History of prostitution

This would have been the equivalent of a high price, showing that only the wealthy owner of numerous herds could have afforded to pay for a single sexual encounter.

In a later biblical story found in the Book of Joshua, a prostitute in Jericho named Rahab assists Israelite spies by providing them with information regarding the current socio-cultural and military situation.

Solon instituted the first of Athens' brothels (oik'iskoi) in the sixth century BC, and with the earnings of this business, he built a temple dedicated to Aphrodite Pandemos, goddess of sexual pleasure.

[16] Prostitutes played a role in several Roman religious observances, mainly in the month of April, over which the love and fertility goddess Venus presided.

[25] The term devadasi originally described a Hindu religious practice in which girls were married and dedicated to a deity (deva or devi).

(Sahih al-Bukhari, 3:34:439) However, sexual slavery via Concubinage in Islam was not considered prostitution and was very common during the Arab slave trade from the Middle Ages via early modern period until the 20th-century.

Women and girls from the Caucasus, Africa, Central Asia and Europe were captured and served as concubines in the harems of the Arab World.

[33] According to Shia Muslims, Muhammad sanctioned fixed-term marriage, called muta'a in Iraq and sigheh in Iran, which according to some Western writers, has allegedly been used as a legitimizing cover for sex workers, in a culture where prostitution is otherwise forbidden.

Female prostitutes generally attempted to limit their sexual interactions to “confessional lines” since cases were more likely to be brought to court when religious boundaries were crossed.

[45] This practice continued among visitors from the Western Regions, mainly European traders, beginning with the Portuguese in the 16th century who often came with their South Asian lascar crew, along with African crewmembers in some cases.

To entertain their clients, oiran practiced the arts of dance, music, poetry, and calligraphy as well as sexual services, and education was considered essential for sophisticated conversation.

[52] In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a network of Japanese prostitutes being trafficked across Asia, in countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and British India, in what was then known as the ’Yellow Slave Traffic’.

Although all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage were regarded as sinful by the Roman Catholic Church, partially on the basis of Augustine's support, prostitution was tolerated because it helped prevent the greater evils of rape, sodomy and masturbation.

[55] In his popular Dragmaticon, the 12th-century Scholastic philosopher William of Conches's discussion of medieval Islamic and European medical science includes an exchange where he explains to Geoffrey Plantagenet that prostitutes so seldom bore children because pleasure was supposedly required for conception,[56] a misconception dating to Galen.

[59] In Southern Europe, the increasing trend was the establishment of civic brothels, with any prostitution found taking place elsewhere punished for its failure to secure licensing.

[72] According to Dervish Ismail Agha, in the Dellâkname-i Dilküşâ, the Ottoman archives,[73] in the Turkish baths, the masseurs were traditionally young men who helped wash clients by soaping and scrubbing their bodies.

In North America, prostitution was seen as a "necessary evil" that aided in marital fidelity, especially as a system that would allow men to obtain sex when their wives did not desire it.

[76] The national move to criminalize prostitution was led by Protestant middle-class men and women who participated in the revivalism movement of the 19th century.

Many early feminists fought to repeal these laws, either on the grounds that prostitution should be illegal and therefore not government regulated or because it forced degrading medical examinations upon women.

This included prostitutes operating out of government-sanctioned brothels given yellow internal passports signifying their status and were subjected to weekly physical exams.

During the 19th century, the British in India began to adopt the policy of social segregation, but they continued to keep their brothels full of Indian women.

[77] In the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a network of Chinese and Japanese prostitutes being trafficked across Asia, in countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and British India, in what was then known as the "Yellow Slave Traffic".

[75] Prostitution in the American West was a growth industry that attracted sex workers from around the globe where they were pulled in by the money, despite the harsh and dangerous working conditions and low prestige.

It was not uncommon for brothels in Western towns to operate openly, without the stigma that was beginning to emerge in East Coast cities as a result of anti-prostitution activism.

[84] After a decade or so the mining towns attracted respectable women who ran boarding houses, organized church societies, and worked as laundresses and seamstresses, all while striving for independent status.

[87] The precise role prostitution played in various camps depended on the sex ratio in specific population groups of colonial society as well as racial attitudes toward non-whites.

These were inspired by white Australians to rethink their racist policies and adopt more liberal residency laws that did not focus on sexual or racial issues.

[99] When the Soviet Union broke up, thousands of Eastern European women became prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year.

Prostitution was made illegal in almost all states between 1910 and 1915 largely due to the influence of the 1st wave feminist Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which was influential in the banning of drug use and was a major force in the prohibition of alcohol.

In Deadwood, South Dakota, prostitution, while technically illegal, was tolerated by local residents and officials for decades until the last madam was brought down by state and federal authorities for tax evasion in 1980.