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Old 03-08-2018, 04:05 AM   #851
RonTheLogician
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Unhappy Insults leveled at your sexual activities

[continued from previous post]

Now, second, onto attempts to use the word "whore" to insult you and your work.

The word "whore" originally simply meant a woman who practiced free love, without any implication of material compensation:
The Germanic terms hore/hure/whore and whoredom are well known from ecclesiastical legislation and theology, but they had no clear direct reference to paid sex. On the contrary, they referred to all kinds of extramarital sex, independent of whether one earned money from it. A whore normally would be not a prostitute but a loose woman.
- Chapter 10, Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution (see below)

In that double-standard world, men who behaved exactly the same way would be celebrated as a "Don Juan" or a "Casanova." Is that sensible or just? Also observe that starting with the Baby Boom generation, the number of lifetime sex partners the average ordinary American engages has exploded, multiplying about a dozen-fold. Damn near "all" of us are now "whores"! Indeed, the book The Porning of America (Beacon, 2008), Amazon page here, argues that in this century, porn stars have become more like lay (snicker!) people, and lay people more like porn stars. But sadly, this is not the case when it comes to STIs. The increased promiscuity of people today has created an STI crisis, EXCEPT when exclusive resort is made to tested and sequestered brothel prostitutes, or the regularly tested members of the adult film profession, such as yourself. Listen to what a contemporary USA physician says here.

Prostitution, i.e. sex (especially coitus) in exchange for money, has always been illegal in Communist bloc and Muslim nations. The United States is rather unusual, in that as a nation never so described, it has made prostitution per se illegal and untolerated almost everywhere - but ONLY in the last century or so. I suspect that this is related to the fact that today it is so anomolously religious for a First World nation. (Btw, it is little appreciated that USA church membership rates were enormously LOWER in its early history of independence.) Ironically however, the (Catholic) Church of the Middle Ages in Western Europe was in the very business of operating brothels, for the sake of obviating adultery by married women (but NOT their husbands), thereby protecting the "sanctity" of marriage.

Learn more about the history of prostitution in America here.

Other good references on this occupation spanning many societies and ages are:
Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work (Greenwood, 2006), Amazon page here &
Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution (Grove, 2005), Amazon page here.

The bottom line is that whether someone tries to hurt your feelings by calling you either a whore or a harlot, I hope you now have ready emotional ammunition for blowing it off! I'll leave the final word on the matter to 12-year-old Violet, the protagonist of the famous 1978 English-language French-made film Pretty Baby, as portrayed by then-young Brooke Shields. Watch the clip here.

If you don't know this film, surely as a Bossier City baby you should want to see it, as it is set a century ago in the famous Storyville legal red-light district of Louisiana's Big Easy, the city of New Orleans. Note also the aformentioned encyclopedia has a couple of articles titled New Orleans and Storyville. By the way, at the time (1978) that Pretty Baby was made, many Americans were shocked at the idea of a 12-year-old hooker, because they had also forgotten how low the age of consent had been in centuries past, including that era.

Childhood and Sexuality: Contemporary Issues and Debates (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017) states:
When Hirschfeld made a survey of the age of consent in 50 countries at the start of the twentieth century, he found variances from 12 to 16. Whilst the necessity of an age of consent became accepted, the age itself was still subject to debate. For example, in Catholic countries the age was 12–13...
And The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005) states:
Colonial America adopted the form of statutory rape laws from English law... Cocca’s research reveals that the age of consent to sexual intercourse for girls was most commonly 10 in 1885, though 12 in some states.
Btw, do you know the 2007 Cajun-style song Bossier City? Find a recording here, and lyrics here.

And what about the much-older 1974 C&W song Bossier City? Find a recording here, and lyrics here. Yeah, I recall you don't like C&W!

Last edited by RonTheLogician; 03-08-2018 at 07:16 AM.
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