We must scrap the prohibition of prostitution

We must scrap the prohibition of prostitution, because it unfairly discriminates against women who demand their money upfront.

We all, as stupid men, have had cause in our lives to wonder why the state of gender parity has changed so that women are now equal but such that the demands made by women upon men have remained the same.

Indeed the majority of young women I have canvassed about this matter say that they would rather use their education, their professional qualification, their job, their income and their means of independence to avoid being saddled with a man who can not provide a decent life for her and her children. That is unless the man is some sort of trophy husband (like me) who would be able to provide a quality of life that exceeds her own.

Now this will sound quite reasonable when you think about it, after all in the old male chauvinist society men were concerned with ensuring their wives could perform miracles in the kitchen and magic in the bedroom. In exchange the norm was that the man would provide a satisfactory quality of life for his family and keep his wife in the convenience and comfort she was “entitled”.

Now when looking at how these relationships and nuclear families start, we must look back to when young, and thus stupid, people meet and fall in love, or at least claim to be in love, with each other. In these early days of prepubescent posturing, teenage hormones, tween existentialist angst, twenty-something expressionism, quarter-life crises and thirty-something regret, what we find is that the cost of this relationship is either borne by both persons or by one.

In addition, conservative communities like mine dictate that the law of chivalry means young men, who bear the cost of their formative relations, are in fact demonstrating that they will bear the cost of providing a life for any marriage or family which may arise from the relationship. It’s a bit like a dress rehearsal wherein the woman is induced to believe this man will be able to provide the quality of life she is looking for.

Now any young man who is in this phase of proving his potentially alpha male status — because let’s face it, being the alpha male on the field doesn’t always translate into being the alpha male in the boardroom or among one’s colleagues and it is here in the area of boardroom politics and professional standing that the means of income and wealth are determined — will be faced with the reality of the cost of love.

Whether it is material purchases, lifestyle purchases, entertainment purchases or tangible apparel purchases the fact is that love, particularly in the formative years, is an activity which has financial and economic implications. And this could be as simple as a cup of coffee which is had in public rather than in your parents’ homes. Privacy it seems, even that privacy which is enjoyed in public, comes at a cost.

Now on the other scale of things, where women and men chase each other just for money and not for love, we have seen many examples of how such things end badly for all concerned. Being mutually exclusive co-shoppers is no replacement for being two life partners in love with each other. But in the middle of this scale is this other grey area which says that women and men sort of size each other up and if, and only if, their expectations for the “quality of life” they expect is met, then they may be disposed to beginning to fall in love with each other.

Now I won’t criticise people who marry for money or who fall in love on the basis of expectation, because it is very easy to convince someone that you have lots of money and it’s very easy to become the ideal person for someone else by creating the basis for the rational expectation of that ideal quality of life — we politicians make a living from doing these things every day.

But I will say that true love, that is that love which is not based on false premise and not based on irrational expectations of an ideal quality of life but rather on the actual “chemistry” between two people, that true love is beyond measure and beyond value.

And yet we have the situation that says it is acceptable for men to bear the cost of their love relationships, it is acceptable for men and women to chase each other for money, power and social status and it is acceptable for men and women to associate with each other on the premise of the potential for the ideal quality of life as expected.

So there can be no debate about the fact that money changes hands from the suitor to the shopkeeper and that the benefits of this money flows from the shopkeeper back to the suitor and the object of the suitor’s affection. And it is acceptable for a woman to expect her prospective husband to demonstrate and prove his love for her and his ability to provide this ideal life through the practice of gift giving, however simple and inexpensive and considerate thoughtfulness.

Now given that considerate thoughtfulness is the only thing that women really want, it would be really strange to find a situation where a woman marries a man who is not considerate and thoughtful, but who is acceptable to her in some other way. And every woman who has ever believed that she could change her husband’s behaviour will recognise the truth in this. After all if your husband is inconsiderate of how you feel, is there any amount of money, power and social status which compensates you for the loneliness and lack of understanding?

And yet, the vast majority of women make the mistake of choosing men based on the perception of wealth, power and social status and on the perception of the potential for alpha male status. Worse still is the situation where women are forced into relationships based on the long-term nature of the “dress rehearsal” and transactional nature of the imperative of chivalry.

While all of this is true and while this may be the state of grace for many people all over the world, the fact is that there is another group of women who have been forced into a life of transactional intimacy and have been forced to conduct their love affairs under the cover of various other professions. They are vilified for demanding their money upfront, in cash.

So it’s acceptable to be a gold digger, to be a quality-of-life freak, someone who seeks a husband to replace her father and to endlessly audition potential suitors (for personal gain) in the hope of finding the ideal, but it is not acceptable for a woman to decide that she has no interest in dealing with the idiocy of men, that she has no interest in putting in 5 years of dating to get a mere R10 000 a month marital household budget, that she has no interest in seeking the ideal man to provide her with her fairytale life and that she has no interest in having someone else provide for her and thus take away her independence.

So who is making it impossible for women to demand their money in cash, upfront, and who is it that insists that this puerile and pathetic pseudo-princess approach of finding Mr Right is the legitimate means of human mating and procreation?

At least with women who demand their money upfront, in cash, the man involved knows with certainty that he is going to get laid. Whereas with the normal method of deferred payments, payments in kind and benefits from third-party recipients of payments may mean that the man spends a number of years chasing a woman without consummating their relationship.

As with all things that cost money, rational people will always look at the value for money one extracts from the transaction and if a date with a woman who you quite fancy costs R500 and you don’t get laid, while a date with a woman who you don’t find repulsive costs R500 and you do get laid, it stands to reason that rational people will spend more time visiting their local brothels rather than their local restaurants and bars because the risk of infection and disease is virtually the same, if you practise safe sex.

And let’s be honest about this, the amount of money spent on the “pseudo-princess” option far exceeds (on a per capita basis) the amount spent on the “cash-upfront” option.

So then I ask you, who are the real prostitutes?