Across the world legislators are still unable to answer a question that was asked decades ago George Carlin, the American comedy legend: “Sex is legal. Selling is legal. Why is selling sex illegal?” As they mull over that question, they will also have to contend with mounting scientific evidence that puts the origin of prostitution in the pre-human society and gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “the oldest profession in the world.”
In a 1990 study at Yale University in the United States, researchers taught capuchin monkeys how to use silver discs as money. When the animals had mastered this skill, a male monkey pimp-strolled over to a female one and offered it a disc in exchange for sex. Penguin, chimpanzee and crab-eating macaque females have also been observed to exchange sexual favours with males through direct barter transaction that fits the definition of prostitution in every respect.
According to Maggie McNeill, a retired American call girl who is now a respected prostitution scholar and recognised as such by credible think tanks in the western world, the universal human custom of a male offering a female food as part of courtship (whether in the form of a primitive hunter bringing her a kill or a modern man taking her to dinner) “may also descend from the ancient food-for-sex transaction; it is merely more thoroughly disguised by ritual than prostitution is.
Another exact parallel can be seen in the fact that male chimps who share meat with females even when they aren’t looking for sex (that is, wealthy, generous ones) mate more often and with a better selection than those who are poor and/or stingy.”
If it is really true that humans are descended from primates, some embarrassing genetic baggage may still be hard to shake off but Botswana’s penal code explicitly outlaws sexual commerce.
The country inherited its prostitution laws from the United Kingdom which, until the 19th century, had no fundamental problem with this practice. McNeill’s contention is that up until the Victorian Era, it was almost universally understood that many working-class women and a sizeable number of those in higher classes would accept money for sex. Then, she asserts, it was “impossible to draw a bright, clear line between behaviours that constituted ‘prostitution’ and those (such as concubinage, mistresshood, and political marriage) which did not despite their often-mercenary basis.” Shocking though this assertion may be to some, McNeill is not adding anything new to the historical record of scholarship on this issue because this view has been publicly expressed centuries earlier. Eighteenth century British feminist and author, Mary Wollstonecraft, described marrying into money as “legalised prostitution.” Here at home, Sesonke Botswana, a commercial sex rights lobby group, has minted cellphone-use language to characterise such phenomenon: “pre-paid prostitution” is the one that this article addresses while “post-paid prostitution” is the one Wollstonecraft describes.
McNeill suggests that as the Victorian Era dawned, a new idea began to take hold of European minds: “If science could perfect Man’s tools and techniques, why couldn’t the same process be applied to Mankind itself? The immediate result of turning (pseudo-)scientific inquiry upon sex was that taking money for it was no longer considered merely something that “unladylike” or “sinful” women did for a living or extra income; instead, the “prostitute” was defined into existence as a specific type of woman, separate and distinct from other women.”
This was when the criminalisation of prostitution began. As the Canadian Supreme Court recently demonstrated in a challenge of the country’s prostitution laws by women in the sex trade, some of this criminalisation is misguided. Like Section 155 of Botswana’s penal code, Canadian law punishes everyone who lives on the avails of prostitution. In its judgement, the Supreme Court found that this provision is “overbroad” – goes too far and interferes with some conduct that bears no connection to its objective.
“The law punishes everyone who lives on the avails of prostitution without distinguishing between those who exploit prostitutes (for example, controlling and abusive pimps) and those who could increase the safety and security of prostitutes (for example, legitimate drivers, managers, or bodyguards). It also includes anyone involved in business with a prostitute, such as accountants or receptionists. In these ways, the law includes some conduct that bears no relation to its purpose of preventing the exploitation of prostitutes. The living on the avails provision is therefore overbroad,” the court said in its judgement.
In a 9-0 decision, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin ruled that while parliament has the power to regulate against public nuisances – like prostitution, that should not be at “the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes.” Consonant with the constitutional separation-of-powers arrangement, the court gave the Canadian parliament one year to come up with new legislation should it choose to do so.
One argument often made against prostitution is that it is degrading and therefore morally unacceptable. The contrarian view is that this argument is logically fallacious because degrading jobs like cleaning toilets are deemed to be morally acceptable. Generally, most employment involves some attack on human dignity. Here in Botswana, there have been media reports of bosses going on national tours to berate, humiliate and insult their juniors. McNeill & Co. go farther to state that the nature of the workplace is such that employees make principal use some part of their body: the lawyer his brain, the boxer his hands, the spy his eyes and ears, the dancer his legs, the black South African twerker her derriere, the masseuse her hands, the professional perfume smeller his nose, the brewery taster his tongue, the career Don Juan his abs and the sniper, his trigger finger. Likewise, the sex worker uses her lady flower in the workplace.
Rubbing religion in the faces of prostitutes is self-limiting in that some of them are non-believers and at a time when it held sway in the western world, the Roman Catholic Church officially tolerated prostitution. St. Augustine, one of the most important Church fathers and early Christian theologians, wrote, “Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society.” Additionally and going back across time, no system of government has ever displayed any real talent to suppress human lust.
In some instances, sex workers fall victim to clients who physically abuse them. Some cite this as reason why sexual commerce should be disallowed. McNeill disagrees.
“Violence occurs both in prostitution and in the family, but no one is advocating abolishing families because some of them experience violence. Violence occurs in prostitution, but this does not mean that prostitution is, in itself, a violent institution any more than domestic violence renders families inherently violent,” she argues, adding that forcing sex workers underground only increases the potential for risks.
Those in McNeill’s camp say that the government should allow a commercial structure for prostitution and extend labour protections for its practitioners. Sesonke Botswana wants the government to normalise prostitution’s economic transactions and extend to it, the same protections that are part and parcel of the legal job market.
Despite its length, the arm of the law almost always fails to reach the rich. Beginning November last year, the police have been sweeping the streets, making prostitution arrests in a campaign that will last six months. At a time that the government wants to eradicate poverty, the current campaign targets poor women who peddle their wares on the streets while upscale providers at indoor venues, who use non-traditional marketing channels, continue to operate without any hindrance.
Notwithstanding the fact that, as the Canadian Supreme Court said, prostitution is a weighty matter that involves the health, safety and lives of people, there is something that always tickles the funny bone when the subject is broached. When he injected himself in a past public debate about prostitution by suggesting that trading should be brought out the shadows, former president Festus Mogae caused a swirl of controversy and excited casual response from some commentators. Mogae is himself in a weird position with regard to that proposition and has not provided any effective response for why he did not legalise prostitution he was in official power. However, for an establishment figure, his comments were an inversion of traditional rhetoric of the powers-that-be.
In an emphatically argued retort (and obvious attempt to score some brownie points), an opposition politician chastised the former president for wanting to normalise the abnormal. The former was quoted in one newspaper as wondering whether Mogae would patronise the services of prostitutes himself. Either this was deep-blue political humour or revelation that the opposition man has a serious knowledge deficit with regard to the correlation between public policy and personal interest. It was also revelation that even at a time his party is preparing to assume power some day, he cannot offer a useful answer to Carlin’s question.
