So, then, Pete, advertising and PR are actually the oldest professions?
I’ll load some more crap on the fire, but hopefully it’ll give the advisory staff a direction to look. I recall seeing a History Channel special (great start eh?) where they alluded to the basis for the statement of prostitution being the worlds oldest profession which was that coins (currency) were first used by soldiers to purchase time with a prostitute. So based on the arguement that a profession is a service provided in exchange for money, prostitution may fit the bill.
Even if it goes back further than that it seems reasonable that sex was the first service provided. You hunted and gathered your own food, caught your own horses and livestock, built your own shelter, and the only other need is sex. Someone would have thought to sell it, in exchange for not having to hunt.
I have a couple of points to make.
(1) So the operative definition of profession involves goods for cash? I guess that’s an okay definition, but the word I would attach to it is not “profession”. Aren’t there some perfectly good words like “trade” for that?
(2) So sex is a good, and food is cash? I can’t really refute that, but I don’t know why we would call those things those things.
(3) Sex is not a need. Chuckle all you like, but you can survive without it. Ask Robinson Crusoe. Maybe your genes can’t, or couldn’t before there was artificial insemination, but I think a lot of monks and nuns would be really surprised to hear it (or wealth or disobedience) described as a need. So prostitution fulfills a desire, not a necessity.
(4) So a bunch of women in hunter-gatherer societies trades sexual favors for food. Presumably they got pregnant and raised their kids. Couldn’t this be considered a prehistoric form of marriage as well as a prehistoric form of prostitution? Or does the fact that some of these whores/ madonnas/ whatevers had sex with more than one man exclude them from the prehistoric marriage category? Which sex-negative monotheistic religion told you that?
(4) I don’t believe the assumption I made in (3) above. I don’t believe early societies were composed simply of male hunters and female hookers. Couldn’t a prehistoric woman have had the ability to do something other than copulate, eat, and raise children? Couldn’t she, like, gather some berries or something? Or perhaps even hunt (though this may lead to a Death Curse which will lead to the Valley of the Horses and several more books)? If so, couldn’t she trade said berries or meat for something some hunter dude made? Like a spear? I.e. doesn’t spear-making stand a pretty good chance of being an older “profession” (trade)?
(5) My new hunch is that the idea of Prostitution as the Oldest Profession is just a simplistic reversal of the religions I alluded to at the end of (3). The clerics pale at the idea of selling sex (or, usually, having it for free for that matter). So some cynic has to try and rain on the clerics’ parade by making up a story about how prostitution is really old. These are the same cynics (so my hunch continues) who say there is no point in voting because “all politicians are corrupt”, and no point in stopping schoolyard bullies because “boys will be boys”. If something is immoral, it is inevitable ipso facto.
My only question is, why did they pick prostitution to be the oldest profession, instead of contract killing, cocaine selling, influence peddling, puppy kicking or standing in the express line with 12 items.
AARGH! I messed up the numbering. Sorry.
In the second paragraph (4), I meant to refer to the previous paragraph (the first “(4)”), not (3).
All this talk about meat and hookers has got me a little dizzy.
Actually sex is a fundamental need, and in society that need as been removed somewhat. Speaking from a uncivilized standpoint sex is a need, as a necesity for reproduction, which is only secondary to survival.
First of all, before there are any more guesses, refer to what ‘profession’ means:
pro•fes•sion \pre-"fe-shen\ noun [ME professioun, fr. OF profession, fr. LL & L; LL profession-, professio, fr. L, public declaration, fr. profiteri] (13c)
1 : the act of taking the vows of a religious community
2 : an act of openly declaring or publicly claiming a belief, faith, or opinion : protestation
3 : an avowed religious faith
4 a : a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation
b : a principal calling, vocation, or employment
c : the whole body of persons engaged in a calling
lol.
This link raises some interesting legal questions: http://www.theonion.com/onion3208/sexforsecurity.html
There is nothing profound about this. It’s a witty joke some man once made that caught on. Like so many slightly off-colour jokes (I’m sure when this joke was born any mention of prostitution was taboo in polite society) it is a subliminal put-down of women. There are a lot of jokes and inuendo among men concerning the material cost of sexual favours (“she was the most expensive piece of ass I ever had haw haw” “compared to my wife hookers are giving it away haw haw” “dinner and a movie and I didn’t even get a kiss haw haw”). Prostitution being the oldest profession is just another classic joke putting down women and implying that, since time began, man has been paying for sex, just as he now pays other professions for a wide variety of services. It also implies that women have always, since time began, been motivated sexually by material gain. That’s why the rich guys get all chicks haw haw. Dumb jokes putting down women is hardly a matter for serious discussion.
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
Further on “why is prostitution called he oldest profession?” If you spend any time in the third world (where I am right now) you soon see that, when people have nothing, and I mean nothing, not even adequate shelter or clothing, and there is no work to be had, if they want something to eat they can usually find someone who is willing to pay something for use of a bodily orifice. It helps to be attractive and to market yourself so there is an element of business competition or professionalism. So, the “first” profession, rather than the “earliest” profession, available to someone who is in the most desperate of straights, is prostitution.
There is one ancient old woman here whom I first saw begging with her hand out by the market. A week later she had an upside down cardboard box and some filthy old playing cards and was telling fortunes. A week after that she had added some pebbles to move around. She wants to eat and she is a successful fortune teller.
I suggest that the really oldest profession is Salesman.
In the begining, in the time of hunters and gatherers, the women were the ones that gathered mostly. And the peoples diet then was made up mostly of what the women gathered, vegetable matter was the main part of thier diets. Women could probaby trade these veggies for meat that hunters brought back. Not really any need for sexual favors, they just needed to pick lots of berries.
Also, I’ve recently read something about the “temples of love,” dedicated to goddesses such as Aphrodite and such. Men would donateto the temple and get sex from the slaves working there.
That pretty old, but not the oldest…
This is really getting needlessly complicated. Prostitution is called the oldest profession because it is the oldest profession.
Why are circular arguments called circular arguments?
Okay, okay. I should have asked, “Why do people consider prostitution to be the oldest profession?” Although I suppose then you could have answered, “People consider prostitution to be the oldest profession because it is the oldest profession.”
Maybe the original question should have been, “Under what definition of “profession” could prostitution possibly have been the oldest one, since that definition is clearly not in my dictionary?” I think Handy and I have pretty much established that prostitution is not a profession at all. It is a trade or an occupation.
It is obviously not the oldest occupation, since that would be food-gathering. And it is certainly not the oldest trade, unless someone can explain to me why sex is a “good”, and food is “cash”. Or was it, sex is “cash”, and food is a “good”?
Ok I think Im gonna give my WAG too then as long as it seems to be the thing to do.
Prostitution is called the worlds oldest profession to soothe the guilt of the men using the services. Since its so old obviously people have used the services long before them so how bad of a vice could it be.
On the flip side, I think the women use the same reasoning themselves.
And the last is that society uses it to prove that their vices are nothing new. “well there’s always been hookers!”
For my 2 cents, I would bet either pusher or shaman would be the oldest profession. Sex could be forced I’m sure!
i couldn’t tell you why its called the oldest profession, but for some interesting debate on whether it should be legal or not check out http://biography.com/messageboards/index.html
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?
Tori Amos
This one’s still being beaten about? I can’t believe it almost made it to Cecil or the Mailbag! Like I said before, it’s just an old “dirty” joke that caught on and keeps circulating. It’s called the oldest “profession” because most Johns are reluctant to admit that their rented sex partner is probably in need of money because she/he is hungry and/or drug addicted and/or in mortal fear of and/or in love with her/his pimp. Although Johns tend to believe it when the prostitute tells them he has the biggest one she/he has ever seen, they still have enough sense to realize they are dealing with some form of professionalism, probably because even the dumbest John can sense that their sexual partner doesn’t seem to have much personal interest in them.
as for the “oldest” component - that is the primary dirty joke element, because it implies that, since time began, sexual relationships between men and women have been dependent on the man paying in some way for sexual favours, and, since time began, women have primarily dispensed their sexual favours in return for some material consideration. Stop treating this phrase as something profound. It’s a joke, get it? If you have any other short witty jokes you have mistaken for serious truths I’ll try and explain those to you also. It’s the least I can do as a grunt in the trenches in Cecil’s great fight against human ignorance.
I don’t really get the joke. I also don’t see why reasonable people can’t differ on this question. I just wondered if there was a specific origin to the phrase. You know how the first time you see Hamlet you realized about half the phrases in the English language came from Hamlet? I was wondering if there were an equivalent source for this.
I don’t expect to find consensus on everything, but I don’t generally rule it out.
As Steviant keeps saying, the whole thing is a form of joke. Although I don’t think there is anything wrong with prostitution (and it is against the charter of human rights to claim there is anything wrong with prostitution per se), it is a profession that has been much demeaned. Someone had the bright idea to take this much-demeaned profession and point out that it is in fact the “oldest profession in the world”, implying that it is the most recurring and well-distributed profession. The joke is good because it accomplishes two things:
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takes some heat off this much-maligned profession by implying how established it is
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makes you laugh (if you get the joke)
That’s what the joke is about, plain and simple, without having to cover up any shame or degrading women, customers, or anyone else. A more modern variation of the joke calls prostitution the second oldest profession, after lawyers. I remember reading that for the first time in an essay about the Old testament.
<< I just wondered if there was a specific origin to the phrase. You know how the first time you see Hamlet you realized about half the phrases in the English language came from Hamlet? I was wondering if there were an equivalent source for this. >>
And, as noted above, the Mailbag Staff understood exactly that. The first use of the expression we could find was the Kipling quote, as above, and we thought perhaps the Teeming Posters could help search for prior usage of the phrase. We’re not asking about its validity; it’s a joke. Who made the joke the first time? The later stuff – like Panati – is clearly trying to JUSTIFY the joke, but that doesn’t say who first worded it.
Thanks for your work finding the origin of the phrase. I wasn’t addressing the Hamlet stuff to the staff, I was addressing it to people who insisted it was a useless question, one of whom opined that it wasn’t even worth the staff’s time.
Mike King and BurnMeUp apparently don’t think it’s a joke, and Pete doesn’t think it’s a joke if amended properly. They’re entitled to their opinion. Steviant and Abe think it’s a joke, and furthermore Steviant seems to think that reasonable people can’t.
I was looking for a consensus, and found none, but found plenty of people disagreeing with each other, each claiming to have found the consensus. That is by far the most telling thing about this thread.