact that
though they all provide gratification,
they do not all tie it to the same social functions. (…) This explains why they
are differently evaluated in
the eyes
of the mores.
The
institutional control of sex
follows three correlative lines. First,
it permits, encourages, or forces various degrees of sexual intimacy
within specific customary
relations, such as
courtship, concubinage, and
marriage. Second, to bolster this
positive control, it discourages sexual intimacy in all other situations, e.g., when the persons are not potential
mates or when they are already mated to
other persons." Finally, in what is really a
peculiar category of
the negative rules,
it absolutely prohibits
sexual relations in
certain specified situations.
This last form
of control refers almost exclusively to incest taboos, which
reinforce the first-named (positive)
control by banishing the disruptive forces of sexual competition from the
family group.
These lines of
control are present no
matter what the
specific kind of institutional system. There may be
monogram, polygyny, or concubinage; wife exchange or religious prostitution; premarital chastity or unchastity. The important point is not the particular kind
of concrete institution, but the
fact that without the positive
and negative norms there could be no institutions
at all. Since social
functions can be
performed only through institutional patterns, the controls are indispensable to the continuance of a
given social system.
In
THE SOCIOLOGY OF PROSTITUTION
Anyone who's heard a group
of men discuss the virtues of high-end stereo equipment will have little
trouble believing that men's and women's brains work differently. That's also
no surprise to scientists, who have spent the past two decades trying to figure
out which aspects of cognition and behavior are determined by nature and which
by nurture. The verdict: Female and male brains differ in both structure and
function, and many of those variations start in the womb. It's no longer:
"Is there a difference?" It's: "What do these differences mean?"
