Last month, Lotta Nonsense started a fascinating topic entitled ‘Prostitution’ in which she asked ‘what is a prostitute?’

Many visitors to this forum have enjoyed reading the pieces by Dr. Eustace Chesser. Hereunder are his writings about prostitution, the difficulties of providing a definition thereof and the psychology of those who are ‘on the game’ (or ‘on the Bromford’, as they say in Birmingham.)

Prostitution is difficult to define, although most people think they know what the word means. It is nearly always used with strong overtones of moral disapproval. Thus even such a liberal thinker as Havelock Ellis wrote that ‘a prostitute is a person who makes it a profession to gratify the lusts of various persons of the same or opposite sex.

‘Stone’s Justices’ Manual’ surprisingly restricts the term to women. ‘Prostitution means the offering for reward by a female of her body for purposes of general lewdness. It is not necessary to prove that the offer was for the purpose of natural sexual connection.’ If we leave aside the question of what is ‘natural’ and the ambiguity of ‘lewdness’ there would be general agreement that to provide sexual gratification for reward is one characteristic of prostitution. It is a business bargain.

Yet, if we look more closely, the situation is not quite so simple. What can be said of the woman who marries for money? She differs from the street-walker in that she keeps to the same client - not because she loves him but because marriage is easier and more profitable than promiscuity. Morally there is little to choose between the two. The gold-digger is lucky enough to be spared the trouble of touting for her favours. She may be more highly paid than the less fortunate professional, and the possession of a wedding ring gives her the appearance of respectability. The fact remains that except in name such a marriage is legalised prostitution.

Another characteristic which is frequently advanced is the absence of sexual feeling on the prostitute’s part. Most prostitutes are said to be sexually frigid; otherwise, it is claimed, they could not engage in intercourse indiscriminately, often taking many clients the same night.

The alternative suggestion that girls who take to prostitution are nymphomaniacs does not merit serious consideration. No doubt a few girls with an insatiable appetite for sex drift into commercial prostitution, but true nymphomania is too rare to be a convincing explanation. In the majority of cases it is a physical and psychological necessity for the prostitute to preserve a certain detachment. Orgasm is simulated to satisfy the pride of the client. He likes to feel that he is an exception, that he has aroused the woman to such an extent that her enjoyment is genuine.

We cannot say that this is never the case. The woman who marries for money is not necessarily cold-blooded. She is not less a woman and she is capable of being sexually excited. If her husband fails to satisfy her she may take a lover, just as the promiscuous prostitute has a ponce for pleasure after she has had other men for gain. So little is known about the psychology of the prostitute that it is rash to generalise.

The male prostitute can hardly help feeling some degree of arousal if he has an erection, because this in itself is usually pleasurable. The term should not be confined, however, to homosexuals. The gigolo is a heterosexual male prostitute. Wealthy, aging women like a man to dance attendance on them and they pay handsomely for his services. He must be potent enough to give them the satisfaction they require.

To get first-hand reports of the gigolo’s attitude is obviously difficult, but sometimes they can be induced to speak frankly. An Italian waiter who took the fancy of a rich American woman in St. Moritz was elevated to the position of companion. He lived with her for several years and accompanied her to various resorts on the Mediterranean. He acted as secretary, interpreter and general factotum. Her sexual needs were satisfied with cunnilingus, much to his relief, as he doubted his ability to engage in full intercourse, virile though he undoubtedly was. His career was interrupted when he was found having an affair with a young waitress. However, his experience qualified him to continue in his profession and he was taken up by another wealthy widow. She made more severe demands, but as he said, ‘I shut my eyes and pretend I’m with a beautiful girl. It usually works.’

Yet if we think of prostitution in these narrow terms we only see part of the picture. If a foreigner asked us to give an account of our own society and we confined it to a description of slums and crime we should be guilty of gross distortion. Where squalor is associated with prostitution it is an indictment of a society that tolerates squalor. We do not condemn marriage because some marriages are loveless, and some outwardly respectable relationships are sordid.

It is true that some prostitutes are neurotic and psychopathic. But dishonesty is common enough in other walks of life where people actually boast about their success in cheating the income tax, fiddling an expense account, pulling off some smart business deal only just within the letter of the law. Where sex is involved we tend to employ a different standard. We speak as though a prostitute is somehow set apart from normal people, inhabiting a different world - a semi-criminal underworld. This delusion is partly due to the fact she is only met with in rather exceptional circumstances, and then in a brief encounter. We do not see her in an everyday background doing ordinary things.

That is not to say that there is no distinctive motivation behind the choice of such a career. Something in every individual’s psychological make-up impels him to choose a way of life. One woman is content with being a mother, another has an ambition to be an actress or a writer or to play a part in public affairs. We do not criticise them for wanting to be themselves. We do not ostracise those who are driven by a ruthless hunger for power or applause. We adopt a totally different attitude to a woman who uses sex as a means of livelihood - unless she is so successful that she becomes the wife or a mistress of a millionaire. Both are trading in sex, the only difference is the price they are able to exact.

My dictionary defines a prostitute as "someone who is paid to have sex with people. This word usually refers to a woman."

But what is a woman who is paid to cane people? Is she a prostitute? There are such women.

Are there men who will accept money to beat a woman?

Are there women who will pay to be caned?

"What is a woman who is paid to cane people? Is she a prostitute?" Undoubtedly.

"Are there men who will accept money to beat a woman?" Yes, and there are millions more who will do it free of charge.

"Are there women who will pay to be caned?" I suspect there are very few - not least because so many men are willing to pay to do the caning.

The very word ‘prostitute’ carries a sting of contempt. ‘Whore’ is even more abusive. ‘Courtesan’ has different associations altogether. The courtesan belongs to a higher social class and even has a certain glamour. We think, perhaps, of the mistresses of kings, like the beautiful Madame Pompadour or Nell Gwynn. We see them through a haze of false romance which springs from class-consciousness. The contemporary prostitute realises this very well and prefers to known as a ‘model’ or ‘call-girl’.

There is no statutory definition of ‘a common prostitute’, but that is how a woman is branded if she is brought before the court. She carries that label for police purposes the whole of her life, even though she has given up her profession and lived respectably for many years. By a strange quirk of the law, prostitution itself is not an offence. Yet there is a charge of ‘loitering for the purposes for prostitution’. To evade it prostitutes no longer ply their trade in the streets. They meet their clients in clubs or advertise as masseuses. The superior prostitute relies on personal introductions.

The full-time prostitute today meets with strong competition from the part-time call-girl. A new and more sophisticated type has come into existence, well-educated and socially accomplished. These attractive, well-dressed girls lead a normal social life with friends and acquaintances who do not suspect the real source of their incomes.

They think of themselves as temporary hostesses and they do not go with any man for the asking. They prefer a well-paid executive or professional man who wants a night or a weekend away from his family ties. The evening is spent as it might be by any upper-middle-class couple. They dine at a good restaurant, or they go to one of the more exclusive night clubs or a casino.

The man does not feel he is with a prostitute. She is more like a mistress with whom he can have an intelligent and cultured conversation. She is dressed with perfect taste and discrimination. No one would suspect her real status. Any man would be proud to be seen with her. There is no talk of sex. Intuitively she senses what interests her partner and sets out subtly and skilfully to entertain. Finally they go either to her flat or a hotel. For many men this is a revelation of what sex can mean when it is totally uninhibited and raised to the level of an art form. It may be what Burke had in mind when he said that ‘Vice loses half its evil when it loses all its grossness’, but it is difficult to see why such a relationship should be regarded as evil in any degree unless all intercourse outside marriage is ‘vicious’ and even the forced, joyless intimacies of the marriage bed are ‘virtuous’. Nothing could be less like the mechanical embrace of the sort of prostitute who is in a hurry to serve other men waiting their turn in a brothel - possibly twenty a day.

The nearest approach to the temporary ‘hostess’ is the traditional Japanese institution of the geisha. She was a highly gifted entertainer trained to sing and dance and amuse the client who hired her services for an evening. There might or might not be any erotic demands. The geisha is not regarded as a prostitute and those at the top of a fairly well defined hierarchy may marry their patrons and be socially accepted. She does not grant her favours indiscriminately. She may have a single, permanent patron, in which case she is a paid mistress. Although brothels were abolished and prostitution made illegal in Japan in the 1950s, the uninhibited attitude of the Japanese towards sex has not been affected.

When so much emphasis is placed on the degraded status of the prostitute it is well to remember that this has not always been the case. Before the rise of Christianity, temple prostitution was part of the religion of the Middle East. In Ancient Greece the hetaerae occupied an even more honoured position than the geishas. They were more exclusively sought for sexual pleasure than the latter. They were well educated and refined. They could provide a married man with the companionship and intellectual stimulus he could not find in his own home whilst also satisfying his sexual needs. Wives were for procreation, hetaerae for pleasure.

This inversion of our own social values depended, in Greece as in Japan, on a strong sense of masculine superiority. The wife was strictly confined to the role of housekeeper and mother. There were dire penalties if she were unfaithful. But the husband was free to keep a mistress or resort to prostitutes. Only the rich could afford the luxury of a cultivated courtesan. Consequently the hetaerae formed a small proportion of the numerous prostitutes of all grades. Some of them were renowned for their skill in philosophical arguments. Aspasia, who live with the great statesman Pericles, is said to have composed the famous funeral oration which is one of the finest pieces in classical literature.

Generals, poets and artists were among the patrons of the elite. Statues were erected to them in many temples and public buildings. Their names have come down through history - Phryne, who was sculptured by her lover, Praxiteles, as Aphrodite; Thais, the mistress of Alexander, who married after his death the King of Egypt.

The sense of guilt which still permeates our attitude to sex is one reason why we now have such a different attitude towards prostitution. The Greeks were untrammelled by such feelings. They saw nothing wrong in prostitution or in homosexuality. It seemed to them that sex, in all its varied forms, was one of the chief pleasures of life. Their literature shows that they sometimes asked the hetaerae to give them the type of pleasure they obtained from boys.

Today prostitution in Western Europe is often said to be declining, but this may be more apparent than real. It depends on what we mean by prostitution. The old-style brothels which were a feature of Victorian London have disappeared with the street- walker. The notorious brothels of Paris, immortalised by the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, no longer exist. Russia and China boast that prostitution has been eliminated in their countries.

For several thousand years prostitutes have been pilloried and persecuted. They have been imprisoned, flogged and even hanged. Society has treated them as moral lepers. But every attempt to abolish prostitution - except in name - has so far failed. As the social setting changes the easily recognisable harlot is less in demand. She no longer provides the only available outlet for those in search of sexual experience. Greater permissiveness has opened the floodgates to the amateur. At the lower, if not the middle, end of the social scale the ‘Good-time girl’ is quite prepared to allow intercourse as payment for a mere evening out. She probably has a full-time job and would resent being called a prostitute.

One unhappy result of this freedom is the sensational increase in venereal disease. Contrary to popular belief, the professional prostitute is not the main source of infection. She knows the risks and takes good care of herself. The idea that she is likely to be diseased has been deliberately spread to frighten those who might otherwise be tempted. The same motive is behind the extraordinary law that prohibits advertisements that even mention venereal disease. In May 1970 a student magazine was prosecuted for stating where medical treatment could be obtained - although many councils provide the same information in public lavatories. Those puritanical moralists evidently hope that the fear of disease will remain a deterrent if the means of prevention and cure are kept secret.

Another consequence of greater permissiveness is that the old, clear-cut lines of demarcation have broken down. They were never as sharp as the law tried to make them, but now they are practically eliminated. We can still draw a distinction between the full-time and the part-time prostitute, for what this is worth, otherwise the various grades merely reflect the class divisions of society. The kept woman, hostess, call-girl and low-grade prostitute form a hierarchy with at least one thing in common: they are all following a way of life that they have consciously chosen. They know that their favours have a cash value. They see no harm in it.

Their motivation is not essentially different from that of the woman who marries for money or the promiscuous pick-up. But for them sex is a profession, not a side-line. In society as it is constituted today they are regarded as beyond the pale. There is much more tolerance than formerly towards sexual behaviour in general but it does not yet extend to those who frankly act for gain. They can only be accepted if they cover up and become hypocrites. Our society is based on a ruthless pursuit of money. It is the standard by which success is measured and prestige bought. The big exception - apart from crime - is the overt use of sex for profit. As in sport, the amateur has a higher status than the professional.

To many people the idea that sex can be part of a commercial transaction is so shocking that it seems incomprehensible. Sex is mentally isolated from all other activities and judged by a rigorous standard that is never applied elsewhere. That it is an intense pleasure in its own right, with no pretence of love, can hardly be denied. Sex without love is a common experience in countless respectable marriages. Yet most people shrink from admitting the fact. The prostitute is even thought to have a special mentality, even more baffling than the homosexual.

The prostitute, states an American psychiatrist, is in no way different from anyone else. ‘Morally, mentally and physically the prostitute is a normal person, as normal as the average of women in other walks of life. She is neither an abnormal, nor a degenerate, nor a criminal.’ He was speaking at the Third Sexual Reform Congress, held in London in1929. He continued: ‘The profession of prostitution must be declared perfectly legal and legitimate; nay, it must be judged as an occupation of public utility; if the idea were not so shocking to those who have not freed their minds of the cobwebs of traditional dogma, we would say it should be placed among the honourable occupations.’ (William Robinson in W.L.S.R. Proceedings, p. 293).

Prostitution in itself cannot be described as a deviation. Some prostitutes may be deviants but that is not because of their chosen profession. Deviants are found in all walks of life, not least among the prostitute’s clients. The fetishist or masochist is usually unable to satisfy his eccentric tastes except with a prostitute. By no means all prostitutes are willing to accept this type of client. They rarely comply because it gives them any special pleasure. But before we condemn what may seem a sordid, commercial bargain we should consider that quite often it is redeemed by a sympathetic understanding that cannot be found elsewhere. Many a man who is oppressed by desires he does not want yet cannot help would feel even more of an outcast if he could not shed his guilt by being accepted in this way without repugnance.

Every psychiatrist knows of the vast amount of secret misery due to sexual problems to which marriage offers no solution. The prostitute ministers to the lonely and the frustrated, to the young and inexperienced as well as the old, whose potency has declined. In the kind of society in which we live I consider that the prostitute performs a valuable function. This does not imply that she is never dishonest, never avaricious, never neurotic. But these are common human traits, by no means peculiar to the prostitute.

Two question remain to be answered. What induces a girl to adopt prostitution as a profession? What type of man uses her services? Obviously there are many different reasons for making such a choice. In a fairly affluent society we can usually discount poverty. There is no longer the desperate necessity that drove a penniless girl on to the streets over a century ago. But although a girl may be able to support herself today by working she may not be able to afford luxuries. The discovery that she can dress in a style beyond her normal means and catch a glimpse of a world she would otherwise not enter may be the first step. She may go no further. There is a psychological gap between the amateur who accepts gifts in return for a weekend and the professional who crosses over and accepts cash. The difference in these attitudes is not very logical but it is real. In the eyes of the world the professional has cut herself off from the way of life of other women. She is not merely a rebel against conventional society, she is regarded as being outside it. She is aware of the gulf that separates her from other people. She is drawn in self-protection into a special community where she can be accepted for what she is. She puts a price on herself.

It is not easy to operate full-time as a free-lance. The professional needs a flat and this is difficult to find. If no questions are asked the rent is correspondingly exorbitant. So she is likely to find herself caught up in the complicated network of organised prostitution.

The obvious risks to which the prostitute is exposed make it essential to find a protector. Although the ponce is universally despised he often meets an emotional need. The prostitute has the normal human craving for affection and this has no part in the depersonalised sex which provides her livelihood. Her relationship with the man who lived on her earnings may be one of love-hate, but at least it is intensely personal. Even if he is a bully he gives an element of stability to her life. Very often she feels affection towards him, possibly a masochistic satisfaction in being possessed by a man whose status is even more despised than her own.

The attitude of a prostitute to her clients is bound to be detached. She could hardly continue to act out the pretence of love with a number of total strangers if she allowed herself to be emotionally involved. But she is a woman, not a machine, and for some of her clients she feels pity and for others contempt. At the top of the hierarchy, however, the prostitute can afford to be highly selective. She may have no more than three of four regulars who visit her on agreed dates. A much deeper relationship is then possible. I have known cases where this ripens into love and prostitution is abandoned for the role of mistress. Sometimes this results in a happy marriage.

But lower down the ladder, when it is not possible to pick and choose, a harder attitude to men is inevitable. This is not the result of prostitution, but the cause. Somewhere in early childhood we shall usually uncover factors that led to an aggressive attitude towards men. Just as a disturbed family background inclines some to homosexuality, so this makes it possible for others to accept prostitution. The child whose longing for love has been rebuffed relates by rejecting love. Instead of sex being used as an expression of love it is exploited for gain. The gifts and extra luxuries this brings are substitutes for a love that is scorned because it has always been out of reach.

A sociological survey sponsored by the British Social Biology council concludes: ‘The prostitute is completely without physical or emotional feeling for the man; in her ability to remain detached from the relationship she views the apparent self-indulgence of the man with distaste. There is a transference of guilt on to the partner. The man frequently criticises the prostitute’s immorality and the prostitute the man’s infidelity to the wife. How far this is a reflection of guilt only over the immediate situation, their present function, and how far it can be regarded as a reflection of the unconscious morality, I am unable to determine.’ (‘Women of the Streets‘, edited by C.H. Rolf.)

This is a somewhat sweeping generalisation based admittedly on a small number of cases. It is also confined to the more lowly class of prostitutes. But there is some evidence from psycho-analysis that displaced hostility to men, arising from a faulty relationship with the father, is often a factor. This may also account for a homosexual component which frequently leads to lesbianism.

According to an American authority on the subject: ‘The majority of prostitutes come from homes where there existed parental incompatibility. Having been deprived of a normal love relationship during childhood with their mother and father, their basic feeling of insecurity inspires them to seek out the affection of both sexes via intimacies with both men and women. Since all prostitutes are frustrated they attempt to find consolation for their feelings of insecurity and basic need for affection by seeking the love of some member of their own sex.’ (‘Female Homosexuality’, by F.S. Caprio, 1957.)

It seems well established that prostitutes are not born so, but made by the environment. The exception is the sex delinquent whose psychopathic personality is due to some genetic peculiarity. But having said this, it does not tell us all we most want to know. Nearly all human behaviour is the outcome of environmental influences. Also, prostitution, like marriage, is a social institution. It is not created solely by the psychology of individuals but by an acquisitive society which encourages a ruthless competition for easy money while at the same time erecting barriers to sexual satisfaction.

Victorian morality was based on the toleration of large-scale prostitution. In 1839 police records show that in London 933 brothels and 848 houses used for prostitution were known to exist. With characteristic hypocrisy it was argued that unless men could go to prostitutes no wife or daughter would be safe. Yet it was the prostitute, not her clients, who was made an outcast. This double standard was the legacy of the traditional attitude of the Church.

Hypocrisy was no Victorian invention. The medieval Church not only condemned the prostitute to eternal damnation but often made a financial profit out of her. The ‘stews’, as baths were called, were brothels. Those in Southwark were the most notorious in England. They belonged to the Bishopric of Winchester and were satirically known as ‘Winchester geese’. They continued until the seventeenth century.

The view that prostitution is a kind of insurance that society takes out against adultery has a superficial plausibility. Now that extra-marital and pre-marital intercourse no longer encounter such severe social censure the pattern of prostitution is changing, though it shows no sign of disappearing. It is likely to continue in some form or other as long as the family environment produces women who are willing to exploit their sex for gain and men who seek sex without the burden of responsibility. What is conveniently overlooked is that it is not only the woman who trades in sex. It takes two people to engage in trading. We still punish the woman while letting the man escape with nothing worse than a mild gesture of disapproval.

A deeper reason for the preference given by both man and woman for de-personalised sex is suggested by Alder. He regards prostitution, in common with various kinds of neurosis, as an attempt to get rid of an unconscious sense of inferiority. Lack of love in childhood is one obvious cause of feeling inadequate. It gives rise to a lack of self-confidence which can best be compensated for in a situation in which there is a feeling of power.

A man can sometimes satisfy this longing by seeking a wife of a lower social class. He can become a petty tyrant in his own home. Or he can go to a prostitute and feel, just because he pays for her services, that for a time he owns her, he can do what he likes with her, and there is no further obligation. In his heart he despises her - which is precisely what gives him the sense of superiority he cannot get elsewhere. The subtlety of Adler’s analysis is that this is a two-way traffic. Deep down the prostitute despises her client. Not always, perhaps. No formula can cover the infinite variety of human reactions. But the point is that the prostitute, too, has an unconscious need to feel that she can exercise power - a gesture of defiance against the society that rejects her. At a deeper level she rejects what is regarded as the normal feminine role - wife and mother. She uses her sexuality as a man would employ his business aptitude to make money and gain prestige. She remains frigid while acting a part. So the man is duped. To quote:

‘Thus while the man in need of a prostitute believes he has demonstrated his superiority over the woman, she is aware merely of her power of business attraction, the nature of her demand and her monetary value, and so she degrades the man to the role of her means of subsistence. Both of them, consequently, come by means of a fiction to the illusory feeling of personal predominance.’ (‘Individual Psychology’, Alfred Adler, 1932).

Adler contends that there are a number of people - men and women - whose psychic make-up calls for prostitution. The man of this type can best satisfy his need for power - and compensate for an inability to exercise it - by the superstition of masculine superiority. The same belief is imposed on women, and one reaction is to try to emulate men and gain prestige and money by making sex a career.

Undoubtedly Adler had a profound insight into a psychological problem for which evidence is not easy to obtain. In the next chapter we shall see what a number of prostitutes have said about themselves in the course of revealing interviews.

Everyone who has made a study of prostitution complains of the difficulty of getting reliable, first-hand evidence. The average prostitute is understandably suspicious of those who try to probe into her personal background. If she comes up against the law she may consent to undergo psychiatric treatment, but it is doubtful in these circumstances whether the desire to be ‘reformed’ is genuine. After all, it is not very clear what is meant by a ‘cure’ where there is no specific disease. The psychological disturbances of the prostitute are no different from those of many other women. Even the way she tries to solve her conflicts may be essentially the same.

A former chief magistrate of New York City is reported as saying: ‘The prostitute has never been understood by our courts. Indeed she is still an enigma to science itself. The nature of her emotional instability, its causes, its cure, are all matters beyond the knowledge of science let alone the law.’ (‘The Call Girl’ by Harold Greenwald, 1958.) To speak in this way is to perpetuate the myth that prostitution is incomprehensible. But we cannot separate women into two sharply defined classes: prostitutes and respectable women. Many prostitutes - psychologically speaking - can certainly be regarded as respectable people. The prostitute uses sex for profit more frankly than the woman who marries for money, or the good-time girl. She is honest about it. In so far as she becomes a recognisable type this is due to the label which society fastens on her. We shall not begin to understand her unless we distinguish the stereotype from the reality.

Dr. Chesser continues:

I have questioned a large number of prostitutes and they do not all conform to the same pattern. There are some common factors. For example, in many cases they have an unfortunate family background. There is frequently an unsatisfactory relationship with the father - either because he is very domineering or very weak. When a child cannot establish a loving relationship with one or the other parent - or with both - there is likely to be a distortion in sexual relationships as an adult. This is a useful clue, but we need to know a great deal more. There are a wide variety of emotional consequences possible. What channels a girl into prostitution is probably the social conditions she encounters when she leaves the family. It is the bigger world she then enters which determines how the warp in her personality - the inability to love - shows itself. Thus she is doubly the victim of her environment.

It is sometimes said that the prostitute hates men, but this needs considerable qualification. She could not possibly love the numbers of men who pass briefly in and out of her life. In sheer self-defence she must be emotionally detached in these transitory relationships. Her clients do not expect to buy her love; they pay for her sex. ‘I don’t like it when a man gets romantic with me,’ one said. ‘I get furious if he asks me why I started on the game. Sometimes I go a bit soft with a young man who has never had sex before. It is rather touching to find a man shy with me. I try to help him - “mother” him, if you like, although it’s an odd word to use.’

Another expressed her resentment of the sort of man who complains about his wife’s coldness. ‘He’s really apologising for sinking so low - in his own estimation - as to go to a prostitute. He looks on me as dirt. He’ll go back to his wife as if nothing has happened. He’s got a nice house in the suburbs, probably some children and friends who look up to him. Outwardly he is a respectable member of society and nobody - least of all his wife - suspects that he is a hypocrite. He expects girls like me to do things for him he wouldn’t dare ask of his wife.’

Sensing that men of this type despise her, the prostitute reacts by despising them. If they think she is leading a degraded life she gets a certain satisfaction by bringing them down to her level. But usually she tries not to experience any feelings.

‘I’m cold, really. I go through the movements, but it doesn’t touch me. Lying on your back is an easy way to make money. All I want of men is the sight of their cash.’

Yet this aggressiveness does not rule out he possibility of feeling affection. The relationship of a prostitute with a man who lives on her earnings often comes close to love. It may be the only way she can experience a genuine orgasm. There is an element of masochism in this curious relationship since she may even be physically ill-treated. She knows, too, that the ponce is more despised than herself and although he bullies her, the working of the unconscious mind restores the balance by assuring her that she is superior.

The following examples give some idea of the variety of types who choose one of the many forms of this way of life. Some are well educated and discriminating, others are not.

Annette. Age 25
Educated at boarding school.
Unmarried
Secretary

Annette was the only child of middle-class parents. Her father was in the export trade. He was a hard-drinking, aggressive extrovert who completely dominated his wife. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in humiliating her with scathing remarks. She was a timid mouse-like woman who had never been more than a housekeeper. She made a comfortable home and it was the centre of her life. She was never taken out by her husband and they had their holidays separately. When he was in the mood he could be pleasant and even generous to Annette, bringing her the unexpected gift. Annette felt he did this to annoy his wife who never received any presents from him. The result was that Annette resented his attitude and sympathised with her mother, though the latter’s passive resignation irritated her. She felt no affection for her parents, only an alternating anger and exasperation. She came to the conclusion that if this was marriage she didn’t want it.

When she left school she took a secretarial job. She soon found that she was attractive to men, but she ignored boys of her own age. She preferred the older men who had money to spend on her. At first she gave little in return, but then one of them became persistent she decided to take the plunge. He admitted that he was married and suggested that she should leave home and have a flat of her own. He would arrange it.

She told her parents that she was sharing with another girl. Her father did not believe her and there was a row. She walked out. She realised they meant nothing to her. She dismissed them with a phrase that she was often to use in the future. ‘They’ve served my purpose.’

Her attitude to all men was to be the same. When they served her purpose she would drop them. This formula was like a protective shell into which she could withdraw if ever she was likely to be hurt. It was the outcome of a deep, unconscious fear of rejection. She herself would be the one to do any rejecting. And so began a way of life which she deliberately chose as an alternative to the romance-leading-to-marriage pattern of most other girls she knew.

For several years she continued with a part-time job as a front. She had very few affairs and certainly did not regard herself as a prostitute She preferred the role of a mistress and there was more security if the man was married. She was cynically aware that all the men who came to her claimed to be unhappily married.

Then the thing she had tried to avoid happened. The brittle hardness she had cultivated was broken by a young wealthy American. He seemed to be passionately in love with her and for the first time she lost her sexual frigidity. He offered to marry her and take her back to the States. The affair lasted three months, then it ended abruptly with a note saying he had to return home. There was no explanation. She could only think that he had pretended to be in love because it gave the affair an extra boost. She was shocked and bitter. At best he had kidded himself; if so he had also fooled her, and she vowed that she would never expose herself to such an humiliation again.

She was approached by a man who organised a call-girl agency. She did not hesitate for long. She would not be ‘hooked’ again by her emotions, but she was definitely ‘hooked’ by her taste of ‘the sweet life’. She was still young and remarkably beautiful. She was able to insist that she was first introduced to a potential client so that she could refuse him if she didn’t like the look of him. She gave good value and there was no longer any nonsense about love. All she intended to sell was her body and her price was high.

I found this on a Blog and thought it would fit in here.

50 Tips for Prostitutes
Helpful hints to The Working Person…
By Jahnet de Light

1. Always observe the safe sex rules.
2. Decide on your boundaries and stick to them, no matter how much money is offered or how broke you are.
3. Remember being paranoid is almost as bad as the thing you are paranoid of.
4. As you’ll probably be working for a third of your life, it seems a real waste of YOUR life to spend it hating what you do.
5. The people who use professional sex services are the same people we meet in our own lives, including our mates.
6. YOU are in charge. No one makes you a victim unless, at a certain level, you allow them.
7. The sex business is a career. Very few who start give up at 25, or “just do it for a couple of years”.
8. If you don’t like the idea of this, find another lifestyle.
9. It isn’t all making money (profit) as there are lots of expenses and bills to be paid.
10. Beginners normally work for someone else, i.e. in saunas, brothels, drinking clubs, or for a pimp.
11. Working for yourself i.e. in a flat or running your own escort agency costs money and means responsibility.
12. The police are not out to get you, unless you’re really unlucky. It’s usually your own stupid behaviour that attracts attention and that’s one of the reasons for producing these guidelines.
13. Rich and successful people will rarely take you on for long.
14. Just because you live with someone, it doesn’t make them a pimp. There’s no difference between a whore supporting a mate and a shop girl supporting a mate.
15. A lot of the people who live with or support a person who beats them or forces them into sexwork, have a need for that kind of relationship.
16. Organised pimping is very different from living with a weak or poor partner.
17. As you get older, you discover other work options, i.e. mistress, madame or maid.
18. Prostitution attracts people who like to give, preferring to be financially independent and be the bread-winner. In other words, control freaks.
19. If you want, you can pay tax and be part of the white economy but, for this you must be organised, get an accountant or, better still, ask the help of an accountant who is a client.
20. Think of the sex business as a career, and utilise the profits you make.
21. Get out of the habit of the daily take. Think of yourself as a business. Start thinking weekly or preferably, monthly.
22. Try to pay yourself a weekly wage. If you employ someone, pay them weekly, and save the rest.
23. Remember there is no sick pay, no pension, so think ahead. You may get sick and you will get old.
24. If you have to lie to everyone around you, you must really ask yourself why you are doing it.
25. If you really hate your job or hate yourself doing it, give it up.
26. Be warned, the sex business is a really tough game and prostitution is the hardest part of it. It is not for everyone.
27. The fact that you can earn more money in one day that your mate can earn in one week, can seriously affect your relationship.
28. If you respect your client, your client will respect you.
29. If you think or treat your client as an animal, they may well behave as one.
30. Misdirected sexual energy often becomes anger.
31. If you piss your neighbours off, they will give you a hard time.
32. Having lots of men going in and out of your premises draws attention. If that’s how you must work, choose an area where no one will notice or nobody cares.
33. Remember it’s an offence for more than one person to work in a premises, so be really sensible if you’re crossing that line.
34. There’s no point in doing 50 men a week, it will make you want to get out after a couple of months and spend all your money on rubbish to cheer yourself up
35. Remember: ten men a week is 520 a year. This is a reasonable average.
36. Give yourself a sensible working week. If you work seven days a week, that’s all your time and you will burn out in a couple of years.
37. Look nice, smell nice, dress nice and you will feel nice.
38. Remember, being a slut is part of the fantasy. Start as yourself, play whatever part is wanted, then return to yourself. This will make your performance much more fun.
39. It’s all right to have fun and it’s all right to enjoy yourself.
40. It’s also all right to come.
41. Remember, you are always in control.
42. If things aren’t working out between you and a client forgets the money, stay calm and friendly.
43. There are good and bad escort agencies. Unfortunately, it’s trial and error from what you. choose. Most take one fee in hand. The going rate is about one third and for that, they should have checked out the telephone number before they give it to you. They should also expect you to call them on arriving and leaving the client. Leave the number and address of each visit at home with them, and a good friend.
44. Make sure you have a friend who knows what you do and will support you. In the end, you have yourself and your own strength: trust yourself and your inner feelings, as they will always protect you. See yourself as worthy, what you do as worthy, and let this be known to your friend/s too.
45. With escorting, know your boundaries and don’t drink too much.
46. If you try the clubs, remember it’s often five or six nights a week and you have to drink. The sex fee sounds lucrative but it’s not every night or even every week. You’ve got to get dressed up and often pawed by drunken men till 2 or 3am in the morning, for a small hostess fee. However, if you enjoy going out and drinking, this could be for you.
47. Clubs with a private membership are safer because the club has a record of the clients’ names and addresses.
48. Saunas usually want a massage diploma and they don’t encourage full sex.
49. Being on the street may seem the easiest way of being on the game but remember most of the hunting grounds are someone’s patch girl/boy-wise, pimp-wise, dealer-wise and police-wise.
50. Whichever way you choose, you will have to pay someone, somewhere (like all work). There are a lot of organisations around to help you, if you need it.

Jeanne Age 23
Educated at grammar school
Unmarried
Travel agency clerk

She was nine when her father was divorced and her mother had custody of her. She had been very attached to her father and when he made no attempt to see her again she turned against him. She felt she could no longer have faith in anyone. Her mother married again, but Jeanne was unable to transfer her affections to her stepfather. For a time she withdrew into herself. She was intelligent and did well at school. She could have had plenty of boyfriends but she was unable to make any real contact with them. She enjoyed being chased and she led them on only to mock their dismay when she threw them over. Superficially she appeared at this stage to be a heartless flirt. The sense of power which each fresh conquest gave compensated for the rejection she suffered when her father abandoned her. She had discovered that she had the power to hurt. She had no desire to love because that would take the power out of her hands and give it to another.

It soon became apparent that sex was the most reliable instrument of power. At first she allowed men to have intercourse with her in return for lavish entertainment and gifts. She was then noticed by a talent-spotter who was looking out for recruits to his call-girl organisation. He tested her by taking her to one of those Mayfair parties that end in an orgy of indiscriminate copulation. Then he persuaded her to take part in a ‘show’ in which she acted the part of a handcuffed slave who was raped. She next moved to an establishment where the same show was enacted in reverse. The men who went there, some of whom moved in exalted social circles, were masochists. They were manacled and suspended in chains and paid a high price to be beaten with birch rods. This was a more congenial role for her. She vented her aggression towards all men by whipping their buttocks until she drew blood. She was such a success that her services were in considerable demand until a police raid brought these activities to an end.

She was forced for a time to operate as an ordinary call-girl, but unlike many girls she let it be known that she had no objection to kinky sex. On the contrary, she preferred it. One client, an elderly stockbroker, visited her every Thursday and paid her to urinate on him. That was all he required. When it was accomplished he thanked her politely and sometimes left a present as well as the fee. To Jeanne there was no more satisfying way of showing her contempt for men. The sadistic streak grew more pronounced as time went on and made it impossible to enter into a loving relationship with any man. Her first realisation that sex could be for pleasure as well as for profit was made when she was initiated by another call-girl who was a lesbian. The affection of which she then found herself capable softened and humanised her. It was the only love that she would ever know and all that she wanted.

Marie. Age 22
Educated at secondary modern school
Unmarried
Manicurist

On leaving school Marie worked in a beauty parlour and became a manicurist in a fashionable men’s salon. Her appearance earned her the name of Baby Doll. She was a petite, natural blonde, with appealing violet-blue eyes. There was something artless and childlike in her manner that older men found irresistible. She herself was attracted by older men. She had felt little of the aggression towards the male sale sex so characteristic of many prostitutes and consequently none of the hardness. She didn’t consider herself a prostitute. She continued to work in the salon after a middle-aged art specialist established her in a West End flat. To Marie he was a father figure - a substitute for a real father who had died when she was seven years old. When her mother married again it proved impossible to identify with her stepfather.

For three years Marie was fairly faithful as a mistress. She felt a genuine affection for her benefactor, but he gave her very little sexual satisfaction. During his frequent absences abroad she experimented with temporary affairs because she was lonely. When he returned unexpectedly and found another man in the flat the life she had been leading came suddenly to an end. For a year she had no offer of a permanent liaison. Many men were willing to take her away for a weekend and they were generous, but she saw herself drifting into the life of a call-girl unless she could find another sugar-daddy. That she should shrink from paying the price for the luxurious life to which she had become accustomed was significant. So far from being incapable of love she had a deep unconscious craving for love. This emotional conflict brought about a nervous crisis and in a fit of depression she took an overdose of sleeping pills.

The shock of being so close to death had a profound effect. She could no longer bring herself to go with the sort of man who was only interested in her body. On an impulse she spent the night with a young man she met casually and fell in love with him. He was a struggling actor with little money. Somehow this didn’t seem to matter. His quietly masterful attitude supplied her need for a father-surrogate and in addition gave her complete sexual satisfaction. The case of Marie shows the extent to which the choice of role is determined by deep unconscious needs. If she had been rejected by her father she might have developed the typical anti-masculine protest and accepted prostitution as a way of life. The need for love would still be present even though its existence was denied. This basic frustration can be compensated to some extent by the colder satisfaction of power symbolised by money.

Marianne. Age 28
Educated at a convent
Married at 19
Fashion artist

Outwardly there did not seem anything wrong with Marianne’s background. She was born in Liverpool where her father, of French extraction, kept a good-class restaurant. He was a man of violent temper and when he had been drinking he would abuse his wife. As a child Marianne was terrified of him. She overheard him say during one of these rows that he was not really her father and had been tricked into marriage. This made a profound impression on her. It seemed to explain why her father showed her no affection. All his hopes were centred on his son. Even Marianne’s mother showed strong preference for the boy and at times appeared to resent her daughter.

Marianne grew up in a loveless household. She was made to feel as though she were an interloper. Extremely good-looking and gifted, she studied at an art school where she met another student, two years older, who seduced her. When she discovered she was pregnant she insisted that the man should marry her. She was not in love with him but dared not admit her condition to her parents. She left home abruptly and went to London where she was married. Having escaped from the surroundings she hated, her next thought was to get rid of the child and be really free. She had an abortion and tried to get established as a fashion artist. She had a minor success but shortage of money led to quarrels and finally the marriage broke up. At this critical turning point she attracted the notice of a wealthy business man whom she met at a Chelsea party. He offered to set her up in a flat if she would be his mistress.

This was the start of her career as a ‘kept woman’. It was a purely commercial arrangement, and she wanted nothing more. She had expensive clothes, luxurious surroundings and a generous allowance in exchange for periodic visits. She was warned that it would come to an end if she had other affairs. For a year she kept her side of the bargain, but what she hadn’t allowed for was that she could be bored. Other men showed their interest and she realised the power she had to maintain herself in luxury by exploiting her sex appeal. By playing hard to get she was richly rewarded.

She terminated the original agreement and started on the more adventurous path of a freelance. She divorced her husband and thought of looking for a suitable marriage. Then something unexpected happened. On a whim she allowed a young, impecunious man, to whom she took a fancy, to spend the night with her. For the first time she no longer had to simulate orgasm. The longing to repeat the experience was so intense that she took fright. It was not merely that such an affair might endanger the whole pattern of her life but if she grew fond of this man she would no longer be fully in command of the situation. He would have power over her, and what she wanted was to remain in total possession of herself, dictating her own terms.

To a varying degree this need for a display of power is found in most prostitutes who compensate unconsciously for having been rejected in childhood. Her father had always been hostile because he didn’t believe she was his child. Whatever the truth, the mother clearly had not wanted her. She lacked the experience of loving her parents and being loved by them which would have prepared her for mature love. Her attitude to all men was coloured by an aggression which enabled her to keep her self-esteem. Once she dropped that defence mechanism she would find it difficult to continue the way of life she had chosen. She would have to admit to herself - what she strongly denied - that she was a prostitute after all. She was frank about her attitude to men. ‘I don’t get any pleasure out of sex,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to. I’m irritated if a man gets romantic about me. All I want are the good things that sex can provide. But I’m very selective. I wouldn’t go with a man I disliked however rich he was.’

In spite of this hard-boiled front she had periodical bouts of depression. There was an emptiness in her life as well as the haunting fear that she couldn’t maintain its present style indefinitely. Unless she could get the security of a marriage she saw herself slipping down in status to a call-girl. She admitted that rather than that she would commit suicide.

Carol. Age 30
Educated at secondary modern school
Married
Waitress

Carol had a traumatic experience at the age of fifteen when her father showed a sexual interest in her. He was a labourer, frequently unemployed, and they lived in a shabby, North London basement. Carol’s mother had long been in poor health and it was during a stay in hospital that the incident occurred. Carol’s father approached her one night and said that she had reached the age when men were becoming interested in her and he must give her some advice. He produced a condom and warned her never to allow a man to have intercourse without one. He then demonstrated how she could put it on. He held out his penis, gave her the condom and guided her hand. He had a strong erection and he held her hand and made her masturbate him, pausing just before ejaculation. He was so excited that she was frightened, but he made no further suggestion. For the next week, however, he repeated the lesson and instead of leaving her he made her lie down with him in bed. Again he pretended to give her advice. He stroked her labia and pretended to explain the significance of the hymen and why it must not be broken before marriage. There was one safe way of protecting herself, he said, if a boy tried to make love to her without a sheath. Again he guided her hand to his erect penis and made her rub it until he had an ejaculation. She herself had no sexual feeling whatever. Disgust was mingled with guilt and yet she had a sense of acquiring some secret knowledge. When her father begged her the next day not to breathe a word of what had happened their roles reversed. She was no longer afraid of him; it was he who was afraid of her. He gave her some money to buy something for herself and she realised then that sex not only meant power but money.

There were no more approaches after her mother returned from hospital. At sixteen Carol left school and became a waitress. When men tried to date her she remembered her father’s warnings. She chose men who were free with money and permitted deep petting but drew the line firmly at intercourse until one man took her to his flat. This was her first taste of real luxury. ‘Would you like to live here?’ he asked. At first she thought he was joking, but he went on to make a startling proposal. He said she was far too good-looking to waste her time as a waitress. She could live in this flat and have pocket money if she would entertain men he would send her. He assured her that they would be carefully chosen and there was nothing to fear. She took a week to think it over, but after returning to the dingy flat and working for meagre wages in a restaurant her mind was made up.

Carol underwent a period of careful training. She was not only taught how to satisfy the various and sometimes eccentric requirements of the sort of men who would come to her, she had to acquire the arts and graces of a higher social life than that to which she had become accustomed. She was an apt pupil. She never felt the slightest thrill from intercourse, but she acted the part convincingly. The cynical view of men which was fostered by the experience with her father hardened. Some of the men who came to her complained of the frigidity of their wives. She despised that sort of talk. She derived a bitter amusement from the reflection that if only they knew she was far more frigid. It was easy to fool them.

She was undoubtedly a success. Her clients included business executives down from the North, delegates to various conferences in London, overseas visitors and on one occasion a clergyman in mufti. She often squeezed gifts out of them and became obsessed with saving money against the day when she would no longer be in such demand.

‘Why is the way I make money so different from the way that these men make money?’ she said when questioned about her attitude. ‘They aren’t squeamish and they do their best to cheat the taxman. Yet society honours men like that and treats girls like me as untouchables. All men are hypocrites.’

This anti-masculine note probably ante-dated the episode with her father, though the experience strengthened it. She was conditioned to separate sex from love and equate sex with money. She felt that all men would ever want of her was her body, and since this was merely a continuation for them of the mercenary standards which ruled their lives, she reacted by copying them. She adopted the same attitude, by taking money as the same measure of success. This was what seemed to give the male sex their superiority and their power. Consequently she tried to take on the masculine role which ruled out the possibility of loving a man. If she was no more than a means to an end - temporary gratification - she would turn the tables and treat men as a means to her end - money.

She had had a lesbian affair which involved her so deeply that she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. It shattered the sexual frigidity which enabled her to remain, as it were, a spectator of her own activities. She was not afraid of sex, but she was very much afraid of love. She wanted to stay aloof from emotional conflicts, essentially not possessed by anyone. This proved to be impossible. The only sexual relationship of which she was capable, except at a superficial level, was homosexual. Characteristically, even in this she took the masculine role.

Yvonne. Age 34
Educated at secondary modern school
Married
Shop Assistant

Until the law on street soliciting was changed Yvonne was an ordinary street-walker. She would pick up men in Soho and take them to a back room for which she paid a high rent. Her father had been a French chef and she was bilingual. He deserted her mother and when Yvonne was sixteen her mother died. She had known what it meant to struggle against poverty. What she longed for was security, and after a spell as an assistant in a dress shop she fell in love with a hairdresser and married him. For a year she was happy, then she discovered she was pregnant. The arrival of a child brought back acute financial problems and living in a single room increased the tension. There were quarrels culminating in separation. He husband walked out and she never saw him again. The security she had striven for seemed as far off as ever.

She found a job as a housekeeper to an elderly man who was willing to have her child though he wanted a sexual relationship. As he was practically impotent it was not difficult to satisfy him. When the daughter was eight years old the man died, leaving her a few hundred pounds. She decided to invest it in her child. She sent the girl to a boarding school, and in order to provide the fees over the years she went on the streets.

By night she operated in Soho, dressed and made up for the part. In the early morning she changed into a sober suit, removed her make-up, and took the first train to Finsbury Park, where she had a small flat. This double life continued except for the school holidays until her daughter left school and gained a place at university. This was the proudest moment of her life. The possibility that her secret might be discovered was so intolerable that she gave up prostitution. Thanks to her knowledge of French she obtained work with a travel agency.

Yvonne was remarkably free from the aggression towards men considering that all the ingredients for an anti-masculine bias were present - the desertion of her father and also of her husband. What saved her was her passionate devotion to her child, a love that was warmly returned. Her whole sense of security was founded on mother-love. If that had been destroyed she would not have wanted to go on living. Also she had a more realistic attitude to sex than most English women. She was quite without the conventional feelings of guilt. It was the only way she could have earned enough to give her daughter a good education and she had no regrets.

It would be a mistake to draw many inferences from this selection of cases. The sweeping generalisations sometimes made rest on the fallacy that prostitution is a clearly defined category. It is a term used in the law courts, but except in this restricted sense it is too vague to be useful. The motivation of women who use their sexual allure to gain status or money is not essentially different whether they are wives, mistresses of call-girls. They do not deserve moral credit if they are fortunate enough to get what they want from one man instead of a number. In the lower reaches they are often inadequate personalities, but this may show itself in different ways.

A society which measures success by wealth and condones ruthless methods to acquire it is in no position to condemn the commercialisation of sex. The ordinary prostitute adopts the same standard as her clients in their own business affairs. In a masculine-dominated world she makes her anti-masculine protest by identifying herself with men - denying her role as a woman with love to give and trading with her body as men trade with other commodities. By offering a pretence of love she makes men her dupes, and to that extent she revenges herself on the men who make use of her while regarding her as an inferior species. She feels that although they may really despise her she, at least, can make fools of them, and be paid for it.

If it makes sense to treat all such prostitutes as though they belonged to a special, recognisable psychological type we must do the same with the men who resort to prostitutes. This is clearly impossible. The man who never seeks sexual satisfaction except with prostitutes is perhaps a special case. He is almost certainly an inadequate personality, incapable of love and unwilling to accept responsibility. But there are so many reasons why men go to prostitutes and here again we cannot generalise. Frigid wives, sexual difficulties, anomalies such as fetishism are all valid reasons. It a more rational society these motives would not arise.

Prostitution is an imperfect solution in an imperfect world. Both the prostitute and her client are casualties of a society which makes a problem of sex and condemns any practical attempt to solve it. In the social conditions of today the prostitute has a necessary place and does not deserve the contempt with which she is regarded and which is never shown towards the predatory women who are prostitutes in all but name while sheltering behind the façade of loveless respectability and marriage.

The End