4.3.4.
Prostitution
In the history of mankind,
prostitution is most often seen as an illegal and criminal activity, but the
question of whether prostitution is a crime or not is difficult to answer
clearly. Let's look at the issue from both sides, namely, that interprets it as
a crime and that does not regard sex work as a crime, instead an occupation.
The well-known phrase that prostitution is the oldest profession makes it
difficult to find out whether it is a legal profession or a very prevalent type
of social crime. At the same time, in the interpretation of prostitution it is
important to consider whether selling sexual services is forced or not because
coerced prostitution is associated with a number of other very serious social
crimes.
From the social point of view, that
is, the foundation of society is family, the life-long or at least a certain
period long (at least as long as an offspring is brought up properly) union of
a male and a female, prostitution is a sin. This is because extramarital sex,
cheating on partners leads to conflict within the family, especially between
the spouses, which often results in divorce and thus in perturbed upbringing of
children causing unhealthy mental conditions. It is a well-known fact that the
work of father-mother is essential for the healthy upbringing of children. Without
it, there is high chance that the offspring will grow up to be an unstable,
poorly socialized individual who may not be able to become a full and useful
member of society due to the emotional insecurity of their childhood. It
follows from the foregoing that prostitution was generally regarded as a sin by
the societies of human history, and tried to eliminate or at least force it to
the periphery, although there were times when prostitution enjoyed legitimacy,
as in ancient Greek and Roman culture, or in the modern Sweden where a new law regulates
prostitution, allowing it to operate legally in certain circumstances. In
ancient times, it was perfectly common for family men to visit prostitutes,
although this is explained by the specific perception of women and their social
position, as women did not have the right to take part in higher education at
that time, only men, making uneducated women boring for educated men. Of
course, well-educated ancient prostitutes were better to talk with, as a consequence,
and this was also their social function, and besides, there were prostitutes on
the market with modest intellectual quality as well. Following the antiquity in
Europe, prostitution was considered a serious social crime and tried to supress
with more or less success. Today, however, as I have already pointed out, in
countries with a liberal democratic system, there has been a radical change in
the concept of prostitution: in the Scandinavian model, selling sex services is
no longer regarded as a crime by the society, but it is the purchase of sex
that is to be punished, which is the sex-clientele. Before the model was
introduced, prostitution had been thought to be a victimless crime, although it
was only later realized that prostitutes, such as street prostitutes, escort
prostitutes, masseur prostitutes, and so on undergo multiple traumas while
working,
so still they are the victims of a crime, prostitution. That is why, perhaps,
the law is trying to protect sex workers by punishing at least not the
employees of sex industry, but by criminalizing the sex-clientele. The Swedish
model was introduced in 1999 after a thorough pre-study and intense communication with prostitutes that led
to a consensus that a prostitute maintains an unacceptable situation by forcing
a painful self-separation (body and self), which is also maintained by the
selfishness of and utter incomprehension of sex-clientele. Because of this, the
state itself undertakes the task of discouraging sex buyers from doing sex-business
through various legal sanctions that do not affect the very person selling sexual
services. This new endeavour at the time was also relevant to the promotion of
women's right of equality, although there was an opposition with the emergence
of a new form of prostitution, the so-called cyber-prostitution on the
Internet, which eliminated all the dangers that go together with the
traditional form of selling sexual services.
Returning to the discussion of prostitution
in the context of sin, from sanitary point of view prostitution cannot be
clearly labelled as a social sin, since prostitution has a kind of socio-health
function. Sanitarily, an unmarried, unsatisfied person is full of biological-rooted
stress that has long-term adverse effects on the body and personality.
According to David McKenzie, a Canadian sex therapist, life without sex will
reduce self-esteem and self-respect, because our culture basically recognizes
the ability to acquire and retain partner as a value. On the other hand, there
can be a number of real biological consequences of the lack of sexual life for
both women and men, such as inflammation of the prostate, the reduction of the
motility of genetic material and the oxygen saturation of genital tract, as
well as hormonal imbalance. From a mental point of view, depression,
aggression, and irritability are the most typical reaction to the lack of sexual life, so the sexual
services of escorts and prostitutes has a not negligible impact on sex-clients’
well-being, so prostitution cannot be called merely a crime in this regard. In
fact, a significant number of writers, filmmakers, painters and poets express
great respect and gratitude in their works. Danilo Kis, the Serbian writer
immortalized the character of a popular prostitute,
who made life easier for lots of men through purchased sex, and when she
deceased, her great number of obliged sex-clientele poured flowers into her
grave.
Another example of prostitution as a
socially useful work, and not as a crime, is that prostitutes have always
played a major role in introducing young men to sex. Whether why it was
important is easy to see: minimum sexual technique acquired in this way in
different brothels gave self-confidence to young adults, and when the really
important woman came into their lives, they were no longer shy and knew what to
do to impress the chosen female.
When prostitution is clearly a very
serious social crime it is when sex workers have not crossed the legal age
limit, that is, they are too young even to have sex, not sell it, so with other
words, it is child prostitution. As we have already pointed out in the chapter
on violence, coercion into sex causes such a psychological trauma that the
sufferer has little chance of becoming a useful member of society. Child
prostitution and prostitution at all, if we look at the latter one as a crime because
it has been forced, as we have already mentioned, bear a relation to other very
serious social crimes, which is human trafficking and terrorism, which will be
discussed later in the following chapters.
The perception of a new form of
prostitution, the so-called cyber or internet prostitution, as a sin is a very
interesting issue since no real sexual service and no sexual intercourse takes
place. The prostitute simply shares live adult explicit video content with clients
and depending on the extent of financial contribution of sex-client she or he makes
certain sexually explicit productions visible on the screen, such as
striptease, masturbation, etc. Can this activity be regarded a crime or
prostitution at all? According to religious interpretations, it should be,
because even an unclean thought is a sin, even if fornication is only realized
in the virtual place and imagination. In the social sense, it is not
prostitution or crime, because it functions as an interactive erotic movie, or
a pornographic film, which to distribute is not a sin or crime. The next
question is quite obvious to ask, whether the enjoyment of sexually explicit
content on the Internet is an individual crime or not. From a pragmatic point
of view, the issue of whether it is detrimental to an individual's life, causing
trauma, addiction or any disadvantage to the sexual content provider, it must
be said that no, as long as it has no distorting effect on normal sexual life.
The internet prostitute as well as the sex-client benefit, and since there can
be no crime of aggression because of the virtual nature of the online sex
business, it also benefits the society. In addition, the risk of sexually
transmitted diseases is also excluded therefore the social security system is
not burdened by the occurrence of a potentially serious infection and their
expensive medical treatment. There is no data available yet on addiction caused
by cyber-porn, so for the time being it has to be concluded that this kind of
virtual prostitution is not really a crime.