Maybe it’s only a thing in the English speaking world - I wouldn’t have a clue as I only speak English, but I have been wondering of late about comments along the lines of “This place is as filthy as a brothel”.
I’ve started asking people over the past year or so who have used this line, “Have you ever been in a brothel?”
I tend to get two responses:
The first, “Of course not, but I can imagine what they look like”. This response is usually from middle aged women.
The second answer is, “Yes”, which requires the follow up question, “Was it filthy”, with the usual response of “No”. This response has only come from men (of varying ages).
I’ve looked in a few places for more information on this denigration of the brothel and haven’t been able to find anything that can tell me more.
The few brothels I have been in (and NO I haven’t taken advantage of their services… was there for other reasons!) have been pretty dirty! But all of then have been in Asia… YMMV…
Brothels are businesses like any other. Some establishments are clean and some are not.
I have never run accross the phrase, “filthy as a brothel.” However, I believe the French have an expression that means chaotic (not dirty) that refers to “like a bordello (brothel).”
Attrayant, aren’t there any “massage parlors” in the DC area? (Some people might say that there’s a lot of prostitution going on in that big building with the dome on Capitol Hill.)
I was informed once that the quick 'n sloppy washing I’d given myself was called a Whore’s Bath. When I finished laughing at myself, ( something I do with regularity), I realized that it made sense. They’d wash their,uh, grotto of heavenly delights betwixt entertaining clientelle.
Me, I was just in a damned hurry. Still, the phrase caught my fancy.
I don’t know if it’s so much the actualisation of the saying as the meaning of it! My guess is this saying originated a long time ago, and was not necessarily referring to the physical cleanliness of the establishment! :wally
Welcome to the boards. Drop your coat in the back bedroom and sign up for the darts tournament. There’s chips and some dip like stuff on the coffeetable, and a cold keg on the back porch.
In further commenting on this thread, I’d like to add a few snippets of conversation with colleagues to whom I’ve also posted my query regarding “Filthy as a brothel”.
One colleague said: “I’m not sure about its direct relation to brothels, but Gail Pheterson’s article “The Social Consequences of Unchastity” (in Delacoste & Alexander’s “Sex Work” anthology) does a wonderful job of discussing the language of defilement in categorizing prostitution vis-a-vis racism, anti-Semitism and classism. It touches on a possible root for the social assumption of dirtiness in whores… you might find it interesting.”
Another wrote: “The first studies of prostitution were done by a sewer inspector in the early 19th century in Paris. Parent Duchatelet was trying to prove or unprove that bad smells could carry disease, which is what people thought [he proved that they don’t]. Then he got a job doing the same about prostitution. Prostitutes were viewed very directly as ‘syphoning off’ the filthy excess semen, they were even called ‘reservoirs’ of filth, the bourgeois had to rid themselves of this excess… And that physical dirt was seen to be reflected in the moral ‘dirt’ as well, prostitutes were supposed to be contaminated both physically and morally. Then you get a little confusion from the bourgeoisie looking at poor street whores and actually seeing unbathed people. Just as plenty of sexwork sites in the Third World are, actually, quite dirty. But that’s not where it all came from. That’s why the movement to save prostitutes fused into the ‘Purity’ campaigns.”
And the third said: “Not to talk about brothels but before the “modern age” as seen in First world countries, life was considered short nasty and brutish. Most brutish of all was the fact that there was not enough clean hot water, toliet paper or sanitary napkins. The Church Fathers inveighed against the filthiness of normal sexual life and noted that the organs of reproduction and excrection were intimately related and that men entered the world between the urinary meatus and the anal sphynter. Of course they most likely did not mention that women entered the same way because after all they considered women to be the dirtiest of all.”
And then continued: “The part of the body between the legs was always considered dirty and this goes back to the time when men and women began to walk upright and divide the good from the evil. Women needless to say because of natural functions were considered even dirtier than men. Sex is dirty for the same reasons. And so the principle is extended to brothels. It is a place where “dirty men” who cannot control their “filthy desires” use “filthy women” (who are supposed to be sexually insatiable otherwise why are they prostitutes?) in nasty ways. How could the brothel be other than filthy in the estimates of those folk who have not advanced beyond the Church Fathers in understanding?”
I thought perhaps you StraightDopers could make use of this in your quest for word (et al) wisdom.
In Korea the yobos douche with boiling water. These are very tough women and a sailor can name any knot to one and watch as an intense look crosses her face until she expells a menstrual clout fashioned into the same knot. In Tijuana the price of a whore is divided into two parts: 1/2 for the woman & 1/2 for the tequila she uses to wash out her mouth afterwads - I mean afterwards.
Well, here are the results of my personal quest for “word wisdom”.
I’ve been a compulsive and insatiable reader ever since age 5, and I have never heard the phrase “filthy as a brothel”, either.
However. There is one possible explanation for your running across the phrase in Appalachia. It occurs in John Calvin’s commentary on the book of Hosea. The phrase itself doesn’t occur in the Bible, just in Calvin’s commentary. http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment2/hosea.htm
The actual phrase “filthy brothel” only occurs once in the commentary; but the words “filthy”, “filthiest”, and “brothel” occur many, many times. Calvin was really “hepped” on the book of Hosea. The whole book is about prostitution, using the metaphor of Israel whoring after false gods.
This would fit in very well with the hellfire-and-damnation preaching style of many Evangelical American preachers, especially those in the backwoods of Appalachia. Someone might have picked up the phrase, hearing it as “filthy as a brothel”, and started using it.
However, I don’t know enough about Australian religious history to know how much Calvinism there is in Oz. Very little, I would suspect. So I don’t know why you’d have heard the phrase Down Under.
So I don’t know why you’d have heard the phrase Down Under.