Given that prostitution very well may be the oldest profession, we can't claim that it is the result of "aberrant" behavior. There is something fundamentally human, it would seem, in the desires that drive the market.
That's one of my favorite points in argument to "follow up." Every one of us is born pre-civilized, teeming with the genes of a feral human, and we each must be raised up to conform to modern social norms sufficiently as to be able to function or at least persist in society without everything falling apart. People often resort to our animal instincts to explain contemporary behavior--as you have done with prostitution just now. This is done to varying degrees of correctness or error. In this case I think you're right that there is a strong animal component at work.
However, it's a given that most of our instincts can be overridden by conscious choice. Therefore invoking our primitive past to explain (and sometimes to attempt to justify!) our behavior immediately raises the question of whether, and to what extent, we as contemporary creatures of relative civilization should allow ourselves to express animal instinct in our social behavior.
For example, on this subject but less ambiguous than prostitution itself: Many cultures at least in theory have outlawed rape even though it's obviously an expression--one possible expression among countless more--of human male nature. In other cultures, however, the crime is to
be raped. This contrast, where two sets of cultures take the same animal instinct and assign it very different social values--one of intolerance for the act and one of indulgence in it--illustrates the power of modern humans to decide how much of their animal nature can be permitted or even welcomed into our lives.
Our animal nature affects all walks of life, not just sexuality. With hunger pangs, most cultures have said that it is permissible to eat--though they vary on the degree and kind of food that may be consumed, as well as the settings and times of day where it is appropriate to eat. Very few cultures have allowed that it is permissible to steal food to satisfy one's hunger. The animal behavior is hunger-related, and therefore easy to appreciate, but the social effect of stealing food is to degrade the integrity of ownership and civil order. And so this thievery of food is often outlawed to the point where people routinely starve. Jean Valjean famously stole "a loaf of bread" and got five years for it--a commentary on the price of enforcing property laws over the most basic needs of individuals--but The Law had a point: Stealing disrupts society; the more it is done, the worse the damage. There is a saying in Latin, which in English translates to "What Jupiter may do, the ox may not." In other words, with power and position, comes privilege: the privilege to behave in ways that mundane people may not. Much of our society and many others is built upon the specialized legal thievery by the very privileged, and strict prohibitions on thievery for everyone else. Once again the discrepancy illustrates the power of human will to trump animal instinct, even as it highlights the sheer power of those instincts to compel us: It's not a coincidence that powerful people often resort to decadence of every kind. This is what most of us would do with ourselves, if we could.
Eating, itself, is more widely accepted than thievery because of the inconvenient fact that people will die if they don't eat. All else being equal, no one will die from not having sex or from not stealing what they desire to possess. But we all gotta eat. The Christians and others certainly tried to the utmost to marginalize that reality, in the Christians' case establishing the "sin" of gluttony--first as ideological response to Roman excess and quickly thereafter as a pragmatic instrument of social control. (Christianity's second truest source of power is its profession of austerity. Food, like sex, are among the strongest threats to Christ, because the animal impulses associated with them are so thoroughly present in the lives of almost everyone, and the thought of satisfying these impulses is a powerful motivator of behavior--particularly in the absence of education and social stability: a condition which has been history's norm. In Christianity the lure of eternal paradise is presented to the unwary, and the promise is made made to these individuals that, if they will live severely in this life, they will have every treasure in the next. Since, historically, the material quality of life had been pretty severe already for most people, it was easy enough for most of them to accept the offer. To entice them further, and persuade anyone still on the fence, the threat of damnation was added in to exploit people's fear. In this way austerity measures were embraced and social control established, and, thereafter in Christian lands, people would routinely act against their own interests in the name of treasures to come after their own demise. Brilliant. Diabolical.) The example of hunger itself, and eating to satisfy it, is an example of an animal instinct that, while it can be tightly controlled,
must be accepted in all societies. Even prisoners scheduled for execution are fed...at least in the liberal democracies. Such impulses are in the minority; sex is not among them.
Anyhow, my purpose here is not to actually try and answer the question of whether and to what extent we should allow our animal instincts into our societies, but merely to point out that the question is
so valid, and
so relevant, that anyone who invokes the contribution of animal instinct to our contemporary behavior, without explicitly pointing out that we have both the means and the obligation to exercise judgment when it comes to the premise that our "nature" will or should drive our behavior, is guilty of a serious omission.
However, I will go so far as to answer the question, for myself, when it comes to prostitution in particular: I agree with you that there is a strong animal component at work here, but, no, I do not think it should be accommodated. In other words, I do not consider it to be an acceptable premise that "because some people are compelled so seek out sex in exchange for money (or other valuables), so therefore should they be able to do so legally." If there is to be legal prostitution, it must be justified on other grounds. Why am I against indulging male animal nature in this instance? Well, in part I think this way because I know no one will die from not having sex (wherein you can see my underlying judgment that society's default should be
not to indulge animal nature solely on the grounds of impulse power, which itself is a judgment against the premise that our animal impulses are self-justifying), and in part because it does not strike me as sufficient in itself that one group's impulses should be accommodated when considering the exploitation, abuse, and exploitation which are routinely inflicted upon the practitioners of the trade. No one will die from not having sex, but people do die, and suffer, within this industry.
As I indicated upthread, I prefer to focus on those who buy sex rather than those who sell it, and if anything is going to be criminalized let it be the buying. Should it actually be criminalized, though? Well, as I suggested in the topic post, I'm still undecided on that one. Just because I would make a decision not to accommodate male nature doesn't mean that other people's desire for paid sex is going to go away, and it also doesn't mean that there aren't those "other grounds" of justification to which I referred. Which would produce the better outcome for society: legalization or illegalization? I don't know. Probably the former, but I don't know. What I do know is that most things which are illegal to buy (or sell) are illegal because they cause explicit harm or sow disorder, whereas sex does neither--at least on the innate level--which influences my thinking. Nevertheless the nature of the commoditization of sex routinely causes considerable harm to those selling it, not because sex is supposed to be "sacred," but because prostitutes rarely are the masters of their business, and, as I said, are subjected to extensive exploitation, abuse, and social ostracization. That weighs heavily on my thinking. Would these problems be reduced if prostitution were fully legalized and more closely monitored? Again, probably. What about society as whole? Would a legal prostitution industry improve or degrade the quality and health of a people? I don't know. What I
suspect is that we are all caught up in Abrahamic sexual mores and that a more enlightened society would consider this a nonissue, providing for a full and robust sex industry that included the buying and selling of sex, as a routine matter of satisfying market demand. (Of course, this uses the assumption that sex can be completely divested from any form of relationship between the congressional partners. I know what the devout think about that, and while I dismiss their arguments, I do have a few reservations of my own...not out of judgment but of ignorance. What is the psychological gravity of sex, in the context of a society where sex is not taught as a sacred concept? These questions may have to wait a long time to be answered empirically. If it should come out that sex cannot be fully divorced from relationship-building, then I suppose a more enlightened society's sex industry would include rapport as a part of sex. That would be interesting.)
I suspect none of this is a surprise to you, Though, and that you don't disagree with my main thesis. Still, as I said, I love to make this point whenever somebody says or implies that, because animal nature
can drive our behavior, it therefore
should be accommodated. Don't take it as directed at you personally; I offer these thoughts to the gallery.
