WHOM DOES PROSTITUTION REALLY OFFEND?

PROSTITUTION AND MORALITY by Harry Benjamin and R. E. L. Masters. New York: The Julian Press, 1964. 495 pages, $12.50. Reviewed by Rolland How- ard.

Here is a book which, despite its foreboding thickness and title, proves to be entertaining, enlightening and easy to read.

The reviewer has to admit that, victim of an overstarched Victorian morality that he is, he too has more than once felt a pang of concem about the "plight" of the "fallen" woman in the clutches of a degrading "white slavery." As this book points out, however, if there is sex "slavery" at all-i. e., any enforced prostitution-it is extremely rare. Most prostitutes are so occupied because that is their choice, and I should have been able to see that for myself; after all, I have often enough said, privately, that with my affinity for men, if I were a wo- man I would certainly be a whore (though I doubt I could ever bring myself to charge for it).

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Thus, the answer to the time-honored question, "What is a nice girl like doing in a place like this?" is, in most cases, "Just what I like to do, and it's a nice place to meet nice men like you.

In a society where prostitutes (and everyone else who pursues his sexual needs honestly) are made to feel guilty and are treated as outcasts, sinners neurotics, or common criminals, prostitutes do often feel compelled to pro- vide an "explanation" or excuse, and the rationalization most often used is the monetary rewards of whoring. Like the suppressed homosexual who can find sexual gratification only under a covering rationalization of monetary exchange, thus making himself simply another kind of prostitute, women in the brothels (and on the sidewalks) of life, are from all social strata, come in all colors, re- ligions, and ages, and seems to persist in their trade even through all the hard- nosed treatment, the one-eyed legislation, the repeated arrests, and even harsh- er measures aimed at them periodically by the outraged and self-righteous societies of which they are members.

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In a chapter on the male homosexual prostitute, or "hustler," there is in- cluded a segment written by Hal Call, president of the Mattachine Society There are things revealed in this chapter that even I didn't know about these boys, having had little experience with them. My attitude toward them has long been to dismiss them as merely another variety of bum, or social leech, too lazy to do an honest day's work. I still, cannot totally rid myself of this no- tion. Yet, as in the case of the female prostitute, there is an obvious social need both for her services and for those of the male prostitute--on the part of those who require brief, relatively impersonal, and, often, paid-for sexual re- lief--and these professionals provide those services.

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Indeed, Dr. Benjamin and Mr. Masters argue for sex as service," and pro- vide ample evidence to indicate that the very sanity-such as it is-of our over- regulated, prohibitive society, may be credited to the failure of prohibitions; credited, in other words, to the persistence of both prostitute and customer in seeking one another out despite the barriers constantly being erected to keep them apart. Man is, on fundamental levels, a sexual being, and his sexual needs, while amenable to certain degrees of control or delay, cannot be denied. Oyer and over, the authors present evidence that a terrible social price is paid for the attempts to maintain a spurious kind of "moral superiority" and "spiritual purity." Spectacular increases in the incidence of venereal disease; moral disintegration of prostitutes and of the law enforcement officers who must persecute them; corruption of our very agencies of law; the forcing to- gether of the otherwise unrelated worlds of the prostitute, the narcotics push- ers, and the alcoholic; the appalling incidence of sex-crimes; even the spread of homosexual participation; all these and more are shown to increase in direct relation to the suppression of prostitution.

If all these serious allegations are true, then why is there the suppression on the part of officialdom in the first place? Well, it would seem that a large segment of the population is, if not downright neurotic, then at least senile, fanatically devoted to some "sex substitute" of their own (religion, et al), im- potent, or motivated by a misguided "do-goodism." Or they may be married, with (in at least some fortunate cases) regular sex-gratification thus pro- vided them. And this is the element too often found among legislators, priests, ministers, and women's clubs, all of which make, or are instrumental in making, official public policy.

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One further thought, not brought out in this book: Dr. Benjamin and Mr. Masters raise the question, "If the sex-need is universal and undeniable, why is there 'so much fear of it, condemnation of it, and effort to suppress it?" In answer, they tend to place the blame on certain groups, or members, of society, as list- ed above. I would like to suggest that it is more a problem of man alienated from himself. If this is so, it will be better understood as an unfortunate as-

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