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An Objectivist society and Prostitution

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Also, you are making an assumption that prostitution must AWAYS be immoral without context. This is also not true. You ever read We the Living.

Yes, I agree with you there.

But what exactly are you mentioning WTL for? Kira and Andrei's interactions?...the one, btw, where the act of prostitution never even took place?...or are you mentioning that in regards to the political-economic system that they "lived" or rather "existed" in, one that contains a proper context in which prostitution is not always immoral?

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It is evident that there are two completely different acts, which should be discussed separately.

One is sex for purely physical pleasure, and the other is sex, as the celebration of your values.

If I have sex with a woman it is because it pleases me. If she has sex with me it is because it pleases her. Now lets say I pay her, I have achieved an orgasm and can now proceed with my life (because I am a horny 16 year old boy and can't think straight if I don't touch myself 4 times a week B)), she can take that money and pay the mortgage on her house.

Value traded for Value. When it comes to sex it seems like there is a double standard.

"It may be true for you, but it isn't true for me"

"'Value for value' may be true for business, but it isn't true for sex"

Edited by tobyk100
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  • 3 years later...
It is evident that there are two completely different acts, which should be discussed separately.

One is sex for purely physical pleasure, and the other is sex, as the celebration of your values.

If I have sex with a woman it is because it pleases me. If she has sex with me it is because it pleases her. Now lets say I pay her, I have achieved an orgasm and can now proceed with my life (because I am a horny 16 year old boy and can't think straight if I don't touch myself 4 times a week ^_^), she can take that money and pay the mortgage on her house.

Value traded for Value. When it comes to sex it seems like there is a double standard.

"It may be true for you, but it isn't true for me"

"'Value for value' may be true for business, but it isn't true for sex"

I am curious if anyone has a response to this.

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I am curious if anyone has a response to this.

Okay, Jennifer, here goes. This is basically an off the cuff response on a very difficult and complex issue.

The issue is one of self-worth. What does this act mean to you. Being intimate with another human is really that, being intimate. Sex is different from other activities or bodily functions. You are asserting yourself. You are opening yourself to another. Wanting a partner is wanting another person, not a doll, not a fantasy, not a picture in which you can project a personality. You want a real person. You want someone who is willing, or wants to open themselves to you. You want reciprocity. We do not need to say that this other person has a tremendous value for you, but that they personally have some.

If we should find someone who we find that we like and get closer and open ourselves to them and then find that they were deliberately deceiving us, we feel cheated, betrayed. We have been taken advantage of.

To find someone to pay money for, we are asking that person to become what we want in a partner. They are attempting to please us by pretending to be what we like (in a better, higher class prostitute). In this case we are pretending that they are someone we want or whose presence we enjoy.

In our generally repressed society, as a male, finding a woman who openly enjoys sex and being with a man has some apparent value. I have seen a couple episodes of an HBO series at a brothel. Some of the women, especially the ones who make the best entertainment, project a delight in having sex. It is all smiles and fun. Even education. In that situation, a man who has modest self-worth might find some pleasure. A man who has self-esteem would be left feeling empty, because he is not willing to pretend that his partner is someone he has regard for. He wants reality.

As a young person, finding out about life involves experimentation and learning. We do not necessarily learn of the importance of a partner’s self-worth until we experience a bad situation, or perhaps a good situation and realize our previous experiences, which might have been fun, are not enough any more.

This whole issue, i.e., sex, is the most complex in humans, in that it involves our total self, our values, our upbringing, our self-appraisal, our options, etc. We need to give our selves and those we know a lot of leeway. We need to pay close attention to what we are doing and what it means to us, what we feel and think.

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It is evident that there are two completely different acts, which should be discussed separately.

One is sex for purely physical pleasure, and the other is sex, as the celebration of your values.

No, there is only one type of sex: a celebration of values, which gives you physical pleasure.

If you can have sex with a hooker, just because you're horny, and enjoy it, that's a celebration of values too: the perverted values of a person who views women (sexual partners in general) as objects.

If you think there's a different kind of sex, one that is removed from values and morality, you are sorely mistaken. You cannot escape the consequences of an act that goes against your values, especially an act that involves such intimacy as sex. Nor can you escape the even more dire consequences of having the wrong values.

P.S. The post is addressed to Jennifer, I just used the quote to identify the error in the 2006 post.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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While it is wrong for any government to outlaw this, I believe that the exchange would not even exist in a society founded on realistic, objectivist principles.

Hi Pulsar

I believe that in a society founded on realistic, objectivist principles there would be much less prostitution than there is today, but we cannot say it would disappear, for the same reason that criminals and prisons and obesity and lies and cheating would not disappear.

An Objectivist society doesn't equal the Garden of Eden, nor Objectivist men are angels.

Error, hate, crime, low self-esteem, fears, violence, religion, along with prostitution will always exist in some way or other. But in an Objectivist society they will be much less seen.

One unexpected twist of history could be the appearance of highly advanced videogames, based on sensors, that would represent for some people a sort of virtual prostitution, while for others it would be a sort of cyber-masturbation.

And the implications would be interesting to analyze.

Your virtual prostitute would be tailored by you, exactly as you wished her to be. "She" would have no way to have AIDS or other STDs. The virtual prostitue would not really be a person, and as such you would not be taking a woman as an object. You would be taking an object as an object.

For those considering it "virtual prostitution" it would be still a degradation of sex.

For those considering an act or "technologically enhanced masturbation", it would be no more harmful that masturbation.

I don't recall having read Ayn Rand condemning masturbation. In her writings, I guess that "sex" refers always to sexual activity between persons. Therefore, I think that when she condemns sex devoid of values she means the sexual interaction between human beings. But I might be wrong.

She condemns pornography (defends the legal right to pornography, but consideres it inmoral). But I don't know whether she condemns it because of the fact that it entails an innapropriate interaction between a person (the model) and another persons (the photographer, the magazine director, and the readers).

It is evident to me that the characters of Howard Roark or Hank Reader, did masturbate as a way to explore their sexuality and satisfy their instincts. If not, how could you explain their ability to give pleasure to women and be so good lovers? How a person not knowing about masturbation can just jump to the bed and have a great sexual experience?

Edited by Hotu Matua
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