Come, Shamhat, take me away with you
To the sacred Holy Temple, the residence of Anu and Ishtar. – The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet I)
Peer review is the process by which scholars are kept honest and mistakes in methodology or data are discovered; it means that studies are first published in academic journals where other scholars in the field can read them, criticize their flaws, attempt to reproduce the results and otherwise ensure that flawed or even falsified studies are discredited before being quoted by other authors and thereby contaminating the pool of knowledge. Though the process can certainly discover cases of outright lying or misrepresentation, its main purpose is to discover honest errors and cut through the bias under which even sincere scholars may misinterpret their findings. One could not ask for a better example of the necessity of the process than the 2001 Estes and Weiner study, which would have been trashed had it been peer reviewed, but was instead published without review and subsequently spawned the “300,000 trafficked children” and “average age of entry into prostitution is 13” myths.
Estes & Weiner weren’t the only scholars whose anti-whore biases caused them to make ridiculous assertions, nor is sociology the only field afflicted by such bias. On June 26th I pointed out the ignorant prejudice which utterly ruins a recent study by two economists, and we’ve discussed the absurd contentions of the neofeminists many times; in my column of one year ago today I described the convoluted process by which neofeminist “researchers” like Melissa Farley design studies to produce the exact conclusions the researchers want them to produce, and unfortunately these bogus studies go unchallenged because most of their authors’ peers are themselves affected by the same bias. Neofeminism has so infected many universities that it’s virtually impossible to find any social science which it has not tainted to one degree or another, and when combined with Christian prudery and plain old Anglo-American Puritanism the result is a widespread prejudice against prostitutes which tends to pollute the scholarly detachment of many academics and to make it far less likely that their erroneous and often asinine pronouncements about our profession will be properly criticized.
Though deeply-held beliefs have always influenced the interpretations of past events made by historians who adhere to those beliefs, the idea that it is acceptable to literally rewrite history, to project modern attitudes upon those who lived in other times and places, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Even the ancient historians, fond as they were of editorialization, generally accepted that different people have different customs and that those in the past might behave in a manner very different from the Greek or Roman ways with which the writer was acquainted. But modern Marxist, feminist and “queer” scholars often make the bizarre assumption that many if not most people in history shared the scholar’s notions and prejudices, and that historical behavior which violates modern doctrines must be explained away or reinterpreted with a Marxist, feminist or “queer” spin. As a result, scholars addled by neofeminism (who insist that prostitution is “violence against women”) feel compelled to reject, deny and reinterpret every historical instance of prostitutes with high status.
Now, this isn’t really new; even the ancient Hebrew writers often conflated zonah (whore) with kedeshah (sacred harlot), using the two words interchangeably throughout the prophetic books. And a few Victorian writers preferred either to portray the courtesans of old as something entirely different from modern prostitutes, or else to use them as proof of the inherent moral turpitude of pagan cultures. In the 20th century, the occasional bluenosed professor harrumphed that Theodora and Aspasia couldn’t have been courtesans because no whore could be that intelligent or respected, and that the plain fact of their harlotry was supposedly “invented” by those who were trying to defame them. The idea that being a courtesan was not dishonorable in ancient or medieval Greece does not appear to register in the minds of these stuffy academics; they were raised to think of “whore” as an insult and like many modern people could not imagine it as anything else. But these were isolated cases; for the most part, scholars recognized that the notion of prostitution as a social ill is largely Judeo-Christian, and the notion that it should actually be abolished dates only to the late 19th century.
All that started to change about 20 years ago, when neofeminist anti-sex views began to permeate academia. At first there were only a few such revisionist papers, but in the past decade a new crop of courtesan deniers has sprung up, and many of them have not limited themselves to denying the harlotry of our most famous sisters; instead they have gone straight for the root like crazed gophers, making the grandiose claim that the entire concept of sacred prostitution is a “myth”. All the records of it from the Middle East, the Far East, India, Greece, Rome and Central America? Fabrications and misinterpretations, according to these neofeminist “historians”. As one of them expressed it, sacred prostitution is “more of a construct of the 19th Century Western European mindset than a true representation of the facts,” those “facts” being of course that prostitution is “violence against women” and a manifestation of “patriarchy”, and therefore it is impossible that prostitutes could ever have been priestesses. Their chief support for this notion is that the only Greek historian who describes the Babylonian version of the practice is Herodotus (who had a tendency to embellish many of his stories) and that some of the Mesopotamian texts which mention sacred prostitution also describe things like kings feasting with the gods. Of course by that same token we must also disbelieve that the Sumerians had cities, agriculture, weapons and all the other things described in these same texts, but since none of those things contradict neofeminist dogma it is only prostitution which is suspect. And somehow, casting doubt on Sumerian texts is held to “disprove” sacred prostitution everywhere in the world. Modern prohibitionists have succeeded in establishing formal persecution of the last sacred prostitutes on the planet, the devadasis of India and the deukis of Nepal, and now in their hubris they wish to retroactively wipe out our tradition back to the beginning of civilization, profaning the memory of the sacred whores of antiquity by denying they ever existed.
Man, I wish I had your research skills. I don’t know how good you were as a courtesan, but you must have been great as a librarian.
At the risk of sounding less humble than is seemly, I must say that I was generally regarded as pretty good at both. 😉
Always the unfulfilled fantasy, the seduction by the librarian as she explained how to use the Dewey Decimal system. But I digress, the at hand is the blatant sell out by “academia” on the matter of courtesans . That is but the tip of the iceberg. A huge segment of the academic population is intellectually lazy, guided by biases that are too numerous to list, and cowardly at heart. Years ago i learned that “scientific” or “statistical” facts that fly in the face of common sense and real life experience usually lack honesty. Any readers who are epidemiologists have a good grasp of what I mean. While peer review is a nice feature,the reality is that most of these ” reports” are geared to the main street media . Short sweet and sexy headlines, and more $$ for the department. And these hypocrites point with disdain and sneers at ” whores” while performing their own version of fatuous fellatio. ( No I am not claiming that the NYT is a bunch of CS…but it does fit) And in academia nothing beats lots of publications. (I know I lived in that den of vipers)
Suggestion: Perhaps these academic whizzers should have their stuff “peer reviewed” by the Honest Courtesan. Now that would indeed be a refreshing change of pace but highly unlikely. These “social scientists” are neither.
–30–
Ah! Oo! Oo-oo! Maggie, how often did role-playing come up?
“You be the seductive librarian, and I’ll be the naive student.”
“I’ll be the conquering general, and you be the captured princess.”
“You be Shamhat, and I’ll be Enkidu.”
Actually, I never got a lot of roleplay requests; just a few typical ones like “the master and the maid.”
I’ll have to re-watch Young Lady Chatterley and check out the maids again.
Dear Sailor B, remember “Man with a Maid”?
I do indeed. Serial rapist eventually gets his comeuppance.
I knew you’d get to Shamhat eventually. It was deliciously inevitable.
Okay, so Braniac, Wonder Woman and now ASH? And this is all in addition to the excellent writing. Don’t you dare stop. Once you find a use for a King Ghidorah pic my head may explode.
I promise, I won’t stop as long as you keep up the lovely compliments! I’ve also had pictures of Superman, Spock, T’Pol, Alanna of Ranagar and Lex Luthor, and I promise I’ll try to eventually work King Ghidorah in somehow. 😉
There’s a quote Heinlein loved from George Bernard Shaw: “he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” Revisionist attitudes are rife in certain circles — just pick up a book with modern interpretations of, say, Shakespeare or Chaucer that insist these men were secret Marxists, feminists or whatever who were mocking the existing social order.
But I should point out that this attitude is not consistent. When the history agrees with their views, then the history is clearly right. It’s only when it disagrees with their view that we talk about unreliable sources and mythology. If Herodotus described oppression of women, you can bet the farm they’d be saying that was the 100% unvarnished truth.
“This…is my BOOM STICK!”
I did my art history senior thesis, which was an exhibition proposal, on the artistic depictions of prostitutes from ancient Mediterranean cultures all the way through to the Belle Epoque and the societal influence on said depictions. My professor insisted that I address the fact that some audience members would view the subject matter in the exhibition as “exploitative” in my paper. Fair enough, but I feel that was almost her way of discouraging me from writing a proposal for that theme. By contrast, one of my favorite art history professors told the class, “Listen. The only two ways a woman had any real influence in many eras was either as a wife or a whore and quite honestly, far better off being the whore!” Of course, the funniest contrasting facts about these two female professors (though, unsurprising in my opinion) is that the first one is non-theist and the second one is a devout Catholic (though heavily French Catholic, like my university).
Though I never came out in my department about my on-and-off again activities in the sex industry (though soon to be on again), I’m pretty sure they figured it out. In every art history course that I could, I wrote about art and prostitutes. Probably the only art history major that did. But I always got A’s and B’s on my paper so if any more of them had biases against the subject, it didn’t affect my grades.
Aspasia Bonasera beat me to it so I’ll have to go with Ahs’s second best quote
Honey, you got reeeal ugly!
I’m partial to “Gimme some sugar.” 😀
How about
Sheila: But what of all those sweet words you spoke in private?
Ash: Oh that’s just what we call pillow talk, baby, that’s all
Or, “I’m an American, baby; our names don’t mean shit.”
I always liked
Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I’ve got news for you pal, you ain’t leadin’ but two things, right now: Jack and shit… and Jack left town
lujlp got my second favorite. For me the best is “Good, bad I’m the guy with the gun.” There’s almost no situation in life that can’t be handled by a quote from Army of Darkness, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Firefly.
courtesans(hetairai)in ancient greece were the most beautiful,the most well educated of the women.they participated in symposia(dinner parties),where philosophers and sophists talked about philosophical subjects and they could also form an opinion,apart from entertaining the guests.they also owned property.none of theese applied to the”respectable”wives.i get really mad when theese so called schollars try to put them down(since im greek as well,its worse for me,because i take pride in my ancestors).the schollars that reject that aspasia was a courtesan,also often say that she and pericles were married.there was no way this could be truth,aspasia was from melitus,thus unable to marry an athenian citizen,according to the law. pericles had also asked the judges to give their son the rights of an ahenian citizen,the child was illegitimate.theodora was an actress in hippodromus,she was known to have played leda and the swan,actresses were courtesans then.(justinian also had to change a law that said that an emperor couldnt marry an actress to marry her )herodotus used to embellish many of his stories but not all.the facts of the persian wars are all true,as well as the story of croesus and solon.in greece sacred prostitution took place in the temple of aphrodite in corinth.the preistesses of ishtar were whore preistesses,that noone could speak badly of,under the law.ishtar herself identified not with the high ranking preistesses,but with the lower class of prostitutes,that practiced their trade in taverns.she said”a prostitute compassionate am i”.i have heard many of those feminists admire diotima as the only female philosopher in ancient grrece.diotima was a preistess of the god pan(a god similar to dionysus)and socrates mentions her as his teacher in subjects of love,she might have participated in sacred sex.she wasnt the only female philosopher in ancient greece,either.leontium was an epicurean philosopher and a courtesan.aspasia was admired by socrates for her intellectual abilities,as well as by other athenians who brought their wives to her house to listen to her speeches.the list of the great women who were also courteasans is long,phryne,lais,thargelia,thais etc.why dont they choose to admire theese women,who played such influential roles in otherwise patriarchical societies,like the one of ancient athens and deny them instead?so much for female liberation and sisterhood.
I have links in the text for my columns on Theodora and Aspasia (though the latter won’t be “live” until this Sunday). And I also did a column on Phryne in which you might be interested; she was one of mt heroines since my early teens.
Needless to say, we agree 100% on “feminists” who try to lie about hetaerae and courtesans.
the peer-review process is easily manipulated. my own first submission to an academic journal, for ‘the disappearance of a migration category: women who sell sex’ took two and a half years to publish because the editor couldn’t find anyone willing to look at the article on its research merits. you could say, vis-a-vis history, that the article was rejected at one period and then finally accepted at another. had i sent the same article to a different journal it would never have been accepted. authors have to choose carefully which journals to send to, and some authors have inside contacts, and some authors undoubtedly get published with practically no review.
the same goes when i am sent an article to review. if i were to be sent something that ranted about violence and had strange numbers in it, i would ask so many questions that the (anonymous) author might never get past my review. if the same author sends the same thing to a violence-positive reviewer, she might zip through.
it isn’t science.
One wonders why people like Farley usually don’t even try, except when they publish in “women’s studies” journals; surely she could find some neofeminist reviewers with the same biases who would pass her through!
farley has published in peer-reviewed journals, you can see some of them here where they are mixed with self-published and others: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=prostitution+&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=%22melissa+farley%22&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1&as_subj=soc&as_sdtf=&as_sdts=5&hl=en
violence, trauma, psychology are her preferred venues.
I think that the tendency to interpret history to affirm present prejudice is universal. Check out the Victorians take on the Romans; they make them sound like Victorian British Colonial Admin.. The difference we see in the modern day is that once upon a time you were expected to be a serious scholar in order to play. You had to have a degree in history and at least one major ancient language under your belt. Nowadays twits with degrees in comparative basket-weaving are allowed to put forward theses which are then treated with High Seriousness (provided they are PC). The Panjandrums of Higher Education need to be put on notice that their Pronouncements will be met with mirth until such time as they start weeding out the more obvious Flakes and Frauds.
I also agree with Paglia that overspecialization is a big problem. If somebody got her “Womyn’s Studies” degree without taking a single course in biology, history, psychology or anything else outside her ghetto she’s that much more likely to believe in the
IlluminatiPatriarchy, “social construction of gender”, the female hyperspatial gestalt and other myths even Scientologists would reject as absurd.It is ridiculas how far this crap has permeated scociety. I acctually got banned from a proBDSM blog for disparaging the idea of the Patriachry.
I dont think the irony of being baned by a pro BDSM woman for criticizing an idea that claims that she is a tratior and collaberater in the oppresion of herself and other women will ever wear off
The biggest reason for the popularity of that myth is that people don’t understand the difference between patriarchy and The Patriarchy. The former is a common, traditional form of social organization whose existence nobody contests; the latter refers to the feminist myth that a single, giant Elders of Zion-like conspiracy exists among all men everywhere to subjugate and control women.
The Patriarchy is even sillier than that. It presumes that the entire world is run by a vast Male conspiracy clever enough to keep itself out of the limelight and at the same time stupid enough to get exposed by the kind of illiterate, innumerate, no-depth-of-background twit that has a degree in Women’s Studies. They are supposedly powerful enough to control most of the world and yet powerless to make the deranged harpies who rant about them shut up or disappear.
The Patriarchy is a construction so absurd that it vastly outdoes the Elders of Zion idiocy. Compared to a Uber-Feminist who actually believes in The Patriarchy, a middle-eastern potentate who thinks that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is true is a rational being.
And somewhere in there belongs the observation that those two (the anti-semetic Islamic idiot and the Uber-Femenist) richly deserve to spend eternity confined together in some VERY small space, in the manner of the “old vintage” refered to in SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST.
They are supposedly powerful enough to control most of the world and yet powerless to make the deranged harpies who rant about them shut up or disappear.
Ah, but that how we work you see, those smart enough to peirce or vast conspiracy come off lookng deranged, and while some of them may be hot enough to have sex with no man wants to be married to them of have kids with them, so they die off never able to raise kids strong enough to stand up to us
Muahahahaha
Also ther is a hidden picture embeded in this post, 30 seconds after reading it it will erase itself from your mind, you will forget the secrets you have learned here today
Fnord
Oh, my God, don’t drag in Scientology!
I was raised a Scientologist, and even though I recovered from that, I still get a bit riled when the religion I got cum lacte is held up as an example of a crazy-headed dangerous cult.
No, actually, I get tempted to emphasize how crazy they are … but this time, at least, I’m going to feign distress instead.
LOL! 🙂
Dont mean to be rude, but did anyone ever try to answer why Zenu would send a fleet around the blackhole at the ceter of the galaxy to drop bodeis on earth when they could have driven a 1/3rd of the way and dumped the bodies into an inescapable prison with no need for an alien sould washing station on Venus?
I’ve never met a scientologist in person so your the first I’ve been able to ask
Dear BeijaFlor, if you don’t mind my asking, what do you think of L. Ron Hubbard’s connection to Aleister Crowley and how Hubbard said starting a religious was a great way to make money?
Sorry, I meant religion, not religious…wink.
The way to make the winking smiley is to use the semicolon ; followed by the right parenthesis ).
Like this: ;)
That gives you this: 😉
In all of this esoteric volleys, there has been one casualty. For eons, I have been of the opinion that the only good thing coming out of an art history class was that really cute senior from CNR who was a great drinking buddy and an even better back seat contortionist . I was obviously mistaken
Hi Maggie,
On the subject of courtesans, what did you think of the movie, “Dangerous Beauty?” I liked it and thought it interesting that the “forces of reaction” targeted the courtesans as the the moral scapegoat for the advent of the plague. A little like the modern evangelicals blaming 9-11 on homosexuals in America.
I liked it enough to borrow the title of the book it was based on. 🙂
There’s at least a few evangelicals (like me) who hate that anyone blamed 9/11 on gays and speak out against this any chance we get. I’m bisexual so personally find this thinking disgusting and upsetting. 9/11 was a complicated thing and can’t just be broken down into 1 cause and/or motive.