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 "Travail" by Havanyé Framboise

Prostitution in comparison with the law in Europe

The recent festival of football in Germany revealed “the massive importation” of workers come from Eastern Europe countries in order to satisfy the sexual request of the supporters. Several specialized establishments thus proposed these “entertainment” with crowd. The German solution to dam up violence according to match is summarized with a visit with the brothel… Big monkeys don't they give the example while frenetically copulating instead of fight against each other?
The legislator tries to bring answers to interrogations put forward by the sudden visibility of the prostitution in Europe and in the world. Is the sex an tool of work, can one “sell” sexual services? and what happen does assent? Is there the right to do everything since one remains in the private sphere, intimate?

But what happens in the other european countries? Germany, England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden?
1 - In any of these countries, the individual exercise of the prostitution does not constitute an infringement, however, soliciting is, except in Spain, in the Netherlands and in Sweden. In other words, prostitution is tolerate if it is not too conspicuous…

 

European countries do not unanimously condemn procuring

2 - All the countries except Spain and the Netherlands condemn the procuring whatever is the form, in particular the incentive to the prostitution, the exploitation of a person in situation of weakness, the hotel procuring…

 

In Sweden, clients of prostitutes can be condemned

3 - Sweden remains the only country to prohibit the purchase of sexual services… The customers of the prostitutes can be sent in prison or to pay a strong fine.
In the other countries, the accent relates especially to exploitation of the minors, but the age of the free assent varies from 12 to 16 years… An English law of 1985 defined a new sexual infringement: the motorized dredger. It is the case where a man driving a motorized vehicle stops to accost a woman and propose to buy her sexual services.

 

Always on society borders

4 - In all the countries except in the Netherlands, the absence of legal recognition of the profession prevents prostitutes to have a complete Social Security cover . Although the prostitution is not regarded any more as an infringement, the incomes of its exercise are compared to “underground” economy, the prostitutes are thus marginalized by an absence of social recognition. In certain countries like Belgium, they can subscribe an health care insurance of the Social Security unless their host country does not offer one minimal Social Security cover to all its residents whatever is their profession.

5 - The incomes of the prostitutes are taxable everywhere except in Spain. There is thus an inconsistency between the absence of social recognition and tax constraint. In other words, they are not entitled to a Social Security cover but must pay taxes…

Currently only the Netherlands regards the exercise of the prostitution as an occupation with whole share.

 

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Historical references marks

Courtesane and client

The "oldest trade in the world"

It is common to qualify the prostitution of “older trade of the world”, and to even seek some “biological” justifications in the behaviors of the animals, to undoubtedly advance the argument of “natural”, however powerful it seems… .However, the male animal which offers a “gift” to the female one in exchange of a sexual intercourse has nothing to do with the prostitution, but with a whole of relational codes as Helen Fisher wrote in he book “Natural History of love”. Thus let us leave the monkeys and other small beasts to couple in peace that will avoid us falling into simplistic comparisons…

Havelock Ellis, (1859-1939) British Psychologist and Sexologist , author of an imposing work in eight volumes treating of sexual psychology, supports that the prostitution appears only with civilization, it would be made necessary to relieve frustrations what generates the various limitations which the society imposes on the sexual life: the late age of marriage, and religious strict control on sexual activity. Only, certain radical movements, i.e feminist or religious dispute this opinion in addition largely shared.

The sacred prostitution

The historian Jean Bottero, specialist in Eastern antiquity puts the question of the origins of the prostitution in sound deliver Mésopotamie (Gallimard, 1987). He poses that it is initially about a worship, the prostitute is a kind of priestess who officiates in a temple. The crowned prostitute would be probably a woman being revealed barren, and finding a integration social in this role, not being able to be the wife of only one, she becomes it of all… The worship sumérien as that of Ishtar in Babylon uses these priestesses as testify the writings to them to the time, but also the code of Hammourabi (law 181), The Greek historian Hérodote (Of civitate Dei), as well as the Book of the Genesis (Deutéronome XXIII, 18).

Men also can be designated as male prostitutes. It is the case when they cannot ensure of descent for physical reasons, they thus takes part in the worships and honors the divinities by offering their body, as Cybèle goddesses priests do. However, those, like their Attys model are castrated to like the goddess.
The men who link themselves sexually with these sacred partners hope to reinforce their vitality, to better ensure the fertility of their wives but also of their grounds and their herds…
This belief crosses the centuries since currently there are still women “marabout” living apart of the village communities in groups with their “sisters”, and practising this sacred prostitution.
It is indeed a prostitution because these exchanges have a cost, the temples grow rich because the faithful ones must pay and sometimes very expensive the services of these “priests”.
Emile Durkeim as max Weber are interested in religions because of their primarily social aspect. From this point of view, the sacred prostitution has several functions. It symbolizes the gift of oneself with the divinity like writes it the poet Charles Baudelaire:

 

Quotation What is love? The need to leave oneself. The man is an animal admirer, To adore is to sacrifice, to prostitute Also any love is prostitution.   Charles Baudelaire

It is thus a question well of breaking the carapace of its selfishness, to leave oneself, going towards a dionysiac fusion, in order to make stronger the social relations…

In many religions, the beginner must accept the sexual plays that the priests, priestesses and more former initiates will impose to him. These “sacrifices” have an initiatory value.
It seems that the sacred prostitution did not exist in ancient Egypt, but in a more traditional form. In all the East, from India to China, on the other hand, these habits were frequent as attest some the iconography of the temples and writings of these civilizations.

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At the Etruscans, the poor young women had recourse to the prostitution in order to constitute a dowry, this current practice was not badly considered and would have been rather largely widespread until the second century after JC, according to an article of Anthony Potter published in medical British Journal of Mars 1897. Constantin (272-337), first Christian emperor, put an end to these practices by many reforms aiming at controlling sexual manners.

 

 

 

Aphrodite, dessin à la plume d'après un vase grec

In ancient Greece, the prostitution is posted openly in the temples and the harbor cities, for example, the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth shelters approximately a thousand of workers. The legislator and statesman legislator Solon (640-558 front JC) would have instituted municipal brothels so that the male citizens can appease their impulses with the help of a moderate cost. They are slaves who work in these establishments, they are located all in bottom of the social scale. It happens however that a free woman having lost parents, husband or tutor sees herself constraint with the prostitution to survive. There are also independent prostitutes like the musicians and dancers who animate the ends of banquet. The hetaeras, professional courtesans form the elite of the profession, they are free to choose with whom they sell their services, and can move from cities to others. Generally, the hetaeras are in relation to people powerful and rich what puts them safe from many problems.

 

In Roman Antiquity, the prostitutes are very numerous, they work in brothels, or at they, must fit in the registers of the city (starting from IIè front century JC) in order to obtain an authorization to carry on their activity. They do not have for as much any civic statute, and their condition enviable is hardly excluded for the courtesans of luxury who make very expensive pay their services reserved for the elite. Some of these courtesans remained very famous as Poppea which will end up marrying the Néron emperor and becoming empress. The rules forces the prostitutes to be not only made record on lists, but also to be made visible. There is habit to think that one of first distinctive signs could have been the make-up and particularly lipstick. To tint its lips makes think without ambiguity of the sexual lips. In the Roman world, only the prostitutes made up, in the Christian world, the make-ups are considered by the religious bigots as devil traps . However in Egyptian Antiquity, the women usually used the make-ups and others cosmetics.

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Portraits de courtisanes

Contrastes, by Havanyé Framboise

 

Hetaera
Ancient Greece is a society where the woman does not have practically any freedom, their more beautiful ornament is silence and invisibility: Menandre (a famous poet) like Pericles (politician) agree perfectly on this position. However, there is there an exception in this state of affairs, indeed, the Hetaera word which means partner, friend, is a free woman. She has her body like its goods, and chooses his/her lovers.

The Hetaera as Geisha is a model of courtesan, being beautiful is not enough. Hetaera received an excellent education, knows philosophy and literature, excels in poetry, music and dance. Men of elite find at Hetaera an ideal partner, who listens to them, understands them, is able to dialogue, advising and alleviating their tensions. Some of these courtesans are remained famous, for example Phrynea which was the partner of the sculptor Praxiteles and was used to him as model for the stature of Aphrodite (to say of Cnide). Theodotea was the partner of Alcibiade, and dialogued with Socrates. The partner of Epicure, Leontion, is it also philosophical. Let us quote still Thais which was the mistress of Alexandre and of its successor. The hetaera is often a foreigner settled in Athens, she has its house where she receives and gives banquets. The Athenian woman citizen, as for it, does not even have the right to attend those which her husband gives.
Aspasia, partner of Pericles, were one of more famous hétaïres.

Vénus Capitoline, copie de l'Aphrodite de Cnide. Le sculpteur Praxitèle avait pour modèle Phryné, sa compagne

Aspasy
Aspasy (470-410 front JC) - Born in Milet, in Minor Asia is undoubtedly the most famous woman of Antiquity Greek. Throughout her life, she will be always regarded as foreign in Athens what will prohibit to marry her companion Pericles, but this will allow to live much more freely than them Athenian of stock, condemned by nature to remain dumb women and invisible… Aspasy lived approximately fifteen years with Pericles then separated from its legitimate wife. Pericles recognized the son whom it had had with Aspasie.
Aspasy lives at one brilliant time for arts and philosophy, and this condition enables her to attend the intellectual elite… Thus her name remains from now on attached to that of Pericles, the politician most powerful then. One indicates this time like century of Pericles.

One often regards Aspasy as one of the first feminists… In 450, she managed her own school of philosophy and of rhetoric and encourages the other women to come to inform themselves there. She also transmits hers passion for mathematics, and her house accomodates philosophers, policies and intellectuals, among them Socrate and his Plato pupil , Alcibiade, Sophocle, Phidias without forgetting the philosopher Anaxagoras which it invited to assist it like Xenophon and his wife. The talents of Aspasy are worth a sulfurous reputation to her, in certain writings, one compares her to the sophist. All like sophist (here, it is Socrate which is aimed), the hetaera (There it is Aspasie) has disciples, and to specify that Socrates has as a pupil Critias, and Aspasie for disciple Pericles himself! In its “parallel lives”, Plutarque does not contradict this insinuation and depicts Aspasy, extremely educated in philosophy as in policy, like mistress (to be thought) of Pericles…
Claude Mossé, historian, reports that: ” Plato, in Menexenes, allot to Aspasy the composition of a funeral oration, these official speeches parody which one made with Ceramics (district located at the North-West of the Acropolis, where one of the cemeteries of Athens) in the honor is of Athenians died in the war, and made say to Socrate which it “had formed many excellent speakers, and in private individual one which is the first of Greece, Pericles, wire of Xanthippos “. Socrat regards it even as the author of the famous funeral oration which reports Thucydide in its History of the Peloponnesian War. After the death of Pericles, Aspasy would have continued to inspire the Athenian policy while becoming the mistress of one of the demagogues more in sight, the merchant Lysicles. 
The literature will not give precision in connection with other talents of Aspasie, one can only imagine it burning and creative in the plays of the love…

 

Tullia d’Aragona
Tullia d' Aragona represents one of the models of courtesan of the Italian Renaissance. The word “cortegiana” appears in XVth century and designates a woman who follows the court of a prince. Later this word will indicate in a specific way the prostitutes of luxury, elegant and educated well, the other prostitutes are described as “peccatrice”. The courtesans were allowed at the court of the Pope Alexandre Borgia who liked them to take part in festivals rascals at the very least…

Born in 1510, Tullia is probably the daughter of the Cardinal of Aragona, noble Spanish resulting however from a illegitimate line of the royal family. Her mother, a courtesan of Ferrare makes her give an excellent education, both intellectual and artistic. Tullia is a very beautiful woman with very blonde hair and blue eyes, she dazzles all those which approach her, shines by her talents of lutist, but especially of poet. Tullia dedicates her best poems to a young man with whom she is madly in love but who remains insensitive to her charms. Tullia does not seem to have chosen by taste the career of courtesan, but this state gave her larger freedom of expression. She preferred the study and transmission of her knowledge, and was very respected of all. In 1546, Cosme, Duke of Florence order with all them prostitutes to wear a yellow veil in order to distinguish them easily, Tullia addressed to the Duchess, who is also Spanish and exempts her this humiliation because of her “scienza di poesia e filosofia rara”. This same year, Tullia publishes in Venice a collection of poetries “dialogues on the infinite love”, dedicated to the Duchess. It is an important event because it is the first which a woman writes on the topic of the love… Nowadays, certain feminist movements english-speaking cultivate his memory…
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/march99/aragona2.html

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Ninon de Lenclos ( 1616-1704)

Dans In his “Memories”, the Count Gaspard de Chavagnac (1638-1669) wrote while speaking about Ninon de Lenclos: “When a courtier had a son to revive, it sent it to its school. The education which she gave was so excellent that one made well the difference of young people that she had drawn up. She taught them the “pretty manner to make love " .

Roger Duchêne, the author of a very documented beautiful courtesan biography, presents her to us: “Daughter of an excellent player of lute, implied in a lawsuit of adultery, which intimidates the witnesses for the prosecution and which must be finally exiled to have killed an engineer of the army, Anne de Lenclos remains alone with her mother at nine years. Her father transmitted his gifts to him. She earns her living while playing of the lute, while dancing, while singing. At sixteen years old, she knows the love. At eighteen years old , she is protected by an adviser at the Parliament which pays a monthly revenue to her. In her twenty , she lose her mother. Her first guard, it in add a second to double his revenues. She seems promised with a life of prostitution. Because soon, she adds to its payers a long list of men whom she likes, its “whims” or its “favorites”, that she temporarily accommodates in her bed, three months at the maximum. And especially, she takes care to have lovers in reserve, those to which it does not grant anything, her “martyrs”.
She applies to love the principles of marketing , having understood that it is when the request is higher than the offer than the prices go up. With one of its whims, Villarceaux, she will live a deep love, and maternity. With time, she will line up, saving appearances and living as a bourgeois in a modest apartment. She died in eighty-two years with all appearances of fine a Christian woman.
Beautiful, intelligent, talented, Ninon de Lenclos is become a legendary character. For the century of Enlightenment, she was an exemplary woman, advances some on her time, for others, she was only one not discharged. Ninon succeeded in building a sizeable image and, at the end of her life, it was of good tone to attend her drawing room.
Havelock Ellis that we referred to for its sexological thoughts about the prostitution, affirms wrongly that Ninon de Lenclos offered her charms right for pleasure! Undoubtedly the famous psychologist fell under the charm… According to Voltaire, Ninon de Lenclos said only one prayer: “My God, made ego an honest man and do not make any never a virtuous woman.” Roger Duchêne multiplied research, and arrives to disentangle the truth of the forgery.

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La Putain révolutionnaire?

Grisélidis Réal, born in Geneva in 1929, deceased in 2005, was a teachers daughter and in her childhood, she lived in Athens and Alexandria. Returned in Zurich, she makes artistic studies, and get married. After having had two sons of her husband, she divorces and flees in Germany with her children and her new lover. It is there, in the sixties that she begins to prostitute. She does it by need, but, very soon, she consider herself as a kind of social worker. She carries out many militant actions in favor of prostitutes. Today, several associations refer to her life and her works. Grisélidis asserts artist and prostitute. She tries to survive as painter and writer, and exerts prostitution during approximately thirty years. She claims high and strong that she freely chose prostitution and refutes the idea to be forced by a procurer. Grisélidis defines the prostitution as a revolutionary act. In Paris, during the Seventies, born the “revolutionary whore”… Griselidis is implied in movements of prostitutes defense, thus occupation of the Church Saint Bernard in 1975 in Paris…
Her first book: “the black is a color”, autobiographical novel is published in 1974 at Balland Publishers. She quickly becomes a media character with a sulfurous fame in the literary field.

- What is this the erotic fury? Asked journalist Alain-Pierre Pillet. Here the answer of Grisélidis Réal: “The erotic fury is in the imaginary one is delirious without taboo nor borders which it is a question by an erudite alchemy of channeling and to realize without too many damage in practical in love and sexual: cannibalism, rape, murder, body gashed, shredded, burned on the furnace bridge of passion and the flesh impulses. All is transmuted, sublimate, metamorphose themselves in caresses, erudite penetrations, suctions, kisses, heating, blows and pressures, pressures and fusions which go from the extreme softness with the extreme brutality without exceeding the extreme limit separating the life from death.”
Grisélidis Réal is animated by a strong personality, hearty appetite of life and an immense sensuality. She carries out face all her activities with an incredible energy. Her combat to be recognized as prostitute and writer do not know any break, she holds so that these two professions are indicated on all her official documents.

 

Since her death in 2005, the Vertical Editions have republished her books, and in particular “La passe imaginaire” and “Grisélidis courtisane” a correspondence with the journalist Jean-Luc Hennig. The desire to create is combined with an intense need to be which is translated in the writing: “I write to you all the time, notices Grisélidis Réal. In sleeping, by dreaming, while writing to you, while not writing to you, it became my breath, my breathing, my unconscious, my force, my reserve of madness and of strong feelings.” In it settled “a parallel existence”, a voice which transforms its life and its combat into work of art, in dazzling writing.
Grisélidis profits from an exceptional social recognition: public interventions and in media, work of diplomas for the occupation of students in sciences social, but she continues to carry on her activity of prostitute. In its book “La passe imaginaire”, she tells in the details how she works, how she accommodates the customers at herself. She depicts with tenderness and cruelty male loneliness and sexual misery, but does not fall into the trap from pessimism. It would be indeed an adhesion with the theses of the “bourgeois” and worse still to those of the “jealous and frustrated feminists”. Grisélidis is playing her part in a revolutionary and libertarian style , firmly anchored in the pleasure of the present…
Today majority of the movements which “defend” prostitution in the name of the choice freedom, are claimed more or less of Grisélidis Réal. The question of the assent remains extremely “hot” as the declarations of Grisélidis to the journalist who wants to know her small secrets of expert…. petits secrets d'experte....

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Nana

 

Nana by Edouard Manet

Heroin of the novel of Emile Zola who bears her name, Nana is a typical character of prostitute. The writer puts it in scene in a very dark social and historical context whose his heroin incarnates miseries, the defects and it punishment… This novel, published in 1880, belonged to series of Rougeon-Macquart… Nana was born in a miserable family; subjected to brutality, with the deprivations, in total emotional distress, she learned how to survive. Nana had a child when she was 16 years old, and becomes prostitute by need. She finds a role of “Venus” in a theatre, and from there, she becomes one of the most famous courtesans. Nana is avid of richness, love, and all the means are good to reach her outcome, its sex is one of her weapons, an instrument of revenge which finishes by to turn over against herself. Nobody will be saved, and all the men whom she allured will finish in the ruin, the disease, the forfeiture…

Zola gave birth to his heroin from a society which it considers immoral and corrupted.

Nana corrupts or destroys with innocence all that she approaches, she does not premeditate to harm, but seems victim of a curse which dedicate to make the “evil”… After having reached an apogee of factitious social recognition , disgusted by men, she leaves her lovers and flees on a journey as if she wanted “to forget” this fragile glory and to try to rebuil herself. When she comes back to Paris, she finds her sick son of smallpox, she will be contaminated and perish with him.

Nana incarnates the “lost” woman, who has no other exit but death, so that the things return in the order…

 

 

The lady of the Camellias

Represent the courtesan as a victim, is also the position of Alexandre Dumas when he writes “the Lady of the Camellias” (published in 1848). The writer takes as a starting point a real history, that of the courtesan Marie Duplessis and his lover Agenor de Gramont. This story will inspire also Giuseppe Verdi who will make of it an opera “Traviata”. In these works, the courtesan has nothing to do with the heroin of Zola, except the profession. Alexandre Dumas depicts the lady of the Camellias like an smart and cultivated woman, able to experience and share feelings, but especially ready to sacrifice herself by love…

Clear side or dark side, courtesans of the novels generally finish offered in expiatory victim of a society which tolerates them without accepting them…

Alexandre Dumas is also the author of a historical essay published in 1843 on the topic of the prostitution since Antiquity until its own time:” Filles, Lorettes and Courtisanes”. It makes the distinction between the various forms of exercise of the activity, the “girls” are those which solicit in the street or work in brothels, the “Lorettes” are women maintained by one or more men. Dumas refer then to the hetaera of antiquity to introduce the courtesan.
He largely took as a starting point the the work of sociologist Parent-Duchatelet entitled “La prostitution à Paris au XIXe siècle”. Alexandre Dumas depicts the life of the prostitutes without seeking to edulcorate the things: misery, insecurity, monotony of a life deprived of a true direction. Fate of lorettes and of the courtesans thus appears much more enviable by contrast. Dumas expresses there a kind of fascination, he quotes of many anecdotes and led its reader in the sensual and refined universe of these beautiful ladies. The author shows himself much sourer towards the men he depicts the hypocritical behaviors with a wild irony…

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