book - Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution

I often see many books referenced by you fschmidt that look informative and interesting to read. I saw Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution mentioned and just finished reading it. The book provides decent historical research, but I found the author a bit weak on putting fourth any overall consensus or theory. Maybe he didn't have one, which is fine if he just wanted to let facts stand on their own.

I did walk away with a few interesting tidbits. I thought it was interesting how Japanese soldiers in WWII tied sexual experience to a strong warrior ethos and felt sexually inexperienced men would make bad fighters. This meant many Japanese soldiers were encouraged even to the point of verbal and physical bullying to see prostitutes rather than be stigmatized for it.

The different historical era's and places seemed to boil down to one reoccurring theme. Prostitution has always been divided between high class and low class. High class prostitutes are disease free, more sophisticated and include better surroundings. Low class prostitutes are the vast majority, are hosts to many diseases, lack pleasant surroundings and don't provide much outside of basic mechanical copulation.

It's my hypothesis that the quality of all prostitutes rose until the event of feminism. Even in spite of feminism, prostitutes have improved in quality outside the US. One key gap that's narrowed between high class and low class prostitutes is disease. With modern birth control, it's now possible for even the lowest quality prostitute to be disease free. A second area is work conditions. Even thailand short-time prostitutes now live in better quarters that probably some high class medieval harlots. And lastly, everyone's more educated now a days. Seeing as education's been democratized, most prostitutes now carry some intellect. We're not at the point where they're all geishas yet, but hopefully we'll be there some day. If it wasn't for feminism, 21'st century prostitution would be a very cheap improved commodity over other eras. Since it's outlawed in America, quality's risen a lot slower. Prostitutes cannot improve themselves when driven underground. Even working conditions, something you'd think feminists would be for, worsens drastically underground.

I was left with one question that I don't have a good answer for. You always say fschmidt that monogamy is the only way to ensure everyone has a partner in a society with equal male and female birth rates. So my question is don't prostitutes present a conflict of interest with monogamy? By the sheer number of women required to sustain such an arrangement where men have a wife and also a buffet of prostitutes? Assuming no man wants to marry a prostitute, then prostitution presents the same problem as polygamy doesn't it? Because if a man marries one woman (-1 woman) and then desires to sleep with one prostitute also (-1 woman), two women are subtracted from the dating pool. Obviously the burden would be eased by the fact that one prostitute will be shared by many men, but it's still an arrangement that doesn't compute supposing no man wants to marry a prostitute. If I remember correctly didn't several societies remedy this problem by importing foreign women? Which depopulated women from somewhere else but ensured stable relations for local marriages? Anyways, food for thought.

Drealm wrote

I thought it was interesting how Japanese soldiers in WWII tied sexual experience to a strong warrior ethos and felt sexually inexperienced men would make bad fighters. This meant many Japanese soldiers were encouraged even to the point of verbal and physical bullying to see prostitutes rather than be stigmatized for it.

Thinking about it, this makes sense.  A sexually inexperienced man hasn't "spread his seed" and so has no reason to risk his life.  But a sexually experienced man is risking his life for the sake of all of his potential offspring.  So evolutionarily, it makes a lot of sense that sexually experienced men would make better fighters.

The different historical era's and places seemed to boil down to one reoccurring theme. Prostitution has always been divided between high class and low class. High class prostitutes are disease free, more sophisticated and include better surroundings. Low class prostitutes are the vast majority, are hosts to many diseases, lack pleasant surroundings and don't provide much outside of basic mechanical copulation.

I'm not sure that there is anything specific to prostitution here.  Virtually all goods and services can be discussed this way.  Through most of history, there were these classes.  Only since the industrial revolution has it been even possible for most people to live well.  But I expect this will end soon.  And I expect that if you go to most third world countries, you will see this division today.  Even in the prostitution zones in Mexico, you can see this division quite clearly.

I was left with one question that I don't have a good answer for. You always say fschmidt that monogamy is the only way to ensure everyone has a partner in a society with equal male and female birth rates. So my question is don't prostitutes present a conflict of interest with monogamy? By the sheer number of women required to sustain such an arrangement where men have a wife and also a buffet of prostitutes? Assuming no man wants to marry a prostitute, then prostitution presents the same problem as polygamy doesn't it? Because if a man marries one woman (-1 woman) and then desires to sleep with one prostitute also (-1 woman), two women are subtracted from the dating pool. Obviously the burden would be eased by the fact that one prostitute will be shared by many men, but it's still an arrangement that doesn't compute supposing no man wants to marry a prostitute. If I remember correctly didn't several societies remedy this problem by importing foreign women? Which depopulated women from somewhere else but ensured stable relations for local marriages? Anyways, food for thought.

Historically, the way this was handled was by war.  Men killed each other off until the ratio worked.  This isn't as common today (but does seem to happening a few miles from me in Juarez Mexico).  I suspect gang violence will rise worldwide and will bring back this solution.

But still, let's calculate some numbers to see what ratio we need.  Let's say that men on average need a prostitute once per month (averaging in single guys who need it weekly with sexually monogamous men and assuming most married men will be somewhere in between).  And let's say prostitutes can handle 100 men per month.  So then only 1% of the women need to be prostitutes to service the men.  This is highly efficient.  If men wait too long to get married, staying single longer, then more prostitutes are needed.  So to keep demand reasonable, it helps for men to marry young.

Oh dear...
So the reason we have a 1.05 to 1.00 male/female ratio (assuming thats genetic) is populations in the past that had that tended to go to war which made selection pressure to eliminate weaker members which lead to a smarter population that annihilated any human tribes with a 1.00 to 1.00 ratio.

Oh dear...