The Prostitute, The Comedian -- And Me
by Tracy Quan(Page 3)
TQ: Why, in your view, does prostitution exist?
CP: It exists because men's sexuality is not fully absorbed in marriage. In fact, the problems of being married produce other sexual needs -- not for all men certainly, but most. Prostitution exists for sexuality to be free from the duties and obligations of home, for the man to be free as a sexual agent. A lot of the sex which an ordinary gay man has is very close to what a prostitute has with a straight man. It has to do with keeping the sex impulse free.
TQ: Some "pro-sex" (or "sex-positive") feminists have told me they'd like to see more women buying sex.
CP: They're misunderstanding what prostitution is. Prostitution is Woman's command of men! No woman should ever have to pay for sex. In the sixties I thought everything would be equal: women would want sex just as much as men; we'd have as much porn for women as for men. But over time, that hasn't happened, and my thinking has evolved. I cannot believe anyone would still say that. What kind of woman would pay for sex?
TQ: A woman who wants to be serviced by a professional?
CP: Xaviera Hollander, who I really admire, said that now and then she had female clients. I love her book The Happy Hooker. She describes a movie star who wanted to be tied up with her husband's neck ties and ravished by two women with a dildo. And Xaviera was being unusually moralistic, saying, "I've never understood this. I thought such a beautiful creature should be treated tenderly!"
But that will always be such a small number of women, compared to what men do. When men go to prostitutes there's a tremendous psychodrama at work. The man engaged in a transaction with a prostitute is trying to resolve some problem he has with the dominance of Woman. The money is a way to detach emotion from it. There's an element of shutting off the dominance of Woman. I applaud that because it's a way to get the masculine impulse free. But women don't need to do that. Most women who pay for sex are pampered women. They have a facial, a massage, a manicure and then -- servicing. It's just like having a masseur.TQ: One of the co-founders of the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights, a women's studies professor, called for an alliance between the "Madonnas" and the "whores." What do you think of the feminists who want to eradicate the "whore stigma"?
