Majda Hrženjak
Prostitution as a Forced Answer to the Mystery of Female Desire and an Incomplete Picture
Prostitution is about sexuality - and sexuality is a matter of love and politics. The following article discusses how a seemingly intimate and personal matter, such as sexuality, can be defined by some objective social facts. The present-day neoliberal and European rhetoric defines prostitution as an economic activity. The Provision of the European Court of Justice characterizes it as an independent economic or profitable activity, 'in which the performer grants the request of the client in return for pay and without producing or exchanging material goods'.[1] Prostitution is therefore a matter of supply and demand. Despite what we may think about such a definition, we can use it to reflect on prostitution, and to find structural points which constitute the demand for prostitution and enable its supply.
To understand the demand for sexual services, we must first take a step from the general understanding of human sexuality as something natural and related to romantic heterosexual love. The questions we pose are as follows: In what manner does culture organize and structure human sexuality? why in such a manner? How does this affect the Subject and what are its consequences for the asymmetric construction of gender roles? moreover, what are its consequences for prostitution and the gender structure of the phenomenon of prostitution? To answer these questions, we shall examine Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, Freud's psychoanalysis and the feminist receptions of both. The aim of the article is to provide some insights into understanding certain aspects of prostitution and to identify some of the possible structural points that enable it. It is not our aim to evaluate prostitution or to search for ways to regulate and decrease it.
Lévi-Strauss's 'Kinship Combinatorics'
In his 1949 PhD dissertation The Elementary Structures of Kinship,[2] Lévi-Strauss sought to prove that all fundamental kinship institutions in the taboo of incest express the principle of reciprocity, and as such form the backbone of society. The incest prohibition is cross-culturally universal, i.e. present in all cultures, albeit in a variable way, since it is expressed differently in every culture. For instance, in some cultures a man is ordered to sleep with his sister but prohibited to sleep with his seven times removed cousin. In a different culture, the incest prohibition means a prohibition for a man to sleep with his sister but an order for her mother's brother, i.e. her uncle, to deflower her before her marriage. The incest prohibition is commonsensically thought to be natural: nature is supposed to prevent the same genetic material from mixing since this would lead into the deformation of the species. Yet, if the incest taboo were the consequence of a natural law, the same rule would apply for all cultures, and would refer to an aversion to sex with one’s genetically closest relatives. Anthropological field studies provide an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
Even before Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss in his work The Gift[3] described the principle of reciprocity as a total social fact, on which integration and solidarity between individuals and social groups are based. Lévi-Strauss interpreted the Mauss reciprocity principle through the anthropological concept of the law of exogamy. This law, as stated by Lévi-Strauss, does not refer only to the obligatory marriage outside one's clan,[4] but also to the prohibition of sexual intercourse with one's mother, daughter and sister, because these women are to be given into marriage to another man. Subsequently men acquire the right and access to other women. The other side of the coin of the law of exogamy is therefore the taboo of incest, which is more of a requirement for a reciprocal exchange of women between two groups of men than a prohibition for men to sleep with their female relatives. Compared to exchanging material gifts, the gift of exchanging women, a ritual in traditional societies,[5] has more radical consequences because it does not only establish the relations of reciprocity but also familial relations. The result of the prohibition of incest is the division of the totality of possibilities of sexual choices into two categories: the category of prohibited sexual partners, and the category of allowed sexual partners. Consequently the prohibition of incest also means the domination of the social aim of exogamy over biological sexuality.
By postulating a theory of the prohibition of incest as a foundation of culture, Lévi-Strauss also brought to the fore the importance of sexuality and the division of humans according to their gender as a structuring principle of culture.[6] He defined some general rules of organization of human sexuality, which simultaneously serve to establish and maintain culture and cultural order. These are: the incest taboo, obligatory heterosexuality and asymmetric distribution of gender roles (the male being the subject, the gift-giver, active; the female being the object, the gift, passive).[7] These three principles function in contemporary societies as well. Arranged marriages may be rare nowadays – they exist only in certain circles but more for endogamous than exogamous reasons (maintaining a certain status, accumulating property, capital and the like) – however a kind of mating combinatorics, as we shall show in the following sections, still exists.
Sexuality and Love
If we look at these concepts from a different, more experiential point of view, the question arises whether sexuality and love are one and the same thing. Do we really sleep with the people we love? Even though we would like to give an affirmative answer to this question, a more careful consideration inevitably leads to a negative one. An obvious example is prostitution, in which love and sexuality are separated, since the act between the prostitute and the client is usually a loveless sexual act. The following examples, however, prove otherwise. For instance, we love our parents, children, friends, (sometimes) teachers, but we do not sleep with them. The unwritten cultural rules and taboos allow us (or even prescribe to us) to love the ones close to us, but prohibit us from sleeping with them. On the other hand, they prohibit us from loving a prostitute, but allow us to sleep with them. This means that culture, through taboos and prohibitions, makes love and sexuality completely incompatible, and that it is sexuality that is problematic. No one is interested in who we really love – this is an intimate matter, which has no wider social consequences. However, if our love is also consummated, matters become seriously complicated and have certain consequences. With a hint of exaggeration, it can be said that every time we sleep with an available partner, we are reinforcing the existing social order, and every time we sleep with a prohibited partner, we are disrupting the existing social order in the sense of rending certain established social relations and social networks. In order not to disrupt this order to a too large an extent – which can be rather tiring – it is perhaps safer and more rational to go to a prostitute. A prostitute is in most cases not a part of the client's social network, therefore, a sexual act with a prostitute has no wider consequences, especially if the affair remains a secret. In the sphere of prostitution, anonymity and discretion are guaranteed; secrecy is a common characteristic of prostitution. Both the prostitute and the client remain anonymous.
On the other hand, culture (in principle and a priori) unites sexuality and love in wedding, marriage and partnership. Marriage actually means that we leave the circle of the ones close to us, the ones we love but are not supposed to sleep with, and find someone virtually among strangers, someone whom we are able to sleep with and love at the same time. As a rule, this partnership is heterosexual, exclusive (we are allowed to sleep with and love this one partner only), long-term and centred on reproduction, i.e. the procreation and the upbringing of children. A difficult task, which very often fails. The requirement to choose only among heterosexual partners, who are also to be exclusive and long-term ones, results in sexuality becoming a relatively rare commodity since all other partners become unavailable to us and, at the same time, once in a partnership, we become a prohibited object for others. In relation to human sexuality, a prohibition is constitutive, it enables and encourages it. This fact may explain the testimonies of prostitutes about their most frequent clients being happily married men.
Sexuality is therefore a rare commodity, and as such it is in great demand. And, as they put it in the marketing jargon: where there is demand, there will be supply. The fact that procreation is an important function of partnership can make sexuality rather monotonous since it narrows the choice of otherwise possible sexual practices. The variety of sexual practices is once again a market niche filled by prostitutes. They claim that after happily married men, the most frequent clients are individuals who are unable to find a sexual partner for specific types of sexual practices.[8] Furthermore, clients can be found among foreigners physically separated from their partners, and those who have, for some reason, been excluded from the 'kinship combinatorics' or have made a conscious decision not to enter it.
In this way, prostitution really is the other side of the coin of the law or marriage. But not because monogamy is unnatural or because long-term partnerships kill sexuality, as is commonly believed. It is because the systems of marriage not only limit the choice of sexual partners (no relatives, outside of some close social relations, heterosexual choice of partners, and so on) but also narrow the universe of possible sexual partners (those already married are prohibited). In addition, any violations of the rules regulating sexuality – these rules are mostly a part of relatives systems, i.e. the systems of marriage – bring about a destabilization of the individual's whole social network.
The question that arises here is why it is predominantly men that contribute to the demand for prostitution as a rare commodity. Why do women do it to a substantially lower degree? Why is there no demand for male heterosexual prostitution? According to the rules of 'kinship combinatorics', both genders are in a similar, unenviable situation. How do we then explain the gender structure of the phenomenon of prostitution, which also manifests itself as an incomprehensible characteristic in the light of the declarative freedom and equality of sexes in contemporary societies? Despite the increase in child, transvestite and male prostitution (the latter for predominantly male clients), it is still possible to claim that the supply of sexual services is provided mostly by women, while the demand for sexual services and the organization of the larger part of the sex industry is mostly in the domain of men. Why is prostitution gender-structured? Why do men not decide to enter the sex trade in greater numbers and why do women not appear as clients or consumers of sexual services in greater numbers?[9]
Freud's Description of Female Sexuality and the Mystery of Female Desire
On the basis of Freud's psychoanalysis, some possible answers to the question why there are no women on the demand side of prostitution can be derived. Freud's psychoanalysis can be described as a theory of reproduction of relatives systems on the level of the individual, and as a testimony to what consequences are borne by the individual facing the rules regulating sexuality in their society. Psychoanalysis is also a theory about the way the androgynous human young are transformed into boys and girls, men and women. Without going into too much detail, it can be said that relatives systems demand a division of gender roles and that they contain a series of rules and taboos that regulate sexuality. Freud's famous concept of Oedipus complex analyzes the division of gender roles and the assimilation of rules and taboos regulating sexuality that apply for relatives systems. What we like to call 'compulsive heterosexuality' in feminism,[10] is considered to be the final product of these processes.
To simplify, within the Oedipus complex, the child absorbs the social regulation of sexuality on two levels: on the level of object choice and on the level of erogenous zones organization. The points of highest sensitivity on the body of a small child are not yet organized into erogenous zones, so the child's body is full of sensations, sensitivity and pleasure, which manifests itself as discomfort. The disciplining of the body, which occurs in the processes of socialization, leads to the command of these sensations, their localization and focusing. The sensitivity and pleasure are completely removed from a large part of the body, however they remain located mainly in the erogenous zones, mostly in the parts of the body that have a procreative function. During this process something occurs that relocates sexuality from the body to the mind. As someone once said, the brain is the most important erogenous zone: merely thinking about a garter on a woman's leg, for instance, becomes more sexually stimulating than an actual physical point on the body. Prostitutes know this all too well, and are thus appropriately clad.
The primary object for children of both sexes and at the same time the object of imaginary identification is the mother. This object, which also functions as a sort of a primary matrix for all other choices of sexual objects, is non-functional since it is incestuous and since the object is in most cases no longer available. With girls, an additional problem arises: the initial object choice is a homosexual one. This is the reason why the child must abandon the primary object.[11] Freud wrote extensively about the traumatic nature of this abandonment, which does not occur on its own as a result of some natural, automatic psychological maturation but under the external pressure of the process of socialization.
With boys, the core of this pressure is centred on the transition from the primary imaginary identification with the mother into the symbolic identification with the father. The object choice pressure must above all ensure the choice of a substitute object of the same type, i.e. of another woman. With girls, the situation is far from analogous; in fact, it is closer to being the reverse. The initial identification with the mother is not disturbing; however, what is problematic is the matrix of the substitute object choice, the substitute object being a sexual object. If a girl is to resolve the Oedipus complex in the standard way required by the society (i.e. if she is to establish a non-incestuous heterosexual relationship with an available partner), she must establish a radical discontinuity with the pre-Oedipal logic of the object choice. Not only must she abandon the mother as the object, she must now also choose an object of a different sex. This procedure is far more complicated than with boys, and is possible only on the basis of extreme pressures, which cause a radical desexualization of girls in the Oedipal stage. Freud reports about the development of sexual inhibitions such as shame, disgust, resentment, about a stronger tendency to sexual repression, and so on.[12]
Thus, with girls, the result of the socialization pressures to abandon the primary object brings about desexualization. The question to which Freud gave no persuasive answer is in what way it is possible to libidinally motivate a girl to choose a man as the sexual object and by doing so fulfil the social requirement for a heterosexual choice of sexual object. In the realm of this question, the mystery of female desire arises: what does a woman want?
Prostitution as a Forced Answer to the Mystery of Female Desire
In this light it is clear that women are not libidinally motivated to recruit themselves into prostitution – neither on the demand nor on the supply side. What is it then that makes them so active on the side of the supply? At least two answers can be provided.
The first can be derived from the increasingly established confluence of the terms 'prostitution' and 'women trafficking' in the term 'involuntary prostitution', which without a doubt leads to criminalization and demonization of prostitution. In this type of discourse, prostitution is an entirely involuntary activity of women, into which they are coerced by means of physical and psychological aggression. Women are forced into prostitution by pimps, but mostly by organized crime trafficking with women in utterly violent ways: by drugging, raping, beating, torturing, intimidating them, etc. Deaths among these women are not uncommon.[13] At the same time, clients are also often violent towards prostitutes. There is practically no prostitute[14] who has not been raped while working, who has not been forced into sexual practices which she does not want to perform (an example of such a practice would be unprotected sex), who has not been beaten, kidnapped, robbed or in some way physically or psychologically abused by the client. In any case, the male violence towards prostitutes is an excess – it cannot be merely explained as an instance of a coerced sexual act.