Prostitution is, they say, ‘the oldest profession in the world’ and, as far as the historical record goes, it’s at least close to being so. The first mention of prostitution that we know of was 5,500 years ago, in the city of Uruk, in Sumer in Mesopotamia, where priestesses in the Temple of Inanna performed this service.
The religious connection with prostitution, of course, is one that has long since been lost — though we might discuss it in another piece; yet of course, the practice continues. Until recently, in fact, the major push to suppress prostitution was itself religious, coming from, in particular the Protestant Christian traditions and notably the Anglican one, which has always been a pillar of sex-negativity and repression.
Of recent decades, however, the attempt to prevent women from engaging in prostitution has come from other women. Indeed, it has become a bastion of modern feminism. But this throws up a thorny moral question: do we or do we not have the right to do as we will with our own bodies?
World War Three has been much talked about in the seven decades since World War Two ended. At that time, almost all of Europe and large parts of Asia were in ruins, scourged by years of brutal, mechanised, industrial war.