The Dilemma of Aspasia
In “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” Engels theorized that monogamy evolved as an economic institution. Its purpose was to enable men to pass their property onto progeny. The restriction of women to one sexual partner was necessary only so that men can be guaranteed that heirs were descendants of their own blood. “The modern individual family is based on the open or disguised enslavement of woman,” [1] Engels wrote. Since monogamy was a social mechanism for property inheritance, only the monogamy of women was required. Men may stray from the rules by visiting a prostitute, and they would not be stigmatized or punished for their transgressions as much as women would.
In Greece, promiscuity in men was the norm and prostitution was regarded as an acceptable way for men to relieve their sexual energies. In fact, the upper class of prostitutes, called hetaerae, were allowed the most freedoms of all women in Greek society. They were often well-educated, paid taxes, and participated in the public sphere. From Nils Johan Ringdal’s history of prostitution, Love for Sale,
“Hetaerae or ‘companions,’ moved around most freely of all, even more than the married wives of the citizens….The hetaerae not only constituted the elite of the prostitutes; may also considered them the leaders among all women. It was said about the Athens of the fifth century B.C. that one saw no women other than hetaerae and auletrides. Women and girls from prosperous homes lived in obscure seclusion; the cheap prostitutes were stowed out of sight. Hetaerae and auletrides, [song-dance-girls,] dominated the streets, attended theatrical performances, and joined public processions. Indeed, some of them even made their marks in politics.” [2]
Famous Hetaerae include Aspasia, the lover of Pericles, Diotima, the lover of Sophocles, and Neaera, the lover of Demosthenes. Demosthenes, the great Greek orator, said in his speech Against Neaera. “We have hetaerae for pleasure, pallakae to care for our daily body’s needs and gynaekes to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.” [3] Thus, to this Greek politician, forefather of Western civilization, the role of women is to serve men, and the role of the wife, or gynaekes, is purely economical: to manage the household and produce heirs.
So long as there was monogamy, there were prostitutes, Engels argued. The prostitute and the wife are inexorably tied. “Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?” [4] Belinda J. Carpenter, in Rethinking Prostitution: Feminism, Sex, and the Self, theorizes the relationship between prostitution and marriage: “The fact that most clients of prostitutes are married men, and can supposedly ‘get it’ somewhere else, does not alter the central issue for prostitutes – that of uncontrollable sexual need. ‘Though it’s her wifely duty to give them sex when they want – you’d be surprised how many don’t. What’s a man to do’; ‘Prostitutes save a lot of marriages.'” [5] Engels concurs with this latter point.
Given Engel’s interpretation of monogamy and prostitution, what should the feminist do in defense of the rights of her sex? Should she condemn the prostitute for service and self-debasement to men? Or, if marriage is but what Engels calls “the crassest prostitution,” [6] an unfair institution binding women, should she advocate for the prostitute, who is perhaps a freer woman than the housewife, and promote the prostitute’s right to sexual choice? Here lies the great divide between two parties of feminists: the Anti-Pornography Feminist, such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, or the Sex-Positive “Sex-Radical” Feminist, such as Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, and Pat Califia. The former believes that prostitution is inherently degrading to women and calls for an immediate end to sex work and pornography. The latter believes that if a woman becomes a prostitute of her own free will and truly enjoys her profession, she should be allowed to practice it without criminalization. I subscribe to the views of the latter while believing that prostitution at large reflects the world view of the former.
Should prostitution be a crime? If a prostitute freely chooses her profession, should the feminist be a supporter of her choice? The Anti-Pornography Feminist answers no. Prostitution is never truly a choice. Anti-Pornography Feminists believe that social and economic conditions force women into sex work. They quote psychoanalytic statistics on the average sex worker: that most sex workers were abused as children, that they have low self-esteem and devalue their bodies. Even if a woman truly believes that she has chosen prostitution of her own free will, she is doing so within the context of a male-dominated society where women are objectified and degraded as instruments to male sexual pleasure. Julia O’Connell Davidson wrote, in Prostitution, Power, and Freedom,
Prostitution is an institution that allows clients to secure temporarily certain powers of sexual command over prostitutes. These are not the kind of powers that many people wish to transfer indiscriminately to anonymous others. In fact, people will generally surrender such powers over their person to others only under very particular social, political and economic conditions – conditions which effectively limit their ‘choices’ to a set of alternatives which are not of their choosing. In other words, prostitution, as much as wage labour, is predicated upon the existence of a very particular set of social relations. In some cases these relations present people with a stark ‘choice’ between abject poverty or prostitution, or ‘alternatives’ may stretch to include monotonous, low-paid employment, as well as prostitution….Wealthy, powerful individuals do not typically elect to prostitute themselves….Prostitution is an institution which founders upon the existence of economic and political conditions that compel people to act in ways in which they would not otherwise choose to act. [7]
The portrayal of the prostitute as a victim incapable of making true sexual choices for herself angers the Sex-Positive Feminist. There do indeed exist prostitutes who choose and enjoy their work. Scarlot Harlot, the famous prostitute-poet-political activist-performance artist included an interview in her book, Unrepentant Whore, where a prostitute described her story,
A lotta hookers tell you they was raped, they was molested. I was a good girl….I got a different story. I was a good girl, you know, up till the seventh grade I had straight ‘A’s. A good family, a really tight family….A lotta girls, working girls always say that they was raped. Me, I wasn’t. I wasn’t like that. It’s just that it was my choice. My choice to do this. It wasn’t anything bad. It’s just, I wanted to do this. I think it was my destination. My destiny. [8]
Sex-positive Feminists argue that there is nothing universally immoral about sex work; that those who believe that sex work is immoral are influenced by a world view based on male-dominated institutions of marriage and religion, which commend womanly virtues of chastity and domesticity, and repress female expression of sexual desire as “dirty” acts of “loose women.” Consensual sex between a woman and a man should not be regarded as degrading for either party, even if one party receives monetary rewards for the act. Devoid of the sexist stigmas of sex, a purchase of sexual service should be no less “dirty” than the purchase of waiting service at a restaurant or entertainment service at a wedding.
Psychoanalyzing and pathologizing the prostitute is a practice in line with the need throughout history and literature to portray whores as “downtrodden” with a “heart of gold” and bad social circumstances in order to be “good”: “the Madonna/whore opposition, which instantly clouds and distorts both men’s and women’s understanding of the two genders.” [9] Those who pathologize prostitutes are condescending and their observations silence the “victims” they purport to understand and protect. Mariann Macey, a writer for New York magazine, who wrote an article based on her field research of the New York escort prostitution scene, later published a book about her experiences, Working Sex, in which she wrote that the escorts of New York don’t need protection by means of the elimination of their trade, instead they need protection through decriminalization and better public services in health and policing against client abuse. [10]
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