> Susan, I think that the opinion that prostitution is, on the whole, a
> bad thing, is a very widespread one. Certainly not confined to the
> US, nor even to Christian cultures.

Different cultures have different views. In Thailand many people respect
prostitutes as businesswomen, and to a peasant she is a sought after bride
due to her big dowry! Girls go to make many in the city, return home to
found their families on that basis. In India sacred prostitutes are often
similarly highly esteemed by their families/ community as breadwinners
sometimes supporting many brothers and sisters. Evidence on this is
conflicting and it seems that this coexists in different places with more
Western contempt.

There seems to me to be an especial virulence against prostitution in
monotheist cultures, not just Christianity.

> Its badness derives, in my rather passionately held view (and I had
> to do a lot of thinking on this as a teenager, when I saw that I
> needed to establish my own set of values on this), from the
> intrinsic beauty and value of the sex act itself.

I don't see sex as intrinsically beautiful and valuable. It can be those
things. It can also be many others - awkward, clumsy, comical, violent,
lethal, medicinally healing for illness, anxiety or other emotional stress
relief, comfort for loneliness, a pure sex tension or fear release,
housework, poetic delightful, a skill training, gymnastic sport, sickly
sentimental, symbolic of contract, ego support, utterly boring, magical
(folk magic), Tantric ....
I think it diminishes the wholistic power of sex to limit its amazing and
unnerving variety into a cultural class stereotype of companionate liaison.

Sex is, ideally, the
> most profound sign of love/trust/friendship/mutual liking between
> two people.

One ideal.

To do it with ten people a night for the purpose of
> earning one's living; to do it with a stranger picked up on the street
> rather than with a loving partner; these actions may have their
> place in the order of things - inevitable, at least occasionally - but
> to me, there is a deep sense of imperfection about them.

I would just stress the "for you". That you do not know the joy of sudden
unexpected encounter, the friendly re-encounter etc doesn't mean they don't
exist or don't matter. Also see my other post re Tantra.
>
> There is no need to translate this opinion into an argument for the
> suppression of prostitution: on the contrary, it is something that will
> always be with us, and of course it should be legalised and
> safeguarded. (Abortion also needs to be kept legal and accessible;
> yet no-one will argue that it is a good thing, rather than a sad
> necessity.)

Prostitution is only sad if we take its fantasy relationship as more than it
is, a restricted relating. But we do not try to live our lives having a
full, multidimensional relationship with everyone we meet!  We deal with the
majority of our encounters instrumentally - the shop assistant, the person
in front of me in a queue, the person who fixes my fridge, who designs my
software, who drives the same motorway as me - these are instrumental
relating. The important thing is to hold a readiness to remember that this
instrument, this marker in my world, is a person too. So when one of them
weeps, or is tired, or shows radiance, I respond to it, because I am not
blind to their personhood, just not interested in it normally.
Similarly the prostitute can sell her (my/ our) physical actions without
being demeaned, so long as s/he is recognised as fully human at need.

Significantly the thing I found impossible to sustain was not the acts of
prostitution, although the first time is a challenge - it's well known that
one rapidly acclimatises to it after two or three goes at most (much like
virginal sex itself). It was the social lie I had to live. I'd sit among
people being treated as a person knowing vividly that if I answered
truthfully the question "What do you do?" it would instantly destroy my
humanness. So life became a web of lies about my daily doings which I found
destroying.

There is also no necessary link with religious morality:
> all modern atheist states, as far as I know, had outlawed
> prostitution. (And thinking of sex as a beautiful, meaningful act, to
> be shared on the basis of friendship and trust, is hardly the usual
> religious view, either...)

It is in Tantra. And in Paganism. And in many other native religions,
although not the pressure to restrict it to friendship and trust. My guess
is that just as many people find a lack of trust highly erotic as those who
need safety. Stranger sex is popular among people less affected by
patriarchal views of female value such as gays, Polynesians, Esquimaux and
other isolated peoples.

By the way did you know that knickers (USA 'underwear') were invented by
prostitutes in  18thC London? They were designed to close off the vital area
so clients couldn't get it without paying first!!!!  For a very long time
until late 19thC no respectable woman would dream of wearing them, as her
protector was instead her male guardian.
I watched a period recently when young women wore thivck tights, with shorts
over them, presumably with knickers under all. Three layers to close off the
vital bit suggested a strong siege outlook to me. It saddened me having
fought so long and hard to teach men better behaviour, and women more
freeness. Backlash.

In trust
Shan