(via CultureMatters) Prostitution is a fascinating topic and means different things in different parts of the world. In the American Sexuality Magazine, anthropologist Lisa Wynn writes about her difficulties to understand what Egyptians meant when they said “prostitute”.
The article explains why we always have to think out of the box and leave our own preconceptions behind. She writes:
Eventually I realized that the reason I was struggling to understand the concept of a prostitute had everything to do with my own preconceptions about sex and money. I thought of prostitutes as women who had sex for money.
It was not the injection of money into a sexual relationship that defined it as prostitution:
What is involved in defining a prostitute in Egypt, then, is a complex moral judgment about a woman’s social behavior, the number of her sexual partners, the extent to which she submits to familial controls over her social life, and her loyalty to her current romantic partner.
>> read the whole story
Similar points have been made by anthropologist Bjarke Oxlund who conducted research among students at the University of Limpopo in South Africa, see my earlier post An anthropologist on sex, love and AIDS in a university campus in South Africa. Earlier this year, anthropologist Patty Kelly argued for a decriminalization of prostitution.
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