Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution

by Nils Johan Ringdal

Book Overview

An accessible chronicle of prostitution throughout recorded history covers everything from the ancient world through today's red-light district, discussing such topics as the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India, the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement, and the risks and rew

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802117457
• ISBN13: 9780802117458
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
• Length: 435 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very fast

I ordered it and I got it two days later, I thought that was pretty fast. I haven't read it yet, but I am really excited :)

An Outstanding Survey Of Prostitution in World History

Occasionally I read something that exceeds my highest expectations and "Love For Sale" is just such a book. It offers an excellent look at the history of prostitution from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day. Each chapter addresses a particular subject in a different historical era. For example, Ringdal discusses the well-educated and socially graceful prostitutes of classical Greece. These "high class hookers" provided both intellectual stimulation and sexual pleasure for Greek men in a society where most women were confined to domestic duties and hardly even allowed outside of the home. Other chapters include the Roman Empire, early Islam, China, India, the European Middle Ages, the American Wild West and the "sex positive" feminism of the contemporary sex worker's movement. Throughout the book Ringdal impresses with both his extensive knowledge and his perceptive insights on the history of the "world's oldest profession." The current reality is that prostitution continues to exist thoughout the globe just as it has during the course of human history. Some countries, like the Netherlands, Germany and Costa Rica, have established enlightened public policies which have legalized prostitution, required regular AIDS tests and attempted to keep pimps out of the business. These sensible regulations have been helpful in protecting both the sex workers and the general public. In other countries, prostitution remains officially illegal but widely tolerated. This is true in most of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is only in the more extremist Muslim countries of the Middle East that prostitution is consistently and brutally oppressed. Unfortunately, here in the United Sates, with our Puritan/Victorian heritage, we continue to waste taxpayer money and police resources trying to stop the exchange of sex for money between consenting adults - a silly and pointless task that intrudes on personal freedom and has yet to be successfully achieved in the history of humanity. In fact, this book does an excellent job of demonstrating how often it has been female prostitutes who have managed to obtain a certain degree of freedom, self-determination and financial independence in patriarchal societies. Meanwhile, more "honorable" women have often been forced to rely economically on their husbands and to submit to the social control of their male dominated societies. In this sense, prostitutes have been strong and fearless women unwilling to submit to the yoke of authority and tradition that required females to live homebound and as second class citizens. Of course, Ringdal is smart enough to know that life for the typical hooker is far from glamorous or easy. So he does also cover the hardships and exploitation these woman have suffered at the hands of pimps, slave traders and abusive customers. But the truth that emerges is that prostitutes are just people, like the rest of you, seeking out the best financial opportunity available to them. Ringdal nei

Illustrates an old catastrophe in a very modern way

This is a very recent look at an old topic. The author, Nils Johan Ringdal, has written about Germans and the Norwegian police in World War II, but has been collecting information about prostitution for so long that the final 30 pages of the books are references, ending with a page of movies. People who have hoped that condoms might be useful to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases will wonder what the Los Angeles police were thinking in 1990 when Gloria Lockett, now an activist, bought twelve dozen condoms in a drugstore, walked outside, and the police "grabbed her purse and shook it upside down. Then they punctured every single condom, one by one, pushing the knife down into the latex membrane, slowly and with great enjoyment. Gloria got her purse back, along with a pile of useless rubber." (p. 401). This book does not have an index, but the short "Quotes and References" for each chapter at the end of the book includes the King James English Bible verses used in Chapters 2, Patriarchs and Priestesses, and 7, Repentant Sinners, with a few references from the Qu'ran for Chapter 9, Muhammad's Women. There is no Table of Contents for finding anything at the beginning of the book, but pictures appear between pages 150 and 151, just before Chapter 11, Celestial Whores, and between pages 310 and 311. The page facing 311 shows most of the world for two maps, "The origin and early spread of prostitution 3000 B.C. - 1000 B.C." and "Migration of Prostitutes 1914" (European women and Japanese women, loosely taken from Ronald Hyam). The second map shows four arrows pointing directly at Shanghai, one of which is from San Francisco, but the arrow in the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco is labeled "To Hong Kong from Shanghai." Page 311 itself is interesting for the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turks. "When the grand harem of Constantinople closed down in 1909, 370 wives and attendants and 127 eunuchs became homeless. The deposed sultan was allowed to take a few favorites into exile in Salonica. The others were set free." This book is highly aware that "Sex and reproduction, happiness and security, have, to an almost absurd degree, become themes of public debate in Europe and the U.S., though the discourse is political and not moral. Hypocrisy and ambiguous argument rule the day." (p. 3). Trying to find a frame of reference that recognizes any individual's rights is far less clear than opting for personal viewpoints: "Nobody has the right to sex, either unpaid or in exchange for payment: If nobody wants to sell sex, it is a crime to force anyone to do so. But when men or women do want to sell their bodies, they should have that full right without encountering punishment or discrimination. If the client behaves decently, the relationship between the sex buyer and the sex seller must be considered a purely private transaction." (pp. 3-4). Striving to find limits that satisfy political economy and the ethical interests of people w

Really a world historical survey of prostitution

Norwegian historian Nils Johan Ringdal traces the history of what is, if not the oldest profession, at least the most notorious, and covers just about everything: he begins with world literature's first lady of the night, found in the 4,000-year-old epic of Gilgamesh, includes a chapter on the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, shows how ancient Greece and Rome incorporated prostitutes into several social echelons, and how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature (e.g Zola's Nana), fashion, arts, and modern sensibility. It tells the stories of the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India, and of the "comfort women" who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. It closes with the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and "sex-positive" feminism, and a look at risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day. Nevertheless, Ringdal's tone is so matter-of-fact that at times it seems more like a recital than a narration.Ringdal illustrates prostitution's pragmatic benefits, which have dwindled only recently with the sexual revolution (with the advent of birth control and the women's movement, prostitution has lost its basic functions as a pastime and a training ground for young men; even so, women willing to have sex for money continued to fill pragmatic roles up to the present).In fact, he assures us, the prostitute was regarded as nothing less than "a guarantor and stabilizer of morality and matrimony" until Victorian times; it was only during the Victorian era, with its emphasis on individual morality, that prostitution took on the cloak of sin. In his opinion, no one is entitled to sex -- paid or unpaid. But, if both parties agree that one will sell sex to the other and if both parties behave decently, then prostitution should be considered a private transaction.