Come yourself to me, and in this enclosure we will fall into each other’s arms. – Phryne
I mentioned in yesterday’s column that one of my heroines was Phryne (390-330 BCE), the hetaera of classical Athens, whom I first read about in the paperback version of The Book of Lists when I was 13 or 14. Though it is not difficult to find information on this great lady online, I felt it only right to compose my own tribute to the woman who was one of my earliest examples of the truth that degradation is something jealous people try to impose on whores rather than something intrinsic to our profession.
Any discussion of Phryne herself is pointless without a brief introduction to the world in which she lived. By the 4th century BCE the ancient tradition of sacred prostitution was a mere shadow of its former self; the practical Greeks had largely replaced the whore-priestesses with exceptionally beautiful slave-girls given to the temples as offerings, and though these sacred harlots were honored as representatives of Aphrodite they were still technically slaves. Though religion remained very important to the Greeks it was no longer the all-encompassing institution it had previously been, especially in progressive Athens; the old aristocrats had fallen out of power, and the temples were increasingly under state control. This was due to the birth of democracy, which was quickly followed by that of her bastard child the professional politician; then, as now, power-hungry individuals were willing to do anything to increase their personal power.
One of these early politicians was Solon (638-558 BCE), whom nearly a hundred generations of male historians have lauded as wise and credited with helping to usher in the Golden Age of Athens. Female students of history are not so quick to praise him, however; Solon established a set of laws intended to curtail the relatively high status of women in Greek society, thus making a lie of Athenian talk of “freedom” and “democracy”. Athenian wives were denied education and public life; like women in modern Islamic countries, they were segregated to their own quarters in Athenian homes and not permitted to go out except to religious ceremonies, and even then they were closely guarded by male family members. They were not even allowed to do their own shopping; this task was performed by slaves. Wives and daughters were condemned to toil and drudgery, discouraged from speaking and handed down as chattel from their fathers to their husbands to their sons.
Given this grim regime, it is certainly no wonder that many women rebelled, as illustrated in this passage from Geoffrey Grigson’s The Goddess of Love:
A girl disenchanted with spinning and weaving and all the chores which withered and wasted the flower of a girl’s life, made a bonfire of her gear outside the door of her house and chose garlands and music and the sweet life instead; she became a courtesan and in her new career naturally called on Aphrodite: “Cyprian, you shall have ten per cent of all I earn,/Just find me work, and you shall have your cut.”
This is still true of many whores today, but for “spinning and weaving” substitute “office work and the rat race.” It should come as no surprise, then, that many of us still worship an aspect of Aphrodite.
But Solon was not to be so easily foiled; he responded to the explosion in secular prostitution by establishing state brothels staffed with (mostly Asian) slave girls captured in war or purchased on the open market. Solon set a very low price (one obol, equivalent to ferry fare or the cost of three liters of cheap wine) on these girls so as to drive down the market value on the services of independent whores, and the lives of these poor captives was even more wretched than that of the Athenian wife; they were confined to cramped cells and saw no profit from the Aphrodite-only-knows how many low-class men they were required to service each day. It was no doubt because of these horrific conditions that wealthier men still preferred to hire streetwalkers, so they continued to thrive despite competition from the public brothels; Solon responded to this by outlawing streetwalking, so the girls were forced to bribe the police with money and sexual favors in order to avoid arrest. These Ancient Greek cops, like those of 18th century France, were therefore the forerunners of pimps as I discussed in my column of July 27th.
After Solon’s death persecution of streetwalkers declined, and in many other Greek city-states there never were any such laws. And so conditions were ripe for the rise of the hetaerae (courtesans), the very first call girls. They were independent, educated and shrewd, and many of them became fabulously wealthy. Alone among Greek women they belonged to no one and could even own property for themselves; they went about in public as they pleased, even attending the theater and other venues forbidden to “virtuous” women. Some of them even retired by establishing gynoecia, schools for the education of young courtesans. The services of the hetaerae were even sought by kings, philosophers and poets; one of them, Aspasia, was the mistress of Solon’s later successor Pericles (495-429 BCE). This, then, was the world in which Phryne lived.
She was born Mnesarete in the city of Thespiae in Boetia; Phryne (meaning “toad”) was her stage name and referred to the fact that she had a yellowish complexion. This does not appear to have detracted from her beauty, however, which was so great that she became the model for several contemporary paintings and sculpture, including a statue of Aphrodite by her client Praxiteles. This statue was purchased by the city of Cnidus after the city of Cos (who had originally commissioned it) objected to its being nude, and became such a popular tourist attraction that the city was able to pay off its entire debt.
Phryne’s beauty did not only make money for others, however; she became so fabulously wealthy that she even offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes after they were destroyed by Alexander the Great in 336 BCE, on the condition that the words “destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan” be inscribed upon them. The prudish government of Thebes refused her, just as the modern government of Nevada refuses to tax brothels on the grounds that it would “legitimize” them. Though her regular price was high, she adjusted it depending on how she felt about the client; since she considered the King of Lydia to be a tyrant she charged him a ridiculous price (which he paid and then recovered by a special tax on his subjects), but she gave herself to the philosopher Diogenes free of charge because she admired his mind. And when the Athenian leader Demosthenes offered her a sum equal to the annual salary of a regular workman, she turned him down cold; this may have been a contributing factor to her legal troubles described below.
Eventually, she became such a celebrity that she went about veiled so that only those who paid could look upon her; however, at the festival of Poseidon in Eleusis, she stripped completely and waded into the sea in full view of everyone as an offering to the god. The event impressed the spectators so that it inspired several works of art, including the Aphrodite Anadyomene of Apelles. The politicians, however, were impressed in a different way; they were jealous of her power, wealth and popularity and so used the occasion as an excuse to arraign her on the trumped-up charge of “profaning” the festival by her offering. In those days, blasphemy was a very serious charge; if convicted, she would have been executed. She was defended by the renowned lawyer Hypereides, who was one of her clients, but despite his skill Phryne appeared doomed by the prejudice of the court; after all, she was independent, proud, educated, outspoken, powerful and wealthy, the diametric opposite of everything a “virtuous” Athenian woman was supposed to be. As a last effort, Hypereides tore off her gown to display her naked body to the judges, crying ““How could a festival in honor of the gods be desecrated by beauty which they themselves bestowed?” The desperate gambit succeeded; the Ancient Greeks viewed physical beauty as a gift of Aphrodite, and Phryne’s figure was so perfect the judges had no choice but to accept it as a sign of divine favor. Since they dared not risk incurring the anger of the love goddess, the judges were forced to acquit the famous courtesan, but they were so unhappy about their failure to make an example of her that the “nudity defense” was henceforth specifically banned in Athenian courts.
Contrary to what some male historians would like to believe, the hetaerae did not regard each other as rivals but as a sisterhood, as evidenced by this excerpt from a letter of thanks written to Hypereides by the hetaera Bacchis soon after Phryne’s acquittal: “We courtesans are grateful to you, and each one of us is just as grateful as Phryne. The suit, to be sure…involved Phryne alone, but it meant danger for us all, for…if we…face prosecution for impiety, it’s better for us to have done with this way of living…you have not merely saved a good mistress for yourself, but have put the rest of us in a mood to reward you on her account.” History does not record whether the ladies rewarded him in the manner implied, but he and others like him soon had many cases, for the Athenian government and those of other city-states (under Theban and later Macedonian domination) began to prosecute the hetaerae more maliciously and much more often, forcing them to form some of the earliest recorded corporations in order to keep experienced defense lawyers on permanent retainer. Less than a decade after Phryne’s death the Golden Age of Greece gave way to the Hellenistic Era, and courtesans did not again have it so good until the height of the Roman Empire over 300 years later.
Yet Phryne’s story survived the ages, and her legendary beauty has continued to inspire not only visual artists but also literary ones: Baudelaire wrote two poems about her, the composer Saint-Saëns wrote an opera about her (Phryne, 1893), and several modern writers have penned novels about her. And I’m certainly not the only modern whore who feels a strong sense of sisterhood and connection to her; like her, we know what it is like to be vilified by “moral” women who lack the strength and imagination to live as we do, and persecuted by powerful men who employ our services, then offer us up as sacrificial lambs whenever it’s politically expedient to do so.
It seems to me the story of Phryne boils down to this: A bunch of powerhungry moralists and wouldbe dictators tried to establish for themselves via state intervention control over peoples’ personal lives. Only when outed for their hypocrisy were thes megalomaniacs even checked for an instant. Kudos to Phryne for standing up for herself where I’m sure others were too intimidated to do so. Ay Dios Mio. As things change, so they stay the same.
I actually included that phrase in the first draft of the column! It’s so, so true.
When do girls like to be nasty?
It depends on how you mean the word. I tend to use it in these senses (source Dictionary.com):
1. physically filthy; disgustingly unclean: a nasty pigsty of a room.
2. offensive to taste or smell; nauseating.
3. offensive; objectionable: a nasty habit.
4. vicious, spiteful, or ugly: a nasty dog; a nasty rumor.
5. bad or hard to deal with, encounter, undergo, etc.; dangerous; serious: a nasty cut; a nasty accident.
6. very unpleasant or disagreeable: nasty weather
In which case the answer for most girls would be “never”. But I suspect you’re using definition 7:
7. morally filthy; obscene; indecent: a nasty word.
In which case the answer for a good wife would be “whenever her husband wants her to be”, and for a working girl “whenever she’s paid to be.”
I came to a hard stop here on the use of the word “nasty,” probably due to the connotation even with your #7 definition. It reminds me of a Typical Guy Moment I had with a friend once, when in commenting on the laid-back, fairly soft-spoken wife of a mutual acquaintance, he commented, “I’d bet there’s a dirty girl in there somewhere.” I knew what he meant – and agreed that it was certainly possible – but words like “dirty’ and “nasty” didn’t seem to capture what we meant. I know that was my hangup on connotation.
Heinlein (one of the few sci-fi writers available in my semi-rural public library as a kid) colored my views on sex quite a bit. (You and I are more or less of an age.) And those librarians would have pulled him off the shelves had they thought he wrote anything other than rockets and John Wayne In Space! I used to feel guilty sneaking into the “Teen Corner” of the library to check those books out when I was 10 or 11, but I was always tall for my age.
Anyway, Marse Bob certainly didn’t think of any of that as “dirty” or “nasty” and I never really did either. It should be lovely, and there may be fetishes that I might think of as literally “dirty” (coprophilia and the like; not my thing) but an appreciation for and enjoyment of sexuality itself never seemed “nasty” to me.
‘In which case the answer for most girls would be “never”. But I suspect you’re using definition 7:
7. morally filthy; obscene; indecent: a nasty word.
In which case the answer for a good wife would be “whenever her husband wants her to be”, and for a working girl “whenever she’s paid to be.”’
So the motivation then would always be external?
What else would it be? Women don’t generally like to be unpleasant, indecent or objectionable, though men seem to take a perverse pleasure in it at times. Some teenage girls certainly act in this way to get attention, but there again the motivator is external.
Wow.
????????
If I get Scroch’s drift, maybe the question could be paraphrased: doesn’t a woman ever want to be ‘sexually nasty’ for her own pleasure, just because it feels good to do so? Is it always motivated by some man’s desire to see her like that?
And in this case, isn’t this desire to be what the man wants a little… submissive? (Cf. the old Freudian-based theory of the ‘natural submissiveness/masochism’ of women.)
Anytime one tries to interpret a phenomenon by alien standards, the results are typically confusing.
What do you mean? I’m not sure I follow your thought here.
Trying to interpret female behavior through a male lens will result in garbage every time.
Sigh… I could point out the epistemological problems this claim would raise, but maybe it’s better to mention that this very claim is frequent in neofeminists’ prose (cf. the term ‘mansplainer’); I’ve had it directed at me by them more than once.
I don’t mean a male mind, Asehpe, but rather the lens of male behavior. Female behavior simply can’t be adequately described in terms of male behavior. 🙂
“When do girls like to be nasty?”
There are billions of girls in this world, so to give one answer for all would be an overgeneralization.
“Anytime one tries to interpret a phenomenon by alien standards, the results are typically confusing.”
That is too funny 😀
…But it’s got me thinking.
I know that many times, not all the time, men get rich & famous & drive hot cars because you can’t get beautiful women to have sex with you any other way. As Chris Rock says, we’d live in a cardboard box if women would still fuck us. But on the female side…
1) Are you saying unequivocally that there would be no porn, no ‘Girls Gone Wild,’ no prostitution, if it weren’t for *men?*
2) Following that train of thought, how exactly DO women want to act if divorced from the desire or need to attract male attention, as I know that’s not your sole motivation for living.
“What else would it be? Women don’t generally like to be unpleasant, indecent or objectionable, though men seem to take a perverse pleasure in it at times.”
Yeah but…that doesn’t account for lesbians. It also doesn’t account for bitchy women, who DO seem to revel in being unpleasant. Also, some feminists quite often are objectionable.
Maybe I’m doing the alien mind thing again, but I too have a hard time believing that woman doesn’t have decadent sexual fantasies as a part of her romantic ones because *she’d enjoy being sexed up that way,* not just because we would like to do it to her.
Want to know what women who don’t care about attracting men look and act like? Just look at nuns and radical lesbians. 🙁
Le ouch. 😐
Also, I think Scorch didn’t mean radical lesbians; how about lipstick lesbians?
Also, what is the function of the clitoris again? Is it important by itself to women, or only as part of the man-attracting/man-pleasing process?
You’re attempting to reduce things past the point where your conclusions will be useful. “Lipstick lesbians” are really bisexual women who are practicing lesbians; radical lesbians hate men. Big difference. And talking about the clitoris and female orgasm is nonsense in this context; I’m sure the ice cream in the hand would still TASTE good, but that’s simply not enough for women.
‘Lipstick lesbians are really bisexual women who are practicing (sic) lesbians; radical lesbians hate men’. What a complete and utter berk.
You’re right; I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that. Probably rushed on a bad day.
But my entire point was simply that it would taste good, not that it is sufficient, every time, for women to want it. That’s enough for my other points, too. Women don’t have to be obsessed by sex (so they’d do stupid things for it) in order to want it.
Maggie, it doesn’t seem to me that we disagree on any facts here; only (perhaps) on underlying explanations. It’s the “social constructivists have gotten me tired of this topic” thing, right? So let’s drop the topic here. If someday you want to compare ideas and/or facts about the topic — without any presuppositions about “women being just like men” or any (neo/rad)fem context or agendas in the background, we can go back to it — I find it fascinating. But it’s not worth an endless thread of disagreeing opinion statements (‘yes it is!’ ‘no it isn’t!’ ‘yes it is!’…). Deal? 🙂
Sounds good. 🙂
Or, if I can put the question differently: does the female sexual drive (there is, after all, some testosterone in women) serve no purpose in itself?
Is female sexual pleasure irrelevant to the woman, as long as men are still attracted to her? In this case, why are there vibrators and dildos at all?
Could women simply discard any sexual pleasure — as long as they still attracted men’s attention by pretending to have them (and then getting their relationship/companionship/love needs satisfied)? Would this be better for women, actually (no need to worry about testosterone effects in their bodies)?
Somehow that reminds me of the traditional, old-fashioned vision of sex in a marriage: it’s only for the man. ‘It costs me so little, and he likes it so much.’ ‘Men like it, we women don’t, so we just let them have it.’ Is that all?
You really need to remember my analogy; make “ice cream in the hand” your mantra. 🙂
I remember your analogy, Maggie. In fact, let me try to rephrase everything I said in terms of ice-cream, and you can tell me how off base you think I am. 🙂
You’re saying ice-cream in the hand is disgusting; you only want ice-cream in the appropriate context.
I am saying there is such a thing as ice-cream. And that women want it. Given the appropriate context. Just like men.
The difference is in the kinds of contexts that make women (or men) want ice-cream — rather than in the nature of ice-cream itself. Both men and women understand that ice-cream is tasty. To men, that’s mostly enough — they need little additional context.
In other words, there is a basic, interal similarity (ice-cream, and the fact we find it tasty) that is modified by other elements (different testosterone/estrogene levels, socio-cultral paradigms) to end up leading to different behavior.
It is because of the basic, internal similarity (we all find ice-cream basically tasty), it’s possible to understand why there should be things like dildos and vibrators — or why the pussies in men’s pornographic imagination are wet (or to paraphrase Scorch put it, why a warm body is not equivalent to any other warm body).
Or else, we’d have to claim men like ice-cream, while women like salad. Or something like that.
Am I making sense to you?
Or, to add yet one more question: Maggie, you wrote in one post that you are bisexual. I imagine this means you can also be turned on by women. When this happens, is it because — as you said about men — you honestly like women and enjoy making them happy?
No, it’s because I’m attracted to women. AND, that is insufficient grounds to get involved with them. Ice cream in the hand, ice cream in the hand, ice cream in the hand… 🙂
Indeed, but you ARE attracted. Which is my point. It’s not all external. Ice-cream, ice-cream, ice-cream… 🙂
“No, it’s because I’m attracted to women. AND, that is insufficient grounds to get involved with them.”
This is it; this is the definitive statement that kind of underscores what we’ve been talking about. The reason that we as men have such a hard time grasping it is because it is the direct opposite biological imperative of the one we have.
Men are physical creatures, it’s how we enjoy, perceive, and measure success in life.
Hardcore phrasing:
-Who’s dick is bigger?
-It’s never a bad day to get your dick sucked.
So even though we agree that it does make some difference who’s doing the sucking, we could care less about why; the orgasm itself is the primarily the point, although an eager & willing oralitician certainly makes it better, and makes us cum harder for sure.
What’s become clear to me through Maggie’s writing is that women are the opposite; and since I have a better theoretical understanding of their nature, I get why. It’s just so hard for men to conceive of a being where the physical act in itself just isn’t enough motivation to act, or enough satisfaction in and of itself to seek it out. Because life with a penis doesn’t work that way.
But I get(as much as I can being a guy) what Maggie is trying to convey with the ice cream analogy…so yes, an orgasm feels good. Yes, the clitoris is for female pleasure and feels good when stimulated. Yes, women want & enjoy sex…but the physical act and the accompanying sensations aren’t enough for them to be satisfied. Again, it’s *who* and *why* and *how*…because they need to be satisfied in their minds & hearts that they are loved, safe, and wanted to give the actual physical stimulation some sort of meaningful context. Maggie’s not trying to debate whether or not ice cream is good…that’s not the issue. She’s saying that women don’t really get excited about it, even though it’s good, divorced from the deliverer, and the delivery.
Again, that understanding is theoretical and not actual because I’ve never experienced life as a woman…but I think I get it. And I get why we struggle with it, because we’re so different.
Of course I want to sleep with the women that I’m attracted to the most…but if some hot girl that I didn’t really know wanted to suck my dick, and suck it hard…if she’s disease free & husband free, that’s a damn near impossible proposition to turn down. Just like porn…strange, freaky, cock hungry(which we know now is acting) women are completely addictive to men…and we’ll throw away our lives, reputations, families & fortunes for them. Don’t we see evidence of this in the news EVERY DAMN DAY?
Rare is the woman who meets up with some man that she doesn’t really know, even if he is hot as Hell and her perfect physical specimen, and throws away her entire family & reputation and future just to get fucked by him. Normally there’s a larger context when women do stuff like that; but just seeking sex with hot guys for its own sake… They just don’t work that way. In general.
Just think about it. If women were actually wired the way that *we* are THEY’D BE FUCKING ALL THE TIME!! 😀 Because they can get dick whenever they want, they don’t even have to be attractive; just willing. (And we know that often they are unwilling, but just because they have a vagina, they get raped.)
But.
This makes me wonder all the more about teachers who get involved with underage boys…that makes even less sense to me now after understanding all of this.
Exactly.
A friend of mine theorizes that these women are cases of arrested development who are attracted to non-threatening little boys because they’re emotionally stuck in junior high themselves. Young boys make no sexual demands; they’re happy with ANY contact with a woman.
Scorch, I see the point you’re trying to make. But what I’m saying, I think, is that all those different features of men that you mention derive not from a different kind of desire, but from a different intensity of it. What Maggie said is that she’s attracted to women, but not enough to get involved with them. But attracted she is — the attraction exists inside of her, not externally to her. Just as in the case of men. Except that, in Maggie’s case, the attraction is not strong enough to make her want to act on it. Unlike in men’s case. (And, I suppose, unlike the case of lesbians.)
I can imagine that teachers who get involved with underage boys have some problem with control: perhaps fear of grown-up men, who are threatening with their physical strength, etc. (In all cases? I don’t know… Reality isn’t that simple… But at least in some cases, yes, probably.)
But again, attracted they are. They know what ice-cream is, and they know that they like it. Which is my point. (Compare that with male teachers who get involved with underage, 12- or 13-year-old girls. They probably also have issues with grown-up women. But they are attracted, and sexually, to underage girls. More strongly than the female teachers to their underage boys, but still.)
Which is exactly what I was saying, too. That is the point I was trying to make: the difference is intensity, not nature. Women’s drive for pleasure with sex may not be as strong as men’s, but it’s enough to justify the existence of, say, dildos and vibrators, or the existence of (often very graphical) scenes of sex in romance novels (a multimillion-dollar business in America), or the existence of lesbians…
Do I make sense to you now?
Yes, that makes a lot of sense, and I would tend to agree.
Men tent to want IT…if we get IT it’s great, but if we get IT the WAY we want it, even better, we’ll cum harder.
Women tend to want IT the WAY that they want it, whatever way that is at the moment…and probably get less excited about getting IT apart from the desired context.
But yes, human beings still want IT. No doubt.
Yes, that’s what I was trying to say. I’m not implying that “women would behave just like men if weren’t for societal rules” or something like that. No–we all want “IT”, but some of us (women; and actually a few men) don’t want it so desperately that they would do the kinds of things others (‘men’) do to get “IT”. Which doesn’t mean they don’t like “IT” when they get “IT” — so it does make sense for a man to educate himself on how to please a lady, because pleasing a lady is indeed possible, not just an invention of later-day feminists. I’m sure women (like men) vary in the intensity of their desire or of their response to stimulation — if there indeed are asexual people, there will be more women among then than men. Still, the biological facts are there.
“Exactly.” (–MM).
In which case we are all in agreement. Hey, folks: I don’t think I’m saying something so different from what you’re saying.
My rephrasing woud simply be: it’s not that women don’t really get excited about ice-cream (or else what would it mean to say that they also know it’s good?), but that they get less excited about it. Enough that things like the deliverer, and the delivery, become important to sustain interest.
Also, deliverer and delivery are important to men, too (speaking for myself, I can tell I certainly do notice them). It’s simply that the intensity of the desire for ice-cream is stronger in men, so it’s easy for them to ignore the other things. But the intensity of men’s desire suddenly decreased… if our testosterone levels dropped… then suddenly delivery and deliverer would rise in importance, as props to sustain interest in what is going on.
I’ve always felt that the (metaphysical? you judge…) difference between men and women is that men are more intense, and women are deeper. Men fly, and women float. No hierarchy here: just a difference.
There’s a nice little story about the Aphrodite of Cnidus statue. A young man was so infatuated with her beauty that he tried to make love to her. He failed, but was so overcome that henceforth visitors were shown the stain on her thigh that he had left.
Poor Lydians… 🙁
I guess Phryne never gave much thought on what effect her whims would have on their livelihoods. Neither, apparently, do you. I doubt she was much popular with them afterwards.
Peace,
WB.
How was she to know? She was a smart beauty, not a psychic.
Perhaps she could not, but this is a good example of how the prostitution and corruption often go hand in hand.
You may complain all you want that resentment of whores by men and women is borne out of jealousy, but this jealousy has an underlying cause that must be considered. Whores, by putting a price tag on sex and controlling this price in order to maximize their profits, are no different than any other capitalists, deepening the power and wealth inequalities that created the whoredom in the first place.
What can be said of the society in which men’s and women’s expectations of love and commitment are overshadowed by the obnoxious luxury of Corinthian harlots? Would men really see women as humans rather than manipulative creatures that use their sexual power purely for the sake of self enrichment? Will women really be able to see men as humans rather then walking dicks with wallets?
I don’t know. My version of sex positive future is about women sufficiently economically liberated so as not to use their sexuality as means of subsistence, and are therefore liberated sexually, moving towards a performance and pleasure models of sex, not an exchange model.. But this future obviously has very little place left for commercial sex work. Sex positivity and sexual liberation are worst enemies of whores, since they narrow their market.
Peace,
WB
My version of the future is one of such great abundance that women don’t have to trade their sexuality or anything else for subsistence, and neither do men. A future in which nobody worries any more about being able to pay for food, medical care, shelter, water, sanitation, and several other things than people today worry about paying their air bill on time. In such a world, a woman who is whoring is doing it as a hobby, just the same as somebody who makes hand-strung beaded bracelets is doing it as a hobby.
But we aren’t there yet. And until we get there, there’s no more reason to disparage a woman who pays the bills through whoring than there is to disparage a man who pays the bills digging ditches. Both are using their bodies to trade labor for money, which is then used to purchase, among other things, physical needs.
The only sexual power a woman has over a man is power he gives to her. Men hold economic power. It’s a fair trade, and has been for some time. (Except for the moral high ground types; who are usually jealous and envious if not downright devious.)
[…] to one degree or another in most historical cultures, there were a few where we actually had more rights and respect than other women, and it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that widespread, systematic and violent efforts […]
[…] as was that of Robyn Few, who later founded the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA. Similarly, Phryne‘s wealth and popularity drew legal persecution from the jealous politicians of Athens, and […]
I don’t appreciate the insult. Just because I don’t sell sex, doesn’t mean I’m lacking in strength or imagination.
Kudos to Phryne for standing up for herself, and being free, even if I don’t agree with her lifestyle.
As for you, selling or renting out your body is not a sign of freedom, it’s a choice. I can be just as free, and only have sex with my life partner.
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