Prostitution

Commentary

Started September, 2009

A prostitute is a person who engages in sexual activity in exchange for money.

Prostitution is defined as the act of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for money or goods.

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In colloquial usage, the word "prostitute" is sometimes generalized to mean the selling of one's services for a cause thought to be unworthy, in the sense of "prostituting oneself" or "whoring oneself".

"If nobody wants to sell sex, it is a crime to force anyone to do so. But when men or women do want to sell their bodies, they should have that full right without encountering punishment or discrimination. If the client behaves decently, the relationship between the sex buyer and the sex seller must be considered a purely private transaction."

◊ Nils Johan Ringdal, Love For Sale

"Prostitution will always lead into a moral quagmire in democratic societies with capitalist economies; it invades the terrain of intimate sexual relations yet beckons for regulation. A society's response to prostitution goes to the core of how it chooses between the rights of some persons and the protection of others."

◊ Barbara Meil Hobson, Uneasy Virtue

"The only way to stop this trafficking in and profiting from the use of women's bodies is for prostitution to be legalized. Legalization will open it up to regulation; and regulation means safety."

◊ Jeannette Angell, Callgirl

"Prostitution presents a moral, economic and social problem that cannot be resolved juristically."

◊ Frederica Montseny

"To the moralist, prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock."

◊ Emma Goldman

"The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men but rather their conqueror, an outlaw who controls the sexual channel between nature and culture."

◊ Camille Paglia

"The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid -- these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls give a man his money's worth."

◊ Polly Adler, American Author