sex and marriage

Chapter 15 Prostitution
Since we regard the morality of decent women as a matter of paramount importance, we must have another institution to supplement the institution of marriage, and to regard it as a part of it, and that is the institution of prostitution.There is a well-known saying, and that is Leckie's, that a prostitute is a guarantee of the sanctity of the home and the innocence of the wife and daughter.The sentiment is Victorian, and its expression is archaic, but its truth cannot be denied.The moralists condemned Leckie because what he said aroused their anger, and they could not say why, they could not prove that what he said was not true.Those moralists pointed out (with good reason, of course) that if people followed his teachings, there would be no whores.But moralists know very well that people will not listen to his fallacies, and that it does not matter what happens when people listen to him.

In a society with traditional morals, many men have difficulty finding decent women they want, or for other reasons, they cannot satisfy their sexual desires-this is an inevitable factor for them to need prostitutes.Therefore, society produces another kind of woman to meet the physiological needs of men.Although the society does not have the courage to admit this situation, it does not dare to completely ignore this issue, so that people will not be satisfied.A prostitute has her advantages. Not only can she be called when she is called, but she can easily conceal herself, because she has no other life except this profession; Go back to your wife or to your family and church.In spite of her undeniable service, in spite of her undeniable services, in spite of the preservation of the morality of wives and daughters, and the apparent morality of members of the church, the prostitute was still a poor woman, despised by the world, regarded as the dregs of society, and not allowed to be with her. Ordinary people come and go, except when they are in prostitution.This extremely unfair situation began after the victory of Christianity and has continued since then.The real crime of the prostitute is that she exposes the hypocrisy of the moralist's profession.She should therefore be exiled to the unconscious along with the thoughts suppressed by the Freudian censor.There, however, she, like the other exiles, made a natural cry of vengeance.

Around midnight,

I heard the cursing of whores in the streets,
It makes newborn babies cry,

And bring disaster to the colorful sedan chair for marriage.

The fact is that the origins of prostitution are so noble that they have not always been despised, and have never been concealed.Originally, prostitutes were priestesses dedicated to gods or goddesses.They serve the needs of passers-by as an act of worship.At that time, they were respected, they were both needed and respected.Later, the church fathers of Christianity wrote a lot of slanderous texts to oppose this system.This system, they say, embodies the immorality of pagan worship, and has its origins in the deceitfulness of Satan.Consequently, the Temple was closed, and prostitution gradually became a commercial institution for profit everywhere (in fact, it already existed in many places at the time).Of course, this is not for the benefit of the prostitute, but for the benefit of her master.Undercover prostitution, which is so prevalent today, was rare in the past, when the vast majority of prostitutes were in brothels, bathhouses and other disreputable institutions.In India, this transition from religious prostitution to commercial prostitution has not yet been fully completed. Catherine Mayo, author of "Mothering India," cites this residual religious prostitution as one of the reasons she blames India.

Everywhere except South America, the number of prostitutes is apparently slowly decreasing.No doubt, on the one hand, because women have more means of earning a living than before;However, I do not believe that the system of prostitution can be fundamentally and completely abolished.Take, for example, sailors who first land on the coast after a long voyage. They cannot wait patiently for a woman who comes to them just out of love.Take again the many unhappy married and wife-phobic men who seek a life of comfort and freedom when away from home, and which they wish to have as little psychological responsibility as possible.Of course, there are good reasons for the desire to reduce prostitution to a minimum.There are three main reasons against prostitution: first, the danger to public health; second, the psychological harm to women; and third, the psychological harm to men.

Health hazards topped these three grounds.Obviously, the spread of venereal disease is mainly because of prostitutes.Attempts to solve this problem by registering prostitutes and state inspections are not fruitful from a purely medical point of view, and are even prone to some disadvantages.Because this gives the police the power not only to control prostitutes, but sometimes even to control women who do not intend to use prostitution as a career, but inadvertently stray into this legal definition.In fact, if we don't regard the willow disease as a due punishment for sin, then we can prevent and treat it more effectively.The prevention of this disease, which might well have been brought to extinction, we believe that such prevention should not be made known to the general public, on the ground that such knowledge would encourage prostitution.Those suffering from vaginella disease often delay treatment because they think this kind of disease is shameful and ashamed to speak out.Society's attitude toward such matters is undoubtedly better now than it was before.If society's attitudes can be further improved, then eventually we will be able to keep venereal diseases to a minimum.But it cannot be denied that as long as the system of prostitution has existed it has provided a means of spreading a disease more dangerous than any.

The existing system of prostitution is clearly not necessary for an ideal way of life.Prostitution is as dangerous a trade as working in a white lead factory, in terms of the risk of contracting disease alone.Furthermore, the life of prostitution is a depraved life.This kind of life is extremely lazy and leads to alcoholism.The very disadvantage of prostitutes is that they are generally looked down upon, even by their clients.The life of a prostitute is a perverse life—very much like the perverse life of a nun.In view of the above-mentioned reasons, the system of prostitution which exists in various Christian countries is an extremely unsatisfactory system.

The situation is quite different in Japan, where prostitution is licensed and considered a respectable cause, and sometimes they become prostitutes even because of parental persuasion.Prostitution is a common method of obtaining a dowry.According to some authorities, the Japanese have a sort of immunity to syphilis.The Japanese prostitute, therefore, does not lead a miserable life like those in places with strict morals.It is obvious that if the system of prostitution must exist, it should exist in the Japanese way, not in the way that prevails in Europe.It can be seen that if the morality of a country is stricter, the life of prostitutes will be more degraded.

If prostitution becomes a habit, it is likely to have a bad impact on a person's psychology.The person will develop the habit of having sex without pleasure.In addition, if he values ​​general moral principles, he will develop a sense of contempt for any woman with whom he has intercourse.This kind of thinking has a very bad effect on marriage, because he either treats marriage and prostitution as the same or as two completely different things, and even some men cannot have passionate intercourse with the women they love and admire.According to the Freudians, this is the so-called Oedipal abnormal psychology.But it seems to me that this is because people draw a sharp line between the woman they love and admire and the whore.Many men, especially conservative men, respect their wives so much, if not to such an extent, that they become psychologically virgins and deprive them of sexual pleasure.If a man equates his wife with a whore in his imagination, it will have exactly the opposite bad effect.This will make him forget that intercourse is only possible when both partners are willing and that there must be a period of sexual arousal before intercourse.He would treat his wife so roughly that she would feel an indelible revulsion in her.

If we allow financial motives to intrude into sexual relationships, it is harmful anyway.Sexual relations should be a mutual enjoyment, and this can be achieved only if they are based entirely on the spontaneous impulse of both partners.Otherwise, everything of value will disappear.To impose an act of intimacy on another is to lose the real life from which only true morality can flow.For a sensitive person, sex does not produce very charming effects.Sexual behavior is likely to lead to self-blame if it occurs only from physical urges, and in this self-blame, a person's judgment of value will become very confused.Of course, this is not only true for prostitution, but basically for marriage as well.Marriage is a woman's most basic way of life. Therefore, the sum of unwanted sexual relations endured by women in marriage is probably much more than in prostitution.Morality in sexual relations, if free from superstition, consists primarily of respect for the other person, so that another cannot be exploited solely for personal gratification, regardless of his or her desires.Prostitution is contrary to this principle, so it should not be promoted, even if we eliminate the danger of venereal disease.

In my opinion, Havelock Ellis' arguments in favor of prostitution are incorrect.Although he has done very interesting research on prostitution.He first mentioned the existence of secret religious rituals in early civilizations, through which people could give vent to vigorous impulses that were usually suppressed.According to him, prostitution had its origin in the secret rites of the Dionysus, and had exactly the same purpose as the previous occult ceremonies.Many men, he says, are under-satisfied because of the constraints of traditional marriages and rituals.So they occasionally set foot in whorehouses to get relief, because prostitution is not as frowned upon by society as other things.In essence, however, this argument is the same as Lecky's, albeit in a newer form.Sexually empty women, like men, have what Havelock Ellis called the urges, so once a woman's sexual life is liberated, a man can satisfy his desires without looking for things that are purely sexual. Prostitutes for money.This is indeed one of the benefits to be expected from women's sexual emancipation.It has been my observation that if women's ideas and feelings about sex were not bound by the taboos of the past, they could derive and give men greater satisfaction from marriage than they did in the Victorian era.Therefore, once the old morality is abolished, the phenomenon of prostitution will gradually disappear.Young men who previously had to step into whorehouses now and then were able to establish relationships with women of their class.It is a consensual relationship; a relationship that has both a physical and a spiritual element;

From the point of view of ideal morality, this is really a huge improvement over the original old system.But moralists deeply regret this, because the system is not conducive to concealment.In fact, the first moral principle advocated by those moralists is honesty.I think this new freedom among young people is something to be celebrated entirely, as it is producing a generation of men who are not brutal and women who are not overly critical.Since those who opposed this new liberty believed that prostitution was the only safe means of resisting the intolerable rigor of legal oppression, they should frankly acknowledge the fact that they were the ones who favored the continuation of the institution.

(End of this chapter)