Now that smacking is so frowned upon, I am told that spanking is all the rage among 'sex addicts'
A couple of years ago in Listowel I heard Frank McCourt, the celebrated author of Angela's Ashes, express astonishment that there existed in modern Ireland such phenomena as pornography, prostitution and the scandals of rape, incest or paedophile assault.
"I thought all that would disappear when the Irish got modern about sex and stopped being repressed," he said.
How, I wondered, did Frank get to be 75 years old and not yet discover that human nature doesn't change very much?
Quite a lot of people are naïve in this respect. Every time an expert blames 'society' for one ill or another, they are implying that some social change or another will alter human nature. Social change may ameliorate, or cause to deteriorate, certain trends, but the old Adam goes on just the same as ever.
Virginia Gilbert's brilliant three-part study on prostitution in Ireland, entitled Striapacha ('whores' or, I think more correctly, 'strumpets'), currently showing on TG4, illuminates this theme.
Well-educated academics come forth to explain that women in the 18th and 19th centuries turned to prostitution because of poverty, unfavourable circumstances, and lack of other employment opportunities. They were the 'victims' of 'sexual double standards'.
But that hardly explains why there is, it seems, more prostitution than ever in modern times than there was in the unhappy past. More men, it is reported, now use the services of prostitutes -- sometimes called 'sex-workers' in one of those well-meaning euphemisms to make it sound nicer to sell your body. Once, said one of the Dublin striapacha, it used to be lonely old guys. Now, it's more vulnerable young guys.
The question is not answered, basically because there is no explanation -- except that human nature is remarkably consistent. People have always done dangerous things for sex, and now that the 'remedies' against the dangers of incontinent sexuality (unwanted pregnancy, disease) have been theoretically overcome, they will do even more dangerous things.
Now that smacking, much less domestic assault, is so frowned upon, I am told that spanking is all the rage among 'sex addicts'.
Transgression is a constant of human nature. Our physicians are dismayed that smoking in Ireland hasn't been reduced since it was stigmatised as the mark of the outcast. Quite so; it is now so exciting to transgress just by standing in the street drawing on a gasper.
But now that women can enter virtually any profession they choose -- and many women are proving themselves a brilliant success in a wide range of professions -- just why do some women still choose to be prostitutes?
I don't buy the answer provided by many academics and gender theorists -- that women are 'victims of society', much less of sexual 'double standards' (and it was women, mainly, who enforced such standards).
Yes, some women are victims of appalling circumstances, as are some men. But I think that many prostitutes freely choose their careers because of its benefits. It's something you can do in your own time, in your own place, and within your own definitions (no kissing, for example).
For those individuals who can practice detachment, it's easy money and untaxed. It may also give the prostitute a degree of power: men who visit prostitutes are often pretty pathetic, and certainly needy.
So what is the answer? You can go down the Australian route and legalise brothels. Or you can go down the Swedish route and ban prostitution altogether, penalising men who seek prostitutes.
Both remedies are imperfect. Legalised brothels always bring with them a black market of freelancers offering their services cheaper and more riskily, while total prohibition brings secret transactions and trafficking.
Or you can just muddle through and do the best you can to minimise the effects of what has been called 'vice'. Certainly, every jurisdiction should seek to prohibit and penalise the trafficking of young girls. But you'll never solve the problem of the 'oldest profession'; although that does not mean you are obliged to admire it, or hope that your daughter will join the ranks of the striapacha still plying for trade.
- Mary Kenny
