They Don’t Call It The “World’s Oldest Profession” for Nothing
For weeks now, articles in various news publications have been trying to address questions like “How Will the Pandemic End?” and “How Will the World Change Due to COVID-19?” and “Why Is Hailey Bieber Threatening to Sue a Plastic Surgeon?”
OK, granted that last one doesn’t appear to be about the pandemic, but you get my point: The media loves to speculate about the Big Questions raised by the pandemic and the public health response to it.
While most of these articles address questions relating to public health, the economy, science and politics, CNN recently asked one that is more up Calico’s alley: Will prostitution survive the age of social distancing?
For Calico, it’s one of the few questions related to the pandemic to which she’s confident she knows the correct answer. And for once, it’s not an answer she’s just pulling out of her ass. Yes, you read that right: In a rare instance, there’s actual information in one of her posts! (File under:”Hard to Believe, but True.”)
What does Calico think; will prostitution still be around when the COVID-19 dust settles, or is this the beginning of the end for that brand of sex work? Find out in her new post, “They Don’t Call It ‘The World’s Oldest Profession’ for Nothing.”
by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn Movies for Women and Couples
Read on…
Back in March, Politico published a long article which offered feedback from “34 big thinkers” about how the COVID-19 pandemic will change the world. When I first read it, one thing that struck me was the largely positive, optimistic predictions these big thinkers had come up with.
I mean, there was Tom Nichols, the author of The Death of Expertise, essentially predicting the reincarnation of the very thing he’d proclaimed dead in his book title.
“It was easy to sneer at experts until a pandemic arrived, and then people wanted to hear from medical professionals like Anthony Fauci,” Nichols wrote. “Second, it may—one might hope—return Americans to a new seriousness, or at least move them back toward the idea that government is a matter for serious people.”
Since Nichols wrote that line, the President has retweeted someone who called on him to fire Fauci and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases also become the central figure in a number of unhinged conspiracy theories, some of which pair him with Bill Gates in an evil, mandatory vaccine-driven global takeover, possibly involving microchips being injected into people, or some such nonsense.
The proliferation of conspiratorial nonsense around Fauci doesn’t mean that Nichols’ prediction about “a return of faith in serious experts” is necessarily wrong – but I’d say it’s certainly not a sign we’re off to a good start on that front.
A Little Historical Perspective on Sex Work
One thing none of the 34 big thinkers in the Politico piece addressed was the question of how the pandemic will impact sex work. As such, we don’t know how they’d weigh in on a pandemic-related question recently posed by CNN: “Can the world’s oldest profession survive the age of social distancing?”
Seeing as how the big thinkers didn’t touch on this, it’s left to little thinkers like me (unless being a “non-thinker” who can somehow still type words is a thing, in which case that’s probably the category into which I fit best.)
While the CNN article raises some good points about the challenges of sex work during a disease outbreak, I find the possibility implied by the headline – the idea that prostitution as a vocation will not survive the pandemic – absurd on its face.
For context in looking at this question, let’s consider a few bits of historical information about prostitution. There are Sumerian records which refer to the profession of prostitution that date back to 2400 BCE. There are multiple references to prostitution in Hammurabi’s Code, which was written somewhere around 1770 BCE.
Call me crazy, but any profession that has been around for nearly 4500 years and isn’t facing the prospect of being replaced by machine work (or isn’t facing such a prospect yet, anyway) seems like a pretty strong candidate for being able to survive a pandemic.
News Flash: Social Distancing Wasn’t Invented in February
Also consider this: Since those ancient Sumerian records referenced above were published, there has been no shortage of epidemics, pandemics and plagues. Sure, the world’s understanding of how disease spreads and how to combat that spread has changed quite a bit over the centuries, but quarantining the sick and forms of social distancing have been practiced in times of disease outbreak for quite some time, too.
Riddle me this: If the Plague of Cyprian didn’t end prostitution across the Roman Empire and the Black Death didn’t stop prostitution across Europe, Asia and North Africa and the H1N1 pandemic of 1918 didn’t eliminate prostitution… well, everywhere, how in the hell is COVID-19 going to do it?
(Spoiler Alert: It’s not.)
Honestly, I don’t expect the world writ large to change much in response to COVID-19, especially the world as it will exist after effective antiviral treatments are widely available, let alone a preventative vaccine. I think once we have those things at our disposal, we’ll go right back to packing sports stadiums, shaking hands, high-fiving our friends – and frequenting prostitutes.
As they say, “only time will tell.” But if history is any indication, prostitution will be going strong long after COVID-19 has been reduced to little more than a bad memory.