History of prostitution
Prostitution has been practiced throughout ancient and modern cultures.[1][2] Prostitution has been described as "the world's oldest profession". .[3][4][5]
Ancient Near East
The
In the region of
In later years, sacred prostitution and similar classifications for females were known to have existed in Greece, Rome, India, China, and Japan.[8] Such practices came to an end when the emperor Constantine, in the 320s AD, destroyed the goddess temples and replaced the religious practices with Christianity.[9]
Biblical references
Prostitution was commonplace in
In the Book of Revelation, the Whore of Babylon is named "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth". However, the word "whore" could also be translated as "idolatress".[10][11]
Aztecs and Incas
Among the
Inca prostitutes were segregated from other people and lived under the supervision of a government agent.[12]
Antiquity
Greece
In ancient Greece, both women and men engaged in prostitution. were as famous for their company as their beauty, and some of these women charged extraordinary sums for their services.
Each specialized category had its proper name, so there were the chamaitypa'i, working outdoor (lie-down), the perepatetikes who met their customers while walking (and then worked in their houses), and the gephyrides, who worked near the bridges. In the fifth century, Ateneo informs us that the price was 1 obole, a sixth of a drachma, and the equivalent of an ordinary worker's day salary. The rare pictures describe that
Male prostitution was also common in Greece. Adolescent boys usually practiced it, a reflection of the pederastic custom of the time. Slave boys worked the male brothels in Athens, while free boys who sold their favours risked losing their political rights as adults.
Rome
Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal, public, and widespread. Even Roman men of the highest social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval,[15] as long as they demonstrated self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex. Latin literature also often refers to prostitutes. Real-world practices are documented by provisions of Roman law that regulate prostitution. Inscriptions, especially graffiti from Pompeii, uncover the practice of prostitution in Ancient Rome. Some large brothels in the fourth century, when Rome was becoming Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly state-owned.[16] Prostitutes played a role in several Roman religious observances, mainly in the month of April, over which the love and fertility goddess Venus presided. While prostitution was widely accepted, prostitutes were often considered shameful. Most were slaves or former slaves, or if free by birth relegated to the infames, people lacking in social standing and deprived of the protections that most citizens under Roman law received.[17] Prostitution thus reflects the ambivalent attitudes of Romans toward pleasure and sexuality.[18]
A registered prostitute was called a
India
A tawaif was a courtesan who catered to the nobility of South Asia, particularly during the era of the Mughal Empire. These courtesans would dance, sing, recite poetry and entertain their suitors at mehfils. Like the geisha tradition in Japan, their main purpose was to professionally entertain their guests. While sex was often incidental, it was not assured contractually. The most popular or highest-class tawaifs could often pick and choose between the best of their suitors. They contributed to music, dance, theatre, film, and the Urdu literary tradition.[21]
The term
During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was initially fairly common for British soldiers to engage in inter-ethnic prostitution, where they would frequently visit local Indian nautch dancers.[23] As British women began arriving in British India in large numbers from the early to mid-19th century, it became increasingly uncommon for British soldiers to visit Indian prostitutes, and miscegenation was despised altogether after the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[24]
Islamic world
- See also: Concubinage in Islam
In the seventh century,
According to
The flow of slaves, from the
China
Prostitution in China was[
Southeast Asia]
In Southeast Asia, prostitution was mostly prevalent in Singapore, due to its active ports. Certain districts of Singapore were dedicated brothel districts sanctioned by the colonial governments.[32] As colonial powers entered the Asian countries, there was an increase in the number of sailors at ports. Merchant ships carried large crews of men, who lacked the company of women for days on end. As these ships docked in Asian ports, like Singapore, they were drawn to the market of prostitution. This higher demand for the company of a woman created the need for these brothel districts.[32]
Japan
From the 15th century, Chinese, Korean, and other Far Eastern visitors began frequenting
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese visitors and their South Asian (and sometimes African) crew members often engaged in slavery in Japan, where they brought or captured young Japanese women and girls, who were either used as sexual slaves on their ships or taken to Macau and other Portuguese colonies in Southeast Asia, the Americas[34] and India.[36] For example, in Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, there was a community of Japanese slaves and traders during the late 16th and 17th centuries.[37] Later European East India companies, including those of the Dutch and British, also engaged in prostitution in Japan.[38]
In the early 17th century, there was widespread male and female prostitution throughout the cities of
In the early 20th century, the problem of regulating prostitution according to modern European models was widely debated in Japan.[42]
Middle Ages in Europe
During the
After the decline of organized prostitution of the Roman empire, many prostitutes were slaves. However, religious campaigns against slavery and the growing marketisation of the economy turned prostitution back into a business. By the
16th–17th centuries
By the end of the 15th-century attitudes began to harden against prostitution. An outbreak of
The Church's stance on prostitution was three-fold. It included the "acceptance of prostitution as an inevitable social fact, condemnation of those profiting from this commerce, and encouragement for the prostitute to
With the advent of the
18th century
Anthropologist Stanley Diamond comments that prostitution was encouraged in Dahomey as it was a form of acquiring tax revenue in the state. Archibald Dalzel documented in 1793 that prostitutes were distributed by the civil power throughout various villages at a price that was set by civil decree. It was the responsibility of prostitutes to provide services to anyone who could afford the fee. During the Annual Customs of Dahomey, prostitutes paid taxes. J. A. Skertchly wrote in 1874 that prostitutes were licensed by the King of Dahomey.[60]
According to
In the 18th century, presumably in Venice, prostitutes started using condoms made with catgut or cow bowel.
19th century
In North America, prostitution was seen as a "necessary evil" that aided in marital fidelity, especially as a system that would allow men to obtain sex when their wives did not desire it.[63] D'Emilio and Freedman document that prostitution was not a crime in the early part of the 19th century, and thus brothels (or bawdy houses) were tolerated in American cities and the laws against individual prostitutes were enforced only occasionally.
In the 1830s, prostitution was becoming more visible in North-American cities, and with the professionalization of police forces, visible prostitutes such as streetwalkers risked arrest.[63] But D'Emilio and Freedman note that raids on brothels were comparatively rare, and prostitution was tolerated in mining towns, cattle towns, and urban centers in the American east. In 1870, prostitution was legalized and regulated in the city of St. Louis, Missouri.[63] Prostitutes were licensed by public health officials and were required to maintain weekly inspections for sexually transmitted diseases. However, due to protests and demonstrations organized by women and members of the clergy, Missouri legislators repealed the legislation allowing regulated prostitution.[63]
The Page Act of 1875 was passed by the US Congress and forbid any importation of women for the purpose of prostitution.[64] The national move to criminalize prostitution was led by Protestant middle-class men and women who participated in the revivalism movement of the 19th century.[63]
Many of the women who posed in 19th- and early-20th-century
During the 19th century, the British in
Mining camps
The houses of prostitution found in every mining camp worldwide were famous, especially in the 19th century when long-distance imports of prostitutes became common.[69] Entrepreneurs set up shops and businesses to cater to the miners, and brothels were largely tolerated in mining towns.[63] Prostitution in the American West was a growth industry that attracted sex workers from around the globe where they were pulled in by the money, despite the harsh and dangerous working conditions and low prestige. Chinese women were frequently sold by their families and taken to the camps as prostitutes and were often forced to send their earnings back to the family in China.[70] In Virginia City, Nevada, a prostitute, Julia Bulette, was one of the few who achieved "respectable" status. She nursed victims of an influenza epidemic, earning her acceptance in the community and the support of the sheriff. The townspeople were shocked when she was murdered in 1867 and they honoured her with a lavish funeral and hanging of her assailant.[71]
Until the 1890s, madams predominately ran the businesses, after which male pimps took over. This led to a general decline in the treatment of women. It was not uncommon for brothels in Western towns to operate openly, without the stigma that was beginning to emerge in East Coast cities as a result of anti-prostitution activism.[63] Gambling and prostitution were central to life in these western towns, and only later, as the female population increased, reformers moved in and other civilizing influences arrived, did prostitution become less blatant and less common.[72] After a decade or so the mining towns attracted respectable women who ran boarding houses, organized church societies, and worked as laundresses and seamstresses, all while striving for independent status.[73]
Australian mining camps had a well-developed system of prostitution.[74] City fathers sometimes tried to confine the practice to red-light districts.[75] The precise role prostitution played in various camps depended on the sex ratio in specific population groups of colonial society as well as racial attitudes toward non-whites. In the early 19th century British authorities decided it was best to have lower-class white, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Aboriginal women service the prisoners and thereby keep the peace while maintaining strong class lines that isolated British gentlemen and ladies from the lower elements. Prostitution was so profitable that it was easy to circumvent the legal boundaries. When Australians took control by 1900 they wanted a "white Australia" and tried to exclude or expel non-white women who might become prostitutes. However, feminist activists fought against Australia's discriminatory laws that led to varying levels of rights for women, races, and classes. By 1939 new attitudes toward racial harmony began to surface. These were inspired by white Australians to rethink their racist policies and adopt more liberal residency laws that did not focus on sexual or racial issues.[76]
Latin American mining camps also had well-developed systems of prostitution.[77] In Mexico the government tried to protect and idealize middle-class women but made little effort to protect prostitutes in the mining camps.[78]
In 20th-century African mining camps, prostitution followed the historical patterns developed in the 19th century. They added the theme of casual temporary marriages.[79][80][81]
20th century
1914-1950
During World War I, in the colonial Philippines, U.S. Armed Forces developed a prostitute management program called the "American Plan" which enabled the military to arrest any woman within five miles of a military cantonment. If found infected, a woman could be sentenced to a hospital or a farm colony until cured.[82]
Beginning in the 1910s and continuing in some places into the 1950s, the American Plan operated in the United States. Women were told to report to a health officer where they were coerced to submit to an invasive examination. Immigrants, minorities, and the poor were primarily targeted.[83]
In 1921, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children was signed. In this convention, some nations declared reservations about prostitution.
The leading theorists of communism opposed prostitution. Karl Marx thought of it as "only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the laborer", and considered its abolition to be necessary to overcome capitalism. Friedrich Engels considered even marriage as a form of prostitution, and Vladimir Lenin found sex work distasteful. Communist governments often took wide-ranging steps to repress prostitution immediately after obtaining power, although the practice always persisted. In the countries that remained nominally communist after the end of the Cold War, especially China, prostitution remained illegal but was nonetheless common. In many current or former communist countries, the economic depression brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union led to an increase in prostitution.[84]
During World War II, Japanese soldiers engaged in forced prostitution during their invasions across East Asia and Southeast Asia. The term "comfort women" became a euphemism for the estimated 200,000 mostly Korean and Chinese women who were forced into prostitution in Japanese military brothels during the war.[85]
1950-2000
Sex tourism emerged in the late 20th century as a controversial aspect of Western tourism and globalization. Sex tourism was typically undertaken internationally by tourists from wealthier countries. Author Nils Ringdal alleged that three out of four men between the ages of 20 and 50 who have visited Asia or Africa have paid for sex.[86]
A new legal approach to prostitution emerged at the end of the 20th century, termed the Swedish model. This included the prohibition of buying, but not selling, sexual services. This means that only the client commits a crime in engaging in paid sex, not the prostitute. Such laws were enacted in Sweden (1999), Norway (2009), Iceland (2009), Canada (2014), Northern Ireland (2015), France (2016), and the Republic of Ireland (2017), and are also being considered in other jurisdictions.
21st century
In the 21st century, Afghans revived a method of prostituting young boys, which is referred to as bacha bazi.[87]
When the Soviet Union broke up, thousands of Eastern European women became prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year.[88] There are tens of thousands of women from eastern Europe and Asia working as prostitutes in Dubai. Men from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates form a large proportion of the customers.[89]
India's
In Germany, attempts to develop a comprehensive framework for prostitution in 2017 have been met by fierce opposition from sex workers, with less than 1% of the prostitutes submitting to their registration duty.[91]
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom introduced the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 which would partly be repealed and altered by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. While this law did not criminalise the act of prostitution itself, it did prohibit such activities as running a brothel and soliciting for paid sex.
United States
In the United States, prostitution was originally widely legal. Prostitution was made illegal in almost all states between 1910 and 1915 largely due to the influence of the 1st wave
Beginning in the late 1980s many states increased the penalties for prostitution in cases where the prostitute is knowingly HIV-positive. These laws, often known as felony prostitution laws, require anyone arrested for prostitution to be tested for HIV. If the test comes back positive, the suspect is informed that any future arrest for prostitution will be a
See also
- Hetaira
- History of prostitution in Canada
- History of prostitution in France
- History of human sexuality
- Kagema
- Pederasty in ancient Greece
- Prostitution in ancient Greece
- Prostitution in ancient Rome
- Prostitution in colonial India
- Prostitution in Harlem Renaissance
- Prostitution in the Spanish Civil War
- Sacred prostitution
- Sexuality in ancient Rome
- Sexuality in ancient Greece
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Further reading
- Attwood, Nina. The Prostitute's Body: Rewriting Prostitution in Victorian Britain (Routledge, 2015).
- Bassermann, Lujo. The Oldest Profession: a history of prostitution (1967).
- Beckman, Karen (2003). Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822330745.
- Bennett, Judith M. (1989). Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226042473.
- Bruhns, Karen Olsen; Stothert, Karen E. (1999). Women in Ancient America. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806131696.
- Bullough, Vern L. The history of prostitution (1964), a scholarly history.
- Bullough, Vern L.; Brundage, James A. (1982). Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church. Prometheus Books. ISBN 9780879752682.
- Bullough, Vern LeRoy; Bullough, Bonnie L. (1978). Prostitution: An Illustrated Social History. Crown Publishers. ISBN 9780517529577.
- Butler, Anne M. (1987). Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90 (Reprint ed.). University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252014666.
- Connelly, Mark Thomas (1980). The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807814246.
- D'Emilio, John; Freedman, Estelle B. (2012). Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Third ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226923819.
- ISBN 9780198201717.
- Dillon, Matthew; Garland, Lynda (2005). Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415224581.
- Edwards, Catherine (1997). "Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome". Roman Sexualities. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691011783.
- Enloe, Cynthia (2000). Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520220713.
- Francis, Raelene. Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution (2007). scholarly.
- Gazali, Münif Fehim (2001). Book of Shehzade. Dönence. ISBN 978-975-7054-17-7.
- Goldman, Marion S. (1981). Gold Diggers & Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472063321.
- İlkkaracan, Pınar (2008). Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 9780754672357.
- Jackson, Louise (2006). Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719073908.
- Jeffrey, Julie (1998). Frontier Women: "Civilizing" the West? 1840-1880. Macmillan. ISBN 9780809016013.
- Leupp, Gary P. (2003). Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. A&C Black. ISBN 9780826460745.
- McCall, Andrew (1979). The Medieval Underworld (First ed.). H. Hamilton. ISBN 9780241100189.
- McGinn, Thomas (2004). The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472113620.
- McKewon, Elaine (2005). The Scarlet Mile: A Social History of Prostitution in Kalgoorlie, 1894-2004. University of Western Australia Press. ISBN 9781920694227.
- Murphy, Emmett (1983). Great Bordellos of the World: An Illustrated History. Quartet Books. ISBN 9780704323957.
- Otis, Leah Lydia (1985). Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-64033-4.
- Remick, Elizabeth J. Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900–1937 (Stanford University Press, 2014). xv+ 270 pp
- Ringdal, Nils. Love for sale: A world history of prostitution (Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2007).
- Roberts, Nickie (1992). Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780586200292.
- Rosen, Ruth (1982). The lost sisterhood: prostitution in America, 1900-1918. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801826641.
- Rossiaud, Jacques (1996). Medieval Prostitution. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9780760701195.
- Scott, George Ryley. A History of Prostitution: From Antiquity to the Present Day (1996). excerpt
- Simha, S. N.; Bose, Nirmal Kumar (2003). History of Prostitution in Ancient India: Upto 3rd Cen. A.D. Shree Balaram Prakasani.
- Sılay, Kemal (1994). Nedim and the poetics of the Ottoman court: medieval inheritance and the need for change. Indiana University. ISBN 9781878318091.
- Stern, Scott W (2018). The trials of Nina McCall: sex, surveillance, and the decades-long government plan to imprison "promiscuous" women. OCLC 1001756017.
- Toledano, Ehud R. (2003). State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521534536.
- Walkowitz, Judith R. "History and the Politics of Prostitution: Prostitution and the Politics of History". in Marlene Spanger and May-Len Skilbrei, eds., Prostitution Research in Context (2017) pp. 18–32.
- Warren, James Francis (2008). Pirates, Prostitutes and Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia. University of Western Australia Press. ISBN 9780980296549.
- White, Luise (1990). The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226895062.
Older and primary sources
- (Vol. 4.) Those that will not work, comprising; Prostitutes. Thieves. Swindlers. Beggars. London, UK: Griffin, Bohn, and Company. 1862. Retrieved 2013-09-30.
- Extra Volume E-Text. )
- OCLC 472470624.