Prostitute or Mistress: Exploring the Degrees of Infidelity
Prostitution is one subject that has long stymied even the most progressive of societies — how do we talk about someone selling sex, when we’re not supposed to talk about sex, to begin with? It’s a complex issue, which has left us with a lot of scars, and taboo subjects, still, even in our refined, open-minded era.
Nowadays, there’s all this discussion on whether or not we should say “sex worker” instead of “prostitute” (as if simply changing the name of something will truly change what it stands for). It seems this is another pointless little addendum that will have no impact on how we view a certain group of people that makes many of us generally uncomfortable.
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece, not dealing with the moral subtleties of forced prostitution, or the fine line between profession and exploitation. Please treat is as such.
Why does prostitution make us uncomfortable?
That’s the real reason why we’re beating about the bush so much when it comes to the men and women in this world willing to parlay sex — they make us uncomfortable. Now traditionally, we tend to talk of prostitution as a “demeaning, lowly” profession, one that generally is detrimental to women .
And yet, the reason we’re so uncomfortable around prostitutes reveals an ironic opposite. These alleged “whores” make us ill at ease because of their inane power and independence. Stereo-typically, it’s women who despise or dislike prostitutes, since as a society, we view these women as ones more “willing” to do things we won’t. After all, that is the reason why men started visiting prostitutes, to begin with.
And yet, it’s not just women who have trouble stomaching the company and even the general concept of prostitutes, but men themselves. Why? Because the prostitute is a stranger with no affection and little liking for her client.
She is the temptress.
She is the one who knows what he likes, even when he’s ashamed of it.
She is the one with the power to dominate, or be dominated, and thus controls his release.
It’s always seemed to me the prostitute holds all the cards in our ever-fascinating sexual dominance hierarchy. Even when she is being dominated. Perhaps especially then.
To put it more succinctly, we’re uncomfortable around prostitutes because they know the same thing we all know. Except they’re the only ones dealing with it openly.
Why do married men visit prostitutes?
Because they are willing to do what their wives won’t. Or rather, the things they’re too ashamed to ask their wives to do. Plagued by the myth of the “virginal wife”, many husbands find it difficult talking about their ‘naughtier’ desires, persistent in their refusal to see their wife as dirty.
But sex is inanely a dirty affair — trying it with proverbial gloves on won’t result in very good sex. (unless you’ve got a thing for gloves)
Hence the need to go to someone else, preferably someone who doesn’t know you. Hopefully someone who’s seen much worse.
There is anonymity in prostitution, and it has always held an important place in our relationship with sex. Aside from sheer convenience, it’s the reason behind the insane popularity of websites like OnlyFans, or before that, of phone sex.
We want to be anonymous, because it’s the only way we can be our true sexual selves.
As ever, religion’s also played an important part in our culture’s relationship with prostitutes. As mostly Christian societies in the West, there was a good bit of time where we were told sex should be done exclusively in the interest of reproduction, and even then, with care not to be enjoyed. One can only wonder what growing up in such sexually repressed times was like. With teenagers today suffering great shame for what can only be described as natural curiosities, imagine how confusing a budding interest in breasts must’ve been when it was considered “a mortal sin”.
So sex has always been dirty, if not in our beds, then at least in our minds, and as with other bodily functions, we designed a special, dirty place to take care of it: the whorehouse.
As such, we assigned it its due place in our social interactions. In many societies, visiting a brothel didn’t use to be considered cheating. Not by the spouse, not by your social circle. Instead, it was accepted that the relationship between a client and a prostitute was not even one of affection or intimacy. Merely a bodily need, one that respectable ladies of the world turned a blind eye to — better her than me, that certainly seemed to be the puritan motto of the day.
So gentlemen could visit whorehouses (or theaters — for a long time, in Europe, the two were synonymous), and demand that the women there indulge their most wicked, depraved, and “unnatural” fantasies, yet that was not considered cheating.
Get caught getting a hand job from another “reputable” lady of society, though, and that was a completely different story.
In the past, we drew a clear distinction between prostitutes and mistresses. Why?
Cheating ain’t about sex.
It’s about the emotional connection. Otherwise, why would we be so adamant that sleeping with a “whore” is okay, whereas sleeping with a neighbor was not? Because at least with the prostitute, one could assure his wife “oh, it meant nothing, dear”. With the attractive neighbor, less so.
Merriam-Webster defines cheating as “to be sexually unfaithful”. Yet, looking back, it seems it wasn’t the sexual aspect that bothered us, but rather the emotional one. In a whorehouse, the exchange was simple — money for sex, or vice-versa, if you will (not that romances and relationships didn’t arise in these contexts, as well). As a client, you didn’t have to woo or in any way seduce a prostitute, so maybe that’s why your wife could be okay with it.
Because in order to seduce and secure a potential mistress, we must use our brains, eyes, and even our heart. We must be attentive to subtleties about this person, in order to seduce her. We must make her feel safe and valued, and attractive. We must give her an obvious sexual power that, ideally, is compelling, and difficult to refuse.
Sexual exchanges in our society are rarely clear-cut and straight-forward, and we must all engage in this eternal push-and-pull, in order to secure sexual gratification. Since the gentleman of yore was not paying his attractive neighbor for sex, presumably he had to convince her through other means. And that meant paying attention to her, communicating, flirting, playing with, and thinking about her. Perhaps even when his wife was present. Which made a lover infinitely more dangerous than a prostitute, both for wife, and for husband.
Even now, in our modern society, we are dabbling and experimenting with sex for its own sake, and that gives rise to an interesting question:
Is cheating purely for sexual pleasure wrong, in itself? And can it be done without hurting your relationship with your significant other?
Maybe so. As a woman, whenever I contemplate or discuss cheating with my girlfriends, the single, most repulsive aspect seems to be that my partner is attracted to another person. Not sexually. I’m sure we’re both regularly attracted to other people sexually. But rather, what seems truly ghastly, is that he may have craved another person’s presence more than mine, if even momentarily.
