prostitution in the Trek Universe?
- Thread starter Yevetha
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AFAIK, in the 23rd and 24th centuries, there are no explicit mentions of people renting their bodies for direct sexual purposes as a business scheme - but there are many characters who apparently get benefits from being carnally friendly with various benefactors, or with customers of other services such as Quark's gambling ones. None of that would be considered prostitution today, though.
There's plenty of mention of "human trafficking". The so-called "Orion slave girl" is a well-known product, although it wasn't until ENT that we found out that these are downtrodden members of the Orion species itself (and that the scheme actually is more complicated than that). The UFP stance on Orion slave girls is unknown: Pike in his dreams thinks that fellow Starfleeters approve, but his own CMO speaks derisively of the idea of pimping Orions. UFP stance on selling brides to frontier miners seems generally positive in "Mudd's Women", though. Whether any of this can be considered prostitution in today's sense of the word is unclear.
In terms of cultures, we've never heard of Romulan or Klingon or Cardassian prostitutes, or of the general status of one gender over the other as a sex object. In DS9, it appears that Bajorans coping with post-occupation poverty take part in Quark's dabo girl business only reluctantly, and that the profession is not a respected one in either Bajoran or UFP view - but several of our main heroes change their attitudes in that respect during the show.
On the issue of moneyless economies, I doubt this would affect prostitution one iota, one way or another. It's an economy, even if moneyless, and goods and services still change owners somehow. But the nature of the UFP economy is such that "sustenance prostitution" is probably out of the picture: selling one's body for sex wouldn't be the way to get out of an economic plight.
As for legality, we have never heard of sex being illegal in any of the major cultures of Star Trek, be it paid or superficially free. And levels of prudishness vary from character to character, not from culture to culture.
Timo Saloniemi
There's plenty of mention of "human trafficking". The so-called "Orion slave girl" is a well-known product, although it wasn't until ENT that we found out that these are downtrodden members of the Orion species itself (and that the scheme actually is more complicated than that). The UFP stance on Orion slave girls is unknown: Pike in his dreams thinks that fellow Starfleeters approve, but his own CMO speaks derisively of the idea of pimping Orions. UFP stance on selling brides to frontier miners seems generally positive in "Mudd's Women", though. Whether any of this can be considered prostitution in today's sense of the word is unclear.
In terms of cultures, we've never heard of Romulan or Klingon or Cardassian prostitutes, or of the general status of one gender over the other as a sex object. In DS9, it appears that Bajorans coping with post-occupation poverty take part in Quark's dabo girl business only reluctantly, and that the profession is not a respected one in either Bajoran or UFP view - but several of our main heroes change their attitudes in that respect during the show.
On the issue of moneyless economies, I doubt this would affect prostitution one iota, one way or another. It's an economy, even if moneyless, and goods and services still change owners somehow. But the nature of the UFP economy is such that "sustenance prostitution" is probably out of the picture: selling one's body for sex wouldn't be the way to get out of an economic plight.
As for legality, we have never heard of sex being illegal in any of the major cultures of Star Trek, be it paid or superficially free. And levels of prudishness vary from character to character, not from culture to culture.
Timo Saloniemi
Ah, the name of the place appears to be Farius - and the guy Bilby provides O'Brien with a woman, but whether we're speaking paid prostitution or something else isn't clear. Could be one of those "I'm working my way up the ladder" things...
As for Kira pretending she's on that Cardassian labor camp to entertain the guards, what are the odds that a Bajoran would get paid for the job? No doubt sustenance prostitution was commonplace when Cardassians occupied Bajor, but if a liberated Bajoran comes all the way to the Cardassian system, the guards should suspect something else altogether...
Timo Saloniemi
As for Kira pretending she's on that Cardassian labor camp to entertain the guards, what are the odds that a Bajoran would get paid for the job? No doubt sustenance prostitution was commonplace when Cardassians occupied Bajor, but if a liberated Bajoran comes all the way to the Cardassian system, the guards should suspect something else altogether...
Timo Saloniemi
What the Cardassians did to the Bajoran women was sex slavery, not prostitution. Same as the 'comfort women' enslaved by the Japanese army in the second World War.
During the occupation, yes.
But in The Homecoming, it's distinctly different. Miles plays the pimp role and specifically says that it'll cost the Cardie guard two strips of latinum for a tumble.
Unless the women have the option of taking up the profession or not, working or not, and refusing clients or not, is there really a meaningful difference? Koreans, for instance, make a lot of noise about comfort women during the war, yet the trafficking and illegal prostitution remains to this day, largely unfettered. Euphemisms really are of little import.
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I can't let you get away with that. Today in Europe there are literally thousands of little girls, sold by their parents in Russia and the Ukraine, kidnapped or induced by lies who end up in the capitals and cities of western Europe, brutalized and imprisoned and sold off to sick bastards repeatedly every day. Euphemism my fucking dick.
I don't see the disagreement here. You're both talking about forced prostitution, regardless of the level of compensation (from "none" to "little", there being no sense in "lots" in the context), and the various shades of that all have their various euphemisms, which nevertheless really are so transparent that one shouldn't get worried that they actually obscure something.
This sort explicitly existed during the Cardassian occupation, at least per Kira's weird dream in "Wrongs Darker". Apparently, it came in shades of black there, too, with some of the women becoming favored mistresses and others, well, not. And "Orion slave girl" sounds pretty non-voluntary, too, although nobody says outright it would be sexual slavery, and ENT puts that fancy twist to the thing. But there appears to be plenty of demand and supply for all sorts of benign renting of one's body, too - the sort where euphemisms don't really hide anything too nasty. In the end, being a dabo girl or sitting on the Grand Nagus' lap appears to be a good and reputable career option, for example.
Timo Saloniemi
This sort explicitly existed during the Cardassian occupation, at least per Kira's weird dream in "Wrongs Darker". Apparently, it came in shades of black there, too, with some of the women becoming favored mistresses and others, well, not. And "Orion slave girl" sounds pretty non-voluntary, too, although nobody says outright it would be sexual slavery, and ENT puts that fancy twist to the thing. But there appears to be plenty of demand and supply for all sorts of benign renting of one's body, too - the sort where euphemisms don't really hide anything too nasty. In the end, being a dabo girl or sitting on the Grand Nagus' lap appears to be a good and reputable career option, for example.
Timo Saloniemi
I always thought Quark's Dabo girls are prostitutes.
On the other hand, they have holodecks. What do they need prostitutes for?
On the other hand, they have holodecks. What do they need prostitutes for?
Yevetha
Commodore
Mass marketing, but that is going away with the net.
I've no idea what I'm supposed to be trying to get away with here? I don't care what terms are used to describe the industry or the people involved in the occupation. I do care for the freedom of the people involved to be able to control their involvement with the occupation.
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So, quibble semantics and ignore the rest of the sentence. Legal vs illegal prostitution is all I wrote about.
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