Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Prostitution and Patriarchy

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Aug. 13, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

13:05

Prostitution and Patriarchy

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	Let me just ask you this though.
	A lot of people say this is something that's going to go on irregardless.
	Oh, okay.
	I'll just overlook that.
	It's just a small thing and I'll assume that it was a one-time mistake.
	And that there is an almost an implied understanding that sex for the sex trade, sex for money, is almost part of the human experience.
	So that even the government turning and condemning it is hypocritical because we all know that it will go on irregardless.
	Idiots.
	So does is that really one of the major points that you make that the governments will be condoning it if we decriminalize it?
	Because I think that some people have some issues with that because they think in essence just what I said that to some extent it's kind of part of human nature.
	You know what's really interesting about prostitution is it's not just a part of human nature.
	We know that female chimpanzees engage in prostitution for meat.
	We know there are types of penguin that engage in prostitution for rocks to build their nests with.
	And in 2005 when Yale scientists taught Capuchin monkeys how to use money, lo and behold, suddenly there were monkey prostitutes.
	It's almost like when there's an excess of resources, some of those resources will be traded in for, well, services.
	But I'm approaching this as if I'm dealing with rational actors, and so far our host has used the word irregardless twice.
	So let's hear from the very rational looking lady who isn't in any way an insane ideologue.
	Exploitation and abuse of power is not part of human nature.
	Jesus fucking Christ.
	Where do you even start with that?
	I mean, okay, I'm not sure that all prostitution is exploitation and abuse of power.
	Some probably is, but I think most probably isn't.
	You know, most is probably voluntary.
	And secondly, yeah, they probably are part of human nature.
	The darker part that we try to mitigate with religion and morality and philosophy and just kindness to each other.
	These things which are also a part of human nature.
	I mean, these are the kind of debates that we have heard in the movement to end sexual violence and rape.
	It's the type of issues that we face when we're dealing with solutions toward ending domestic violence.
	What the fuck has prostitution got to do with domestic violence?
	It's a business transaction.
	Well, you know, people fight and women marry poorly and these things happen and it's called life.
	Okay, so what?
	Women aren't allowed to make their own decisions now.
	Because they might choose poorly and that would be called life and we don't want it to be called life.
	That is not true.
	It's a falsehood to say that prostitution is the oldest profession.
	It is not.
	Well, you're right.
	It's the second oldest profession.
	Because the oldest profession is the gathering of the resources needed to pay the prostitute.
	I am of Haitian descent.
	I have spoken to a lot of indigenous women, native women, First Nations women, who say they cannot find the word or the concept of prostitution in their native languages.
	Now, while that sounds crazy, it's actually not as crazy as you'd think.
	She might well be right, because prostitution requires excess wealth.
	If we take a look at Richard Pankhurst's history of prostitution in Ethiopia, it gives us quite a good indication of the circumstances that need to be present for prostitution to arise as an institution.
	Traditional Ethiopian society was essentially a rural civilization, not only in the sense that the overwhelming proportion of the population lived in the countryside, but also in that there were scarcely any towns and that in some regions isolated homesteads were more characteristic than villages.
	The economy throughout most of the country was basically one of subsistence, with an almost complete absence of money, a minimal division of labor, and domestic slavery rather than wage labour.
	Under such circumstances, there was little scope for prostitution, an institution which even today is widely regarded as alien to traditional Ethiopian way of life.
	Existing within a subsistence economy leaves very little resources for anything in the way of frivolous spending.
	The exception to this, however, was the Emperor's Camp, which was a vast establishment that was moved around the country at the ruler's wish, and was often composed of several thousand tents and upwards of 100,000 people.
	Unsurprisingly, the existence of such a multitude of people resulted in a far more pronounced division of labour than existed elsewhere in the land.
	They were visited in the 16th century by a Portuguese priest called Francesco Alvare, and he records that at the camp of Emperor Lebna Dengel, he saw the tents of the prostitutes, whom they call Amaritas.
	So put simply, prostitution is an institution that rises within any kinds of society, even animal societies, when there is a degree of surplus wealth.
	This is something that we believe is a product of a patriarchal system.
	Now, this is kind of right too, because patriarchal systems are almost completely designed to produce excess wealth.
	So, yeah, it's kind of true that patriarchal systems produce prostitutes, because as soon as women see that there's a lot of excess wealth going around, a proportion of those women decide that, yeah, it's a productive endeavor to have sex for money.
	That may have started in Greece or elsewhere.
	Well, the answer is elsewhere, because there were far richer societies in existence long before Greece existed.
	For example, in Sumer around 2000 BC, we know that the ancient Near East was familiar with the marketing of sexual services and reason to believe that the prostitution market was active enough to support standardized prices.
	We know that the cult of Inanna was directly involved in the production and sale of sexual services, and this was very successful.
	There were sexually explicit hymns and myths of goddesses which served to advertise and increase demand for the service of cultic prostitutes.
	I'll leave a link in the description to a recitation I've done of one of them.
	And it's pretty damn lewd.
	And there were taverns and inns in temple precincts that housed brothels, some of which were probably privately owned, and there's reason to suspect that those brothels were advertised by means of small, sexually explicit terracotta plaques.
	And the ancient Near East isn't the only place.
	In ancient China, around the 7th century BC, the first brothels were established.
	In the 1st century BC, Emperor Wu recruited female camp followers for his armies called Camp Harlots.
	Ancient India had its own sacred prostitutes known as Divadasi, which is a woman who has been forced into a life of prostitution into the service of the Hindu goddess of fertility, Yelama.
	But they did also exist in ancient Greece, and they made some women fabulously wealthy.
	The most notable of which I think is probably Aspasia, who is not only the mistress of Pericles, whom he lived with like a wife, but also was a brothel owner and harlot herself.
	And certainly was a tool, a colonization tool that was used by the European forces, whether it was the British colonial empire or even the, you know, the Napoleonic codes also codified this type of abuse of women in order to control women's body.
	Alright Fruit Loop, calm down.
	They weren't actually thinking about how to control women's bodies.
	I am of course no expert in British colonial prostitution, so preparing for this video I did some research and the first place I looked obviously was Wikipedia.
	Let's see what Wikipedia's basic stance on this was.
	In the early 20th century, European prostitutes were visible in major cities and seaports of British India.
	As seaports became more prominent in India, more European women were imported to serve as prostitutes.
	Many British authorities tolerated the importation of European prostitutes in the hope that men would engage in sex with them instead of Indian women.
	This would maintain a perceived racial superiority over those who were colonized.
	What strange language.
	I mean, maybe that would maintain a perceived racial superiority, but importing women, British women, incidentally, is a very strange way of putting it.
	I mean, I thought we were trying to maintain a perceived racial superiority.
	Why would we treat our own women like chattel?
	Wouldn't hired or recruited be more appropriate verbs?
	I think it might be time to check those sources.
	The Elusive Ingenue, a transnational feminist analysis of European prostitution in colonial Bombay.
	And the other one.
	What a surprise.
	Feminists talking about women as if they're property.
	On the plus side, there are sex-positive feminists who don't talk about women as if they're property.
	For example, the prostitutes who followed the prospectors in the California gold rush were some of the first women in early American settlements.
	They weren't imported there.
	They decided to go because it was profitable for them.
	So the exploitation of women in the sex trade and the purchase of women.
	Or conversely, the exploitation of women of men for their hard-earned money for sex by men in the sex trade is really just another form of violence and discrimination against women and girls.
	Yeah, because no woman has ever chosen to become a sex worker of her own accord.
	She's never thought, I do quite like sex, and it's quite a profitable career.
	If we were in a society that valued women as full human beings, that valued equality, there would be no purchase for sex ever.
	Oh, I see you subscribe to the Anita Sarkeesian branch of feminism.
	I bet you're a big fan of bell hooks as well.
	not of men, not of transgendered people, and not of women.
	And also what, yeah, go ahead.
	No, you finished.
	Go ahead.
	Oh, yeah, do carry on.
	There are no breaks on the crazy train.
	And also, what we have to understand is as long as a woman is purchasable, we will not have any equality in the corporate boardrooms, in the halls of power.
	Jesus Christ.
	I'm looking forward to how you justify that.
	As long as prostitutes exist, women will never be equal in boardrooms or courtrooms or positions of power.
	Fucking hell.
	Because as long as human beings are purchasable for exercising your sexual fantasies, whatever they are, then any woman is purchasable.
	That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
	Are you purchasable?
	Because someone else is a prostitute.
	And any woman can be commodified and objectified.
	But only if she consents to it.
	That's the thing.
	If she says, hey, I choose to do this, then yes, any woman could do that.
	Doesn't mean they all will.
	But what you're saying is that until none of them have the option of choosing to be sex workers, then potentially any of them, hell, all of them, could be sex workers.
	So yeah, technically any woman could be, but that doesn't mean they will be.
	And there's also this myth that if you decriminalize the sex trade, then women would have recourse to go to those police and claim violence or sexual violence or harassment, etc.
	But we know in fact if you look at the case in Germany where the government did in fact intend for women to come to the police or to government for assistance, there are 400,000 women in prostitution in Germany and only 40 have registered with the government.
	And what does that prove?
	Proving that the level of stigma doesn't change.
	As someone who's lived in Germany, I find this hilarious.
	Yeah, no, no, there's a lot of stigma for sex and sex workers in Germany.
	In a decriminalized situation, the level of violence doesn't change.
	Quite the opposite.
	The level of violence is sanctioned.
	You think violence against prostitutes is sanctioned by the German government?
	Are you fucking insane?
	So what you have now in Germany are countrywide chain brothels that are multi-level floors.
	Yeah, that's exactly what I would expect in a country that heavily stigmatizes prostitution.
	Where you can come with your buddies and have gangbang parties.
	Or for 69 Euros on Friday nights, you can have all the beer, the sausage, and the women you want.
	You've got floors that are deemed nudist floors where all women wear stiletto heels and the list goes on.
	Yeah, the list goes on because you're describing a country that doesn't stigmatize sex workers.
	And frankly, you make it sound fucking awesome.
	69 Euros for all the beer I can drink, bratvurst I can eat and pussy I can fuck.

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